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Gromit posted:I wanted to like Electric Dreams more but I just couldn't. They all ended up just being kind of okay at best for me, and I'm not really sure what my problem with them was. Electric Dreams has some massive duds its true (The commuter, Crazy Diamond) I'd compare it to post-netflix black mirror, but there are definitely episodes like Real Life, Autofac, and Kill All Others that are well worth watching. Funnily enough two episodes (Safe and sound, and Autofac) act as a fun little reflection of episodes like Arkangel and Metalhead. It's a shame there's no thread for it, because I'd like to see goons argue over Autofac vs Metalhead since it's the same broad sci-fi concept (Apocalyptic future where drones still operate based on pre-war consumerist programming) and even open with pretty much the same scene (A group of survivors attempting to steal products in cardboard boxes from a drone) then goes in a completely different direction (by actually explaining what happened, and even having characters in it) Hell, I even liked weirder episodes of Electric Dreams like Impossible Planet and Human Is, which are very different to anything you would see on Black Mirror. (Mainly because they deal with things like Aliens and Space Travel)
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Jan 13, 2018 16:43
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Re: Electric Dreams I'm only four episodes in (on Amazon, so out of order from UK audiences), and besides one dud episode so far, I think it's a pretty great show. Human Is is fantastic. Bryan Cranston's acting range is astounding. According to an interview with Ron Moore, Cranston got a pick of any episode he wanted, and he wisely chose that one because it, wow, you can really see two sides to him. The general consensus from the UK watchers is that the show is rather bland, but I'm definitely enjoying it. I actually think the intro is the worst part. It's cringy try-hard scifi whimsy.
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Jan 13, 2018 17:05
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Mike the TV posted:Re: Electric Dreams The episodes are done in a different order in the UK too I believe, UK opens the season with the much weaker 'Hood Maker' while America starts with 'Real Life' Be interested to see how impressions differ depending on the order of eps watched.
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Jan 13, 2018 17:18
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mcbexx posted:Clickbait link - Comic covers for BM episodes. That dumbass drew a hamster not a guinea pig for the Crocodile cover.  cosmically_cosmic posted:Though hang on now that you mention it, didn't they have to talk to the person to get them to think of the event in order to 'read' the memory? Yeah, it’s one of those things that falls apart if you think about it for two seconds. I guess they could show the guinea pig a picture of the baby and see if anything pops up? Or, next season they give us the episode ‘White Pigsmas’ where they make a cookie of Codger, and Jon Hamm (in a guinea pig costume, naturally) tries to get the info from him. LadyPictureShow fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jan 13, 2018 |
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Jan 13, 2018 18:13
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Autofac is so good. But I also love Janelle Monae a lot so I’m glad she was in it.
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Jan 14, 2018 00:41
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TheDon01 posted:Yeah i think someone a few pages back mentioned something about maybe having a scene with a security guard and a little flashing light that says "Warehouse" and then he presses a button labeled "Dogs" That would be terrible, it's much scarier that they're the autonomous leftovers of some kind of horrible technology apocalypse. The mention of the pigs at the very beginning is super chilling, because you can extrapolate that and imagine dogs charging into an elementary school and gunning down everyone with an identity tag, or whatever. khwarezm posted:I know it's easy to get mad about rankings like that (Shut up and Dance at 14?!) but something that really fascinates me about the show is the insane variation I've seen from people over what are the worst and best episodes, out of all the shows I've watched BM is the most divisive I've ever seen when it comes to that question. My husband and I have wildly differed a few times - he loved Shut Up and Dance, while I thought it was really dull and hokey, and he was lukewarm at best on Arkangel, which I thought was fantastic.
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Jan 14, 2018 01:10
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MOVIE MAJICK posted:I watched my first Black mirror last night, arkangel, and I thought it was straight garbage. Badly acted and it stumbled to make any interesting point about technology. Are the rest any better? Black Mirror isn't about technology really
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Jan 14, 2018 06:56
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Is there an Electric Dreams thread at all? Or can we talk about it in here? There’s some really great episodes in the 10 episodes they dropped, but it’s getting like absolutely zero attention.
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Jan 14, 2018 08:19
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Gromit posted:I wanted to like Electric Dreams more but I just couldn't. They all ended up just being kind of okay at best for me, and I'm not really sure what my problem with them was. The stories and acting never felt like they clicked. I watched the first one with Rob Stark, the one with Charlie Chaplin's daughter and then the third one that I don't even remember. I think I wanted Philip K Dick stories and they're not. It wasn't very well marketed.
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Jan 14, 2018 10:42
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Taear posted:The stories and acting never felt like they clicked. I watched the first one with Rob Stark, the one with Charlie Chaplin's daughter and then the third one that I don't even remember. I watched ‘the hood maker’ and ‘Real Life’ episodes the first one was just boring, the second was fine but not great; it kind of reminded me of Playtest or USS Callister.
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Jan 14, 2018 11:27
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Taear posted:The stories and acting never felt like they clicked. I watched the first one with Rob Stark, the one with Charlie Chaplin's daughter and then the third one that I don't even remember. Weird, Chaplin's granddaughter was in White Christmas. I guess with 11 kids his kin will be in every show eventually.
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Jan 14, 2018 12:15
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Hello, I watched my first episode of black mirror last night (15 million merits) and I was curious if they're all roundabouts that level of depressing or if it gets even more dystopian. I can't even tell if He was really seeing the outside in the end or if it was just a screen. Like do the bikers work for a very small set of "gentry" and is it a class system? Do debtors get put in or is it a lottery? I know none of these things are important at all but I really liked the episode. Well, as much as you can like things that make you feel horrible.
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Jan 14, 2018 19:00
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Considering that 15 Million Merits seems to take place around the same time as Crocodile and before the first segment of Black Museum, I've got a theory that it's sort of a boot camp for prospective actors/singers/etc. It's like if someone took the entertainment industry and turned it into a formal institution that's nominally "fair". Merits are a way for unknowns to get their chance to stardom. Everyone who chooses to live in and on the peripheral of the industry end up working to maintain it. Only those who put in their dues get to really reap the benefits. Maybe it's contracted indebted servitude to the industry for a set number of years. I think this is one of the episodes that loses the most from being set in the same universe as the other episodes.
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Jan 14, 2018 19:18
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Emerson Cod posted:I think this is one of the episodes that loses the most from being set in the same universe as the other episodes. 100% this. I think there are much better ways they could have done it, but they didn't have to do it at all.
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Jan 14, 2018 19:22
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They don't all have to be in the same universe, it just seems like some episodes are connected.
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Jan 14, 2018 19:24
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There's just some easter eggs. The episodes all take place in their own separate universe.
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Jan 14, 2018 20:04
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Not after Black Museum: http://collider.com/black-mirror-shared-universe-confirmed/ When the showrunner confirms it, it's pretty clear.
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Jan 14, 2018 21:38
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You can ignore it. It’s pretty clear that despite the Easter eggs and name drops, that’s still just filling out the world of each story, rather than the core of each story. Looking at it all as a puzzle to be deciphered is somewhat reductive of any reading you care to do of the various episodes.
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Jan 14, 2018 22:47
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My view is that each episode takes place in an alternate timeline where most things are similar but certain technologies end up being more developed and used than others.
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Jan 14, 2018 23:20
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Sure, you can watch it however you want. It's a work of fiction (mostly).
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Jan 15, 2018 00:55
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Black Museum is a meta-episode
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Jan 15, 2018 04:01
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Emerson Cod posted:Considering that 15 Million Merits seems to take place around the same time as Crocodile and before the first segment of Black Museum, I've got a theory that it's sort of a boot camp for prospective actors/singers/etc. It's like if someone took the entertainment industry and turned it into a formal institution that's nominally "fair". Merits are a way for unknowns to get their chance to stardom. Everyone who chooses to live in and on the peripheral of the industry end up working to maintain it. Only those who put in their dues get to really reap the benefits. Maybe it's contracted indebted servitude to the industry for a set number of years. I think this is one of the episodes that loses the most from being set in the same universe as the other episodes. This is nonsense, it doesn't take place in the same universe, and it's clearly not a "boot camp for prospective actors and singers". I don't get why people are so hung up on continuity. In the grand tradition of British sci-fi programming, the show has continuity when it serves the story and doesn't when it doesn't.
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Jan 15, 2018 17:07
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So just as depressing then? I only got to watch half of episode three last night, looking forward to seeing how it goes horribly wrong
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Jan 15, 2018 17:14
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Android Blues posted:This is nonsense, it doesn't take place in the same universe, and it's clearly not a "boot camp for prospective actors and singers". They're trying to force it to take place in the same universe. There's an ad for Abi's wraith babies flick in crocodile, the judge from hot shots was treated at a hospital in black museum, and the Selma lady has a couple ads and billboards throughout the series. It's clunky and dumb but they've decided semi retroactively that it's all in the same universe. They did put a comic book of 15MM in black museum so maybe the people are all real but the crazy events of 15MM are just an adaptation of the comic saying "wouldn't it be crazy if this was how showbiz worked!"
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Jan 15, 2018 17:17
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:They're trying to force it to take place in the same universe. There's an ad for Abi's wraith babies flick in crocodile, the judge from hot shots was treated at a hospital in black museum, and the Selma lady has a couple ads and billboards throughout the series. Those are easter eggs, not some deep examination of the canon. There have been easter eggs in Black Mirror since forever. There are earlier episodes where Hot Shots shows up when someone's channelsurfing or a chat room user is called I_AM_WALDO. They're nods to other episodes, that's all. It's a bit more extensive in Black Museum but that's because it's the premise of the episode that this is a collection of macabre tech stuff, so integrating those familiar stories into it serves the plot.
