1y ago

Annoyed at season 6 episode 3

I'm annoyed at the large plot hole in beyond the sea; why wouldn't you send the replicas to space instead of the humans. I have heard the argument "what if something goes wrong and the link is lost?" But the benefits of sending replicas is WAY larger than possibly losing the link. First and foremost, you wouldn't need any life support and could build an extremely robust spaceship without life support.

But I'm not here because the episode directly annoyed me, however, I'm annoyed that this episode is consistently ranked as either the best or second best of the season. How? It's not thought provoking or unique. I assumed the Ross character was going to snap and kill someone as soon as his family was killed. I suppose I didn't know who he was going to kill until the final scene, however it wasn't very suspenseful and the story telling to get to the end was incredibly slow and boring.

Does anyone agree? Anyone disagree? Why do you think the episode is great if you don't agree?

3 comments

Yeah I dunno, I’m with you on that. Could be highly rated just because Aaron Paul showed up in the episode.

To be fair, I wouldn't rate the season itself very highly. Lots of the plots were quite predictable. Like in the space episode you know something's gonna go wrong with sharing the chip almost immediately.
Granted, I didn't expect murder, but I don't think that minor surprise makes up for an otherwise predictable episode.
I'm putting aside all the problems I have with that technology somehow existing back then too. The thing is, the episode doesn't need that technology really, and it's kind of used just as a lazy way to link their families together. There is no strong insight into whether it's an upside or downside, and as you said, it'd be much better to send the replicas to space by far.
The technology could be explored in so many more interesting ways and it just wasn't. What about wars, sports, politicians? I'm sure all of them would use the technology in different ways.
The netflix episode was similarly lazy, instead of exploring any interesting influences or social aspects of having a show show off your life, instead it becomes some really lazy computer in a computer thing where oh we have to destroy the quantummajig and it's all magically fixed. That's not thought provoking, it just kinda is.

But the benefits of sending replicas is WAY larger than possibly losing the link.
I thought that at first too but I got the impression that the replicas aren't self operating - Basically they "sleep" the entire time their human host isn't plugged into it. The families on earth must spend a lot of time alone without the astronauts but at least their replica allows them to visit more frequently, I guess? That also implies the space station needs to be staffed 24/7 for the most part hence why the humans are up there.
Also agree with /u/solivine@sopuli.xyz this episode didn't really need all the replica tech stuff, I get the feeling the writers were trying to set up some sort of body switch romance gone wrong & this is what they ended up with.