The Official, Long Awaited, TV Shows Thread

Only three episodes in so far, I'm enjoying it. It's not perfect, but it's still great. A noir cyberpunk tale !

 

Just started it. I know the concepts aren't new but the society and technology with the timespans of the individuals reminds me of Peter Hamilton's novels.

 

Hmmm. Well, not really. Hamilton's stuff has ultradrives and wormholes and all that sort of stuff.

It has been many years since I read the books but I seem to recall that the Altered Carbon universe doesn't have FTL travel, at least not for matter. Personalities, in the form of data, on the other hand, can be squirted between different solar systems. I also seem to recall that it is rather a lot less utopian than Hamilton's universes tend to be. If you ever read the book, 'Market Forces' by Morgan, you'll see he's rather cynical about corporations!

I'll have to find the time to watch AC because it will be interesting to see how much of what I remember from the books is correct!

 

I was thinking more about the lifespans of the ruling houses and Commonwealth leaders based on re-issuing bodies with conciousness transfers. I believe in the last books, Paula Myo was over 1000 years old, with Ozzie and Nigel even older.

I'll have to read up on this universe. Data transfers between systems into waiting skins isn't viable for initial discovery, and given how limited new skins are (are bodies grown?), seems to be limited to the wealthy mostly which severely limits true expanding of society to other systems in the Galaxy.

 

Finished Altered Carbon and really enjoyed it. Yeah it could have been better, it could have explored more possibilities, it could have explained the transferring process better; but it felt fresh and good to me.

My ONLY complaint is:

Spoiler

the last episode wrapped everything up a little too much/neatly for me. Usually I complain they leave too much stuff unanswered, but this felt like the opposite...like it was overly completed.

But it was by no means a deal breaker, just a bit unexpected to me and felt weird. I'm looking forward to the next season, seems like a new franchise that could have some legs and a lot of different stories to tell in that world.

 

Not counting the lead, I've so far spotted three SF alumnus. Two of them were on Dollhouse, one of those was also on BSG and Continuum, and the third one I spotted is a bbbbblast from the past, though he's had plenty of excellent more recent roles

I'm only up to the episode he appears in.

 

Utopian? Not sure which Hamilton books YOU have read but I've read Night's Dawn trilogy, Fallen Dragon and Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained (Commonwealth Saga or whatsitscalled, I believe); none of them are utopian in any way shape or form. If anything they're mostly dystopian; only the rich have it good in all books (and the rich are much fewer than the rest, as usual), and in Night's Dawn, also the Edenists, although they're also fewer in number than the Adamists. Fallen Dragon is extremely dystopian, describing an essentially dying society which is cannibalizing itself and holding hostage and murdering people for profit.

Overall, his books are mostly stuck in a rut, where society hasn't progressed past basic neo-liberalism/libertarianism/predatory capitalism of today, despite inventing things like FTL or wormholes, which is just ludicrous really. In the Commonwealth books you have wormhole tech that can stretch dozens of lightyears easily and AI computers, yet colonization of new worlds is handled by shipping in primitive tech and letting people build up essentially the equivalent of slums/frontier towns, when everything could be built by automated factories to utmost levels of comfort and luxury. Constantly "costs" is mentioned as a limiting factor, but the commonwealth spans hundreds of lightyears with gods knows how many solar systems chock full of every resource of every kind for the taking. Open up a ground-based wormhole next to an asteroid, point a mining excavating machine out of the opening and start chewing it up. Bring the proceeds straight down onto a planet surface for purification.

Rinse and repeat. Every man woman and child could have their own mountain of gold, easily. Money ceases to have any meaning when you're no longer supply limited in any way shape or form, yet money is still the most important thing in his books. That's just dumb.

The man writes fabulous fiction, but his worldbuilding is utter stupidity really.

Plus, he's also a sexist perverted pig, but that's perhaps another discussion...

