Man, I was hoping this thread would be lit up with posts and have many pages by now…I love this show so much and was really looking forward to having a lot of discussion about it with many different participants, but I guess I’ll have to go to Reddit for that. It’s not that the discussion in this thread hasn’t been interesting, it’s just that I guess there aren’t many people on the Dope who are Black Mirror fans. I was hoping the thread would be Game of Thrones level. Maybe Black Mirror is more of a cult show than I had thought.
In any case, I hope to get this thread going again. Here are some things I’ve thought:
The main theme of Black Mirror is clearly the concept of consciousness and the idea that in the future it will be manipulated, duplicated, and transferred into forms other than the human brain, and discussing the ethical implications of this. Obviously this has been a plot device in science fiction for a long time, but Black Mirror has really run with it and used it in ways that actually seem believable.
With that being said, I find it odd that at no point in the show (that I can remember, anyway), has there ever been any religious character discussing any of this from a religious perspective. I don’t recall anyone ever using the word “soul” at any point on the show, or really discussing the idea that there’s some kind of special element in the consciousness of a natural-born human brain that makes it different from a digital copy of one.
It seems like the world of Black Mirror is nearly 100% secular. The Muslim woman in Crocodile was the only hint of religion that I can remember in the entire show, and even that was limited to her brief prayer before she is killed.
I’m not saying I want the show to start featuring any kind of religious-based “supernatural” content, but it would be interesting to at least TOUCH on it a little bit.
The “Carrie” storyline of Black Museum was absolutely one of the most emotionally powerful stories I’ve seen from the show. For a long time I have had ideas about exactly that - the notion of someone’s consciousness being transferred into some kind of pathetic inanimate device with limited or no form of communicating. The similarity between the “Monkey loves you” and “Monkey needs a hug” binary communication choices and the green and orange lights of the communication device she used when she was in a coma, really highlights just how sad it was when she was transferred into the monkey.
I have absolutely NO DOUBT that these scenarios will become part of real life, and possibly within my own lifetime.
Also an outfit from ‘white bear’ and the bathtub from ‘crocodile’ were in the museum.
Plus there are the cultural issues of a black guy (possibly immigrant, I couldn’t tell) accused of killing an attractive, famous white woman and all the social baggage that comes with that.
I love the show. Binged it over the weekend. I liked the “dating” episode and the black and white one. Hang The DJ; I was just wondering what would happen if they surprised you with a same gender partner when they slipped a woman into the montage of Amy’s partners. Wonder if the system had decided she might be up for that or if she indicated an openness to that in the application process. Metalhead; I was dying to know the origin of the “dogs” and why they were deployed originally. Were they still on mission or had they run amok? Better storytelling to leave it unexplained, probably.
Overall I felt it was the fourth best season (more episodes was great) but as is so often said in BlackMirror threads, the worst episode were better than most of the rest of what’s out there.
One thread for the whole season impacts it some I think. There are lots of us on the Dope who are previous seasons’ Black Mirror fans but many of us are not binging so fast and some of those of us who are not are afraid of spoilers and can only comment on what we’ve watched anyway.
It isn’t like a drop that has an overarching plot that drives you to see what happens next and the first one just wasn’t good enough to excite about seeing them all as soon as possible. We’ll watch them but by then the conversation here will have died down.
Frankly, everything about how “future technology” was portrayed in that episode was so absurd that it may as well have been Harry Potter muttering bad latin with a bit of a stick as the explanation. There’s trivially creating strong AI, full-sensory interface sufficient to convey the effects of alcohol and bowel movements, uploading what would be ridiculously data-dense AIs into the “internet” – it’s all crap science.
Perfectly fine for a fantasy show like Black Mirror, of course, where the point isn’t about the science: it’s about the horrible things people do to one another if they have the opportunity to do so.
The song from “Fifteen Million Merits” was what was playing on the radio for the car drive that opened “Crocodile”, I think (it’s such a lovely song, but still gave me a moment of dread when I recognized it). And there were lots of easter egg props in “Black Museum” – every episode this season but “Metalhead”, I think.
