I am totally astonished about this episode and I found many answers. I think this one was kind of a connective episode and excitement still continued. There were a lot of connections to previous Black Mirror episodes, while almost all Black Mirror episodes can be watched without watching any other episode, this one was different.
Plot takes places in a sideway museum, which is far away from crowded. There is only one visitor on that day. Owner of the place jokes about the place being crowded in the earlier days and we understand what he means towards the end of the episode. In the museum, there are many artifacts related to previous mysterious events and crimes. We saw a robot bee from Hated In the Nation episode, we saw the tablet from the Arkangel, we saw the bathtub from Crocodile, to count some of them. Museum owner, who is apparently the single employee, starts touring the girl in the museum and telling three stories consecutively. It turns out, all events are actually related and is part of a development of some technology which eventually allows transferring human consciousness to a virtual program. In the first story, only feelings could be transferred. In the second one, human consciousness could be transferred to a different human mind and also to an object and in the third one it could be transferred to a software. Interesting thing here, as it is seen in many previous episodes, is that transferred consciousness is like a human without a body. Have emotions, can feel, can think, can express.
Here is the part that made the episode great to me. It turns out, we saw this technology of transferring human consciousness, its advance version or its primitives in different Black Mirror episodes before. To speak of some, in San Junipero, we saw human consciousness being transferred to a cloud that sort of created heaven for people who are dead on earth. I think this one was an advanced version of consciousness transfer since transfer was to a cloud in which all transferred human consciousnesses could interact and communicate. The characters actually mentioned San Junipero in this episode. We saw humans playing a virtual reality game by transferring their consciousness into the game, because they were like sleeping in real world when they were playing, in USS Callister. We saw sight transfer and body condition transfer (like heart rate and nutrition values in blood) in Arkangel. We saw memory transfer which was kind of primitive technology since it was not giving correct results every time and it was largely depended on emotions and feelings in Crocodile. We saw a dating app in Hang the DJ and I think the way that dating app works was also about transferring the human consciousness to the system because eventually digital copies of the users were created and used to make good matches. I am sure we can find other traces in episodes I am not mentioning here, like White Christmas and Playtest.
The point I am getting to is, there was this pattern of consciousness transfer/digital copy creation in many episodes and I think this one explained the development of the idea and technology in great success. This idea of consciousness transfer is presented in innovative ways throughout the series and it definitely expanded my horizons.
I think the only episode of the season I don't mention in this review, Metalhead, is one of the standalone nice episodes too, its review doesn't belong here. To conclude, I enjoyed watching all episodes in this season even though I sometimes was bored in some of them, but Black Museum was definitely not one of them.
Plot takes places in a sideway museum, which is far away from crowded. There is only one visitor on that day. Owner of the place jokes about the place being crowded in the earlier days and we understand what he means towards the end of the episode. In the museum, there are many artifacts related to previous mysterious events and crimes. We saw a robot bee from Hated In the Nation episode, we saw the tablet from the Arkangel, we saw the bathtub from Crocodile, to count some of them. Museum owner, who is apparently the single employee, starts touring the girl in the museum and telling three stories consecutively. It turns out, all events are actually related and is part of a development of some technology which eventually allows transferring human consciousness to a virtual program. In the first story, only feelings could be transferred. In the second one, human consciousness could be transferred to a different human mind and also to an object and in the third one it could be transferred to a software. Interesting thing here, as it is seen in many previous episodes, is that transferred consciousness is like a human without a body. Have emotions, can feel, can think, can express.
Here is the part that made the episode great to me. It turns out, we saw this technology of transferring human consciousness, its advance version or its primitives in different Black Mirror episodes before. To speak of some, in San Junipero, we saw human consciousness being transferred to a cloud that sort of created heaven for people who are dead on earth. I think this one was an advanced version of consciousness transfer since transfer was to a cloud in which all transferred human consciousnesses could interact and communicate. The characters actually mentioned San Junipero in this episode. We saw humans playing a virtual reality game by transferring their consciousness into the game, because they were like sleeping in real world when they were playing, in USS Callister. We saw sight transfer and body condition transfer (like heart rate and nutrition values in blood) in Arkangel. We saw memory transfer which was kind of primitive technology since it was not giving correct results every time and it was largely depended on emotions and feelings in Crocodile. We saw a dating app in Hang the DJ and I think the way that dating app works was also about transferring the human consciousness to the system because eventually digital copies of the users were created and used to make good matches. I am sure we can find other traces in episodes I am not mentioning here, like White Christmas and Playtest.
The point I am getting to is, there was this pattern of consciousness transfer/digital copy creation in many episodes and I think this one explained the development of the idea and technology in great success. This idea of consciousness transfer is presented in innovative ways throughout the series and it definitely expanded my horizons.
I think the only episode of the season I don't mention in this review, Metalhead, is one of the standalone nice episodes too, its review doesn't belong here. To conclude, I enjoyed watching all episodes in this season even though I sometimes was bored in some of them, but Black Museum was definitely not one of them.