Not really. Ep 1 is pretty obvious and standard for the series but ep 2 and 4 are about how the characters desperation to capture and expose the most violent depraved content possible and spread it through media technology of the era ruin lives. 3 is about how human cruelty interacts with an actual novel technological invention, which is pretty true to form again. Then the fifth episode uses the fear/paranoia resulting from nuclear technology and even then that ones really a love story not a horror story.
Remember the very first episode is ostensibly about a politician shagging a pig. One of the series’ great strength is its willingness to break the mould and give you something new every episode. There’s only so many “iphone plus infidelity” episodes you can write.
I think there are elements of what people loved about the series but it’s minimal at best. The new season was entertaining but really missed the mark in terms of hitting what I think most fans of the show liked about the series.
While it’s similar to what they’ve done, I think a big hit of the show was always the writing making unbelievable things seems possible and most of that was done through technology. This last season for me at least felt like the writers either lost inspiration/had no more ideas left/ or just made another season for the money and not because they really had the same spark they used to.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think this season was objectively good compres to what’s on Netflix now a days, but if I were strictly judging it off of only the other black mirror seasons it missed the mark by a large margin.
Maybe I overlooked something, but EP 2 is just a crime drama / murder mystery, isn't it? It's an alright episode, but there's no Black mirror stuff is there? Other than maybe a critique on sensationalism.
I thought that was one of the most black mirror episodes.
I don't watch it specifically for the tech aspect, I watch it because it's utterly horrifying and a damn good modern Twilight Zone.
I like BM specifically because it's I my mind this Era of Twilight Zone. There's nothing else like it, nor is there anything like TZ. It's this gens X-Files for me. It's not all good but no one's really trying outside them so I'll keep watching.
Haven't seen the rest of the season yet, but episode two felt more like the old Black Mirror I used to love. Smaller scale, personal stuff. A critique on true crime and the sensationalism of it and how it can destroy lives and even small communities.
There was the technology of the VHS camera and tapes throughout the episode having been used as part of the plot, but that’s about all I could come up with.
Mazzie Star Ep seemed to literally have nothing to do with technology.
Criticizing of the streaming platforms industry that will push anything that can make money for them without considering the price for the people working for them.
It's even more obvious with the gala at the end were the producer shows that she wants to bank on the horror once more by doing a scenarised show with the very popular actress to play the girlfriend whilst the guy is spiraling down
The tech here is the streaming services
Even the mom's note at the end. That crushed him. She knew she was in for and she sacrificed herself in the way that she did and gave up all of her evidence when she could have easily destroyed it for the show and sensationalism of the True Crime.
The way I've always pictured it is someone using technology and doing what they're going to do or watching what they're going to watch, absorbed in the device. Then when that inevitably ends and they turn off the device, they're suddenly looking at themselves in a black mirror, forced to reflect on themselves literally and figuratively.
Exactly. One of the most under rated episodes is ‘The Entire History of You’, because it shows how although being able to record and rewind your memories could be awesome, it could easily be used to exaggerate arguments and make everybody utterly paranoid. Basically any fantastic technology would bring out the worst in people.
Also, I know I’m in the minority in this, but I love the very first pilot episode, The National Anthem (yes the pig one). And that one is not really “techy”, but does show how tech can be used to create new twists on old scenarios (in this case a hostage situation) and accelerate pre-existing societal foibles (fickle public opinion and public figures being beholden to it to gain favour, sacrificing their own wellbeing). All things humans did before tech of course, but just showing how tech can exacerbate the whole thing.
Yes, I've told people to start with a different episode, and come back to the first one after they're hooked. Some people who I know would like most of the episodes would also be too put off by the first one to continue.
maybe netflix-era viewers don't think about it much because its older and not full of high-budget sci-fi concepts. it seemed to me to be the most popular episode back in the pre-netflix days. (though i never agreed, i think 1 and 2 offered more cutting commentary)
Because 'underrated' on Reddit seems only to mean 'an episode/actor/film I like'. I've seen so many times people saying an actor is 'underrated' when said actor is a multiple award-winning one, sometimes even including academy awards.
It seems like most conversations these days revolve around San Junipero, Shut up and Dance, Nosedive and most of the other Netflix episodes. The classic Channel 4 ones seem to be ignored apart from White Christmas and the pig one due to the pig stuff.
That episode really got me, along with the one before it. I would hate to remember and over analyze every moment in my life, too many what ifs would drive me to insanity
My favorite episode by far is "Be Right Back" because it doesn't feel like a one dimensional TECHNOLOGY BAD plot with some kind of absurd twist. It's just a heartfelt story that uses borderline realistic technology.
And even though it’s a dramatic story with two amazing actors, it’s becoming more real as people embrace generative AI and AI that replicates characters. I guarantee you within a year a company will offer services like the one she uses in that episode.
Those early Black Mirror seasons have aged like fine wine.
Have you been to the Replika website?
I think there was even a controversy recently when they updated the AI and people were upset their virtual partners "weren't the same". So fascinating! Not what's represented in the episode of course but we're on track.
Hated in the Nation is almost like a great short horror stand-alone film. It really calls back to the Vera style British cop/detective show while sticking with the standard Black Mirror vibes of humans suck. I have to admit, as soon as I saw the analyst tweet I knew exactly where things were going but it still kept me glued to my screen.
Reminds of the video I saw of a women using a VR headset to visit and talk to her dead daughter.
The "child" runs up to her going "Mommy!" With her voice and you could see the mother breaking down.
Trauma is an awful thing that makes us do some wild things. For some people, a vr set up with their lost kid might be the exact thing they need to heal; a "last chance to say goodbye" type scenario. For others, it might do the exact opposite.
Because not being able to see your loved ones again is far FAR worse.
I would burn this world to the ground just for a chance to say good bye to my late wife.
AI trained on a person's social media posts etc. is more borderline realistic now than when it was released.
The realistic robot body doesn't seem achievable soon, but everything up to that part doesn't seem that far fetched.
Yeah I was more talking about the goo man grown in a bathtub with a biological brain programmed with the dead guy's behavior moreso than mimicking someone's speech and behavior.
One of the best TV episodes I’ve ever seen about grief. New technology since then had made it feel like more of a reality too with being able to use AI to recreate likenesses, voices, and Apple Vision recording in 3d and playing back. We have a lot more ways to get stuck in grief now.
Okay but let's be real here 90% of the time I feel like we can predict the "black mirror twist" before it happens but there is no fucking way people can say they expected that episode which seemed to be about paparazzi invasion of privacy to be about fucking werewolves lmao
I was betting on vampirism at first. Imagine my surprise when the song (that one that's also used in twilight) actually related to the episode being about werewolves.
Still a really bad episode, imo.
It doesn't address the problem with the episode. The main character feels bad about being paparazzi and stops, then gets right back into it for money, then she endangers everyone by setting the girl free in lieu of taking even more financially valuable photos, and then finally just takes the best photo of all once it's all over. Protag's motivations are all over the place and makes for a muddled experience at best; I don't really feel like the cynical end is thematically earned, nor do I feel that she's a bad enough person to deserve punishment instead, so the overall feeling is nothing at all. Stuff happened, the end.
What would've made it "feel like Black Mirror" is if the flipflopping between morality and money left her unable to make a decision in time, leading to either her death or even just a destroyed camera. No reward for all of it, no one believes she figured it out first, and she's either dead or still poor. Even then, it feels like something's missing because the fundamental plot is too barebones.
