Black Mirror Season 7’s Tech Tales Come With a Knife-Twist of Emotion

A new season of Black Mirror has arrived, and with it the usual cautionary tales (and screaming warnings) about technology’s darkest capabilities—wrapped in a deceptively alluring blanket of “Jeez, that would actually be really cool if it were real!” Across six episodes, season seven boasts some of the show’s all-time greatest performances, as well as its first sequel episode, which proves well worth the eight-year wait.

(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=92b7b46b-43ed-4e0e-b21b-2c999302d9d7&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "92b7b46b-43ed-4e0e-b21b-2c999302d9d7" }).render("54612ab9a0fa4d14bdc41e22140d69fb"); });

Black Mirror‘s past track record of predicting tech trends takes on a particularly chilling hue in season seven, which puts a special emphasis on re-purposing vintage tech, including old Hollywood movies and physical photographs. It also digs into the extreme emotional reactions that tech “innovations” are capable of drawing out of people, especially those who engage with it innocently at first.

That latter theme comes into sharp relief in the first episode, “Common People.” Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd star as Amanda and Mike, a married couple whose relationship is charted across several years of anniversaries—and the turns their lives take when Amanda’s mysterious headaches abruptly reveal a scary diagnosis. Tracee Ellis Ross plays the smooth-talking biotech sales rep with the answer to their prayers, which in classic Black Mirror fashion, soon becomes its own waking nightmare.

The episode’s main thrust is how health-care companies tend to see people as customers rather than patients, but beyond the obvious, it also sneaks in some satire about creator culture, introducing an online game show that pays contestants to accept painful and humiliating dares. It works in a funny, if poignant taken in context, dig at subscription services that keep adding more “tiers” that are both more expensive and yet impossible to resist. (Netflix, you listening?)

Jones and O’Dowd have co-starred together in other projects and are mostly known for their comedic performances, and “Common People,” directed by Ally Pankiw and written by Charlie Brooker, from a story by Brooker and Bisha K. Ali, draws on their innate likability and makes them a believable couple. Because Amanda and Mike are such lovely people, it makes their ordeal all the more heartbreaking, though Black Mirror does an admirable job of showing how there’s really no choice in the choices they must make.

Far less sympathetic are the characters in “Bête Noire,” an episode perfectly named for the phrase that means “the bane of one’s existence.” Black Mirror loves a toxic workplace, but rarely has it gone so hard as it does here. A rising star in the research and department of a niche candy company, Maria (Siena Kelly) is smugly pleased with her success until Verity (Rosy McEwen), a former school mate, joins her team.

You get the sense that Maria would already be suspicious of anyone who might be seen as competition, but her hackles are even more raised because of who it is: Verity, you see, was once the school outcast. It’s incredible that someone Maria knew 10 years ago can still trigger her mean-girl instincts with such force, but it’s soon clear there’s something very strange going on—even if only Maria (and the audience) believe it to be true.

The agony drags on along with the mystery (this one’s directed by Toby Haynes, and written by Brooker) and it’s hard to pick a side because both women are impossible to root for. As you might guess from Maria and Verity’s shared history, “Bête Noire” also incorporates another favorite Black Mirror theme: elaborately concocted revenge. But just when you think you’ve figured the episode out, it rips out some surprising twists.

© Netflix

A far sweeter duo comes to the fore in “Hotel Reverie,” which introduces Brandy Friday (Issa Rae), a movie star in a career rut. She’s successful and in demand, but she’s bored to death with playing either “the noble victim” or “the fuckable sidekick.” Her agent doesn’t understand her desire to find “something magical and timeless,” but a project in that vein unexpectedly materializes: a remake of golden-age classic Hotel Reverie, with Brandy playing the previously male leading role.

Black Mirror has a lot of fun recreating Hotel Reverie, giving us a trailer that lays out its plot—a love triangle involving an heiress, her murderous husband, and a dashing doctor, whose paths cross at a bustling hotel in 1930s Cairo—and introducing the studio head (Harriet Walter) despairing of what to do with the fading media library that’s her family legacy. The remake sounds like a killer idea to all involved, but Brandy doesn’t initially understand what she’s signed up for isn’t a conventional do-over. Instead, it’s a first-of-its-kind creation of ReDream, cutting-edge tech that “creates an entirely self-sufficient immersive dimension.”

