Line #46 Recap/BlackMirrorBeyondTheSea


1	[[WMG:[[center:[-'''[[Recap/BlackMirror Recap:]] Series/BlackMirror Series Six'''\
2	[[Recap/BlackMirrorJoanIsAwful Joan Is Awful]] \| [[Recap/BlackMirrorLochHenry Loch Henry]] \| '''Beyond the Sea''' \| [[Recap/BlackMirrorMazeyDay Mazey Day]] \| [[Recap/BlackMirrorDemon79 Demon 79]]-]]]]]
3
4	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bm_beyondsea.png]]
5	[[caption-width-right:300:''"A man sleeps in the sky while his mechanical image walks the earth.[...] Defying nature must come at a cost or what will become of us all?"'']]
6
7	->'''David:''' I know the way you look at me.\
8	'''Lana:''' At you?
9
10	In an alternate 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.
11
12	----
13	!!Tropes:
14
15	* AbusiveParents: Cliff is shown to be a less than ideal parent to his son, whom he is emotionally neglectful toward and later is revealed to have hit numerous times before, explaining his dismissal of David doing the same thing to him while in his replica.
16	* AlphabeticalThemeNaming: The home invaders: Kappa, Sigma, Theta and Epsilon.
17	* AlternateTechline: Despite taking place in the late 60s and having some very advanced technology that doesn't exist even in the 2020s (like realistic androids or BrainUpload), the rest of the technology seen is pretty standard for the time, such as in the cinema seen when David and his family go to the movies or the printed newspapers.
18	* AloneWithThePsycho: The note the episode ends on: After discovering David murdered his family, Cliff exits the dream machine, and finds David silently sitting at a table, gesturing for him to sit down.
19	* ArtificialGravity: Onboard the space station, Cliff and David are able to walk around normally as they do on Earth.
20	* BaitAndSwitch: Toward the end of the episode, David falsely reports a coolant problem and sends Cliff into space to investigate. When Cliff realizes there is nothing wrong, David takes longer than necessary to let him back in, giving the impression that he had abandoned him out there to die. However. after a few minutes, he lets him back in and it's revealed that David's delayed response was due to him being up to something far more sinister — murdering Cliff's family using his replica.
21	* BeardOfSorrow: Cleanshaven family man David grows a shaggy beard after the deaths of his family. He shaves it off again before murdering Cliff's family.
22	* BloodyHandprint: The first sign that something is not right at his home is Cliff seeing his bloody hands and finding bloody hand smears around his house.
23	* BrainUploading: Essentially how the replicas work. The real David and Cliff are on a space station but are able to transfer their consciousness to an exact replica of themselves on Earth.
24	* ChekhovsGun: Early on, it's shown that David and Cliff need to remove their personal items, including the dogtags that they use to 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.
25	* CrazyJealousGuy: Played with; after Cliff finds David's sketches of Lana in the nude, he angrily accuses her of having slept with him, simply because David once mentioned that he "draws from memory". Lana has to repeatedly assert that nothing happened before Cliff finally accepts it.
26	* DanceOfRomance: David's happy marriage is established when he pulls his wife into a romantic dance that turns hot and heavy. He tries the same tactic with Lana.
27	* 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 parralels to real-life racial supremacists, specially white nationalists, who deem those in interracial relationships as "race traitors".
28	* DownerEnding: The episode ends with David in Cliff's replicant body killing Cliff's family. The two men end up in their normal bodies in the spacecraft [[SpaceIsolationHorror loathing each other, but with no recourse in the vastness of space]]. The episode ends there, leaving it open to interpretation what they do next.
29	* DramaticIrony: The bookstore cashier greets "Cliff" and asks after David, not knowing that she's talking to David in Cliff's body.
30	* EvilLuddite: The hippies who invade David's home, especially the ringleader, are all this - they see his robot body and the technology behind it as an anomaly and offense to the "natural order" and consider this enough reason to kill him. They go as far as murdering the rest of his family, [[WouldHurtAChild including his children]], in the process for trying to "pretend they're a normal family" and having a relationship with a "metal man".
31	* 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 spacecraft drifting through space to the strains of "La Mer", is how the episode ends.
32	* {{Foil}}: The kind, passionate, and loving David to the much more stoic, uptight, and rigid Cliff. David’s kindness in Cliff’s body eventually leads Lana to develop complicated feelings for the new Cliff.