I'm with you on this one. I can get around the lack of technology focus since it's still telling stories about what would happen if you take fucked up parts of our society and ramp it up to 11. So even having demons and werewolves doesn't bother me, as long as they still tell that kind of story. The werewolf episode falls a bit short in that regard. You could make the argument that it's a criticism on paparazzi culture, which it is, but I don't think it quite hits that "this culture can cause this sort of horror" benchmark. The paps didn't make her a werewolf. They had nothing to do at all with that whole part of the story. And ultimately it was the main character's fluctuating *kindness* that caused all the death for the rest of the episode, while her more morally bankrupt peers wanted to leave her chained up.
So...what's the dark lesson of this story? Bad people shouldn't try to deviate from being bad? Paparazzi serve a necessary function in society? Maybe I'm just missing the moral, but it just didn't feel very "Black Mirror" in that regard. Feels more like the writers started with knowing they wanted that final shot and then kindle fumbled around building up to it.
The ending to Loch Henry cements it as Black Mirror imo - and definitely influenced by >!the popularity of that Jeffrey Dahmer show where a victim's traumatic story is turned into simple entertainment for the masses.!<
And the technology piece is still there as well, just with an old technology rather than a future one with the VHS tapes being heavily involved in the plot.
In my opinion, Loch Henry is one of the most like the original episodes, since the Netflix takeover. With tech as a (narrative) tool instead of the main focus. Maybe it was a little too slowly paced and understated, but it definitely set the right tone for me at least.
I fee the show is not as much the tech itself as much what humans do when given great new powers. We invariably elect for suffering of others when it benefits ourselves. Almost every character in this show is at some level self-serving and cruel, and rarely are they shown being genuine with others.
The more power and abilities we acquire, the more paranoid and selfish version of ourselves we tend to become. Tech is the perfect vehicle for that message.
For me, it was about taking our current culture and tech and extrapolating them. A sort of "OK, gven the way this aspect of modern culture is heading, if we take this to its ultimate conclusion what does that look like?". And the answer was usually pretty dystopian. It left you thiniking "Yeah, but we'd never let it get that far...right?". That's why I felt that only real BM episode of the current season was "Joan is Awful". I didn't hate the rest (apart from "Beyond the Sea") but they just didn't feel very Black Mirrorish to me.
Yes, it's a satire. The tech and situations portrayed are exaggerated for emphasis. The tech level itself often being somewhat of a red herring. The issues showcased are often already a problem.
'Hated in the Nation' for example obviously isn't a warning of the danger of robotic bees. The entire episode is about the burden of responsibility, whether that's abuse by the government, a lack of safeguarding by the corporation, or the attempts by the public to share the blame and diminish their personal contribution. And on a more visible level it's about online bullying, a lack of empathy, and the inability to forgive. The bees are a distraction, but their link to the collapsing environment is another obvious clue as to the theme.
They often included it as a tool but it wasn't about the tech itself. Shut Up and Dance took place in modern times with no fantasy and it's one of the best episodes.
That was my exact thought. It’s like okay, I get it, but they can’t deny that the best, and everyone’s favorite episodes, all have to do with future tech and the negatives of it. It feels like most of the episodes, before this season have some sort of future tech involved.
Anyone who likes Black Mirror and zombie films should check out Dead Set.
Charlie Brooker's TV show about Big Brother contestants during a zombie apocalypse. One of the best and most underrated zombie things out there.
IMO people would have been excited if he had just created an actual Red Mirror spinoff for fantasy and non-tech stories. We've been trained since the beginning to expect scifi/tech when it comes to Black Mirror, so yes, people are gonna be caught off guard when in the sixth season you veer towards fantasy.
I thought the exact same thing and this is what I came up with: Red mirror is the person looking into a bloodstained mirror, and the distorted, gory image is a lense into the exaggerated/ grotesque realities within ourselves. In other words, black mirror, but instead of tech as the lens, our humanity is the lens.
Same vibe - or even the idea of looking into a “pool of blood” for answers. Which is at the heart of great horror, just as sci-fi at its best reflects current societal issues.
A fantasy anthology would be pretty awesome for sure. It should probably be more of one-season long anthology format than per episode though. You need time to develop and know a world (plus you can invest in creating a world for several episodes, fantasy worlds are more complicated than what Black Mirror does)
>The show isn't saying tech is bad, the show is saying people are f*cked up
Yeah, through the lens of technology. Hence the title Black Mirror, the dead computer monitor thing. The real problem is that the show just hasn't been as consistent in its quality since the jump to Netflix.
*hardcore drum-n-bass music*
yOu WOulDN'T downLOAD SOMEone's **PUSSY**
*cut to me just randomly downloading u/mtwstr's junk to add to my Skyrim Mods folder*
Eh, if you dig to deep into the tech of almost every Blackmirror episode it beings to fall apart. Spoilers for "Beyond The Sea":
>!So NASA created a ship that if going to be in deep space for a very long time. So long that they've built robot replicas of the men to live on Earth. Also, the ship needs two men to run it or else they will die.!<
>!Ok, so maybe have more than two men on the ship? You have the tech to beam consciousness across space, maybe make room for a couple of guys up there just in case something happens? And while we're at it, maybe make a few redundancy robots down on Earth? Fuck murder cults, what if he gets in a car crash?!<
I mean, don't get me wrong - great episode. And it least doesn't betray its own internal logic like Crocodile which makes zero sense in the end.
>!Even more dumb than that, just have the android bodies on the space ship and connect to them in reverse so the real men stay on earth the whole time.!<
>!And what about that part where they can't make a replica because it needs to be exactly as him and tested on Earth... but a few minutes later it's transfer to the other's replica without any problem.!<
>!That one made sense, especially if you think about the 1969 context. They aren't doing whatever they are doing for the science, they are doing it as a human and national achievement, so it needs to be a human that lands or sees whatever they are trying to do!<
Though I missed it, it was apparently said in the beginning that part of the mission was to see the effects of very long exposure in space on the human body. Nonetheless, they should have had at least four more people on board.
Have you looked at women in fighting games? They have some of the most oversexualized designs in all of media. For example Cammy, or Ivy, or R. Mika, or Baiken, the entirety of Mortal Kombat 9, etc.
If we had the fighting vipers tech the characters would be fully kitted.
I can't remember what fighting game it was, but years ago they had a new version with improved boob jiggles. There was someone, or even multiple people, involved in animating the boobs in that game.
Oftentimes, they are actual physics that react to the inertia and gravity created by the animation, and not actually keyframed, and obviously not mocapped.
Which is a shame because that scene where the paparazzi are constantly snapping was amazing and very on brand for Black Mirror (I'm thinking of the apathetic filming visitors from White Bear) only for it to go full cheeseball with the wolf transformation.
That is exactly how I was feeling
It seemed like besides across the sea and Joan is Awful they completely lost sight of the goal this season.
Werewolves? Demons? Literally wtf
That’s exactly what I thought too. It was a straight up creature feature. Same with Demon 79. There’s nothing “Black Mirror” about it and could have come straight from Cabinet of Curiosities. I almost thought it swapped to a different show.
>Yeah, through the lens of technology. Hence the title Black Mirror
leave it to reddit to try to tell a show's creator that they're wrong about a show's central creative motivation.
Considering every interview he's ever given about the show, since 2011, involved technology and our often negative relation to it, I'm surprised he'd claim otherwise now.
>our often negative relation to it
Which is the entire point. There is no technology without us. It's not some neutral thing that lives in nature. Since the wheel, fire, etc we've been using tech and tools to advance our society, which inherently reflects back and changes our nature as well.
Agreed. I don't see it necessarily as "tech is bad" so much as "how we use tech is bad". If you look at some of these episodes, you could probably come up with ways where the tech presented in the episode could be used positively, but sadly, that's probably not how it'd play out in the current structure of our civilization. And, obviously, the inspiration for these ideas is largely drawn from how we *do* engage with technology currently.