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Jan 15, 2018 17:39
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I'm not trying to argue that like.. The world of Shut Up and Dance makes no sense since 15MM canonically takes place before it, I just mean that literally the show creator had stated that they take place in the same universe and the Easter eggs let you put them in rough chronological order. Not trying to poke holes in the Canon or anything, just throwing out some thoughts on how it could be possible. For fun.
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Jan 15, 2018 17:49
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A Black Mirror episode where an artist is trying to make a point and all people care about is fitting it into the continuity of all their work that doesn’t really say anything What if Wikipedia but too much
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Jan 15, 2018 17:55
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If we were limited to discussing The Point of each episode, the only posts in here would be "people are dicks and technology lets them be even more so, except sometimes"
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Jan 15, 2018 17:58
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Fandoms and their weird obsession with pointless minutiae could legit make a good Black Mirror
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Jan 15, 2018 18:11
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:I'm not trying to argue that like.. The world of Shut Up and Dance makes no sense since 15MM canonically takes place before it, I just mean that literally the show creator had stated that they take place in the same universe and the Easter eggs let you put them in rough chronological order. I clicked the article you linked and Brooker really doesn't seem to say anything like that. I think the writer was leaping to conclusions.
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Jan 15, 2018 18:11
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Supercar Gautier posted:I clicked the article you linked and Brooker really doesn't seem to say anything like that. I think the writer was leaping to conclusions. I didn't post any articles. A few years ago, Brooker said that the episodes shared an Artistic Universe, but then after season 4 he had to admit that it had ended up going for more of a literal shared universe “It does actually now seem to imply that it is all a shared universe,” Brooker told DigitalSpy, before adding that that wasn’t always the plan. And again, I'm not trying to find some Ah Ha! Gotcha! level continuity error or something, I'm just having fun thinking of how they could be linked. The show runners have zero idea, so we don't need to worry about who's right and wrong.
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Jan 15, 2018 18:18
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The twist is the Entire of Black Mirror is actually just a single show recorded for an internet streaming service and once again the universe isn’t real.
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Jan 15, 2018 18:20
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:I didn't post any articles. Whoops, I must have gotten you mixed up with someone else arguing the same thing a while back. Still, I don't think it makes sense to tie the episodes together as a shared universe considering how incompatible many of them are. It feels very Wookieepedia-esque; treating a fictional work as a document of a "real" universe that lives separate from the work, about which facts can be determined and studied and woven into a history. I don't think it's a very interesting or valuable way to engage with fiction, especially in cases like this where you have to bend or break what each story tells you in order to make it all fit.
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Jan 15, 2018 18:26
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The whole premise of the show is to take each episode, and consider "the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes' time if we're clumsy." What's so heretical to swap out "how could our world turn into Be Right Back" for "how would the world of San Juniperro progress to Be Right Back"
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Jan 15, 2018 18:40
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Obviously it's impossible for the world to make any sense if strung together. Be Right Back has advanced flesh cyborg bodies but crude personality copies. Black Museum has advanced perfect personality copies but you get stuffed in a teddy bear. A cheek swab can create a cookie with perfect memories of the deceased, so all murders would be solved by asking the AI who killed them. It's just for fun and not a game of Point Out More Minutiae Than the Opposition to Become Correct
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Jan 15, 2018 18:48
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I don't know why people are getting so upset about the episodes hypothetically being in the same universe. It doesn't prevent you from viewing each episode as it's own story. It's fun to think of how things could be linked together. If you want to imagine that there is zero connection between any episode, fine, but don't run into the thread shouting "NO CONNECTION, NO CONNECTION, IT'S JUST AN EASTER EGG" any time someone wants to explore the ramifications of if the episodes are in a certain timeline. We have maybe a year until another season, so what's the harm in talking about these things?
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Jan 15, 2018 20:10
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And some of them are definitely more than just easter eggs at this point. Rolo Hayes literally works for the San Junipero corporation and Nish mentions that they "upload old people to the cloud" so it's clear that at least Black Museum and San Junipero are in the same "universe" though it's unlikely they are in the same universe as, say, The National Anthem where we see no future tech.
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Jan 15, 2018 20:14
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:And again, I'm not trying to find some Ah Ha! Gotcha! level continuity error or something, I'm just having fun thinking of how they could be linked. You consider this fun?
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Jan 15, 2018 20:14
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“I’m sure the fans won’t get weird about this” is also a good pitch for a Black Mirror episode
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Jan 15, 2018 20:18
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Orange Devil posted:You consider this fun? I do indeed enjoy thinking and talking about Black Mirror, yes. If you google "black mirror shared universe" you will see that there have been literally millions of posts, articles, videos, interviews, etc., all on the very subject! Fans posted:“I’m sure the fans won’t get weird about this” is also a good pitch for a Black Mirror episode Don't refer to yourself in the 3rd person
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Jan 15, 2018 20:22
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