History Recap / BlackMirrorBeyondTheSea

** After being let back into the spacecraft after discovering the coolant problem was a false alarm, Cliff gets out of his spacesuit and begins reacquiring his personal effects from David... only to notice his dogtags are missing. David doesn't respond when Cliff asks where they went... [[OhCrap only to instead pull them out of his pocket]].
** [[GenreSavvy Fully understanding what this implies]], Cliff promptly rushes back to the machine to activate his replica. Upon "waking up", he finds himself sitting in the replica's recharging station... and notices his hands are bloodied. He then proceeds to follow a blood trail all the way downstairs... [[PaterFamilicide and falls to his knees in horror]].

In 1969, two astronauts -- David (Creator/JoshHartnett) and Cliff (Creator/AaronPaul) -- on a years-long space mission can link their respective consciousnesses to lifelike robotic replicas on Earth. To keep David from falling into despair after tragedy strikes his beloved family, Cliff and his lonely wife Lana (Creator/KateMara) agree to let David use Cliff's robotic body for an hour every week. This goes badly.

[[Recap/BlackMirrorJoanIsAwful Joan Is Awful]] | [[Recap/BlackMirrorLochHenry Loch Henry]] | '''Beyond The Sea''' | [[Recap/BlackMirrorMazeyDay Mazey Day]] | [[Recap/BlackMirrorDemon79 Demon 79]]-]]]]]

** Early on, Cliff comments that he and David's ship requires two people to operate and maintain its functionality, meaning if one of them is incapacitated, both men are dead meat. This plays a part in David's later plan. While David has the option of [[KillAndReplace stealing Cliff's life after leaving him to die in space]], he won't be able to enjoy it for long, so he has to settle for [[IfICantHaveYou slaughtering Cliff's family]]. Likewise, Cliff is unable to retaliate because he won't live long afterwards either.

--> '''David''': "I SAID [[GetOut GET OUT OF HERE!]]"

--> '''Kappa''': "Oh, you don't even bleed right."

** NASA has a six-year mission in a spaceship that requires a minimum of two crew members to operate... so, of course, they only send up ''two'' astronauts. Sure hope neither of them gets injured, or sick, or dies unexpectedly during those six years.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The way the hippies expressed disgust towards David's wife having a relationship with a "metal man" and justifying their murders of her and his children for living "unnaturally" have some creepy pararels to real-life racial supremacists, specially white nationalists, who deem those in interracial relationships as "race traitors".

* {{Foreshadowing}}: David's innocuous, but notable insight into Lana's personality in an early scene aboard the ship.

* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: NASA has a six-year mission in a spaceship that requires a minimum of two crew members to operate... so, of course, they only send up ''two'' astronauts. Sure hope neither of them gets injured, or sick, or dies unexpectedly during those six years.

* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: NASA has a six-year mission in a spaceship that requires a minimum of two crew members to operate... so, of course, they only send up two astronauts. Sure hope neither of them gets injured, or sick, or dies unexpectedly during those six years...

* RoboticReveal: When the cultists severe David's forearm.

* ChekhovsGun: Early on, it's shown that David and Cliff need to remove their personal items, including the dogtags that they use to the transfer themselves over to their replicas, when they go on a spacewalk, which is what David takes advantage of to use Cliff's replica one last time to murder his family.

* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: The deaths of David's happy but famous Californian family to a bunch of hippie cultists in 1969 is an obvious parallel to the Manson family murders. Creator/RoryCulkin plays the ringleader, an analog to UsefulNotes/CharlesManson.

* ProtagonistJourneyToVillain: David starts out as a innocent figure who lost his family in a tragic massacre and grows into a more morally ambiguous but still sympathetic person as his feelings for Cliff's wife and life in general stem from the tragic loss of his own family's death. It explodes into [[FaceHeelTurn full blown psychopathy]] as he kills everyone in Cliff's family after being refused a chance to see his wife one last time.

* {{Robosexual}}: Variation. While up in space, the astronauts send their consciousnesses into RidiculouslyHumanRobot replicas down on earth. It's these replicants that sleep with their wives. David's family is killed for it (and his replica destroyed) because the Manson-esque killers find [[RobosexualsAreCreeps the notion of a woman sharing her bed with a robot abhorrent]].
* SexlessMarriage: In contrast to David and his wife, who are obviously loved up, Cliff and Lana have a more frigid marriage. Lana has been lonely ever since Cliff uprooted them to live in a rural farmhouse, and even though Cliff can spend time with her in his replica they are aloof with each other. She briefly entertains the seduction of David-in-Cliff's-body before collecting herself because it felt like her husband was back and actually wanted her.

* TooDumbToLive: Cliff, who's just made a bitter enemy of the untrustworthy and [[SanitySlippage unstable]] David, takes no precautions to protect his person in the dream machine and puts himself at David's mercy in ''the vacuum of space''. His faith is arguably justified, as one of their deaths would doom the other -- indeed, ''Cliff'' survives -- but his family pay for it.

* TragicVillain: David winds up becoming this by the end. While he over extends his bounds in using Cliff's replica, and eventually snaps and murders Cliff's family, these events only happened because [[ProtagonistJourneyToVillain David's own family was murdered by a group of Manson-expies]].

** After being let back into the spacecraft after discovering the coolant problem was a false alarm, Cliff gets out of his spacesuit and begins reaquiring his personal affects from David... only to notice his dogtags are missing. David doesn't respond when Cliff asks where they went... [[OhCrap only to instead pull them out of his pocket]].
** [[GenreSavvy Fully understanding what this implies]], Cliff promptly rushes back to the machine to activate his replica. Upon "waking up", he finds himself sitting in the replica's recharging station... and notices his hands are bloodied. He then proceeds to follow a blood trail all the way down stairs... [[PaterFamilicide and falls to his knees in horror]].

* AlternateHistory: The episode takes place in a version of 1969 where technology is far advanced from what was possible in the real 60’s including life-like human replicas.

* ActingForTwo: Aaron Paul, since both Cliff and David use his replica. They're very different people, also.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Downplayed: After Cliff [[KickTheDog discovers that David had used his replica to murder his family]], he exits the dream machine in near-tears, and finds David quietly sitting at a table. During this tense moment, David merely kicks a chair over to Cliff, and silently invites him to sit down with him. This, barring one final shot of the space station drifting through space to the strains of "La Mer", is how the episode ends.

%%* TragicVillain: David.

* ThereAreNoTherapists: You would think that after such a horrible tragedy, David would at least get another robot duplicate and a therapist to help him get through the grieving process. Apparently, ground control never even bothers to do either.

* BeardOfSorrow: Cleanshaven family man David grows a shaggy beard after the deaths of his family.

* HopeSpot: Just as Lana appears to be reciprocating David's feelings, she tells him to back off and reminds him that she only loves her husband and is attracted to David because she sees her husband in him. Cliff eventually returns home after learning of David's attraction to Lana, and they have a confrontation that ends with the couple making amends with each other, suggesting that things will become better for them. The episode ends with David '''murdering''' Cliff's family after Cliff coldly reminds him that Lana is his and his alone.

* TragicVillain: David.