Altered Carbon Review Season 2 Episode 7

Article Written by J. Y. Calcano

Altered Carbon Episode 2.7: Experiment Perilous

Written by Nevin Densham

Directed by Salli Richardson- Whitfield

Synopsis: When Quell’s sleeve begins to shut down, Poe and Ms. Dig send her into VR, where Kovacs finally learns the truth about her deadly rampages.

     The mystery of why Quell (Renée Elise Goldsberry) has been murdering the colony founders in blind rampages she cannot control defines Season Two's main plot. Considering that stack digitization technology is derived from the Songspire trees and elder technology, and that said technology began on Harlan’s World, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that not all the elders are dead.

     That’s the secret. An elder is riding roughshod on Quell’s sleeve and killing the founders, because the founders murdered the elders on Harlan’s World in order to claim the planet as theirs. That sounds simple enough, and it is that simplicity that might impede this season from being as good as it could be.

     At face value, the revenge plot is sound, but the elder satellites make this entire premise shaky. The elder satellites don’t just protect the planet from space invasion, they can also target the ground. The creation of such deadly battle platforms establishes a foundation that the elders do understand the concept of danger and weapons. That begs the question, how did the founders ever come close enough to shoot all the elders with a handgun? The whole idea that the elders were incapacitated to such an extent that they could not control their formidable defense satellites, but, that now, one can do so through a human stack just falls a little short.

     

     The banality of applying simple revenge to the mystery that are elders feels cliché and cheap. On one hand, it is a credible way to tie the threads together. On the other, it feels too simple for a series that prides itself on its twists and surprises.

     With a deadly array of pinpoint accurate satellites as the price, everyone has an agenda:

• The elder wants to kill the last founder or burn all humans on the planet to ash.
• Danica (Lela Loren) wants to control the satellites and become not just governor, but a power able to challenge the Protectorate. Her ambition is well in tune with the entitled, but brilliant, personality that won’t quit until she overreaches and burns.
• Everyone wants to prevent the elder from killing all the humans, one way or another.

     The series finally is next and it promises to be dizzy and action packed finale with one last set of questions to answer. Who lives, who dies, and who mourns?

References

"Altered Carbon: Experiment Perilous." Netflix. March 1, 2020. www.netflix.com

"Altered Carbon: Full Cast and Crew," IMDb.com Inc. March 1, 2010. www.imdb.com