By far my favourite was “Hang the DJ”; the idea was fairly clever and it was funny. My least favourite was probably “Arkangel” which started with an interesting premise and then didn’t really go anywhere with it. I liked “Crocodile” more than some people here did, but I’m a general fan of stories where the protaganists keep digging themselves in deeper and deeper trying to fix things. I thought “Metalhead” felt like a warmed-over rehash of other “unstoppable monster” stories, but it had a certain amount of style (although I smelled the “they’re searching for something silly” twist a mile away). Also, DNA and computers don’t work like that.
I find Black Mirror a difficult series to binge. The stories are dense and have many layers. They’re are written to evoke some kind of emotional reaction that’s not the usual “Yay, kill the villain!” you see in many other shows. We haven’t watched it since finishing Hang The DJ. I can manage maybe 2 episodes in a sitting. My husband, OTOH, can go for days without watching it. He’s not a a big dark story fan like I am, although the technological aspect of the series speaks to him.
Really, you can say it about most Black Mirror episodes. However technology does end up developing, there’s no way it’ll end up looking like it’s represented here. The writers just aren’t too tech-savvy.
But complaining that ‘DNA doesn’t work that way’ just irks me when someone is accepting a strong AI that doesn’t realize it’s not a person.
Not to mention a strong AI that can run full personality emulations of two people through thousands of years of subjective time in just a matter of seconds (if I’m not misinterpreting the end of the dating episode.)
The psychology is not valid, either: our mental models that predict how other people will behave do not involve “full personality emulations”, so why would they for a strong AI? On the contrary, a sufficiently intelligent observer would have a deep understanding of simple creatures like humans that goes far beyond having to observe them for thousands of years to see what they’ll do.
I need to rewatch pretty much the whole season again because I was really disappointed and I think I may have not been in the right mood or something. No, I wasn’t drinking nor fiddling with my phone, I just didn’t seem to absorb much or it didn’t sit right, or something. But I love the previous seasons too much to give up without at least giving some of the eps a second look.
A couple of probably stupid questions about Crocodile. Is there some meaning to the title? Um . . .crocodiles are predatory and will kill anything that crosses their path, or something? If that’s it, it’s kind of lame.
Also, where are they supposed to be? IMDB tells us it was filmed in Reykjavík but I assumed it’s meant to be somewhere in northern England(?) It seemed like it was purposely ultra bleak, and I think Mia was an architect dealing with environmental issues. Was the “view” from the windows in their isolated house just a projection? It kind of looked like it was green outside until they actually showed the exterior. I guess not knowing first hand what the landscape should look like I can’t tell if I missed an element of the story / setting.
No, it was probably meant to be Iceland. That was a geothermal hole (or whatever you call the thing that you drill for geothermal energy) that she dumped the first body into. Iceland is known for it’s use of geothermal energy. Northern England, not so much.
I agree. I think part of it is that black mirror has had so many groundbreaking episodes that it is hard for them to maintain that level of quality. But I’d say season 4 was my least favorite season so far. It feels like they just rehashed themes from previous seasons.
3 of the 6 episodes had to do with tormenting digital consciousness. Also crocodile is about mind reading, which IMO is not far off from tormenting a digital consciousness since its the same technology behind cookies. IMO, metalhead and Arkangel were the only episodes that felt like novel themes and novel technology and both were only of average quality.
It feels like season 3 had such a wider variance in episode themes. Season 3 had one great episode, a couple really good episodes and the rest were average. Season 4 felt like it was rehashed themes and the new themes were only average quality.
Callister: I have a hard time believing someone that important is going to be left alone in his apartment to rot for more than a couple of days. I mean, somebody is going to eventually stop by and check in on him and pull him out of the game.
I think the mood of the episodes themselves was different this season – not as bleak in outlook, nor as dark. And too damn reliant on the virtual person simulation “cookies”.
I think there was some good stuff this season, but “Arkangel” doesn’t seem like it fits into the same bin as “Be Right Back” or “The Entire History of You”. And they got nowhere near as black in mood as “White Christmas”, for example.
Last season, “San Junipero” stood out because it had such an un-Black Mirror conclusion. This season, “Hang the DJ” doesn’t seem so out of place.
So, I don’t think it was just you. But I do think some of the episodes will improve on reviewing; “Crocodile”, in particular, was very well-told.