33	* ForcedToWatch: David's replica is forced to watch his family being slain by the cultists.
34	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
35	** David's innocuous, but notable insight into Lana's personality in an early scene aboard the ship.
36	** Early on, Cliff comments that his 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.
37	* HandsOnApproach: The first hint that David is pushing his established boundaries in the arrangement with Cliff and Lana is that he offers to let Lana paint some leaves on the painting he's making, then leaning behind her to help her correct it.
38	* 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 and lying to him that Lana hates him, thinks he's disgusting and never wants to see him again, even though in reality she admits to Cliff that she was attracted to David but knew that going further than that was wrong.
39	* HorrorHippies: A bunch of ax-crazy hippie cultists murder David's family.
40	* IfICantHaveYou: This seems to be David's motive to kill Cliff's wife and son since he just learned that Cliff forbid any further visits.
41	* IntimateArtistry: David befriends and becomes attracted to Cliff's wife Lana while in Cliff's body (it's complicated). The episode goes downhill after Cliff realizes that David is making nude art of Lana.
42	* LeaveMeAlone: Cliff tries to comfort David after the death of his family. David screams at him to leave him alone.
43	--> '''David''': I SAID [[GetOut GET OUT OF HERE!]]
44	* MachineBlood: To the hippy cult's disgust, David's android body bleeds a yellow-green oily substance when they cut off his arm.
45	--> '''Kappa''': Oh, you don't even bleed right.
46	* ManlyTears: David, in Cliff’s body, breaks down into tears after seeing Earth again for the first time since his family’s murder.
47	* MoodLighting: In the opening scenes, David's happy family life is lit in warm colors, Cliff's unhappy family life in cool colors.
48	* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Cliff and Lana decide to let David use Cliff's replica to help him out after the loss of his family. Ultimately, that causes Cliff to lose his own family too. Though it should be noted that Cliff's good deed was also in his own self-interest; he needed David to be stable to help man the spaceship.
49	* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: The deaths of David's happy but famous Californian family to a [[HorrorHippies 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.
50	* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup:
51	** 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.
52	** Similarly, apparently NASA didn't have any extra replicas available after David's was destroyed by the HorrorHippies.
53	* NothingIsScarier: The only clues we are given that show David murdered Cliff's family are the fact that Replica!Cliff's hands are covered in blood, there's several blood smears along the walls leading to the living room, and there's a giant blood puddle on the floor. But with Cliff collapsing in grief and horror, it's easy to imagine what David had done.
54	* NuclearFamily: David has the picturesque midcentury family life: gorgeous house, beautiful and happy wife, two cheerful kids. It's in contrast to Cliff's gloomier rural farmhouse, occupied by his lonely wife and son.
55	* OppositesAttract: Austere, reticent, reclusive Cliff and cultured, compassionate, sociable Lana. David's attempt to sell [[SensitiveArtist himself]] as a better match for her ends badly.
56	* ProtagonistJourneyToVillain: David starts out as an 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.
57	* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: Civilians interacting with the robotic replicas of Cliff and David (who have their respective consciousnesses from up in space) comment on how lifelike the bodies are. They are obviously robotic beneath the skin.
58	* {{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]].
59	* RoboticReveal: When the cultists sever David's forearm.
60	* 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 from 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.
61	* TargetedToHurtTheHero: David tricks Cliff into handing over his tag so that he can fridge Cliff's wife as revenge for Cliff's personal comments towards him and withdrawal of permission to use his body. David wants Cliff to experience the same kind of grief and isolation that he has.
62	* ThereAreNoTherapists: You would think that after such a horrible tragedy, ground control would do something more for David than advise Cliff to leave him be.
63	* TitledAfterTheSong: "Beyond the Sea" takes its title from Music/BobbyDarin's "Beyond the Sea" -- the original French version, "La Mer", plays in the opening scene while David fingers his wife after a dance in the house. He tries the same trick with Lana later.
64	* 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 pays for it.
65	* TooHappyToLive: [[TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth David's affectionate and adoring wife and kids]] get the chop to start the episode's dramatic arc.
66	* 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]].
67	* WhamShot: Two-fold in the closing minutes:
68	** 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, only pulls them out of his pocket.
69	** [[OhCrap 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]].

Context Recap / BlackMirrorBeyondTheSea