History Recap / BlackMirrorMetalhead

* DaylightHorror: Most of the action takes place on broad daylight, which is still made moody thanks to the black and white.

[[Recap/BlackMirrorUSSCallister USS Callister]] | [[Recap/BlackMirrorArkangel [=ArkAngel=] ]] | [[Recap/BlackMirrorCrocodile Crocodile]] | [[Recap/BlackMirrorHangTheDJ Hang the DJ]] | '''Metalhead''' | [[Recap/BlackMirrorBlackMuseum Black Museum]]-]]]]]

[[Recap/BlackMirrorUSSCallister USS Callister]] | [[Recap/BlackMirrorArkangel Arkangel]] | [[Recap/BlackMirrorCrocodile Crocodile]] | [[Recap/BlackMirrorHangTheDJ Hang the DJ]] | '''Metalhead''' | [[Recap/BlackMirrorBlackMuseum Black Museum]]-]]]]]

* ActionSurvivor: Bella has survival skills but knows she can't outfight the dog, so the episode is about her going on the run trying to evade it.

* AmbiguousSituation: The plot is so minimal this is inevitable. Are the dogs an example of AIIsACrapshoot, killing off all life against the wishes of their designers? Or are they particularly horrifying weapons introduced into a war zone and doing exactly what their creators intended? Is the whole world being wiped out by them, or is the catastrophe confined to Britain?
* ArmCannon: The dogs have what appears to be a miniaturised shotgun mounted inside their right forelimbs. While it seems to lack penetrative power (breaking a car window but leaving the person behind it relatively unscathed), it is more than sufficient to incapacitate and execute humans that get into range.

* AutomatedAutomobiles: Unfortunately this means to hotwire a car you need to hack into its computer, and worse--the Dog can do the same to use a car to chase after you, despite not having any arms to turn the steering wheel.

* EliteMook: The dog is a nearly unstoppable killing machine, and as shown at the end, he's just one of many.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Bella finds a house with a couple who killed themselves with a shotgun before the dogs could get to them. After Bella's own fight with a Dog with said shotgun, she realizes she can't remove the trackers the dying Dog sprayed her with. To avoid having to fight Dogs who know her location at all times, she kills herself by slitting her throat in that same house.
* FragileSpeedster: Mixed with GlassCannon. The dogs are fast enough to keep up with (and jump in to) a moving van, and have a primary weapon capable of killing an unarmoured human in one or two shots, but two shotgun blasts are all it takes to render one non-functional.

* {{Homage}}: To zombie, slasher, and vintage horror films. Near-future technology, the metalhead, stands in for the monsters typical to said genres.

* KillerRobot: The dogs are basically weaponized and miniaturized versions of Boston Dynamic's Big Dog robot, possibly implying that militarization of the model got out of hand.

** True to its roots in classic horror, this happens as Bella is trying to escape the dog.

* NoisyRobots: Mostly averted. The dogs tend to move noiselessly except for the sound of their footsteps. However, a whirr when the dog picks a kitchen knife [[OhCrap lets Bella know the dog is in the house]].
* PatiencePlot: When Bella climbs a tree and the Dog can't follow her, the Dog enters its power-saving mode. Bella repeatedly counts down from 1000 and throws [[ChekhovsGun sweets]] on it to briefly reactivate it, slowly wasting its energy. She only comes down from the tree after the Dog no longer responds, which takes multiple tries. It's also a PatiencePlot from the Dog's perspective: since it can't follow Bella up the tree, it decides to stop and wait for her to come down, saving its power in the process.

* RecursiveAmmo: The dogs shoot shrapnel bombs, not to kill their prey, but rather to tag them with hard-to-remove [[TrackingDevice tracking devices]], the better to hunt them down with.
* RoboCam: Several shots are from the dog's POV, who sees the world through [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar LiDAR scanning.]]

* ShootEverythingThatMoves: Apparently the Dogs have no target discrimination between humans and animals--at the start of the episode the characters pass a pig farm and discuss how the Dogs would have killed them off as well. Again we've no indication as to whether this is down to poor programming or a deliberate intent to kill livestock to [[ScorchedEarth starve out anyone]] who manages to avoid the Dogs.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: All the characters die without getting what they set out for--which turns out to be a simple teddy bear.

* SuperPersistentPredator: The dog is able to track Bella across a great deal of difficult terrain, never gives up, never rests (except to recharge its battery), and even upon "death," it shoots a good half-dozen tracking devices into her, so other dogs will pick up the chase. Takes this trope to the extreme by heavily implying the robots have become the “apex predator” of the entire ecosystem and wiped out all life.
* TemptingFate: Subverted. Bella triumphantly taunts and mocks the dog for its futile attempts to climb the tree with a broken leg, but rather than shock her with a display of acrobatic celerity the audience might expect such a challenge to be answered by, it quickly accepts reality and decides to play the waiting game instead.
* TooDumbToLive: The protagonists make some ill thought out decisions during the episode. Bella knows the Dogs can track radio transmissions but goes on a long diatrab instead of being short and precise, allowing it to triangulate her location. The reason the trio went to the warehouse in the first place is to get a teddy bear for a terminally ill child close to death, while it is understandeably kind and heartwarming to want to give a dying child some comfort in an apocalyptic setting it is an unnecessary risk which proves to be disasterously fatal.
** This is possibly the case in-universe as well, given that Bella mentions the three of them were considered “mad for trying.”
* TrailOfBlood: A couple times the dog is able to track Bella by the blood from her leg wound.
* UncannyValley: Just like [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgaO45SyaO4 the robots]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf7IEVTDjng they're based on]], the movements of the dogs fall somewhere between that of a robot and a living animal, resulting in something that tends to look just plain ''wrong'', making them unsettling even without the idea of them [[SuperPersistentPredator chasing you]] to [[YourHeadASplode blow your brains out]].

* FreezeFrameBonus: [[https://i.redd.it/0j409y0g3l701.jpg The diagnosis messages in the van monitor]] include references to other episodes[[note]]including their series/episode numbers, titles (or abbreviations thereof, eg. "[[Recap/BlackMirrorTheEntireHistoryOfYou tehoy]]"), and other information, eg. "[[Recap/BlackMirrorTheNationalAnthem pigpoke]]"[[/note]]. The screen also says this: