markx

I'd say that a common theme of technology in Black Mirror has been showing the implications of possible or recent technology. So I'd say The National Anthem for example was very much about technology - it showed how the usual tropes of a kidnapping story could be completely overturned (e.g., they ask to keep the ransom video private, but it turns out it was uploaded to YouTube). So this did seem different to me - true it was a case of how they were found out by then new technology, but the idea that video recordings could provide evidence is no longer anything original or unexpected. More generally Black Mirror shows us things that are scary but plausible (either now or in the future) - but crucially things that most people wouldn't have previously considered. (I mean, the fact that some people might secretly have been serial killers isn't in itself an original idea.) That doesn't mean I didn't like it though. It still had other things in common, and it's good to see different ideas - I'm glad this didn't end up with them being in a simulated universe yet again! Liked the San Junipero reference.

They could have at least turned the phones off when having sex! More generally, revoke Streamberry's permissions or uninstall it from the phone (and if they're still getting the data from the phone after that somehow, that's malware and illegal). I did like this episode in that it at first it seems complete fantasy, but actually could be plausible in a matter of years (at least AI or CGI being able to generate TV shows of people's lives; the twist at the end when the quantum computer running simulations of millions of lives seems more far fetched). I'd hope that such a breach of privacy would cause a public outrage. I note that this Black Mirror episode reduces the chance of this particular situation happening - it'd be unoriginal now that this storyline has already been done. What if someone watching tried to fast forward?

"Sorry, sweetheart."

I loved the episode - just when it seemed the season was wrapped up, we got a nice little ghost story covering the years that followed. I think the season as a whole was good, though wavered in the middle - the "tucked away" seemed confusing, I didn't care for the story with Peter and Rebecca, and I'd rather have seen more of Dani experiencing the horror and torment (e.g. more creepy games from the children). Meanwhile Hill House seemed to me to be consistently good until the last episode, where explaining everything just seemed tedious and removed the horror.

The name change makes sense to me, not everyone will have seen a poster or trailer. If I'm scrolling down the "what's on" for a cinema, the title is the number one thing to first grab someone's attention.

How do replicators compare to transporters - clearly no one anymore has any trouble accepting results of the latter as real. Imagine if Picard takes one of his homegrown wines to a party, that he travels to via transporter - would that mean his wine is now inferior to the original? (Even though no one would question that Picard is no longer the real Picard?) Possibly replicators are simpler versions though. https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Replicator says "Despite replicated food and drinks being practically identical to their real counterparts, some people claim to be able to tell the difference between real and replicated foodstuffs and maintain supplies of their favorite food and beverages from more traditional sources. This may be due to the fact that molecular level resolution is used with replication, rather than quantum level resolution used with life forms - which causes single bit errors to often appear in replicated items." And even if such claims seem very unlikely, it could be analogous to audiophiles who keep their music in wav format... Or as jcin617 says, it may be that replicators would only give you exactly the same thing every time.

This may indeed be how Star Trek views it - there was a fair amount of focus on positronic brains, the implication being that requiring human level intelligence required particular hardware, and wasn't simply a property of software running on a computer. Star Trek has been a bit vague on the abilities of AI. On the one hand the ship's computer, whilst able to communicate, clearly had limits - but then the same computer could happily simulate Einstein for people to converse with, or a self-aware Moriarty, not to mention Voyager's Doctor. Why not just stick that AI in a robot, and how does that fit with the ban? Even if the Star Trek view is that a computer AI can't achieve sentience, ST TNG The Measure Of A Man made it clear that this wasn't known for Data as an objective fact either, but was a point to be argued. It was ruled that Data was sentient, and none of Picard's arguments relied Data's positronic brain; the arguments would have worked just as well if the Doctor had been the subject of that trial. Still, even if this doesn't make sense, I suppose knee jerk bans don't have to make sense - it may be that androids with positronic brains are banned because they're the ones that went bad; or maybe it applies to any AI with a physical body.

