Charlie Brooker reveals Black Mirror idea that didn’t make the cut
Beyond the Sea could have been very different.
Warning: This article contains minor spoilers for Black Mirror season 6 episode 3 Beyond the Sea.
With Black Mirror season 6 finally here, fans have once again been left slightly traumatised by Charlie Brooker's latest offering.
The five new episodes subvert genres and expectations, with reviews looking favourably on the highly anticipated season, which we've waited four long years for.
However, Brooker has revealed that one of the most talked about episodes - Beyond the Sea - could have been very different.
The episode follows two astronauts, Aaron Paul's Cliff and Josh Hartnett's David, who are completing a years-long mission in space, and can switch their consciousness into a replica body on Earth to still spend time with their loved ones.
But when a tragedy befalls David and his family, he's left stuck in space, and Cliff has to find a way to ensure he doesn't lose himself along the way.
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Speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press about the episode, Brooker explained: “When I’d originally conceived this, it was set in the sort of near future and everybody looking at holograms and crying, which is your trad[itional] Black Mirror.
"Initially, I’d conceived of a forest fire created by climate change which wipes out one guy’s family at the start. And then, I think there was something about shaking up my own thought process a bit and thought ‘What if I set it in the past?’.
"Then that led me to think of the hippy cult and the other interesting thing is it means the characters are behaving like characters of their era rather than of now or the future. So it made it an exciting thing to explore.”
“At one point, I was going to call it Sea of Tranquility, which is a sort of story that we keep referring to in the Black Mirror universe, as it were. Then I probably saw there was a show called Sea of Tranquility coming out. So that song, it’s quite haunting, quite timeless, beautiful, slightly eerie and also it just chimed with the character of David, it seemed like something he’d listen to and play.”
Elsewhere in the season, Brooker tackles everything from the paparazzi in Mazey Day and true crime in Loch Henry, to nuclear war in Demon 79, even giving us a Netflix parody in the first episode, Joan is Awful.
Black Mirror season 6 is streaming now on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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