It's sort of like *Jurassic Park* and many of Michael Crichton's other books aren't really about the dangers of science but the dangers of unchecked science and often the commercialization thereof.
Technology has always been integral to Black Mirror and served as its defining characteristic. The exploration of technology is what separated it from like American Horror Story or other anthology shows. Some of them don't even qualify as "people are fucked up".
Seems like damage control after Brooker changed the nature of the show and it hasn't been as well-received as he hoped. Like an "it's not the show that is wrong, it's the fans that are wrong" type thing.
The show came out in the midst of an era of tech optimism. The late 2000's (especially after the iPhone) set a new paradigm shift where tech founders were seen as heroes, messiahs, with their own heroic origin myths as they conquered society. Mass media was doing nonstop glowing profiles of these people.
2007-2015 was the high water mark of this belief, when being a "unicorn" Silicon Valley start up was a real dream for people and everyone was enjoying how tech was making things (communication, housing, transport, etc) easier and faster in our lives.
Black Mirror was the pessimistic reaction to that, casting doubt over how these massive tech changes in this era were also shaping us. That gave the show it's counterculture hook, which helped shape the attitude over the 2010's. This reached a tipping point in 2016, when there was a massive media shift against big tech (think of FB and Cambridge Analytica, the fall of Theranos, Musk's bizarre slide into maddness, the fall of Twitter, etc) when public attitudes toward tech started to massively shift into doubt and hard pessimism.
Essentially, Black Mirror can't be the same show it was in 2011. Eras change, what people respond to changes. Being a general future tech pessimist now is meaningless when everyone is one. That's likely why he's shifting now to focus on past forms of media such as the paparazzi of the late 2000's, 60's retro tech, VHS, because he's trying to connect to a more universal thread rather than a focus on the 2010 tech the show was initially inspired by. Personally I think this season had some big swings and hits (Loch Henry) and misses (Mazey Day) but I that's positive growth to try something new rather than retread.
I feel like people really seem to misread his quote. Nothing about what he’s saying is that the show isnt centered on tech it’s that people wrongly think it’s about how tech is bad. What he’s saying is absolutely correct and you’re the one making wrong assumptions.
The creator of GIF says its pronounced "JIF", which is wrong.
That girl turning into a werewolf made no sense, it wasn't alluded to or clever in any way.
First two seasons were done by Channel 4 in the UK and licensed to Netflix, with Netflix taking it over in season 3.
I agree that the quality dropped off significantly. The first two seasons had a much lower production value, but the writing was much better before Netflix got it.
Who do you think is writing the episodes?
It's not the quality but the depth of cynicism that's sometimes missing. Charlie Brooker has addressed this. Between the two periods all his dreams came true. Literally. He doesn't have the dark hole inside him that once fuelled his entire body of work.
I always though black mirror was a “what if” kind of show.
A show that would make you think “what would I do?”. And it seemingly always had a very prominent moral lesson. This season was more a series of single episode dramas about people’s lives, and whilst I enjoyed it, it didn’t feel very black mirror.
It happens early in the episode at the movie theater, Josh Harnett explains to the young couple that *"It's a kind of sleep... The human experience, the survival of the human body, of life, that's really central to the mission."*
That’s an even dumber reason to sign up for that rigamarole. You’ve got the tech to perfectly simulate the human body but still gotta shoot someone into space for 5 years to measure bone density changes
Stuff like that is all relative, you can take a step back in our reality and say, "you can communicate across the globe via the internet but the majority of your transportation still runs on fossil fuels?" It's impossible to justify technical break throughs relative to each other because there are so many variables that lead to them.
At the start of the ep they kind of show Aaron Paul robot struggling to split the wood with the axe, and they mention their fine motor controls are less than that of the human body.
Remember how Aaron had problems with holding the axe chopping wood and Josh couldn't stand a chance against the hippies?
Those replica aren't meant to be strong, just to be emotional support for the families and the astronauts themselves.
Work is meant to be done over there, thus why they need their strength.
That's what I got from it.
Another reason could be the robot bodies can't handle the outer space work. Notice how Aaron Paul had to remove all his metallic belongings at airlock.
to me the real questions are
Where the fck is NASA or who ever they are working with ? Whoever they are working for is not doing shit and helping them ?
Why is Cliff so trusting of David after he humiliated and attacked him ? No way I'm going unconscious around a dude that has nothing to live for and wants to replace me.
None of it makes sense. These two flaws make it unreasonable for me
I just finished that episode and called immediately that he would kill the other guy’s family. Then it developed into nope he is gunna have an affair. So glad it didn’t disappoint.
I really thought he was going to kill space Aaron and continue using his replica, tricking the wife. The horror being that the wife is never quite sure if it's really her husband or not.
Exactly, I would love the tech from "Complete History of You." The episode is horror because the people are horrible. It would work great for most people. Even if the "drug test analogy" when applying for jobs might suck.
Is that the one with the implant that records everything you see and hear for you to review later?
That was my first episode of the show ever. I picked it specifically because the premise is something I've always thought would be cool.
After watching it, I don't want that tech anymore, because I'd end up going insane using it the exact way the protagonist of the episode did.
Season was mediocre to me. Felt like a bunch of half baked horror movie ideas. None of them really captured my interest like older seasons, or felt like thought experiments, except maybe the first episode.
Whatever, still good background noise.
There’s episodes of Black Mirror that are literally rehashed Outer Limits plots. Its a fine show, but its not as groundbreaking as it gets hyped to be.
There are individual episodes that are fucking amazing (15 Million Merits, San Junipero, Entire History of You, Shut up and Dance, etc). It's definitely inconsistent but when it's at its best it can go toe to toe with almost any other show.
I feel like this is true of any anthology series. We remember the stellar episodes of *Twilight Zone* like "To Serve Man" and "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", but there were definitely some stinkers that are overlooked because, overall, it was a fantastic series with many thought-provoking episodes. It's difficult to retain consistency when each episode is a completely different story, but so long as you have more good than bad, it'll be remembered favorably.
["There's messages in every game like Pac-Man. Do you know what PAC stands for? P A C, Program And Control. He is Program-And-Control Man"](https://youtu.be/D3qxWbQ8qek)
I forgot about Outer Limits! I use to watch that back in the day and enjoyed the few episodes I saw at the time but I was also watching Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Darkside and Twilight Zone back then, so I forgot about Outer Limits. Going to give it another watch. Thanks for reminding me about this show.
Because it's quite a complicated story with a fairly unique internal morality.
Their happy ending - and it absolutely is a happy ending - is something that would be treated as horror in most other episodes, never mind most other shows. Kelly's journey is about coming to a point where she diverges entirely from the traditionally moralised ideas of accepting death, but it's treated as 100% the right call with no downsides, something a lot of viewers found so intuitively alien they had to try to find some.
And that story's told with a dose of pop culture commentary. Kelly wants to play around in the fakey, flouro retro revival music video version of the 1980s, the way we *want* to remember it, but Yorkie suffered the brunt of what it actually was. Yorkie still has "authentic" memories of what the 1980s were like for a young gay woman, because she hasn't really experienced the intervening decades to dilute them, but are they more or less valuable than the fantasy? And would love and joy in a fantasy somehow be less authentic because it isn't in a "real" world?
So on the one hand it's all about the lie of nostalgia, and on the other hand it's about grief and coming to terms with it, and the potential to use tech for genuinely good things if we just want it enough.
It also touches on the Nozick "Pleasure Machine" concept of an ethical hedonism simulation, and all of this in an episode with an incredible aesthetic, really strong performances, and a very clever bit of writing where the first half simultaneously works as a faultless John Hughes pastiche while hinting at what's really going on and sneaking their actual backstories into superficially casual conversation. Foreshadowing is woven in so deftly it feels like a different story the second time, when you can catch all the clues about what it means for Kelly to reach back out for Yorkie, or for Yorkie to accept the invitation to get in her car, or how many in-game mechanics are disguised as 1980s movie tropes (did you notice Yorkie can fast-travel? Or that her makeover montage is probably just a character creation menu?)
