‘Black Mirror: Beyond The Sea’ Review
by Frank Martin
A lot of Black Mirror episodes are built upon big ideas and concepts. When these ideas start to unfold, storytellers can get tunnel vision with their intended purpose. That’s exactly what happens with “Beyond the Sea.” It has an interesting concept and idea that makes the audience ask some fairly interesting questions about what it means to be human. But the story is extremely contrived. It’s riddled with tons of potholes and nonsensical decisions. These things happen not because of poor writing but because the episode has a specific intention. It largely succeeds in its mission, though, even if these issues need to be overlooked in order for the episode to be enjoyed.
In an alternate 1960s, two astronauts (Josh Hartnett and Aaron Paul) are assigned to a multi-year mission aboard a space station. While there, they can link up to robots back on Earth that resemble their likeness. This allows them to spend time with their families when not on the clock. Unfortunately, a zealot cult who view these robots as abominations broke into one of the astronauts’ homes and murdered his family. Stuck on the station by himself, this astronaut grows lonely, so his partner lets him borrow his link to be able to visit Earth. He then starts growing fond of his co-worker’s wife (Kate Mara), which has disastrous results.
While the situation certainly raises a lot of questions about intimacy and humanity, from a practical standpoint, it would never actually happen like this. This technology is just too expensive and important to not have a security apparatus around. Plus, space agencies are notorious for having redundancies for their redundancies. The fact that they didn’t have a backup robot or at least some sort of monitoring in place to protect these astronauts just isn’t believable. Plus, there are so many other ways that the tragic end could have been avoided. Mental health screenings and support systems are a necessity. Still, all of these grounded storytelling measures aside, the episode is still a whimsical yet dark story about technology and family.
Black Mirror is now streaming on Netflix.
