Altered Carbon Review: Sci-Fi Drama Is Visually Stunning, Unevenly Paced

When technology advances to the point that death is more a minor inconvenience and less a consciousness-ending blow, humans will have the theoretical ability to live forever. But Altered Carbon, Netflix’s optically impressive yet frustratingly off-balance new drama, makes a convincing argument that we probably shouldn’t.

The sci-fi series, which begins streaming its entire first season on Friday, Feb. 2, is based on Richard K. Morgan’s 2002 novel of the same name and takes place in a far-flung future in which the totality of a person’s existence — thoughts, memories, joys, sorrows, etc. — is stored in a disc-shaped “stack” implanted in the spinal column. When bodies (or “sleeves,” in the show’s terminology) become sick or hurt or simply fall out of fashion, stacks can be transferred into new vessels as easily as slipping a BluRay disc into its player.