One handwave might be that Bortus does measure his birthday by a different year length, but it just happens that this year their birthdays coincided (I may have missed it, but it seems ambiguous as to whether their birthdays were always shared). But this is a flaw for them being labelled Gilliacs - just because their birthdays now were during the bad sign, doesn't mean they would have been born during that sign, due to using a different length of year. I can see that the planet's authorities would have refused to accept that explanation given how irrational they were, but it would have been nice to see that argument tried. On another note, the artificial star surely seemed too close to the planet, to have the same apparent position (compared to background stars) for all viewpoints on the planet. It was also noted that they had satellites in orbit to observe the stars' positions, so surely that would spot the issue straight away.

I'd say it was covered (although with him accepting it) - Ed said something along the lines that for him Janel did exist at that time. In general changing your appearance or using a different name does not mean consent does not count - I'd argue Ed consented to sex with Teleya even though she'd had surgery and lied about who she was. There are some specific circumstances (e.g., impersonating someone's partner) where it does make a difference. She had clearly deceived Ed, so does that make the difference, I wonder? The obvious analogy with today's technology would be spies (or even police officers) who work undercover and form a sexual relationship. Although whatever the legality, I do agree it was interesting that they had him be forgiving and still loving her, rather than hurt and betrayed.

Maybe it's just me, I can't help thinking the reviews were better until the under-performing US opening ("We can't go giving a good review to something that's flopped!") I wonder what the expectations of Terminator sequels are. To me it seems obvious that Terminator - although well known - just doesn't have anywhere near the reach or number of fans as something like Star Wars. To me, that alone answers why The Force Awakens was going to make a whole load more, even if it was a copy of the original storyline far more than Dark Fate was. Terminator 3/4/5 made $433m/$371m/$441m - all less than T2 (especially factoring in inflation), and not massive hits, but are they commercial flops? Other films (including series say The Expendables) have made less. It seems the problem is they spend so much on marketing for Terminator that it's hard to break even. (E.g., Wikipedia quotes a source saying Genisys needed $450m to break even - I don't understand how that comes from a $155m budget and $50-100m on marketing?) The other problem is this repeated cycle where it's decided Terminator is a flop and the plans for sequels are scrapped, until a few years when someone else decides to have enough go, so continuity suffers. Imagine if Marvel gave up after The Hulk's $263m! Well, I liked it, I'd be happy to watch it again. It suffered a bit of too many main characters making it hard for the new main character to shine through. The idea of an evil AI rise being inevitable was covered in both T3 and the TV series, but it seemed better done here, e.g., that it would change which people were important in the future timeline. Cameron's vision for sequels was that Sarah would find a way to end this ever happening, and I guess we'll never see how now. (It seems to me the only options are to either prevent such a super intelligence ever arising by destorying all technology, or make sure that a good super intelligence arises.) I was fine with not making John Connor part of it. There were already too many main characters. The first two films were really about Sarah not John. If people want to see sequels with John, that's Terminator 3/4/5. And I think they suffered because it's hard to show the reality of the character growing up into the myth that was made of him - especially in an altered future. The idea of a terminator growing a conscience and living a family life seems funny, but I'm reminded of the scene in T2 where the T1000 has murdered John's foster mum, and is meanwhile at home cooking and preparing dinner. That's a good point. To be honest, I took the intention to be that Terminator/T2/Dark Fate should be considered an entirely separate story, i.e., nothing in the other films or TV series were canon to this story. However, they did indeed make the "separate timeline" argument, and as you say, this doesn't work. Personally it's a pet hate of mine when writers use the "separate timeline" argument rather than just saying it's a different story (unless it's explicitly part of the plot, e.g., Star Trek's reboot). I can happily watch separate Batman film series without having to pretend they all exist in different parallel universes or timelines.