 

Hmmm, I'm rather thinking of the more recent Commonwealth books where society has developed a lot further than in Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained where the rich certainly dominated things, but life wasn't so bad for most of the others. Not exactly bleak. Anyway, in the recent books based around the void, things have got rather a lot better for everyday folk (the ones who haven't bothered to upload themselves).

Obviously, the Night's Dawn universe is rather bleaker even before the crap hits the fan!

If you've not read them, I'd recommend the Greg Mandel books by Hamilton as well. Quite enjoyable, I found, though not such far future stuff. Fewer weird sexual mores as well.

 

Now watching HBO show The Pacific for the first time. Yeah, I like to take my time...

It's good, but, you know, so close-up and realistic it makes me sick to my stomach at times. Of course, war isn't nice and tidy... Even back then it was fucking nasty gruesome business that dehumanizes a person, so I suppose it's better this way, to remain true to what it was really like, but man... The fighting scenes are genuinely horrific.

 

BoB followed a single unit through the war; the Pacific on the other hand mostly seems to try to convey the horrors of war for individual soldiers, de-emphasizing heroic elements further (reserving those for Basilone). Have to say it leaves also the viewer with much less feelings of reward for watching the whole series.

 

Finished Altered Carbon, a bit underwhelmed, first episodes were much better imho than the season end. There was a cheap tv vibe with the envoy stuff.

 

I'm most of the way through Altered Carbon and somewhat underwhelmed as well. Great production values and it seems to try to be hard-scifi noir but the writing and direction leave it feeling more like an average TV drama.

 

From my rather vague recollection, Altered Carbon seems to follow the book quite closely and I'm enjoying it so far. I'll have to see if it continues in the same vein though I can't really remember exactly what happens at the end of the book in any case!

Spoiler

I was pleased to see that Kovacs kills everyone (destroying their stacks) after escaping from the virtual torture place. Thought they might tone that down a bit - the torture itself certainly was - in the book I recall that he's put in the simulation in a woman's body (something to do with more nerve endings) with lots of much nastier torture in practice.

 

First half of AC was indeed better then the second. Some parts almost felt sorta soap-ish to me. If soaps were incredibly violent that is. For once, I think the show could have done with a couple more episodes. The whole thing feltreally rushed towards the end. Overall I still enjoyed it, but as far as sci-fi adaptations go, The Expanse worked a bit better for me.

 

I've just finished watching and was also disappointed with the second half. The show took on a distinctly shlocky feel later on and I think this was in part because it went much further off book than the first half:

Spoiler

His sister wasn't even in the book, let alone being the 'bad guy'. Building up some sort of a romance between Kovacs and Quellcrist was weird as they never met (she was dead before he was born, I believe?) and, in fact envoys were created to stop uprisings of her type!

I actually thought the second half of the show dragged on a little personally, mostly because of the bits they added in and I reckon it would have been better with a couple of hours less screentime.

Not sure what they are going to do with season 2 as the second book cuts across the changes in the show quite a bit.

 

Just watched the first 5 episodes of "Counterpart" starring J.K.Simmons and only gave it a shot because it sounded a bit cool and well, c'mon it's J.K.Simmons!

I love it, 5 more episodes to go but I gotta wait until Saturday for the next one!

 

His acting is amazing between the 2 versions of him. The distinct differences he maintains between them in facial expression, posture, vocal strength etc is just amazing. Brilliant work from him.

 

Finished watching the first season of Marco Polo. Pretty good and fun to watch. Too bad there are only two seasons (or is the second season really bad?).

 

A long while back there was a SF novel about the US government dealing with its counterparts in an alternate dimension, one where the CCCP had the upper hand, and the other USA was in a depression, and under a reactionary government. Some people had close counterparts, others had none, and others had counterparts who were walking a different path.

And I guess Keith Laumer deserves a mention here. Thanks for the tip regarding this show!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_of_the_Imperium

 

Speculation from watching the first two episodes.

Spoiler: Does it look like ...

Neither universe is ours? The styling of some of the men's clothes hint at that, but the bulky monitors in both worlds seemed like a tip off. So are the writers holding out in reserve the possibility of a third Universe, and a third Counterpart?