Beyond the Sea

Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett play two astronauts on a mission in space. But fortunately for them, they get to still see their families, well sort of, with the use of doppelgangers. One of the two experiences a horrific tragedy with his family which leads to decisions the other astronaut would regret. Once you see what's going on, you'll probably agree it's a bit predictable. However the very ending there's a little curve ball twist moment which caps the episode off nicely.

If you're a Twilight Zone fan, you may notice (as I did) one astronaut is named Stanfield and the other is named Ross. In the TZ episode "The Long Morrow", the astronaut who ages by pulling himself out of hibernation is named Commander Stansfield. And lead astronaut in the episode "Death Ship" from season 4 is named Captain Ross. Maybe just maybe Black Mirror was paying homage to The Twilight Zone.

What an episode. It has some problems that will probably hurt it's ratings hard. Such as the mission and it's importance not properly explained, including why the humans needed to be the ones in the ship and not their replicas. Maybe they should have invested in that more and a little less in the middle drama.

I have to be honest I came here to write a horrible review. The shock of the ending leaves you wanting to insult the writers for their "lazy" work. But after the realization of how everything revolved around the mission's importance, how it seems to be above everything else; I now understand it actually finished with a climax and not with a disappointment.

Black Mirror Season 6's third episode, "Beyond the Sea," deserves a solid 9/10 rating in my book. Let me break it down for you!

First off, the direction in this episode is masterful. They excel at building tension and creating an eerie atmosphere that had me on the edge of my seat. Throughout the entire episode, there was a lingering feeling of impending doom that added to the overall suspense.

The ending is downright terrifying. I won't spoil it, but it left me with goosebumps. The situation they set up is incredibly messed up and will make you question everything. It's classic Black Mirror at its finest.

The acting is absolutely amazing, particularly Aaron Paul's performance. He brings a level of emotion and intensity to his character that is captivating. He deserves recognition for his outstanding work in this episode.

One thing that stood out to me was the constant sense that something bad was about to happen. Even in moments of apparent peace, there was an underlying uneasiness that added to the overall tension. The storytelling and narrative setup were top-notch.

Overall, "Beyond the Sea" is a knockout episode of Black Mirror. The direction is masterful, the ending is chilling, the acting is phenomenal (shoutout to Aaron Paul), and the constant anticipation of something going wrong keeps you on the edge of your seat. It's a must-watch for any Black Mirror fan. Don't miss out on this one!

For starters, Aaron Paul does phenomenally here. He hasn't always taken the best roles since Breaking Bad, but he truly gave his all for this performance and it shows. I don't have much to say about this episode other than it's a fantastic technological concept that's executed pretty good. I do think it is a little predictable, I felt like I knew where things were headed after the first significant event. Even so, some stuff happens in this episode that gets pretty dark, even for Black Mirror's sake, and I enjoy getting that chill of disturbance when watching this show. It's one of the better episodes.

This was a very good episode. I won't give it a 10 because 10 is perfect and this doesn't quite reach that. It deserves an 8.5. All three of the main actors were excellent. Some reviewers are complaining because it is "predictable". Admittedly, after Lana's solution to the issue after the "unimaginable tragedy" I saw the general place this was going. But I did not see the final results. And the writing and acting to get to that point were great. At all points in the process, what happened made sense.

I largely wrote this review to refute others who wrote bad reviews because of a "plot hole" that they do not realize does not exist. These reviewers were not paying attention and/or were not thinking.

(Now I become a little geeky. There are no real spoilers here. The specifics I give are either from early in the episode, or my own calculations of reality instead of things mentioned in the episode.)

These reviewers ask why they did not send Replicas to the space station, instead of sending humans, since the Replicas could do what the humans do. This is explained early on: When fans greet David's (Josh Hartnell's character's) Replica outside the movie theater, he says central to the mission is "the human experience, the survival of the human body, of life".

Remember, this is set early in space exploration. If the Netflix description is correct, 1969, the first time humans were, in the real world, on the moon. At one point in this episode, it was said that Cliff and David were to be in space for 6 years. This mission was to determine the effects on humans of being in space for years. This information would be needed as humans went further into space. (Many of the things the humans did when they were awake were not the purpose of the mission. What they did when awake was just so the mission could continue.)

Replicas need the connection to the human: what the Replica does is controlled by the human. If you think about, Replicas could not go significantly further into space while the humans remained on Earth. Assuming the communication between humans and their Replicas is at the speed of light (it cannot be any faster) humans on the space station in geostationary orbit could communicate with Replicas on Earth in a fraction of a second. So what we saw in this episode is possible. But what about when we want to explore Mars? Even when Mars is at its closest to Earth, it would take a few minutes to communicate that distance at the speed of light. Humans on Earth controlling Replicas could not get much done with that kind of delay. When NASA's probes are landed on Mars, the probe runs a preprogrammed process, and the engineers at NASA wait for several minutes until they find out if it worked.