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Spoilers Black Mirror - Season 6

The Nth Doctor

The Nth Doctor

Wanderer in the Fourth Dimension
Premium Member
At long last, we have a trailer and release month for the sixth season of Black Mirror.

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The full cast for this season includes Aaron Paul, Anjana Vasan, Annie Murphy, Auden Thornton, Ben Barnes, Clara Rugaard, Daniel Portman, Danny Ramirez, Himesh Patel, John Hannah, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Michael Cera, Monica Dolan, Myha'la Herrold, Paapa Essiedu, Rob Delaney, Rory Culkin, Salma Hayek Pinault, Samuel Blenkin, and Zazie Beetz.

Charlier Brooker has this to say about the new season:

“I’ve always felt that Black Mirror should feature stories that are entirely distinct from one another, and keep surprising people — and myself — or else what’s the point? It should be a series that can’t be easily defined, and can keep reinventing itself,” the writer, creator and executive producer said.

So that’s exactly what he did. Not every episode of the new season will be exactly what you’re expecting — but that’s the whole point.

“Partly as a challenge, and partly to keep things fresh for both me and the viewer, I began this season by deliberately upending some of my own core assumptions about what to expect,” he says. “Consequently, this time, alongside some of the more familiar Black Mirror tropes we’ve also got a few new elements, including some I’ve previously sworn blind the show would never do, to stretch the parameters of what ‘a Black Mirror episode’ even is. The stories are all still tonally Black Mirror through-and-through — but with some crazy swings and more variety than ever before.”
​
I know some people were lukewarm about season five, but I'm pretty excited about this season with its killer cast. I'm particularly intrigued by Aaron Paul's space adventure that we barely get a glimpse of in the trailer.
 
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I've always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Black Mirror but I will still be looking forward to this.
 
Entertainment Weekly has published titles and synopses for all of the episodes. The article also contains a bunch of photos from each episode.

"Joan is Awful" is the story of an average woman who is stunned to discover a global streaming platform has launched a prestige TV drama adaptation of her life, in which she is portrayed by Hollywood A-lister Salma Hayek. In addition to Hayek, the episode stars Annie Murphy, Michael Cera, Rob Delaney, Ben Barnes, and Himesh Patel. The episode's directed by Ally Pankiw.

Directed by Sam Miller, "Loch Henry" is about a young couple who travel to a sleepy Scottish town to work on a genteel nature documentary but find themselves drawn to a juicy local story involving shocking events from the past. It stars Samuel Blenkin, Myha'la Herrold, Daniel Portman, John Hannah, and Monica Dolan.

"Beyond the Sea" takes place in an alternate 1969, where two men on a perilous high-tech mission wrestle with the consequences of an unimaginable tragedy. Directed by John Crowley, it stars Aaron Paul, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Auden Thornton, and Rory Culkin. Given the spacesuit visible in the photo below, it's worth remembering that 1969 was the year that America sent a man to the moon.

In the episode "Mazey Day," directed by Uta Briesewitz, a troubled starlet is dogged by invasive paparazzi while dealing with the consequences of a hit-and-run incident. It stars Zazie Beetz, Clara Rugaard, and Danny Ramirez.

"Demon 79" takes place in northern England in 1979, where a meek sales assistant is told she must commit terrible acts to prevent disaster. It stars Anjana Vasan, Paapa Essiedu, Katherine Rose Morley, and David Shields. Notably, this is the only episode not solely written by Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, but is instead co-written by former Ms. Marvel head writer Bisha K. Ali. It's directed by Toby Haynes.
​
All of the episodes sound intriguing but I'm especially curious about "Loch Henry" and "Beyond the Sea." I was little wary of "Demon 79" since the premise sounds similar to "Shut Up and Dance," but the fact that it's co-written by Bisha K. Ali and directed by Toby Haynes ("USS Callister," episodes of Doctor Who, Sherlock and Andor) has piqued my curiosity.
 
