Wouldn’t it be easier and safer to put the robots (replicas) on the space mission? Like duh? They do not need life support system, food, and physical activity. Would it be nicer if they actual humans stayed in their homes and spend their time with family?
Somehow, the pilot of story twisted to make us watch 80 minutes episode, almost as long as a movie. Just to tell us that we need to take care of our family and loved ones! The only explanation for this movie plot is that the astronauts were already in a long distance space mission and later on, they have decided to make the replicas for their families.
Wow. Just when I thought it was getting a little too predictable, it went there. That was dark.
This setting is really strange, can others also use your copied person's link? Is there no DNA restriction?
It starts with an interesting concept. Then it gets brutal. But as soon as the borrowing link takes place you know it will either be wanting his life or going after the killers. The final twist comes late, you only expect it after he provokes him, it is brutal again, and a good choice.
However in the middle it gets very very boring. 1h20 for that ? Seriously ? Would have perfectly fit in 45 minutes.
At least it looks like a Black Mirror episode, but it's also very far fetched. If they have this technology, why are the humans in space and the replicas on Earth and not the opposite ? Wouldn't it be even better to have generic replicas that you can log into when needed ?
But anyway, assuming you do it this way, how in hell do you not
1) Make sure your astronauts are safe ?
2) Put a 24/7 security detail after the first one ?
3) Have a psychological cell and training for Cliff to handle David ?
4) Consult a mission team before making the decision to share the link and do it under supervision ?
5) Use it to have him at least talk to a shrink ?
6) Have at least a spare replica ?
Also how do they have such an advanced technology and these 70's looking computers and screens ? If they're able to transfer a whole consciousness back and forth, they should be able to send color tv; Damn, they could probably have Streamberry in there. They could probably have delayed but doable radio contact.
It's totally absurd how they don't ever interact with anyone ! Why is there no people talking to them ? Mission control. People checking on them. Receiving and analysing the results of whatever it is they're doing. Doctors, shrinks, checking if they're alright. Bosses giving them orders. Asking for reports.
I like the tech concept, and the ending and all that it implies, but the scenario feels so so forced that's it's annoying.
Books featured in this episode:
smart concept, very dull and boring execution
I'm into episode 3 right now and doesn't seem to get better at all. Season 6 so far is disappointing. BM was so much better before Netflix.
Yo mister White, we gotta go to space.
Now, this is more interesting. I'm just glad that the twist was not identity theft. Also, I think it's a huge oversight the fact that the developers did not create a replica backup OR protect the families from the very beginning. They can't risk a trauma to affect the astronauts after spending so much on the mission. David was a crazy man with nothing to lose, frankly frightening.
The ending is so pungent, with Cliff knowing that he has to endure four more years with the killer of his family, or kill him and die, unable to maintain the spaceship alone.
I don't buy the inciting incident on a plot level (high-stake project such as this has no protection or no back-up? And conveniently no regular check-in for Cliff's also conveniently semi-closed-off family even after all that happened? I could go on), and really don't buy the final one on a character level (either the writing or performance needs to establish David's psychological nuances more than just "mentally pushed after tragedy" so this big action feels more character-based rather than symmetrically plot-mandated). So even if there are a few intriguing dramatic dilemmas in between, that ending doesn't feel justified or developed naturally from the episode's length at all, and has me feel like it's just Brooker indulging in Black Mirror's worst tendency of empty shocking nihilism.
Yeah this season is absolutely bringing it this time! The longest episode of the season at 80 minutes but never felt that length at all, flew by. This one will have you hooked very early on and yet again, some fantastic performances! 8.5/10
The pursuit of masculinity through fantasy.
It's undoubtedly about masculinity, hence the incessant competition between them about who is the better husband or who has the better body (the characters working out is such an important thread throughout), but I'm not entirely sure on what I get out of this just yet. I've seen some reviews that call it outright feminist and a satire on the 1960's working man/housewife dynamic but I disagree and think it's focusing on the fantasy that can creep up in lonely/lost men's heads...
If you actually think about it, these are men that can leave their problems behind by literally leaving the planet at a click of button - which is kinda hilarious in concept - so they are already living in a fantasy land (hence the choice for outer space, charlie brooker a flat earther?? all the fisheyes seemed like he couldn't help but drop hints and space denial would fit the themes/point of the episode damn perfectly) but it obviously zooms further into the fantasy idea with one of the protagonists by exposing him at his most vulnerable (not long after he lost his entire family) to a utopian lover, home and kid that the other guy seems to take for granted. This is where the plot's core really begins, and shows how an emotional (in this case heavily grieving) man is not far away from being an unstable man. Not only does he get near to sleeping with his space partner's wife very quickly but also immediately gets possessive with her to the point where he murders her just so another man won't have her (which in itself is covered in irony since he is already the replacement).
