By creating the world of Black Mirror, writer Charlie Brooker shows in each episode how technology can influence our lives. It shows how it can solve problems, but at the same time also how it can make people suffer by it, even if this wasn’t the purpose of that technology. That’s also the case with the final episode of season 4, which just like the episode White Christmas, consists of short stories set against a bigger backdrop.
Nish (Letitia Wright) is travelling in America and stops at a gas station, where she goes to a place called the Black Museum. It is by the somewhat weird Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge), a former tech company salesman whose job it was to get people interested in participating in trying experimental products. While showing Nish around and showing various criminal artefacts, het tells three different stories. They all have to do with making special experiences possible. Like a doctor being able to feel his patients pain, installing someone else’s consciousness in your own head and the chance of a man sentenced to death to stay “alive” in the form of a hologram.
This is one of my favorite episodes of this season, which nicely used various concepts. The questions it asks make you think and both Letitia Wright and Douglas Hodge are great in their roles. Black Museum is also filled with references to other episodes, which you can read about in (this article by The Verge), something fans of the show will definitely appreciate. A nice closer of this fourth season.
[score8]