Going to be a busy day between this show and Strange New Worlds' premiere!

Edited to add the new trailer!

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Curious how "Demon 79" is billed as "Red Mirror presents." A straight-up horror? I don't think show has ever done gore before, just existential horror.
 
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The Nth Doctor said:
In the episode "Mazey Day," directed by Uta Briesewitz, a troubled starlet is dogged by invasive paparazzi while dealing with the consequences of a hit-and-run incident. It stars Zazie Beetz, Clara Rugaard, and Danny Ramirez.
Click to expand...

Way too many Z's in that episode...
​
 
Presumably Netflix will cancel Joan is Awful after one season ;)

They all look interesting, and the tone seems slightly different, several seem less 'isn't modern/hypothetical tech terrible' than we're used to (of course it doesn't mean they aren't all set in VR worlds for all we know, certainly the space one seems to involve VR as Hartnett says he needs a rest and then wakes up in bed).

Both Loch Henry and Demon 79 look like straight up horrors which is good also.
 
Wonder what the run times will be? Must admit I've been edging closer to cancelling Netflix (them cancelling Lockwood & co. wasn't quite the last straw but I feel they don't have many straws left.)
 
Charlie Brooker told Empire that he got ChatGPT to write a Black Mirror but the results were "shit"...but also a teaching moment?

“I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit," Brooker reveals in the new issue of Empire. "The first thing I did was type 'generate Black Mirror episode' and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is shit. Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, 'Oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.' It’s [1970s impressionist] Mike Yarwood — there’s a topical reference.”

Brooker’s brush with AI did, however, prove to be a useful experience. As in much of Black Mirror, the problem turns out not to be the technology itself, but the use it’s put to by human beings. In a typical twist, Brooker found that the tech was actually teaching him what not to do in the future. “I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes 'Oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!'", he chuckles. "So I thought, 'I’m just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a Black Mirror episode is.' There’s no point in having an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules. Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.”​

The article also features an exclusive image of Aaron Paul and Kate Mara together with Brooker musing on the origins of their episode:

An impossible mission set in an alternate 1969, it is, Brooker tells us, "sort of dystopian past, present and future. I had the plot idea first and then, at one point, I thought [adopts the voice of a TV-making moron], “What if I set this in the late ’60s? That’d be, like, disruptive and cool! And then when you actually come to write it, you realise, 'Oh, hang on, if this is a different time and everyone in it is from that time, that actually informs how the characters are thinking and behaving.' But I don’t think there was a deliberate rejection of nostalgia, so much as it was just a fun thing to do.”​
 
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The season is out. I've set the spoiler tag so you're welcome to talk about the episodes openly.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to start watching but hopefully not too long of a wait.
 
Only seen Joan is Awful so far but loved it.

Bit freaky that Netflix did that update of legal stuff when I logged in and I just clicked ok however :lol:

"Please don't kill me Salma Hayek!"
 
Just watched Loch Henry and fuck me that was good. I saw where it was heading but if anything that just made it more harrowing!

So that's two that have been very Meta about Netflix, are they all going to be like that? I can't figure out if I think it's really clever or ever so slightly too clever for it's own good, but if the other three episodes are as well made as the first two I might not care.

Daft question but do people know if you have to watch them in order? Is there some kind of linking theme or doesn't it matter?
 
Holy shit I'd forgotten that Monica Dolan played
Rose West
years ago. This damn episode gets more meta by the minute! :eek:
 
I'm watching the episode 1 and, as an European, the most shocking thing until now is how simple and fast is firing someone in the US, ruining their life.

But American companies complain when employees don't give two weeks notice, accusing them of being unprofessional and of not understanding what damage they are doing to the company.

I hold on to my "socialist dystopia".
 
^I suppose what we don't know is whether they're being fired immediately, or given notice but put immediately on gardening leave for the duration of that notice period?
 
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