{"id":89504,"date":"2025-10-21T20:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T20:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/89504\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T20:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T20:17:08","slug":"9-years-ago-today-one-of-the-21st-centurys-best-sci-fi-shows-released-a-10-10-episode-that-broke-all-the-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/89504\/","title":{"rendered":"9 Years Ago Today, One of the 21st Century\u2019s Best Sci-Fi Shows Released a 10\/10 Episode That Broke All the Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 21st Century has given us some classic Sci-Fi TV shows<\/a>. The first half of the 2000s was a boom period for a genre that had arguably peaked in the 1980s (at least on the big screen), with the likes of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, and Doctor Who giving us some all-time great Sci-Fi<\/a> series. That continued into the 2010s and then well into the streaming era, with shows like The Expanse and, more recently, Apple TV\u2019s offerings such as Severance holding their own among the very best of the genre.<\/p>\n

If Netflix is to have a say in all of this \u2013 and, as the biggest, most dominant TV studio of the past decade, it must \u2013 then it should be with Black Mirror<\/a>. The streamer took over the show from Channel 4 after the first two seasons, giving it some U.S. polish and a bigger budget, but without losing the storytelling ingenuity of Charlie Brooker that had made it such a standout in the first place. Season 3 debuted on Netflix on October 21st, 2016, and still stands as one of Black Mirror\u2018s best seasons, with perhaps its greatest episode: \u201cSan Junipero<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black Mirror\u2019s San Junipero Is A Perfect Sci-Fi Episode<\/p>\n

\"Kelly<\/p>\n

A great Sci-Fi TV episode<\/a> needs either a high concept if it\u2019s something standalone like this, or to elevate the concept of the overall series and do something unexpected with it. Ideally, there\u2019ll be a satisfying twist or two thrown in there, but more important is that it balances the science-fiction of it all with grounded character work that allows the viewer to be emotionally invested. When I think of some of the best episodes from those other Sci-Fi TV shows mentioned earlier \u2013 say, Firefly\u2018s \u201cOut of Gas,\u201d Lost\u2018s \u201cThe Constant,\u201d Doctor Who\u2018s \u201cBlink,\u201d or Battlestar\u2018s \u201cPegasus\u201d to name but a few \u2013 they all do that in some way.<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Junipero\u201d is no exception, and it has the fundamentals of what makes a great Black Mirror episode<\/a>, in particular: a technological concept that doesn\u2019t feel too far away, and is used to drive human drama. In this case, that\u2019s the ability to upload one\u2019s consciousness to a machine and essentially live forever in a simulated reality, which is used as the setting for a romance between Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Their stunning performances are at the heart of the episode, but it stands apart from other installments of the show with its visuals, musical cues, and most of all, its ending.<\/p>\n

The happy, uplifting ending to \u201cSan Junipero\u201d is the rare time you could call Black Mirror beautiful, and it packs a punch 100x harder because it\u2019s so atypical. At the same time, there\u2019s still enough of a darker edge and questions surrounding the reality of living forever that it feels true to the show. It does what some of the best Sci-Fi stories do, which is take that foundation and push the boundaries of it in exciting and surprising ways, and that\u2019s why, re-watching it nine years on, it still feels as fresh and brilliant as it did at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Junipero\u201d and other Black Mirror episodes<\/a> are available to stream on Netflix.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 21st Century has given us some classic Sci-Fi TV shows. The first half of the 2000s was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[57781,60817,146,85,46,15628,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-89504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-answer-feature","9":"tag-black-mirror","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-sci-fi","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}