Black Mirror: Why Metalhead Is So Disliked (& Why It’s Actually Good)

Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror season 4, episode 5, “Metalhead”, was largely disliked by fans and received the one of the lowest ratings out of the entire series, but it’s better than its bad reputation. It is largely considered a break away from the expansive multiverse that Black Mirror is known for as well as a going against expectations of some form of human connection. While most episodes feature these two elements, “Metalhead” strays from the norm of Black Mirror, but that doesn’t justify its low rating. It is actually one of the most complex stories that Brooker intricately wove into the multiverse without making an overt connection.

The entirety of “Metalhead” follows Bella (Maxine Peake) as she runs from robotic dogs that are sent to search and destroy all human life. It appears to be a technological experiment gone awry, but it may be a calculated hunt perpetrated by an unknown individual. In this post-apocalyptic setting where all human life is in danger, these robot dogs, inspired by the Boston Dynamics dogs, wield lethal weapons of every caliber. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Brooker discussed the reasoning behind the lack of backstory as being purposeful. He did not intend for the audience to be able to uncover when this dystopia took place, nor how it started. The original script reveals that the robots are being controlled by a man overseas. This was ultimately scrapped due to the fact that it was too obvious and removed the episode’s nuances.

By making “Metalhead” a simplistic story of the distant future where humans are physically hunted by technology they helped create, Brooker perfectly encapsulated the series’s overarching theme of the destruction of humankind at the hands of their inventions. Fans often regard it as a monster plot rather than an analysis on technology, resulting in it being disliked or considered a low point of the series. However, the nuances Brooker captured in this somewhat simple story make it one of the series’s best episodes rather than one of its worst.

Why “Metalhead” Is Actually Good

The basis of “Metalhead” is its theme of survival and the inevitable future humanity faces if they allow technology to advance beyond their control. It is filmed entirely in black and white in order to encapsulate a classic monster movie feel, but that does not mean it’s a story about a monster. The robotic dogs represent Black Mirror’s technology at its most advanced. It can be deduced that the man-made equipment became sentient at some point if it is not being controlled by an outsider. Once the technology is able to recognize the ways that humanity takes advantage of it, it transforms into their worst enemy.

Black Mirror attempts to evoke conversations on the relationship between people and their cellphones, social media, the internet, and any other technological resource available at their disposal. While the human relationships that are familiar to each episode bring in a layer of emotion, “Metalhead” removes them and replaces it with the loneliness of the post-apocalyptic future that results from a lack of awareness towards technology. It is a far more complex story than how it is initially perceived. “Metalhead” offers an all new perspective and method that Black Mirror can utilize to express the series’s main plot. The fact that it is so simplistic and covert fills it with much more nuance than previous episodes.

Bella’s story is not about a woman running from a monster-like robot. “Metalhead” actually speaks to the uncertainty of the future and the importance of recognizing how infatuated humanity is with technology up until the point that it fights back; Black Mirror illustrates this perfectly throughout the series, but especially with this much-maligned episode.

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