Your thoughts on Black Mirror.

[bastardofmelbourne]

Though from the episode it seems like people with higher scores got better stuff like better houses, better job offers, better treatment. It really doesn't matter if people started liking lower scores, free shit is free shit.

There's a side concern I have with that. The number of 4.5s and higher is always going to be a small segment of the human population, and if the 4.5s live in fancier houses, work in higher-paid jobs, and get preferential medical treatment, it would take exactly one instance of them skipping to the head of a line at the airport before their rating gets bombed by onlookers out of sheer jealousy.

I know what Charlie Brooker is aiming for, and it's a very well-produced series that sometimes really punches me in the gut, but every now and then I just stop and go "Hang on, that's not what would happen." Like that episode where the guy finds out his wife is cheating on him by obsessively reviewing memory recordings. Recording everything a person saw in their lifetimes in that fidelity would require vast amounts of memory storage, more than could feasibly fit in a human skull on a cost-efficient basis, not to mention the question of how a dangerous-sounding product like a neural implant connected to your optic nerves that might make you blind if it ever gets removed or damaged would ever gain mainstream usage compared to something a lot safer, like Google Glass.

Or that episode with the contact lenses that overlay reality - that part is fine, but when the man's girlfriend blocks him so he can never see her or her child that he thinks is his, I just went "Hang on, that's all kinds of illegal. And couldn't he just get a mutual friend to talk to her? Or remove the contact lenses? And that shit isn't going to do anything to stop stalkers or abusive ex-husbands, because it doesn't actually prevent physical contact, just visual identification. Why does the function even exist?"

Then again, if I made a list of all the times where science fiction stories upset my suspension of disbelief, I'd be here all afternoon.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

I didn't like the third season. All of the episodes felt sanitized I guess. They lacked the darkness of the first two seasons. Here my brief opinion, as spoiler free as possible.

1. Probably the most like the early episodes but still played as an upbeat manner and the resolution is pretty blech. The only episode I kept out of the whole season. 6/10

2. I fell asleep after the start amd woke up tpwards the end. I don't feel like I missed much of the story though. Take that how you will. NA/10

3. Seemed phoned in (hurrhurr) and fairly obvious. Figured out the twist early on in the episode. I dunno, it just didn't click with me and felt lazy. 4/10

4. Super, super boring. It takes like 40 minutes to get to the point and I hate 80s nostalgia. 3/10

5. Again it felt phoned in. Also that Charlie has been playing too many computer games. Honestly if it WAS a computer game, I think it could have been really good. Instead it just comes off as him wanting to write a scifi film and shoehorning it in. 5/10

6. The basic idea is good. The killing method drags it down. It feels like he had the social media idea first but couldn't think of a way to make it work, so worked in a method that goes a bit too far into unrealistic. 6/10

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

5. Again it felt phoned in. Also that Charlie has been playing too many computer games. Honestly if it WAS a computer game, I think it could have been really good.

It was [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haze_(video_game)] a computer game. A mediocre one, at that.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

5. Again it felt phoned in. Also that Charlie has been playing too many computer games. Honestly if it WAS a computer game, I think it could have been really good.

It was [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haze_(video_game)] a computer game. A mediocre one, at that.

Well then. I never played Haze, it triggered my "overhyped" alarm.

 

[Vault101]

I loooved San Junipero

I just watched and and and I have to many feelings, way too many, I can't listen to 80's music, 80's music is my favorite music and now it brings about feeling about love and death and life and and the girl in the glasses SHE IS ME, I AM HER I AM YORKIE YORKIE IS MY SPIRIT ANIMAL AND MY HEART IS ACHING

*incoherent rambling*

 

[Nimcha]

I loooved San Junipero

Same, but perhaps for different reasons.

Also I don't necessarily think you have to take the stories these episodes tell as a sort of warning or plausible outcome of our current technological progress. I see it as rather taking certain aspects of our technological life and turning those up to 11 and seeing what that would result in. I always hate it when people think 1984 was a 'warning' of some kind.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I like these stories, they're like little fun, modern, adult goosebumps stories and thought experiments. Just the dark underlying humour that represents what our culture is best at producing. Haven't seen the latest series yet as have no connection to the networks, is it on BBCi player? I can give it a go when finally back home. Brooker does well for keeping things subtly lighthearted while exploring themes within the heavier hypotheticals. If you see a recent articled interview, he talks of this in an interestingly modest manner.

