Even in a future of body-swapping, we still need rubber tubes to breathe underwater.

Netflix’s Altered Carbon is an A+ sci-fi premise in the body of a B+ TV drama, but make no mistake, this is a compliment.

Yes, the performances occasionally feel stilted, the dialogue sometimes drifts into corny; a writing shortcut here or an egregious nude scene there hold it back from the Blade Runner heights it aspires to. But the show builds a fascinating world at such a high level of production, it’s hard to look away. And by setting a pulpy detective story in such a complex future — where identity is fluid and mortality is negotiable — the philosophical questions it raises are so much more mind-bending than the mystery it exposes.

In Carbon‘s vision of the future, each individual’s consciousness is stored in a “stack”, a mini-disc-sized data device embedded at the base of the brain; while bodies are referred to as “sleeves”, mere containers for the individuals who inhabit them. Some characters have inhabited a number of sleeves in their lifetimes. Some use other sleeves temporarily for subterfuge. The richest upper classes have their sleeves cloned and their stacks backed up to the cloud, so they can live for hundreds of years, cycling through body after rejuvenated body, in an uninterrupted aristocracy — with predictably dystopian results.

Throw in a few other weighty ideas like the humanity of AI (consciousnesses who never even get a sleeve), the potential for virtual manipulation (consciousnesses ripped out of their sleeves against their will), or the fragmentation of the individual (copying one consciousness to multiple sleeves) and the implications of this technology alone make the show a worthwhile speculation.

This only scratches the surface, as the show continues to find thought-provoking new implications to explore, amid a murder mystery filled with gun fights, flashbacks, grimy fantasies and brutal violence. It’s existential dilemma wrapped in guilty pleasure, but don’t let appearances fool you.

If you could transplant your consciousness into a new body instead of dying, would you?

Would you want a fresh copy of your own body, in peak condition, at whatever age you prefer? What would you choose?

Or would you experiment with living in totally different bodies? Which ones? Why?

If they key art for the game can spoil a plot twist, I certainly can.

SOMA is a game that’s hard to talk about without getting into specifics, and there’s nothing more insufferable than talking around something in an attempt to “avoid spoilers”, and thereby talking a lot without really saying anything at all. So there’s that.

On its surface, SOMA is a scary haunted house game set in an undersea research facility where you have to find a way out of the nightmare you’re trapped in, both literally and metaphorically. But really, SOMA is a game about consciousness. And if it weren’t more about that than running from monsters in a dark dank creepy maze at the bottom of the ocean, it would not be a very interesting game at all. In fact I would be just as happy to think and talk about the version of this game with no monsters at all. The monsters are not the point.

Some things a thoughtful person will ask themselves as they play this game include: Is putting a broken-but-still-living thing out of its misery an act of mercy or cruelty? Does this machine feel pain, and is that pain different than “real” pain I would feel guilt for inflicting on a person? Does a form of intelligence not based in traditional human biology have the same right to exist and propagate that we do?

But the biggest questions are about what it means to be human. In a future where consciousness can be transplanted — where our minds have the chance to continue after our frail human bodies, and the earth they occupy, are no longer sustainable — it’s up to us to decide if that’s an action worth taking.

The designers employ a clever trick to force us to confront this directly. At several points in the game, the player comes across kiosks with seemingly benign survey questions about what it feels like to be taken from your original body; about what it means to be untethered from the physical anchor we’re used to.

The questions don’t change over time, but based on the actions you’ve taken and what you’ve been through between these points in the game, you may find yourself reevaluating your responses. It’s tough to say you don’t want to go on when you’ve fought so hard not to give up. What may seem like sweet release viewed from the outside might be a torturous end when it’s your turn. Deciding between a false reality and none at all isn’t much of a choice.

If you could live on beyond your body by putting your mind into a mechanical host, would you?

Would it be better or worse to upload your consciousness to a simulation (like in The Matrix) and leave bodies behind altogether?

How do you think you would feel different in either of these situations, given that you are 100% aware of what’s changed?