This episode is extremely allegorical, in pure Black Mirror fashion - I tried to find one for pornography (addiction) but it didn't take me long to realise that one's a stretch.
I want to watch it again very soon to find more though.
An important reminder to be nice to your wife otherwise the man who you let use you skin will murder her
The episode felt a lot like "Black Mirror" again. Nice ending.
Aaron Paul is a wonderful actor and is not limited to Jesse Pinkman as many imagine. It was a monstrous acting lesson!
honestly speaking, if i were cliff's character i'd just blow us both up at the end like fuck this fuck everything idk
Great concept, pretty good performances, waaaay too long.
Goddamn they made a drama.:fire:
I'm really starting to dislike "american" Black Mirror.
Yet another story where the technology is not central to the story, with minor changes the plot would work the same without the replica/spaceship angle, that's just a gimmich or "MacGuffin".
And anyway, why are the replicas on earth and the humans in space? Shouldn't this be the other way around?
And where is Mission Control?
Guy had to watch his whole family killed in front of him and nobody cares that there might be a problem down the road?
This is just sloppy/lazy writing.
Performances by the actors were quite good though.
most creepy and disturbing episode of entire saga for now. I don't know why, but unlike many I'm enjoying this season despite the lack of that touch of scifi and dystopian future that characterizes this TV series.
I waited the whole episode for Aaron Paul to say "yeah science!"
Although I found the episode a bit mediocre compared to some former show highlights, Aaron Paul was incredible in this. His crying scene in the wood was superb, Emmy worthy acting.
So incredibly predictable from beginning to end. It's very slow and long, too long. Very repetitive in the middle. The acting (from Aaron Paul and Kate Mara exclusively) and the sets were awesome but the drama doesn't work at all. It's constantly ruined by the poor decision making from Aaron Paul's character and his wife too. Like, what did you expect guys? It was written in the sky. It also fails at basic logic like the tech itself, it doesn't make sense to send the actual person in space instead of the tech. The ending was so anticlimactic... like nothing happened. Rory Culkin's scene was the standout for me, he's so good at playing deranged characters.
Having only seen the first 3 episodes, my guess is this will be the best this season offers. I was super excited this show was coming back, the first though was alright, the second was totally off theme. A better ending to this one though is homeboy replacing the other guy and not telling the wife.
really felt like the Sharon Tate murder at the beginning and I wondered where it would take me. moral of the story: appreciate your family, never trust nobody and don't help people :sweat_smile:
I'm just now getting around to watching this season. I must watch and read too many things with tech, crime, and other stuff because the first things I said as I was watching this (Yes, I talk back to my TV. Don't judge me!):
* Unless they somehow needed to test the long-term effects of humans in space, why were the replicas not up there? Just a few things there would be no need for:
- pressurizing the craft
- oxygen
- heat (unless the instruments require it)
- food and water
- space suits
- waste disposal
* No security for the families back on Earth? Everyone knows the replicas are there. Plenty of wackos out there...
* No DNA security for the tags?
* Before the first switch, I would have established a code word/phrase with my wife to ensure she KNOWS who is in my shell. (And I would speak it first thing when I "arrived" so she did not have to prompt me because that would let David know there IS a code word/phrase he needs to beat/torture out of Cliff should the time come.)
* After the first "You know you want this", my wife starts carrying a concealed handgun - or the swaps stop immediately. Oh, and you sleep in the barn - you're not allowed in the house until you're ready to break the link. You're here to paint, so PAINT!
* The chair push at the end, as if to say, "NOW we can talk because we've both suffered a tragic loss"? Nope. You've just made it so I can never return to Earth. I have no family now AND there's no way I can prove that I DIDN'T DO IT! I'm straight-up murdering you and blowing this station up!
Just my thoughts...
Other than that, very predictable that he would either kill Cliff and take his place or kill his family. Mediocre episode.
Why replicas here and not there? Also, as soon as the swaparoo gets arranged it's too easy to see where this is going. Meh.
Great acting and script for this episode.
First episode I didn’t watch to the end.
It look ages….
never trust anybody. Jesse Pinkman you should have just kept selling drugs!!!