With a no-nonsense Awkwafina playing the eager project leader, the weird-science element of having Brandy port her consciousness into a simulation filled with AI constructs who think they’re all real people, living in a real world—when in fact, they’re recreations of movie characters who were never real to begin with, in a world that’s completely contained inside a computer—helps keep the story flow from getting too tangled. It’s a high-concept idea both to Brandy and the audience, but with ReDream’s team clustered around in a control room watching Brandy perform inside the movie, dropping techie exposition as we need it, you thankfully don’t get too confused by how all this is working.

The how isn’t really important, anyway—elaborate computing aside, “Hotel Reverie” is far more interested in the relationship that forms between Brandy (both in and out of her doctor character) and her co-star, a character named Clara played by an actor named Dorothy (played by Emma Corrin).

Intended as a beat-for-beat recreation of the movie—with Brandy seamlessly swapped in; the aim here is to get younger audiences excited about “heritage media” by adding in an A-lister—things soon inevitably go off the rails. The ReDream team realizes right along with Brandy how quickly an AI simulation can spin out of control, as well as how many layers it can craft within its drama, and how much genuine emotion it can bring to the surface. It’s written by Brooker, and directed by Haolu Wang.

© Netflix

Maybe the weakest entry in the bunch—and again, it’s a very strong bunch, so that’s a minimal ding—is “Plaything,” written by Brooker and directed by David Slade. It’s a murder mystery in which the DNA-identified suspect is a wild-eyed, wilder-haired computer geek played by Peter Capaldi—whose performance is a delight even if it’s in service to a story that telegraphs its ending far too early in the episode. Also of note, however, is that “Plaything” brings back a past Black Mirror character in video game creator Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), who fans will remember from the Bandersnatch interactive movie.

More in line with “Hotel Reverie” is “Eulogy,” written by Brooker and Ella Road, and directed by Chris Barrett and Luke Taylor. In a season that showcases a lot of wonderful acting, Paul Giamatti takes top honors as a lonely man who goes on an unexpected and surprisingly visceral journey down memory lane. “Hotel Reverie” has already asked, “What would it be like to step into your favorite old movie?”—but “Eulogy” makes it even more personal, asking “What would it be like to step into an old photo and re-live the moment that was captured?”

We follow Giamatti’s Phil as he combs through old shoeboxes, searching for images to contribute to an “immersive memorial” for a long-ago girlfriend, and “Eulogy” takes us on a roller-coaster of feelings. Warm nostalgia gives way to sadness and regret, and then resentment. The latter we can tell he’s spent the last several decades papering over, but it surfaces just as raw once he starts poking into those old wounds. It’s a heartfelt journey as well as a reminder of how break-ups used to be, when you could just scratch someone’s face out of a photo and not have a digital trail of memories following you everywhere. At least, until some new form of tech comes knocking and wondrously, yet awkwardly blends the two.

© Netflix

Last but certainly not least is “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” which brings us back to the digital clones trapped inside of Infinity, “the most immersive multiplayer game in human history,” and the humans who work at gaming company Callister, Inc. There’s a “previously on” that’s helpful even if you remember the original episode, and the story then picks up a few months after Robert Daly’s death.

Part one ended in victorious freedom for the crew of the USS Callister. But some cracks have formed after their jailbreak, and they’re now confronting new challenges that make their previous suffering under Daly’s thumb almost a breeze in comparison. Let’s just say being the only players in a video game who can never leave the game creates some unique predicaments.

The outside world also gets a deeper dive, with Nanette (Cristin Milioti) and Walton (Jimmi Simpson) having to grapple with Daly’s legacy in surprising ways—not to mention experiencing a fresh dose of that toxic workplace that, again, Black Mirror simply adores as a setting.

Directed by Toby Haynes, and written by Brooker, Ali, William Bridges, and Bekka Bowling, “USS Callister: Into Infinity” is everything you want a sequel to be. The world gets bigger, the characters you’ve already come to know reveal new dimensions, and the narrative goes to some extremely clever places. The Star Trek homage is way dialed down this time around, though, since Daly’s no longer running the show—but there’s still plenty of space action, not to mention some Trek-style thematic lessons about making choices for the greater good that end up shining through.

Black Mirror season seven is now streaming on Netflix.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.