1. Ash is addicted to his phone
2. Ash is dead
3. Martha orders a robot
This was my favorite episode of Black Mirror by far. I love that it deals with the theme of grief in a technological manner. I love that the technology behind this may not be too far away (at least the chatbot part given that this episode aired 10 years ago). The writing was tight and overall well executed. It had good buildup in the beginning as Ash's crash was never shown or explained but it was perfectly understandable as we saw that he was very attached to his phone. This negative trait of him was what allowed the virtual Ash to be a better replica of what he was like.
While some part of Martha is apprehensive of the robot Ash and some part of her is happy that he's back, I feel that it's delaying her overcoming her grief properly. As we've seen, while the robot is able to recreate his persona based on his online data, it fails to recreate part of Ash that was never online, which for some people, it may be a significant part. It also sometimes just doesn't feel human because it isn't human (doesn't breathe and obeys any order, for example). We may ask ourself, "how much data do you need to fully recreate a person?" (which actually will be answered in other episodes). It highlights that there's a part of humanity and consciousness that cannot be quantified into some form of data.
One may guess that Martha never fully gets over Ash because she decides not to destroy the robot. She even allows her daughter to hang out with it every weekend. It's unclear whether the daughter perceives him as a father figure but it must have been a difficult choice for Martha as well being pregnant. Did she fully and adequately grieve over Ash? I'm not sure but this episode was a fantastic episode with great exploration of technology's impact on grief.
This was my favorite episode of Black Mirror by far. I love that it deals with the theme of grief in a technological manner. I love that the technology behind this may not be too far away (at least the chatbot part given that this episode aired 10 years ago). The writing was tight and overall well executed. It had good buildup in the beginning as Ash's crash was never shown or explained but it was perfectly understandable as we saw that he was very attached to his phone. This negative trait of him was what allowed the virtual Ash to be a better replica of what he was like.
While some part of Martha is apprehensive of the robot Ash and some part of her is happy that he's back, I feel that it's delaying her overcoming her grief properly. As we've seen, while the robot is able to recreate his persona based on his online data, it fails to recreate part of Ash that was never online, which for some people, it may be a significant part. It also sometimes just doesn't feel human because it isn't human (doesn't breathe and obeys any order, for example). We may ask ourself, "how much data do you need to fully recreate a person?" (which actually will be answered in other episodes). It highlights that there's a part of humanity and consciousness that cannot be quantified into some form of data.
One may guess that Martha never fully gets over Ash because she decides not to destroy the robot. She even allows her daughter to hang out with it every weekend. It's unclear whether the daughter perceives him as a father figure but it must have been a difficult choice for Martha as well being pregnant. Did she fully and adequately grieve over Ash? I'm not sure but this episode was a fantastic episode with great exploration of technology's impact on grief.