This is the beginning of the end for me. This was the first episode I started to feel a divergence from the original concept. It's a terrible decision and does not pay off. There were many other potential endings and the one they went with was boring and pathetic.
interesting concept, but like many pointed out its way too long and have lots of plotholes.
such an advanced technology but sending actual humans in space instead of the replicas are so dumb. and is the mission control in the room with us?
getting tired of that kind of ending
Started out very promising and I loved seeing Josh Hartnett and Rory Culkin again.
But after the big thing happens it gets predictable and loses potential.
why everything is so expected this season:(
sorry, this was just slow and boring. It just never grabbed my attention and I only watched to the end just to give an honest comment here.
Skip this one, it’s bad.
Maybe connection loss. What if what sends the communication for the bodies gets damaged?
The Worse out of all of Black Mirror....
Sci Fi....?
SCI-SHIT
Solid performances by the three leads, an interesting take on mutually assured destruction, and a terrific plot twist at the end more than compensate for some pacing issues (bad editing) and the mistakes that Cliff makes along the way in terms of dealing with the guy he's going to have to get along with for the next four years. And that ending? Just brutal.
absolutely love when David finds new inspiration jumping into a life so different from his own - like a new form of empathy - it makes him so alive & full of creativity again! and then when he tries to communicate to Cliff what he notices is missing & it gets thrown in his face & possessiveness drives the show, he goes to such extreme just to get Cliff on the same playing field just so they could "talk" again. dark but brilliant!
This is why you hire Aaron Paul; the story features some gaping plot holes, but his excellent performance makes it worth watching.
i thought that i saw the ending coming from a mile away but holy shit i was not expecting that. used to think of mr bean’s holiday everytime i heard that song but i don’t know if that’ll be what comes to my mind first anymore. holy shit this episode is devastating.
Holy shit, this was dark and depressing…classic Black Mirror.
It’s tough to watch; a sea of emotions where nobody wins or has a happy end. It takes the dreamy image of late 1960s America, with space travel, a family man with beautiful children and wife, and farm fields, and turns it into something grim.
Fantastic performances throughout from everyone.
it's just sad man..
This episode was amazing! Great performances!
Why didn't they send the replicas to space? They can't make another of the same replica, but somehow you can use someone elses if you use their tag? Conceptually flawed and predictable.
how good of an actor is Aaron Paul?
He can play Josh Hartnett, playing Aaron Paul.
Towards the end, during the 2nd spacewalk, I was like "uggh! predictable end." But then they pulled a "psych".
But I did not quite agree with the real end. If that had happened with me, I would have killed him for sure, even if it meant I'd die to, due to the spaceship needing 2 people to operate.
It's a good enough episode, if predictable, but it was waaay too long. Could've been 40 minutes long or less.
I loved it...
It's diabolical...
It's bizarre...
It's perfect...
Basically, Face/Off meets The Astronaut's Wife .
The ending was completely irrational and sadistic, even for someone as unstable as David. They should've gone with the more predictable but logical ending of David killing Cliff and taking his place in the replica.
Many episodes of Black Mirror have flawed logic but generally those flaws aren't at the heart of the drama, they are just things that create an artificial setting so that some aspect of the human condition can be examined. These episodes work in much the same way that an analogy works. When Forrest Gump says, "Life is like a box of chocolates..." we could start to list all of the ways that life isn't like a box of chocolates or accept the premise so that we can try to understand his point, "You never know what you're going to get". Usually a box of chocolates lists all flavours inside so that you can choose your favourite but we still get it. (Not a great example because it's a crappy analogy but one that everybody knows).
As listed by many, many people here, repeatedly, over and over because most people don't read a few other comments before commenting themselves, there are a couple of logical issues with the premise.
Why don't they put the replicas in space and keep the real people on earth? It could have been better sold in the show but the robots aren't precise enough in their control (painting must have been a challenge which is probably why his technique looks so poor)
Why is the robotic tech and amazing ability to control them in real time so advanced yet their computer monitors and interface are so limited? How could they even program and code the robots using such archaic computing? If there wireless transmission is even better than we have in 2024 then why isn't everyone carrying around mobile phones which are comparatively simple?
He had a beard by the time he watched the funeral. How long did it take before his family were buried? It clearly wouldn't take weeks for them to transmit the footage to him.
There were many similar issues but they were mostly necessary to move the story along and creating the setting for the what if drama. I'm quite analytical but if you get too bogged down with these logical flaws or unanswered questions then you're probably missing the point of the show altogether. If you can watch the average superhero film and not worry about the flawed logic that conveniently moves the story along, then surely this is much less of an ask.