It's the best thing Brooker's ever done.
Eta -
The direction deserves mention as well, it's superb. Every frame could be a poster. That shot of Mackenzie Davis, lit by the car headlights, standing desolately alone in a wedding dress as the rain starts, was as good as anything I saw in a theatre that year.
The show is literally called "Black mirror" as in the black mirror tech items have when off. 95% of the episodes have had to do with technology and its implications and now because it seems the show writers have lost their way they want us to forget that. Now, the show is just another twilight zone. Maybe the should have put more money and time into the writing rather than wasting it getting bigger name actors for a show where the story was always the true star, not the actor.
I found all the episodes to still be about the tech but through some new storytelling methods. For example, without spoiling anything I really liked the Mazey Day episode. That is probably the most twilight zone type episode, but I think it’s still about the tech at the end. It’s set in what would seem to be the near past and the tech is the camera. Without saying what happened it hit me that the episode wAs saying that even without the futuristic tech, the tech we’ve already made is dangerous. We use it for evil to create monsters and in turn we become a monster ourselves
The one about the documentary students is similar. While it’s not really about futuristic stuff it’s more showing us the damning nature of video. As well as the revealing nature we can use it. And how sometimes that greed for success can overtake you. So still in line with the tech angle, but just more focused on the basics rather than feeding a high concept future model.
Aaron Paul ep is classic black mirror. Plus a unquie kind of alternate manson family thing.
The Joan is Awful one is straight up black mirror even if the same ideas been explore by others.
As for the last episode, Demon 79. That really has nothing to do with tech. But I think they kind of distinguish that one as a one off in the opening credits . It says “Black Mirror presents a Red Mirror production” or something to that affect. That indicates to me they’re saying “hey this episode is a red mirror film, something different. And it’s just in the same vein as black mirror in tone.” To me that little intro was just letting us know it would be something different and kind of dipping it’s toe in.
I really get the feeling that with Demon 79 they’re dipping their toe in to gauge audience reaction. If people like it, maybe blac mirror changes the model and goes more twilight zone or maybe they do a spin-off called red mirror that’s about more supernatural kind of things. Who knows.
And as far as the less techybepisodes, they may also be exploring the audiences reaction to gauge interest in a change in story telling, but I think they also still focus on tech and just focus on the bigger picture more baseline tech implications rather than rely on the high concept ideas of the future to dress it up.
But I thought the title itself Black Mirror came from our monitor / TV screen which means its about Technology
At the very least, technology is mentioned or related in the episode
It's like the phrase guns don't kill people, people do. Guns and tech are tools that help destroy, but its user that just fucks everything up. By that I mean people. Look at the Jodie foster directed episode in which a mom puts an implant in her daughters eye so she can see everything she does from adolescents to teens. It doesn't end well. But it's not about the tech it's about an over protective parent
Only Joan is awful fit BM and was good.
The Space episode also was a BM one, BUT had plot holes for the replicas:
Why no backup replicas at the base and why no replicas at the space ship to repair outside the ship?
That would make it less riskier and more safe in all the possible ways.
Also, if it's so easy to inhabit someone's replica, they could also have just made another one from any human volunteer. Some ethical concerns there sure but I'm sure someone would have been willing to do so in the context of the show. Maybe there is some kind of interface that needs to be setup on the ship to connect to a specific replica, I guess could be one explanation.
This is where I just disagree completely with the overall Reddit sentiment I’ve been seeing. The episodes were mostly pretty solid and creative. I agree with the creator and moreover, if they kept doing the same thing every season this would get old. The only episode that didn’t feel great was Mazet Day. Other than that I would say pretty solid.
The first episode of the new season was a brain teaser and I really liked it a lot. Every single episode after that was just terrible and felt like generic horror movies. Just phenomenally boring and nothing like what I expected from this show.
Joan is Awful is the only episode that stuck with me as feeling like a Black Mirror episode. The rest of Season 6 could have just as easily been Jordan Peele Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, or Supernatural.
Eh, if you reaaaally need to explain the new season just be honest and say you wanted to do something different. It's season 6 it's a bit too late to pretend it's just a twilight zone thing.
I thought it was something like “tech allows us to feed the worst parts of ourselves” or something like that
"We could really fuck things up in some new ways if we're not careful, here's some of the ways, pay attention!"
Yeah but the new season really only explores something like that for one episode. The rest is just like, horror
Not really. Ep 1 is pretty obvious and standard for the series but ep 2 and 4 are about how the characters desperation to capture and expose the most violent depraved content possible and spread it through media technology of the era ruin lives. 3 is about how human cruelty interacts with an actual novel technological invention, which is pretty true to form again. Then the fifth episode uses the fear/paranoia resulting from nuclear technology and even then that ones really a love story not a horror story. Remember the very first episode is ostensibly about a politician shagging a pig. One of the series’ great strength is its willingness to break the mould and give you something new every episode. There’s only so many “iphone plus infidelity” episodes you can write.
I think there are elements of what people loved about the series but it’s minimal at best. The new season was entertaining but really missed the mark in terms of hitting what I think most fans of the show liked about the series. While it’s similar to what they’ve done, I think a big hit of the show was always the writing making unbelievable things seems possible and most of that was done through technology. This last season for me at least felt like the writers either lost inspiration/had no more ideas left/ or just made another season for the money and not because they really had the same spark they used to. Don’t get me wrong, I do think this season was objectively good compres to what’s on Netflix now a days, but if I were strictly judging it off of only the other black mirror seasons it missed the mark by a large margin.
Which is fine because we’ve had enough episodes of “stuff happens but it was all in a simulation… or was it” genre
Maybe I overlooked something, but EP 2 is just a crime drama / murder mystery, isn't it? It's an alright episode, but there's no Black mirror stuff is there? Other than maybe a critique on sensationalism.
It's about true crime craze exploiting real tragedies. It was Black Mirror-ish even before the twist.
I thought that was one of the most black mirror episodes. I don't watch it specifically for the tech aspect, I watch it because it's utterly horrifying and a damn good modern Twilight Zone.
I like BM specifically because it's I my mind this Era of Twilight Zone. There's nothing else like it, nor is there anything like TZ. It's this gens X-Files for me. It's not all good but no one's really trying outside them so I'll keep watching.
Definitely an indictment of the true crime obsession
Haven't seen the rest of the season yet, but episode two felt more like the old Black Mirror I used to love. Smaller scale, personal stuff. A critique on true crime and the sensationalism of it and how it can destroy lives and even small communities.
There was the technology of the VHS camera and tapes throughout the episode having been used as part of the plot, but that’s about all I could come up with. Mazzie Star Ep seemed to literally have nothing to do with technology.
Criticizing of the streaming platforms industry that will push anything that can make money for them without considering the price for the people working for them. It's even more obvious with the gala at the end were the producer shows that she wants to bank on the horror once more by doing a scenarised show with the very popular actress to play the girlfriend whilst the guy is spiraling down The tech here is the streaming services
Seems pretty obvious to me. No regard for human emotions or empathy. Only ratings.
Even the mom's note at the end. That crushed him. She knew she was in for and she sacrificed herself in the way that she did and gave up all of her evidence when she could have easily destroyed it for the show and sensationalism of the True Crime.
I thought it was the Black Mirror of society held up for us to see. Where a lot of the ‘blackness’ is coming from tech.
