Charlie Brooker was on Desert Island Discs this week, always a good listen on a Sunday morning and he was no different: BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Charlie Brooker
I sure was.
“Metalhead” is a classic example of a story that owes to much to the stupidity of the main character; Bella acts stupidly, again and again. It got to the point that I was cheering for the dog. To end it with them being even stupider than you thought, well, it robbed the story of punch.
Episode 4: Hang the DJ
The highlight of this generally-strong episode was the clear romantic chemistry between the two leads. The drawback was that it was a fairly thin premise, ignoring the very types of implications that the show so often deals with. (Were the simulations truly sentient? Isn’t the whole thing a form of genocide?) And it leaves a bunch of questions deliberately unanswered. (What do the people in the simulation do all day? Do they have jobs?) (And the little 99.8% successful callback really doesn’t make sense… because it wasn’t known until all 1000 simulations were done that 998 of them resulted in resistance/success…)
Nonetheless, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts, and I enjoyed trying to puzzle out what was going on (I settled on “they’re already a couple in real life, and they signed up for this program to strengthen their relationship”, which obviously was not right).
Overall grade: B
If the simulation recorded 998+ rebellions, it would report a successful match. We saw the 998th rebellion, and then saw the app report a successful match.
I loved how “Hang the DJ” mirrored the spirit of the Smith’s song…
Article with some comments from Brooker about “Hang the DJ”.
“a cloud-based system that’s simulating 1,000 different run-throughs of yourself and a potential partner to see how many times you’d rebel against it” Um, yeah. Apparently their smartphones did run a complex simulation with apparent strong AI in the cloud. Oy.
It’s the future.
Episode 5: Metalhead
This is a pretty simple episode, and it excels in its simplicity. The fleeing woman (does she have a name?) is well performed, and is resourceful and believable and heroic. But the real star of the show is the remorseless terminator dog-robot, and it’s never less than terrifying and utterly plausible. Props to the SFX.
My only real quibble is with the “twist” at the end, that what they were trying to get from the warehouse was teddy bears. Frankly, I thought that cheapened the whole thing, and was a twist for the sake of being a twist. They could have been trying to get life-saving cancer drugs, or necessary food or supplies of some sort, and I think it would have been a stronger episode overall.
Overall grade: A-
What would the alternative explanation have been?
IOW, I took the scenario to be a future version of match.com. I am in a bar, a civic function, work, or elsewhere. I see a potential dating partner across the room. I point my smartphone at her, get a pic, and find that she is in the match.com system as well.
The app then runs my personal profile against hers and determines the percent match. Like most of the Black Mirror episodes, however, it creates a clone sort of consciousness that feels real feelings during the simulations (so much so that the lady began to realize that she was in a simulation because the rock always skipped four times).
But to our real life protagonists, this all took about as long as checking the football scores do on our smartphones.
I would tend to agree. I mean Infinity technically does a “brain scan” anyway, so why introduce the stupid DNA plot device? And why does he need to save the DNA in the fridge if he already has a digital copy of them?
And was that DNA tech a prototype? I know the CTO was using a hacked “mod” of the game. But it seems to me that tech that can trap a sentient copy of your consciousness while disconnecting you from the real thing Matrix style is pretty darn dangerous.
Also, Black Mirror seems to be going all-in on the benefits and horrors of making a digital copy of your mind (San Junipero, The Entire History of You, White Christmas, maybe some others I haven’t seen).
I just finished today. Had to wait for full attention to watch them, so it took a while. Plus I had to rewatch previous seasons, and with the easter eggs in Museum, I’m glad I did.
It was the weakest on first watch season for me, but I didn’t dislike it. B+. And maybe on rewatch it’ll improve.
Some of it too was that the DJ one felt like a mash up of Be Right Back and San Junipero. Charming and fun and all and not a waste of time, but nothing spectacular. As a mother with some fear issues about raising my child, Arkangel was terrifying and sad. I thought the mother was wrong while at the same time wondering if I would do similar things.
My least favorite was Callister. One: I don’t like Star Trek, so a lot of its charm was completely lost on me. That’s a minor quibble, as I loved Galaxy Quest, but this didn’t win me over the way GQ did. Second, and most important: am I the only one who thinks that an actual human being basically getting killed is kind of a big deal? I mean, he was pretty creepy and all, and the avatars didn’t kill him (he’d have been fine if he had just exited game earlier), but he was a person? And he expressed his weirdo fantasies which were explicitly non-sexual on virtual creations.
I’m setting aside, of course, the notion of the … humanity… for lack of a better word… of these cookies, to borrow White Christmas’s word. Are they really “real” enough that we should care about their “feelings”? Are these cookies different from WC’s mini Oona Chaplins?