So all it took to figure out the "limiter" was plugging it into a computer, by two people who by their own admission had no clue what they were doing? Given how eager some people are to hack/mod any product, this seems unlikely! (I don't think it matters that geeks aren't the target market - e.g., people have been finding security holes in all sorts of IOT devices even if they're not at all aimed at geeks.) The technology doesn't make sense: making a human-level AI duplicate and then limiting it would be far harder than just trying to create the limited version in the first place. That would only stop being true in a future where human-level AI duplicates are already commonplace - in which case, it would be a world where there would be various levels of AIs including human duplicates everywhere. Interesting that in this case, the cookie didn't seem to mind that she was trapped in a limited robot/toy (other than being briefly angry at the limiter), and was also happy to accept that she was a copy. Personally I'd have no interesting in watching a gig where the music was all pre-recorded, and the performers were just random dancers projecting a hologram! (Sadly the reliance on pre-recorded/from-a-computer music in gigs seems increasingly common, even in alternative genres. I'm sure I even remember seeing a NIN gig where the drums continued when the drummer wasn't playing, although to be fair he was playing a different instrument.) Re Peter Cushing - a key point I think is that Disney don't claim to own any likeness of Peter Cushing, but they do own the character Grand Moff Tarkin, which is not something that Cushing created. In my opinion, that reasonably includes Grand Moff Tarkin as portrayed by Cushing in the Star Wars films, and creating derivative works of that. This is different to if they used Cushing's likeness for other characters, or especially this was derived from his appearances outside of Star Wars. But I can see things being more dubious in the music industry, where there's a far more blurred distinction between the person and the product. As an aside, I'm interested in that mouse catcher product, our cat keeps bringing them in...

If you're going to be glued to your phone when taking a taxi, you should have at least used Google's recently announced feature!: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-maps-taxi-goes-off-route/ I enjoyed watching it, but I agree with other comments, it felt a bit mundane by Black Mirror standards and didn't really say anything new. It's not that Black Mirror is about advanced technology - rathwe it's often been about showing new often frightening ways that technology (either existing or hypothetical) could be used. The very first episode was very much that - a story very bizarre and seemingly unlikely, but one that could actually happen. It also showed the Government's struggle to keep up with technology (e.g., the demand video posted on Youtube rather than direct to the Government, pointless gag orders on media). This episode tried to do a similar thing implying how the police were lagging behind companies like social networks, but that came across unfair to me. Police today *are* taking advantage of new technology including information on social networks, and they would gladly use more of it if not for laws preventing access (and I'm glad laws put those limits there). The information that the company came up with ultimately was of little use anyway. It also seemed a rather unfair portayal of trained negotiators - on the contrary, doing things like playing the gunman's music collection back at him would be more likely to be something he spots and gets angry over. The idea that a hire car might have a driver who takes you hostage was a frightening aspect to imagine, but I spent the rest of the episode trying to guess something that wasn't there - e.g., would it show how even a massive Internet company could be brought to its knees by old fashioned hostage taking, or would it show how an Internet company would have the power to diffuse something that the police couldn't. Not a criticism, I liked it anyway. It's very true that the guy in the suit is most likely the new guy. Re: the kids watching and posting about it - to be fair, they were stuck in the middle of nowhere without their bikes! Not to mention having just experienced a dangerous situation and no doubt wanted to tell people about it. Maybe the police could have given them a ride home to their families - not to mention they were potential witnesses so they could have taken their statements. In fact that's still fine - outside the US (and certainly in London) we've had ride sharing aka private car hire for decades before Uber. (Before they received jobs on a phone, they would have radios or more dedicated equipment.)