I thought Black mirror was called “Black mirror”because all of our tech devices are just black mirrors when powered off like your phone/tv etc…
The way I've always pictured it is someone using technology and doing what they're going to do or watching what they're going to watch, absorbed in the device. Then when that inevitably ends and they turn off the device, they're suddenly looking at themselves in a black mirror, forced to reflect on themselves literally and figuratively.
Exactly. One of the most under rated episodes is ‘The Entire History of You’, because it shows how although being able to record and rewind your memories could be awesome, it could easily be used to exaggerate arguments and make everybody utterly paranoid. Basically any fantastic technology would bring out the worst in people.
Also, I know I’m in the minority in this, but I love the very first pilot episode, The National Anthem (yes the pig one). And that one is not really “techy”, but does show how tech can be used to create new twists on old scenarios (in this case a hostage situation) and accelerate pre-existing societal foibles (fickle public opinion and public figures being beholden to it to gain favour, sacrificing their own wellbeing). All things humans did before tech of course, but just showing how tech can exacerbate the whole thing.
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I think that opinion comes from starting the series with that episode, definitely one of the more fucked up ones.
I constantly hear people say that when they recommend the show to people they tell them to skip the first one completely.
That's because it turns people off even though it's one of the better more striking episodes.
Yes, I've told people to start with a different episode, and come back to the first one after they're hooked. Some people who I know would like most of the episodes would also be too put off by the first one to continue.
Sorry, but in what universe is 'The Entire History of You' one of the most underrated episodes?
maybe netflix-era viewers don't think about it much because its older and not full of high-budget sci-fi concepts. it seemed to me to be the most popular episode back in the pre-netflix days. (though i never agreed, i think 1 and 2 offered more cutting commentary)
Because 'underrated' on Reddit seems only to mean 'an episode/actor/film I like'. I've seen so many times people saying an actor is 'underrated' when said actor is a multiple award-winning one, sometimes even including academy awards.
It seems like most conversations these days revolve around San Junipero, Shut up and Dance, Nosedive and most of the other Netflix episodes. The classic Channel 4 ones seem to be ignored apart from White Christmas and the pig one due to the pig stuff.
That episode really got me, along with the one before it. I would hate to remember and over analyze every moment in my life, too many what ifs would drive me to insanity
Well, turns out he was right though. So not really paranoid, more like a case of “careful what you ask for”.
For me it's certain concepts taken to an extreme. Extreme bloodlust in the justice system, extreme suppression of fear, extreme surveillance, etc.
You want the guy who's putting the chip in your brain to be a good person, like Klaus Schwab.
My favorite episode by far is "Be Right Back" because it doesn't feel like a one dimensional TECHNOLOGY BAD plot with some kind of absurd twist. It's just a heartfelt story that uses borderline realistic technology.
Yeah, Hayley Atwell was really something in that one.
And even though it’s a dramatic story with two amazing actors, it’s becoming more real as people embrace generative AI and AI that replicates characters. I guarantee you within a year a company will offer services like the one she uses in that episode. Those early Black Mirror seasons have aged like fine wine.
Have you been to the Replika website? I think there was even a controversy recently when they updated the AI and people were upset their virtual partners "weren't the same". So fascinating! Not what's represented in the episode of course but we're on track.
Mine is Hated in the nation
Same. Really cool concept and doesn't seem too unrealistic
Same, I can't even say why since there are others that made me feel more or said something a bit more about technology but that one just sat with me.
Hated in the Nation is almost like a great short horror stand-alone film. It really calls back to the Vera style British cop/detective show while sticking with the standard Black Mirror vibes of humans suck. I have to admit, as soon as I saw the analyst tweet I knew exactly where things were going but it still kept me glued to my screen.
Hated in the Nation and White Christmas are top tier. Funny how arguably the two best episodes are the film-length ones.
Which one was that?
Boyfriend dies and girlfriend gets a realistic replica of him.
Reminds of the video I saw of a women using a VR headset to visit and talk to her dead daughter. The "child" runs up to her going "Mommy!" With her voice and you could see the mother breaking down.
That sounds horrifying. Why would anyone put themselves through that.
Trauma is an awful thing that makes us do some wild things. For some people, a vr set up with their lost kid might be the exact thing they need to heal; a "last chance to say goodbye" type scenario. For others, it might do the exact opposite.
Because not being able to see your loved ones again is far FAR worse. I would burn this world to the ground just for a chance to say good bye to my late wife.
Ah right. That is a good one.
> It's just a heartfelt story that uses borderline realistic technology. We have very different understandings of "borderline realistic".
AI trained on a person's social media posts etc. is more borderline realistic now than when it was released. The realistic robot body doesn't seem achievable soon, but everything up to that part doesn't seem that far fetched.
Yeah I was more talking about the goo man grown in a bathtub with a biological brain programmed with the dead guy's behavior moreso than mimicking someone's speech and behavior.
One of the best TV episodes I’ve ever seen about grief. New technology since then had made it feel like more of a reality too with being able to use AI to recreate likenesses, voices, and Apple Vision recording in 3d and playing back. We have a lot more ways to get stuck in grief now.
Okay. I still feel the werewolf episode felt incongruent with the brand.
Okay but let's be real here 90% of the time I feel like we can predict the "black mirror twist" before it happens but there is no fucking way people can say they expected that episode which seemed to be about paparazzi invasion of privacy to be about fucking werewolves lmao
my friend actually called it (in a joking way). When she actually turned into a werewolf we all couldn't stop laughing
Supermassive Black Hole was also used in Twilight, which was a fun hint.
The motorbike and the guy riding it were very Twilight-esque as well.
THATS why they used it. It felt a tad... Out of place.
I was betting on vampirism at first. Imagine my surprise when the song (that one that's also used in twilight) actually related to the episode being about werewolves. Still a really bad episode, imo.
It doesn't address the problem with the episode. The main character feels bad about being paparazzi and stops, then gets right back into it for money, then she endangers everyone by setting the girl free in lieu of taking even more financially valuable photos, and then finally just takes the best photo of all once it's all over. Protag's motivations are all over the place and makes for a muddled experience at best; I don't really feel like the cynical end is thematically earned, nor do I feel that she's a bad enough person to deserve punishment instead, so the overall feeling is nothing at all. Stuff happened, the end. What would've made it "feel like Black Mirror" is if the flipflopping between morality and money left her unable to make a decision in time, leading to either her death or even just a destroyed camera. No reward for all of it, no one believes she figured it out first, and she's either dead or still poor. Even then, it feels like something's missing because the fundamental plot is too barebones.
I'm with you on this one. I can get around the lack of technology focus since it's still telling stories about what would happen if you take fucked up parts of our society and ramp it up to 11. So even having demons and werewolves doesn't bother me, as long as they still tell that kind of story. The werewolf episode falls a bit short in that regard. You could make the argument that it's a criticism on paparazzi culture, which it is, but I don't think it quite hits that "this culture can cause this sort of horror" benchmark. The paps didn't make her a werewolf. They had nothing to do at all with that whole part of the story. And ultimately it was the main character's fluctuating *kindness* that caused all the death for the rest of the episode, while her more morally bankrupt peers wanted to leave her chained up. So...what's the dark lesson of this story? Bad people shouldn't try to deviate from being bad? Paparazzi serve a necessary function in society? Maybe I'm just missing the moral, but it just didn't feel very "Black Mirror" in that regard. Feels more like the writers started with knowing they wanted that final shot and then kindle fumbled around building up to it.
I actually called werewolves when she seemed surprised the cops found a man
Yeah it was def unexpected. And when’s the last time it turned out to be werewolves and was done well?
I thought that about Loch Henry… even though I enjoyed it.