But like… if Bowser and some goombas caused my IRL death, I’d hope people would be kind of sad and not be like “creepy loser had it coming.” So yeah, he was super creepy but does it count if it’s in an elaborate role playing fantasy setting with arguably non-humans? Are they truly sentient or is it just programming mimicking sentience?
The show and reviews seem to portray this as bad guy comeuppance, and that’s kind of what makes me weirded out. To me, it was more complicated, and the simplification in others’ responses grosses me out more than the character did. I’m not saying he was a hero or anything, but I feel the show is generally more gray vs gray and this episode was to me too, but everyone else seems to see it as black and white.
And as for the DNA doesn’t work that way… My head canon is that he needs the DNA to replicate their physical appearance and that he uses some sort of advanced data collection to recreate their personalities. Perhaps even uses their DNA to verify identity to preexisting cookies making their toast.
There was a bit of throwaway dialog when the other crewmembers were explaining what was up to Nanette, about how Daly had gotten his hands on classified tech or something for the DNA angle.
Be Right Back, although I wouldn’t list The Entire History of You in there (it was only digital recordings of what Grain-users had seen).
And this season adds USS Callister, Hang the DJ, and Black Museum. Maaaybe add in Crocodile. So out of only 19 episodes, that’s 6+ beating on that one theme.
While the “consciousness being transferred/duplicated/trapped” scenario is obviously a rich source of material, I do hope that this show explores some other ideas. Nosedive is a good example of an episode that managed to pack a serious emotional punch without invoking the “manipulated consciousness” theme.
I’m confused. Doesn’t Walton along with Shania appear back on the bridge at the end of the episode, or was that Valdek?
Never dealt with parents looking for the not to be found in thing for Christmas eh?
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That ep was all about the style and stylistically it was amazing. Cinematographically it was a joy to watch. Plot? A mere set up for the being hunted vingette.
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Post apocalyptic with the dogs having killed off most of society and the kid established as going to die soon (and the McGuffin was established right off as not being able to change that)? Taking a risk to make his last days a bit less awful, because replacing a loved stuffed animal can do that … honestly it does not seem completely crazy. But yeah it was an afterthought attempt at a twist.
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It was at least a different concept than what they’ve been rehashing. And that in two ways. Yeah the digital sentience bit, in general being tortured potentially forever, with minor detours as a way to find love. And the ways in which humans will use technology to harm each other in deeper ways. This was humans doing stupid things but motivated selflessly. It did not go well but they were not expecting a dog to be there.
Weakest ep to me was Krokodile. Seemed like a long way to go for the hamster twist and the main character’s first murder seemed unlikely for the character to commit and unlikely to be able to do. And did not get why she agreed to the recall device interview.
U.S.S. Callister was cute and with great talent in the cast but ultimately just a rehash of the themes for the sake of the themes.
I liked Hang the DJ even if it was clear from the moment she came up with her crazy theory that she was right.
Close to it Arkangel as the focus was not the technology but the tragedy. I liked the Oedipal theme of the effort to avoiding something bad is the cause of the loss that was feared. I was hoping there’d be more discussion about this one. I’m not sure that the biggest thing the mother did was the monitoring but the dishonesty once she did.
Black Museum was a well done rehash but too much rehash. Came off almost like a clips episode.
The insurance lady made it clear tat if she didn’t co-operate she would get the police involved, and she was only interested in the events surrounding the pizza truck. Mia was hoping she could focus her thoughts well enough that she would show the accident, the insurance lady would have enough to go on and would go away. This nearly worked.
this show is too disturbing, i can’t stomach it
Same here, so it’s something I can’t binge like other shows. Two episodes are my absolute limit.
We watched Metalhead yesterday. The styling reminded me of old Twilight Zone episodes. I think it just added to the mood of the episode.
I didn’t think the teddy bear was a cop-out. Somebody already mentioned “searching for something to make somebody’s last days easier”, and if that somebody is a child, perhaps? My husband said the same thing. You * would* expect it to be something like a cancer drug, but the simplicity of the teddy bear makes that whole relentless chase more frightening.
The weakest we’ve seen thus far is Black Museum. I liked the throwbacks but there was something lost in the narration angle. The story with the doctor, for example, could’ve been an entire episode in its own right.
I don’t understand how “Crocodile” has anything to do with artificial consciousness. Reading a person’s memories is creepy but it doesn’t remove their consciousness or move it somewhere else, it’s just like a fancy EEG.
That said, I agree they could give the concept a rest.
I was replying to “digital copy of your mind”, not to “artificial consciousness”. But, no, I don’t think Crocodile fits naturally with the others.