 

[Parasondox]

I like these stories, they're like little fun, modern, adult goosebumps stories and thought experiments. Just the dark underlying humour that represents what our culture is best at producing. Haven't seen the latest series yet as have no connection to the networks, is it on BBCi player? I can give it a go when finally back home. Brooker does well for keeping things subtly lighthearted while exploring themes within the heavier hypotheticals. If you see a recent articled interview, he talks of this in an interestingly modest manner.

It's on Netflix now as they outbid Channel 4 for the right to show it. But don't worry Channel 4 fans! All 5 of you. You now have the remains of the Great British Bake Off.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I like these stories, they're like little fun, modern, adult goosebumps stories and thought experiments. Just the dark underlying humour that represents what our culture is best at producing. Haven't seen the latest series yet as have no connection to the networks, is it on BBCi player? I can give it a go when finally back home. Brooker does well for keeping things subtly lighthearted while exploring themes within the heavier hypotheticals. If you see a recent articled interview, he talks of this in an interestingly modest manner.

It's on Netflix now as they outbid Channel 4 for the right to show it. But don't worry Channel 4 fans! All 5 of you. You now have the remains of the Great British Bake Off.

Ah thanks, it shall be observed! The only channel 4 fans are the T4 bunch who seem to have concentrated pure insufferable smugness into human form.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I like these stories, they're like little fun, modern, adult goosebumps stories and thought experiments.

I always saw this on Netflix but for whatever reason, I never even looked at it. This description makes me want to binge the entire thing.

 

[maninahat]

I've not seen a lot of episodes, I tend to pick them at random rather than watch each season back to back. The one about the PM being forced to fuck a pig was my favourite, basically because it had a fairly (by BM standards) down-to-earth premise that feels like it wants to experiment with what would actually happen.

I didn't like the other few I saw though, which each had a premise about being needlessly cruel to people via technology. There is a particularly stupid one about societal revenge, in which a woman finds herself waking up in front of a mysterious tv broadcast, in what seems like a post apocalyptic world. Then there is another one where people can make simulacra of themselves and imprison them in the house's wifi, to force them to make toast. That felt stupid too. When an episode stays as dark comedy they tend to work, but as soon as they become a bit too self-serious and anguish filled, they call attention to how daft they really are.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I like these stories, they're like little fun, modern, adult goosebumps stories and thought experiments.

I always saw this on Netflix but for whatever reason, I never even looked at it. This description makes me want to binge the entire thing.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I avoiding if for ages because the title and limited (oh so very limited) spotlight didn't really portray anything other than at best mystery. But as long as you go in expecting nothing more than short, fun, dark thought experiments, it will definitely entertain. Brooker does admit to never being a dystopian genius writer, he just wants to explore certain extremes of humanity for at least entertainment's sake. Hence the goosebumps comparison. Taking this work too seriously is not recommended, hehe!

 

[RedDeadFred]

Well now that I've finished the first season, I'd say it's pretty great. The second episode in particular was fantastic. I love how the show takes random parts of our culture and takes them to various extremes. It's kind of weird because it pisses me off, but it's so intriguing and oddly funny that I can't stop watching.

 

[Kyrian007]

I like it. Its more clever than most tv these days. Its a good mix of possible and unsettling. And I miss anthology shows, there really isn't much on tv before or since that's as good as the original Twilight Zone. Mostly because they tell stories... and the stories END. No freaking arcs going on for years and years and years. Introduction/in medias res, action, climax/reveal, denouement, BAM DONE... NEXT! That's good tv, that's just good storytelling. What that isn't is direction changes, production or casting changes having to be written in, writing by committee, or any of the stupid weaknesses in television these days that pretty much assures that only 1 out of every 50 or shows stays consistently watchable for more than a year or so.