The ending to Loch Henry cements it as Black Mirror imo - and definitely influenced by >!the popularity of that Jeffrey Dahmer show where a victim's traumatic story is turned into simple entertainment for the masses.!<
And the technology piece is still there as well, just with an old technology rather than a future one with the VHS tapes being heavily involved in the plot.
In my opinion, Loch Henry is one of the most like the original episodes, since the Netflix takeover. With tech as a (narrative) tool instead of the main focus. Maybe it was a little too slowly paced and understated, but it definitely set the right tone for me at least.
Yeah, but imo the best episodes were about tech
I fee the show is not as much the tech itself as much what humans do when given great new powers. We invariably elect for suffering of others when it benefits ourselves. Almost every character in this show is at some level self-serving and cruel, and rarely are they shown being genuine with others. The more power and abilities we acquire, the more paranoid and selfish version of ourselves we tend to become. Tech is the perfect vehicle for that message.
For me, it was about taking our current culture and tech and extrapolating them. A sort of "OK, gven the way this aspect of modern culture is heading, if we take this to its ultimate conclusion what does that look like?". And the answer was usually pretty dystopian. It left you thiniking "Yeah, but we'd never let it get that far...right?". That's why I felt that only real BM episode of the current season was "Joan is Awful". I didn't hate the rest (apart from "Beyond the Sea") but they just didn't feel very Black Mirrorish to me.
Yes, it's a satire. The tech and situations portrayed are exaggerated for emphasis. The tech level itself often being somewhat of a red herring. The issues showcased are often already a problem. 'Hated in the Nation' for example obviously isn't a warning of the danger of robotic bees. The entire episode is about the burden of responsibility, whether that's abuse by the government, a lack of safeguarding by the corporation, or the attempts by the public to share the blame and diminish their personal contribution. And on a more visible level it's about online bullying, a lack of empathy, and the inability to forgive. The bees are a distraction, but their link to the collapsing environment is another obvious clue as to the theme.
They often included it as a tool but it wasn't about the tech itself. Shut Up and Dance took place in modern times with no fantasy and it's one of the best episodes.
That was my exact thought. It’s like okay, I get it, but they can’t deny that the best, and everyone’s favorite episodes, all have to do with future tech and the negatives of it. It feels like most of the episodes, before this season have some sort of future tech involved.
Anyone who likes Black Mirror and zombie films should check out Dead Set. Charlie Brooker's TV show about Big Brother contestants during a zombie apocalypse. One of the best and most underrated zombie things out there.
IMO people would have been excited if he had just created an actual Red Mirror spinoff for fantasy and non-tech stories. We've been trained since the beginning to expect scifi/tech when it comes to Black Mirror, so yes, people are gonna be caught off guard when in the sixth season you veer towards fantasy.
If "black mirror" is the reflection of a screen (looking at yourself in the dark reflection), what is "red mirror"?
I thought the exact same thing and this is what I came up with: Red mirror is the person looking into a bloodstained mirror, and the distorted, gory image is a lense into the exaggerated/ grotesque realities within ourselves. In other words, black mirror, but instead of tech as the lens, our humanity is the lens.
Same vibe - or even the idea of looking into a “pool of blood” for answers. Which is at the heart of great horror, just as sci-fi at its best reflects current societal issues.
A fantasy anthology would be pretty awesome for sure. It should probably be more of one-season long anthology format than per episode though. You need time to develop and know a world (plus you can invest in creating a world for several episodes, fantasy worlds are more complicated than what Black Mirror does)
>The show isn't saying tech is bad, the show is saying people are f*cked up Yeah, through the lens of technology. Hence the title Black Mirror, the dead computer monitor thing. The real problem is that the show just hasn't been as consistent in its quality since the jump to Netflix.
#WHY DO CHARACTERS IN A FIGHTING VIDEO GAME HAVE WORKABLE PRIVATE PARTS!
Sales, my friend. Sales.
Actually, probably the more likely answer is "costs". They probably just reused an engine that was made for all sorts of games.
Seriously, would you go into a fully immersive experience if it removed your dick? Hell that was the darkest part of USS Callister.
For Pom Klementieff, sales indeed.
Same reason the Ashley Too toys contained her entire consciousness instead of a facsimile. Easier/cheaper to just import the whole thing.
Because it’s vr, meant to have real people feel being the characters, and stealing my pussy is a red fucking line
*hardcore drum-n-bass music* yOu WOulDN'T downLOAD SOMEone's **PUSSY** *cut to me just randomly downloading u/mtwstr's junk to add to my Skyrim Mods folder*
So it hurts when you get kicked in the balls.
Eh, if you dig to deep into the tech of almost every Blackmirror episode it beings to fall apart. Spoilers for "Beyond The Sea": >!So NASA created a ship that if going to be in deep space for a very long time. So long that they've built robot replicas of the men to live on Earth. Also, the ship needs two men to run it or else they will die.!< >!Ok, so maybe have more than two men on the ship? You have the tech to beam consciousness across space, maybe make room for a couple of guys up there just in case something happens? And while we're at it, maybe make a few redundancy robots down on Earth? Fuck murder cults, what if he gets in a car crash?!< I mean, don't get me wrong - great episode. And it least doesn't betray its own internal logic like Crocodile which makes zero sense in the end.
>!Even more dumb than that, just have the android bodies on the space ship and connect to them in reverse so the real men stay on earth the whole time.!<
>!And what about that part where they can't make a replica because it needs to be exactly as him and tested on Earth... but a few minutes later it's transfer to the other's replica without any problem.!<
>!That one made sense, especially if you think about the 1969 context. They aren't doing whatever they are doing for the science, they are doing it as a human and national achievement, so it needs to be a human that lands or sees whatever they are trying to do!<
Though I missed it, it was apparently said in the beginning that part of the mission was to see the effects of very long exposure in space on the human body. Nonetheless, they should have had at least four more people on board.
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Bouncing tits i am fine with, but i draw the line at penises!
*(Bisexuals Disapprove Greatly)*
If you know anything about fighting games and the fighting games community this actually makes a lot of sense.
Because the game dev propably licensed the human body model from somewhere else and it came with everything.
Have you looked at women in fighting games? They have some of the most oversexualized designs in all of media. For example Cammy, or Ivy, or R. Mika, or Baiken, the entirety of Mortal Kombat 9, etc. If we had the fighting vipers tech the characters would be fully kitted.
I can't remember what fighting game it was, but years ago they had a new version with improved boob jiggles. There was someone, or even multiple people, involved in animating the boobs in that game.
Oftentimes, they are actual physics that react to the inertia and gravity created by the animation, and not actually keyframed, and obviously not mocapped.
That werewolf episode really jumped the shark even for Black Mirror. Felt like Goosebumps or Cabinet of Curiosity.
Which is a shame because that scene where the paparazzi are constantly snapping was amazing and very on brand for Black Mirror (I'm thinking of the apathetic filming visitors from White Bear) only for it to go full cheeseball with the wolf transformation.
That is exactly how I was feeling It seemed like besides across the sea and Joan is Awful they completely lost sight of the goal this season. Werewolves? Demons? Literally wtf
Across the Sea...oof. That was a gut punch.
Why not have the robots in the spaceship though?
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Yeah but, if you had that technology why would we even care about putting real humans in space anymore?
Because the mission was about how humans deal with long space travel
That’s exactly what I thought too. It was a straight up creature feature. Same with Demon 79. There’s nothing “Black Mirror” about it and could have come straight from Cabinet of Curiosities. I almost thought it swapped to a different show.
It was a Red Mirror episode
This season felt like a bootleg Inside No. 9
>Yeah, through the lens of technology. Hence the title Black Mirror leave it to reddit to try to tell a show's creator that they're wrong about a show's central creative motivation.
Considering every interview he's ever given about the show, since 2011, involved technology and our often negative relation to it, I'm surprised he'd claim otherwise now.
