- Episode length: 57 minutes
- Number of pages: 51
- Number of chapters: 4
This episode follows the book pretty much to a tee. Theres hardly any differences between the two, although I’ve outlined them below for you.
SPOILERS AHEAD – WON’T RUIN THE SHOW BUT WILL TELL YOU SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO KNOW BEFORE WATCHING/READING IT
You can see the differences summarised in the table.
| SHOW | BOOK |
|---|---|
| Kovacs is woken up by Prescott (the lawyer) being in his room | Kovacs is woken up by the hotel with news that Prescott is on her way up |
| Kovacs sees the re-sleeving facility and interviews Mr and Mrs Bancroft while there | Kovacs goes to Alcatraz to see the storage and re-sleeving facility Bancroft owns and uses |
| Kovacs reviews all the death threats with the AI from The Raven | Kovacs reviews all the death threats with Prescott |
| Elliot is a black man who has his daughters stack in VR | Elliot is an old white man sitting on a bench |
| Elliot needs to be forced to talk about what happened to his daughter | Elliot freely talks about what happened to his daughter |
| Kovacs chases a guy to cause a fight outside of the brothel | Kovacs is jumped by Elliot and then others |
| Ortega arrests Kovacs for organic damage | Ortega saves Kovacs from the guy he was chasing |
Although there are minor differences in how these are presented, I think I can understand why. I don’t think there was as much awareness around diversity back in 2002 when Altered Carbon was first published as there was 16 years later when Netflix released the TV show. Given the lack of black representation in a country that has such a huge black community I can understand wanting to make a few characters black that may not have originally been.
Although there are minor differences in how these are presented, I think I can understand why. I don’t think there was as much awareness around diversity back in 2002 when Altered Carbon was first published as there was 16 years later when Netflix released the TV show. Given the lack of black representation in a country that has such a huge black community I can understand wanting to make a few characters black that may not have originally been.
I think because this episode so closely resembled the book, they were only able to get through 4 chapters (51 pages) compared to the 6 chapters (72 pages) of the first episode. I’m looking forward to seeing the spread of the remaining episodes in the coming weeks.