Rare for Black Mirror, but I'm glad it had a happy ending - it's a resolution that seems obvious to me, but is rarely considered an option in relationships. I'm glad that Theo got something too - in that non-monogamous relationships are about both (all) partners having that freedom, not just men; and that it considered her sexuality too. Chances are that that is going on, but I don't know if *everyone* would be trying it. It sounds amazing technology sure. But plenty of people may be happy having sex as they are and their partners are in real life - indeed, whilst I'm someone who would love to have such technology, there are still an awful lot of people with very fixed ideas of gender and sexuality. For those who are single (or non-monogamous) using it to find partners, there's also the issue of people who would get bothered about not knowing the "real" person that they're having sex with, or perhaps they're not interested in random sex with strangers. Another issue is that with so many things to keep us interested, it takes a certain effort to get into something new. Second Life is something that for me has always been "That'd be interesting to try" - and I've never got round to it. Sometimes this even leads to laziness where we stick to the same things we're used to, even if we're getting bored of them - this was shown when Danny could have been playing any number of computer games with hundreds of hours of content, but he's stuck there playing Tetris. Or I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had the feeling of getting "bored" of the Internet and keep hitting reload on the same sites... And would people get stuck in there? Some would. But it's like saying why doesn't everyone spend all their time watching porn, having sex, playing computer games etc. I think there is a problem though that by the time we have technology to have brain/machine interface that works like that, similar technology would be appearing not just for games (e.g., why bother with a phone anymore, just interact with a computer directly through your mind). Motorola are already on it! ( https://www.t3.com/news/motorola-razr-2019-confirmed-new-samsung-galaxy-fold-rival-to-launch-soon )

Well, the story was about the war for the Iron Throne. That story was told, came to and end; I don't think the resolution means that things have to become completely different - maybe there be another war when Bran dies in the future, but that'll be a different story. Some things changed (the new way of appointing a ruler), some things stay the same. Some characters grew (Arya, Sam), other characters went full circle (Jamie). And then there's the whole other story of the Night King, which came to a clear end. As a more general question to people - what ending did you want to see (either this episode, or the season as a whole)?

I was judging and criticising her actions last season, and not about her parentage or coin-flipping (and I don't think she went mad - that's a viewpoint from the people who see it as a sudden flip). Evidently people disagree over how we view her - but people did make these earlier criticisms at the time. I was tired of people previously coming up with all sorts of justifications for burning people to death last season 🙂 No emotion in saying goodbye, burning someone to death for not being the knee, you never know what Bran will do next. If it was true, that would be valid criticism. But it's speculation of what happened; the commentary of Dany in earlier seasons doesn't rely on speculation of what happened (rather different people interpret the events differently). Dany is not the only character after the Iron Throne who showed a mixture of good and evil (in fact I think they were all, except for the ones that were just plain evil). The thing I loved about Game of Thrones was that most characters had this mixture of good and evil - rather than going down the path of good vs evil.

It was a nice minor twist to avoid the obvious ending of Jon Snow ruling, but there seemed something a bit contrived about them having to choose someone who wasn't Jon Snow - yes the arguments put forward seemed reasonable, but part of me would have rather he just chose to go up north on his own accord, and then left the rest to choose and lead (which would have been entirely in character). Found a use for the chocolate teapot though. Given how Jon was able to kill Daenerys without guards around, who's to say he couldn't have escaped? How did they even know, Drogon got rid of the body... It felt a shame to have Grey Worm and the Unsullied cast as the bad guys. I didn't object to how Daenerys was portrayed last episode and yes Grey Worm was loyal to his queen. It's also realistic that allies can fall out (e.g. the cold war). But the episode very much seemed to portray them as the bad guys, when the Unsullied settling in new lands and finding new lives after a life of war is just as much an interesting future as the endings of the other characters. What does the Nights Watch do now that there's peace with the wildlings, and the Night King is dead? Sea Captain Arya, where did that come from? I mean, clearly she was going to have adventures and not settle down, but that in particular seemed out of the blue. And also again odd that they felt the need to have a contrived explanation for Jon Snow's ending (even though it would have been in character for him to go back to the wall), but nothing to explain Arya.