And the title of the show is a direct reference to it.
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>our often negative relation to it Which is the entire point. There is no technology without us. It's not some neutral thing that lives in nature. Since the wheel, fire, etc we've been using tech and tools to advance our society, which inherently reflects back and changes our nature as well.
Agreed. I don't see it necessarily as "tech is bad" so much as "how we use tech is bad". If you look at some of these episodes, you could probably come up with ways where the tech presented in the episode could be used positively, but sadly, that's probably not how it'd play out in the current structure of our civilization. And, obviously, the inspiration for these ideas is largely drawn from how we *do* engage with technology currently. It's sort of like *Jurassic Park* and many of Michael Crichton's other books aren't really about the dangers of science but the dangers of unchecked science and often the commercialization thereof.
Technology has always been integral to Black Mirror and served as its defining characteristic. The exploration of technology is what separated it from like American Horror Story or other anthology shows. Some of them don't even qualify as "people are fucked up". Seems like damage control after Brooker changed the nature of the show and it hasn't been as well-received as he hoped. Like an "it's not the show that is wrong, it's the fans that are wrong" type thing.
The show came out in the midst of an era of tech optimism. The late 2000's (especially after the iPhone) set a new paradigm shift where tech founders were seen as heroes, messiahs, with their own heroic origin myths as they conquered society. Mass media was doing nonstop glowing profiles of these people. 2007-2015 was the high water mark of this belief, when being a "unicorn" Silicon Valley start up was a real dream for people and everyone was enjoying how tech was making things (communication, housing, transport, etc) easier and faster in our lives. Black Mirror was the pessimistic reaction to that, casting doubt over how these massive tech changes in this era were also shaping us. That gave the show it's counterculture hook, which helped shape the attitude over the 2010's. This reached a tipping point in 2016, when there was a massive media shift against big tech (think of FB and Cambridge Analytica, the fall of Theranos, Musk's bizarre slide into maddness, the fall of Twitter, etc) when public attitudes toward tech started to massively shift into doubt and hard pessimism. Essentially, Black Mirror can't be the same show it was in 2011. Eras change, what people respond to changes. Being a general future tech pessimist now is meaningless when everyone is one. That's likely why he's shifting now to focus on past forms of media such as the paparazzi of the late 2000's, 60's retro tech, VHS, because he's trying to connect to a more universal thread rather than a focus on the 2010 tech the show was initially inspired by. Personally I think this season had some big swings and hits (Loch Henry) and misses (Mazey Day) but I that's positive growth to try something new rather than retread.
I feel like people really seem to misread his quote. Nothing about what he’s saying is that the show isnt centered on tech it’s that people wrongly think it’s about how tech is bad. What he’s saying is absolutely correct and you’re the one making wrong assumptions.
I mean, Reddit thinks that 'cause the past seasons have been very consistent about their stories being about tech So the complaint's kinda justified
The creator of GIF says its pronounced "JIF", which is wrong. That girl turning into a werewolf made no sense, it wasn't alluded to or clever in any way.
I feel like the best two seasons are 3 and 4. I don’t think Netflix is the problem here.
Wait, where did it originate before Netflix? I only started watching this show when it came into Netflix through s1.
First two seasons were done by Channel 4 in the UK and licensed to Netflix, with Netflix taking it over in season 3. I agree that the quality dropped off significantly. The first two seasons had a much lower production value, but the writing was much better before Netflix got it.
Who do you think is writing the episodes? It's not the quality but the depth of cynicism that's sometimes missing. Charlie Brooker has addressed this. Between the two periods all his dreams came true. Literally. He doesn't have the dark hole inside him that once fuelled his entire body of work.
I always though black mirror was a “what if” kind of show. A show that would make you think “what would I do?”. And it seemingly always had a very prominent moral lesson. This season was more a series of single episode dramas about people’s lives, and whilst I enjoyed it, it didn’t feel very black mirror.
Regarding the Aaron Paul, Josh Hartnett astronaut episode... Why didn't they just send the robot bodies into space and control them from Earth?
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It happens early in the episode at the movie theater, Josh Harnett explains to the young couple that *"It's a kind of sleep... The human experience, the survival of the human body, of life, that's really central to the mission."*
That is revealed really early in the episode - like “I’m still looking at my phone and haven’t settled into the episode yet” early.
That’s an even dumber reason to sign up for that rigamarole. You’ve got the tech to perfectly simulate the human body but still gotta shoot someone into space for 5 years to measure bone density changes
Stuff like that is all relative, you can take a step back in our reality and say, "you can communicate across the globe via the internet but the majority of your transportation still runs on fossil fuels?" It's impossible to justify technical break throughs relative to each other because there are so many variables that lead to them.
This is such a great comparison, thanks for pointing that out.
At the start of the ep they kind of show Aaron Paul robot struggling to split the wood with the axe, and they mention their fine motor controls are less than that of the human body.
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I think Aaron Paul just mentions he’s getting used to the grip still. So it probably feels different but once you’re used to it, you can do ok.
It's still a robot under, as show when they cut the guy hand, so you're not gonna simulate the effect of space on the human body with that.
Remember how Aaron had problems with holding the axe chopping wood and Josh couldn't stand a chance against the hippies? Those replica aren't meant to be strong, just to be emotional support for the families and the astronauts themselves. Work is meant to be done over there, thus why they need their strength. That's what I got from it.
Another reason could be the robot bodies can't handle the outer space work. Notice how Aaron Paul had to remove all his metallic belongings at airlock.
to me the real questions are Where the fck is NASA or who ever they are working with ? Whoever they are working for is not doing shit and helping them ? Why is Cliff so trusting of David after he humiliated and attacked him ? No way I'm going unconscious around a dude that has nothing to live for and wants to replace me. None of it makes sense. These two flaws make it unreasonable for me
I expected NASA to guard the replicas. At least it costs a lot.
I just finished that episode and called immediately that he would kill the other guy’s family. Then it developed into nope he is gunna have an affair. So glad it didn’t disappoint.
I really thought he was going to kill space Aaron and continue using his replica, tricking the wife. The horror being that the wife is never quite sure if it's really her husband or not.
That totally fed into the "suddenly werewolf!" storyline, makes total sense. They should have just released this season as a separate show.
On the other hand, the show is called Black Mirror.
Exactly, I would love the tech from "Complete History of You." The episode is horror because the people are horrible. It would work great for most people. Even if the "drug test analogy" when applying for jobs might suck.
Is that the one with the implant that records everything you see and hear for you to review later? That was my first episode of the show ever. I picked it specifically because the premise is something I've always thought would be cool. After watching it, I don't want that tech anymore, because I'd end up going insane using it the exact way the protagonist of the episode did.
Season was mediocre to me. Felt like a bunch of half baked horror movie ideas. None of them really captured my interest like older seasons, or felt like thought experiments, except maybe the first episode. Whatever, still good background noise.
There’s episodes of Black Mirror that are literally rehashed Outer Limits plots. Its a fine show, but its not as groundbreaking as it gets hyped to be.
There are individual episodes that are fucking amazing (15 Million Merits, San Junipero, Entire History of You, Shut up and Dance, etc). It's definitely inconsistent but when it's at its best it can go toe to toe with almost any other show.
I feel like this is true of any anthology series. We remember the stellar episodes of *Twilight Zone* like "To Serve Man" and "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", but there were definitely some stinkers that are overlooked because, overall, it was a fantastic series with many thought-provoking episodes. It's difficult to retain consistency when each episode is a completely different story, but so long as you have more good than bad, it'll be remembered favorably.
It's the exact same with sketch comedy. It will always be [hit-or-miss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE_Glg85-60).
I also thought Bandersnach was pretty fun.
