This article contains spoilers forBlack MirrorSeason 6 Episode 3, “Beyond the Sea.“Black Mirrorhas a reputation for using science fiction technology to animate bleak and unsettling plot lines. Far from feel-good, the Netflix anthology series opts to offer its fans food for thought about the ethical compromises entailed by modern living, frequently served alongside less-than-happy, often altogether hopeless endings.
Season 6, with its first two episodes “Joan Is Awful” and “Loch Henry,” backs off from that mode to a degree.“Loch Henry” hits more notably devastating beatsthan “Joan Is Awful,” but it leaves its audience feeling perhaps more sad than properly appalled. “Beyond the Sea,” however, signals a return toBlack Mirror’s signature cycle of technological terror.
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What is “Beyond the Sea” about?
The year is 1969. David Ross (Josh Hartnett) and Cliff Stanfield (Aaron Paul) are astronauts who have elected to pioneer new consciousness-transporting technology that allows them to operate machine replicas of themselves over great distances. This way, they can sleep and perform the occasional maintenance task on their ship in outer space but spend most of their time possessing their replicas on Earth, living their lives more or less normally. Their unique situation has made David and Cliff into celebrities—more so than the average astronaut, that is—as people stop them in the street to marvel at their lifelike craftsmanship.
From the beginning of the episode, it’s clear that these two men do not lead similar lives, in spite of their shared profession. David seems happier, more integrated with broader society, and much closer with his wife and kids, while Cliff and his melancholy wife Lana (Kate Mara) raise their son in silence on their isolated country estate. The tables turn, however, when a machine-hating cult of home invaders murder David’s entire family in front of his replica eyes. The enigmatic cultists also destroy his replica, leaving himstranded in outer spaceto grieve alone.
Moved by the tragedy that has befallen David, Cliff and Lana decide to let him use Cliff’s replica link for a brief period of time, as a kind of “break” fromthe horrible monotony of space. All goes well, but of course David soon wants to go back for more. He asks Cliff whether he could use his link to paint a landscape of Cliff’s house as a gift for him and Lana. Cliff hesitantly agrees to let David inhabit his replica for one hour per week in order to breathe fresh air and work on his painting.
This seems to work out at first. David gradually pulls out of his deep depression and develops a friendship with Lana, a seemingly positive development. David’s feelings for herquickly turn to infatuation, though. He attempts to seduce Lana, which she declines to tell her husband, and Cliff soon discovers that his coworker has been sketching nude images of Lana in his idle time aboard the ship. Cliff violently confronts David, which leads—in a bizarre snowballing of events—to David killing Cliff’s entire family by way of the replica.
Who are the cultists in Beyond the Sea?
The audience never learns much about the mysterious terrorists that kill David’s family and obliterate his replica. They have no names; each cultist apparently goes by a latter of the Greek alphabet: their leader Kappa (Rory Culkin), Sigma (Siân Davis), Theta (Marama Corlett), and Epsilon (Ioachim Ciobanu). Even in the newspaper shown later on in the episode, the caption under a photograph of Kappa reads simply: “CRAZED FANATIC.” The only real explanation given for their actions is their hatred for the replicas. Kappa calls David an “abomination,” and the newspaper quotes him as having said, “We protected natural order.”
Even as their heinous crimes set the episode’s entire plot in motion, the cultists do not get much time on screen. In fact, after the murders, they promptly turn themselves in and disappear from the story altogether. This may feel likea lazy plot deviceat first glance, but in truth it sets up the crux of the episode’s social commentary on technology that plays out later on in the conflict between Dan and Cliff.
What does Beyond the Sea say about technology?
Black Mirroris known for its social commentary, usually centered on humanity’s tendency to misuse advanced technology. In this case, viewers might easily write the episode off as predictably punishing David and Cliff for their hyper-modern reliance on technology: they’reliving literally among the stars, they live most of their lives inside machines, they live off plants grown inside a spaceship, etc.
Yet,“Beyond the Sea” moves pastBlack Mirror’s typical farewith a criticism of the possessive, masculinist attitudes of its dueling protagonists. While the audience may initially side with Cliff during his encounter with David, the words he exchanges with David during their confrontation betrays a sadistic, controlling side. The episode’s conflict is not so much murder (though there is a lot of that) as it is cheating. When Cliff finds out about David’s obsession with Lana, his violent and hate-filled response reveals him to be a deeply insecure and jealous husband, concerned primarily with his proprietary claim to Lana as his wife. “Beyond the Sea” is about two men with a compulsive need to dominate, both with respect to the natural world and to the women in their lives.
What does the cult have to do with this? Well, Kappa and company represent the antithesis of David and Cliff’s domineering desires: chaos. They are unknowable and uncontrollable. Their names even resembles mathematical variables. The threat they pose is not to technological advancement, but to the protagonists' control over their world, and that is what ultimately drives them to the violence.
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