I didn't see her burning the Tarlys to death for not bending the knee as moral. And when last season was discussed, it seemed there were plenty who disputed she had such negative sides to her. Of course it wasn't on the scale as this episode, but they were still serious acts, and dangerous red flags for any would be ruler.

But having Jon kill the Night King would have been something convenient for the writing rather than necessarily realistic. Arya wasn't unexpected to me, she was the most obvious choice if not Jon (and, with her training as an assassin and atypical fighting skills, more realistic). In general, I don't feel there have been twists or reveals this season, all of the pieces were brought into play by the end of last season.

I loved it. I liked it making the point that war is hell - even when the invaders think they are liberating. I didn't see this as any kind of plot twist or that she was meant to have turned mad. I was more annoyed when people thought that she was wonderful. Her fight against slavery is a very good part of her character, but take it away, and I'd argue we'd have had far less reason to have viewed her on the good side. Game of Thrones has most characters being shades of grey. It wasn't just Daenerys - Grey Worm attacked those who surrendered, and northerners were committing rape against women. I wonder if the reaction would have differed if we hadn't have seen the effect on the ground - just the dragon destroying buildings from above. I think there's a parallel with the way that western countries justify "collateral damage" - I can imagine Daenerys justifying it similarly: not someone who has gone mad, but believing it's a necessary action to kill enemy forces. "But she didn't burn all of them to death!" doesn't seem a ringing endorsement! They had surrended. They were burned to death for not bending the knee. These are not mutually exclusive - she was risking her life in this episode too. In her mind, both were battles to be won (and she's long made it clear that she cared more about the Iron Throne than the Night King).

I know it wouldn't have been as tasteful, but I couldn't help thinking dragons would have done the job much quicker...

It would be polite to thank - and it's true that Sansa comes across as being unreasonable - but I'd still see it as fighting against a common cause rather than a great favour. It would also seem odd if my neighbour required me to bend the knee for help, when their house was next in line. (If anything, Cersei should be thanking all of them for stopping the Night King...)

But isn't that the point - getting back to the conversation between Tyrion and Varys, they supported her as the liberator of the enslaved, not as someone who might destroy Kings Landing and risk large numbers of innocents dying, no matter how evil Cersei is. As a viewer I'm looking forward to see a dragon blast Kings Landing, but I'm not surprised to see her advisers questioning things - and I saw it more as them favouring Jon, not Cersei.

Phones, tablets, laptops allow higher brightness due to outdoor use, though it looked great on my LG TV as well as my Surface.

Because everything indeed moves in the Universe, there isn't an absolute concept of "same place but different time", so I'm happy for "same place" to be relative to the earth rather than say the Sun. Given the immense power the stones have, this seems trivial compared to bringing billions of people back to life. But even if it can't be perfect, I think that's okay too. So some people might still have died from this indirectly who don't get brought back, and all sorts of complications occur from bringing billions of people back five years later. It's giving us things to think about that I like. I don't think future movies need to go into it in depth - on the other hand I hope they don't ignore it completely. [I don't know why there's a random smiley on the end of this post that I can't delete... this site's editor drives me mad sometimes!] 🙂

But Gamora's actions aren't undone in the timeline we've been watching, according to the behaviour of time travel they gave at the start - same reason they can't just go and kill Thanos as a baby to undo his actions. Generally I liked the model they used - I'm glad it wasn't a case of using time travel to do a big hard reset where none of it ever happened. And whilst many movies use or hint at the idea of multiple timelines, the problem with that is there's no point to time travel if you're not the time traveler (why should Skynet send Terminators back to create a timeline where it wins, if nothing will change for Skynet in the original timeline). The problem of Steve could be answered if this isn't a first timeline, but one where Steve already jumped back. So the old Steve we see jumped back from another timeline, although he'd be a different Steve to the one we've been seeing all along... I agree it's unclear why he didn't act - maybe he didn't want to risk dramatically changing things from the future he knew, or he might not be certain how time travel actually works out.