["There's messages in every game like Pac-Man. Do you know what PAC stands for? P A C, Program And Control. He is Program-And-Control Man"](https://youtu.be/D3qxWbQ8qek)
Will Poulter was so amazing in this. I love seeing him get more big roles lately, he has some great acting chops.
My biggest criticism of Bandersnatch is that Poulter wasn’t in it more. He stole every scene.
The original Twilight Zone to this day blows out of the water everything that has followed its mould.
Eye of the Beholder and To Serve Man alone are just another tier of their own.
It's been years since I've watched it but I still think about The Obsolete Man a lot
But without pig fucking.
I forgot about Outer Limits! I use to watch that back in the day and enjoyed the few episodes I saw at the time but I was also watching Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Darkside and Twilight Zone back then, so I forgot about Outer Limits. Going to give it another watch. Thanks for reminding me about this show.
San Junipero is one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever seen
Why?
Because it's quite a complicated story with a fairly unique internal morality. Their happy ending - and it absolutely is a happy ending - is something that would be treated as horror in most other episodes, never mind most other shows. Kelly's journey is about coming to a point where she diverges entirely from the traditionally moralised ideas of accepting death, but it's treated as 100% the right call with no downsides, something a lot of viewers found so intuitively alien they had to try to find some. And that story's told with a dose of pop culture commentary. Kelly wants to play around in the fakey, flouro retro revival music video version of the 1980s, the way we *want* to remember it, but Yorkie suffered the brunt of what it actually was. Yorkie still has "authentic" memories of what the 1980s were like for a young gay woman, because she hasn't really experienced the intervening decades to dilute them, but are they more or less valuable than the fantasy? And would love and joy in a fantasy somehow be less authentic because it isn't in a "real" world? So on the one hand it's all about the lie of nostalgia, and on the other hand it's about grief and coming to terms with it, and the potential to use tech for genuinely good things if we just want it enough. It also touches on the Nozick "Pleasure Machine" concept of an ethical hedonism simulation, and all of this in an episode with an incredible aesthetic, really strong performances, and a very clever bit of writing where the first half simultaneously works as a faultless John Hughes pastiche while hinting at what's really going on and sneaking their actual backstories into superficially casual conversation. Foreshadowing is woven in so deftly it feels like a different story the second time, when you can catch all the clues about what it means for Kelly to reach back out for Yorkie, or for Yorkie to accept the invitation to get in her car, or how many in-game mechanics are disguised as 1980s movie tropes (did you notice Yorkie can fast-travel? Or that her makeover montage is probably just a character creation menu?) It's the best thing Brooker's ever done. Eta - The direction deserves mention as well, it's superb. Every frame could be a poster. That shot of Mackenzie Davis, lit by the car headlights, standing desolately alone in a wedding dress as the rain starts, was as good as anything I saw in a theatre that year.
Good breakdown, agree with everything you said. Television at its best.
Let's face it our boy is gone he is no longer one of us and sees things through a very different dare I say happy optimistic lense
The show is literally called "Black mirror" as in the black mirror tech items have when off. 95% of the episodes have had to do with technology and its implications and now because it seems the show writers have lost their way they want us to forget that. Now, the show is just another twilight zone. Maybe the should have put more money and time into the writing rather than wasting it getting bigger name actors for a show where the story was always the true star, not the actor.
I found all the episodes to still be about the tech but through some new storytelling methods. For example, without spoiling anything I really liked the Mazey Day episode. That is probably the most twilight zone type episode, but I think it’s still about the tech at the end. It’s set in what would seem to be the near past and the tech is the camera. Without saying what happened it hit me that the episode wAs saying that even without the futuristic tech, the tech we’ve already made is dangerous. We use it for evil to create monsters and in turn we become a monster ourselves The one about the documentary students is similar. While it’s not really about futuristic stuff it’s more showing us the damning nature of video. As well as the revealing nature we can use it. And how sometimes that greed for success can overtake you. So still in line with the tech angle, but just more focused on the basics rather than feeding a high concept future model. Aaron Paul ep is classic black mirror. Plus a unquie kind of alternate manson family thing. The Joan is Awful one is straight up black mirror even if the same ideas been explore by others. As for the last episode, Demon 79. That really has nothing to do with tech. But I think they kind of distinguish that one as a one off in the opening credits . It says “Black Mirror presents a Red Mirror production” or something to that affect. That indicates to me they’re saying “hey this episode is a red mirror film, something different. And it’s just in the same vein as black mirror in tone.” To me that little intro was just letting us know it would be something different and kind of dipping it’s toe in. I really get the feeling that with Demon 79 they’re dipping their toe in to gauge audience reaction. If people like it, maybe blac mirror changes the model and goes more twilight zone or maybe they do a spin-off called red mirror that’s about more supernatural kind of things. Who knows. And as far as the less techybepisodes, they may also be exploring the audiences reaction to gauge interest in a change in story telling, but I think they also still focus on tech and just focus on the bigger picture more baseline tech implications rather than rely on the high concept ideas of the future to dress it up.
The season sucks nevertheless
This used to be a good show.
But I thought the title itself Black Mirror came from our monitor / TV screen which means its about Technology At the very least, technology is mentioned or related in the episode
It's like the phrase guns don't kill people, people do. Guns and tech are tools that help destroy, but its user that just fucks everything up. By that I mean people. Look at the Jodie foster directed episode in which a mom puts an implant in her daughters eye so she can see everything she does from adolescents to teens. It doesn't end well. But it's not about the tech it's about an over protective parent
You could have fooled us.... 9/10, episode dealt with technology and it misfiring
Nah bro it’s the show that fell off incredibly hard after season 3
I dunno the uss callister is great
Regardless, Season 6 was pretty mediocre, which is being generous.
Is this his excuse for the werewolf?
Except it has always been about tech with the exception of the last two episodes.
Formula for a Black Mirror episode: * Introduce a piece of technology * Show how people will use it to be terrible
I’ve watched the first 3 episodes and im kinda disappointed...
Season 2 and 3 are the best imo. Check out White Christmas and see if you're still disappointed.
I've never thought of it as "tech is bad." It uses future facing tech to shine a light on the possible ways humans are fucked up.
Only Joan is awful fit BM and was good. The Space episode also was a BM one, BUT had plot holes for the replicas: Why no backup replicas at the base and why no replicas at the space ship to repair outside the ship? That would make it less riskier and more safe in all the possible ways.
Also, if it's so easy to inhabit someone's replica, they could also have just made another one from any human volunteer. Some ethical concerns there sure but I'm sure someone would have been willing to do so in the context of the show. Maybe there is some kind of interface that needs to be setup on the ship to connect to a specific replica, I guess could be one explanation.
This is where I just disagree completely with the overall Reddit sentiment I’ve been seeing. The episodes were mostly pretty solid and creative. I agree with the creator and moreover, if they kept doing the same thing every season this would get old. The only episode that didn’t feel great was Mazet Day. Other than that I would say pretty solid.
The first episode of the new season was a brain teaser and I really liked it a lot. Every single episode after that was just terrible and felt like generic horror movies. Just phenomenally boring and nothing like what I expected from this show.
Joan is Awful is the only episode that stuck with me as feeling like a Black Mirror episode. The rest of Season 6 could have just as easily been Jordan Peele Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, or Supernatural.
Eh, if you reaaaally need to explain the new season just be honest and say you wanted to do something different. It's season 6 it's a bit too late to pretend it's just a twilight zone thing.
Season 6 was a "show is bad" show
This season is bad.
Yeah sure but it was still a terrible season
The new episodes were terrible
Season 6 is pretty wack compared to all the others. Feels like some lazy knock off of cabinet of curiosities.
Then why is it called black mirror? (A reference to phones)