They can send brainwaves to their replicas but they can't give these guys some internet to keep them occupied?
The galaxybrains thinking they found a plot hole large enough to call this stupid don't really understand how MISSIONS work.
The replicas are on Earth and not in space because if they malfunction in space the mission is over.
Even within this premise these replicas must not have been cheap. They might have been needed to convince the astronauts to sign up for a long mission but there's still a mission being paid for that somebody ABOVE the astronauts wants to see completed.
The getting to experience Earth while up there is a bonus astronauts get to have.
What a depressing story. It had potential but then turned into an absolute waste of time. What on earth was the writer trying to tell us?
Why the fuck is Jessee Pinkman in this?
What this episode did very well was not show us the gruesome acts in gory detail but leave it up to your own imagination and that painted a very gnarly picture for me. One I was up thinking about plenty. Story wise a decent episode but slower paced than the previous and very predictable.
muthafricking child killing shice, frick off
Interesting concept, very twisted dilemma, I wouldn't know how to decide on the premise. The second half of the episode was quite easy to anticipate, however
All of this would’ve been solved if the logical decision was made of putting the robots in space to not risk human lives and also the human can control the spaceship instead of the human in the spaceship controlling the real life of the person
That was the most dull thing I've ever watched.
Dire.
The ending was quality. But imho it could be less runtime)
Plot was full of holes, entirely predictable and it dragged on far too long. The runtime could have been halved easily. The first two episodes were very good and both could have had an extended runtime, but this was 80 minutes, why?
So, it seems that this season will be entirely about plodding, less than mediocre story lines where the conclusions are easily guessed a third of the way through an episode. Aside from the opening, I can't recognize this show anymore.
Why don't they send the robots up and keep humans down? is it because they have to do maintenance every now and then in evac suits which robots clearly can't accomplish?
The good part is, this is one of two episodes that actually feel like Black Mirror.
Beautiful retro style in the whole episode. Makes it seem like they spent all budget to get these visuals right, as the story is very predictable and much too long for what it is worth.
Disappointing season so far, boring.
Now that ending right there, was Black Mirror
Pffff. The idea is nice. But soooo slow. So boring.
1 hour and 20 minutes for a very awful ending...
Best episode of the new season. Aaron Paul delivers a truly fantastic performance that I loved every second of. Josh Hartnett was right there with him and so was Kate Mara, making this Black Mirror episode stand out from a performance level alone. It's a story that you know is going to end badly so you're just waiting around for things to fall apart, then once this starts to happen the tension and dread settles in and you're waiting to see how exactly it will end and how bad things are going to get. I thought the build up and pacing of that tension was very good, and I didn't even really feel the runtime. It is definitely a bit predictable in the middle and I also had a few ideas for how it would end, one of which ended up being right, so there's a lack of a major twist in this one but there was so much tension and angst throughout. Finally ending on an incredibly dark note which felt earned. When I think about it after the fact it's easy to find conveniences and holes in the story, but they didn't take away from my overall experience. I loved how sci-fi the story was and I ate up those aspects as well. Just really driven by the pacing, ending, atmosphere, and great performances.
8.9/10 -- Great
That was such a stupid story line. Thanks for wasting 80 mins of my life. The new season is not looking good.
Interesting concept, quality acting. Also very predictable up to the last minute. As soon as Paul’s character told his wife “he’s all alone up there” I knew exactly what was going to happen.
But what was the purpose of killing his family? What was accomplished? I do not understand the motive at all. “ you don’t understand what you have, so now I will take it all away from you. Also now we have to live together in space.”
Didn’t like the ending at all.
Completely twisted, goes completely beyond the notion of "liking it" or not. I don't even know why I wanted to comment because at the moment I've got nothing to say.
Now i'm getting it: Black Mirror wants you to rethink your recent votings for episode 1 and 2 of this season...Evil...
My current problem is that if this kind of "quality" is continuing i have no clue how to vote negatif.
This could have been 20 minutes, instead I was forced to watch for 60 minutes knowing how the entire plot would go.
Why didn't Cliff rip David's head off? But there's so much that makes no sense here. Although the acting was superb.
Way too tragic. Did not need to go there.
Shout by MabelVIP BlockedParent2023-06-15T20:50:18Z
The language with which both men talked about their families as possessions really stuck out to me. It's what led to one being unable to grieve his dead family and the other being unable to connect to his living family. The ending showed how viewing women as mere set dressing for men's lives ultimately leads to tragedy for not just the disposable women but for the men living in misery and loneliness.