S04E01 - USS Callister - 9/10

I normally get hung up on unrealistic technical aspects of TV shows and movies, but for this once, I let the DNA / memories thing slide and accepted the premise. All because the episode was well shot, well crafted, well acted. The story was a bit weak at times, but the core aspect of the episode was well thought out. The situation, the characters and the acting were all great. I rate this 9/10, as I had a really good time watching it, and beacuse the overall impression was great, I could forgive some details. I thought it was a brilliant touch to subvert and deconstruct the Star Trek space opera genre through the lens of the main character's personality. Many great ideas and great character moments were presented competently. Good stuff.

S04E02 - Arkangel - 8/10

The tech is believable, so is the motivation why a parent would install such a thing into her daughter's brain. The distortion effect was not realistic, and not practical, but I let that slide. There were some contrived plot details, but overall the events were constantly skating on the edges of credibility. Overall the message was a bit heavy-handed, but the episode did its job: I was entertained and horrified about the prospect of something like this actually getting invented and used by parents. The episode gets a 8/10 from me, as it had some problems, but was still better than anything in Season 3 (barring Nosedive and San Junipero which were solid 9/10s)

S04E03 - Crocodile - 7/10

Man, that was dark. Probably the darkes BM episode ever... and I've seen all of them. The tech was not that prominent as I would have liked it to be, it was focusing mainly on the main character's descent to madness. It kind of lost credibility somewhere in the middle, and from that point on I felt that "Daamn, they are now only doing this to make the viewer feel more and more horrified". After 30 minutes of this, it did not really add value. The story was paper-thin, and the main character was not portrayed competently enough to make killing a blind baby fully believable. And the ending was just a "ha-ha I bet you did not think of THIS particular solution!" kind of twist for the sake of a twist... and it wasn't really a twist... so it was just weak. Overall it had beautiful shots, competent direction and a relentless pace which I liked... so it gets a 7/10 at the end.

S04 E04 - Hang the DJ - 8/10

The idea and the final resolution is brilliant. The acting and directing is also brilliant. The plot structure and the events are decent, I think we could get rid of 20 minutes of runtime and not losing much. All in all it was a nice idea and great execution - however the main "digital replicas of people in simulations" topic is starting to get worn out at this point... Still, I had a good time watching this - 8/10.

S04e05 - Metalhead - 6/10

Oh, boy, this is Season 3 all over again. I understand what effect it's supposed to inflict on me, and I usually don't think every single thing needs to be explained in a story for it to make sense or work, but here I found the plot paper-thin and the characters are non-existent. Even with the twist in the end it doesn't work. I found the whole thing extremely weak. There are details in the plot which seem ridiculous without context (a house with working electricity and running water?) - and I can imagine a story in which these things make sense, but the writers forgot to write it... And without a backstory, this did not work. I would give it a 5, but it had some decent design and some good parts, so I settled on a 6/10.

S04E06 - Black Museum - 8/10

Now, this is the point where this "digital consciousness in new hosts" premise is done to death - but I liked it. There are multiple variations of the same tech, and all of the stories were creative (except for maybe the main one which was a bit too similar to White Christmas). It was sufficiently well acted and well structured. Maybe this too could have been trimmed a bit in terms of runtime. The ending was a bit weak, but overall I really enjoyed it. And I hope Charlie Brooker never ventures again into this territory of transhumanism, unless he has an ultimate killer story which he has not told before... 8/10.

Overall S4 was way better than Season 3, which was a dreadful quality dip, especially after the brilliant first 2 sesasons. Who am I kidding: I'm a sucker for sci-fi anthology series, so even if the quality dipped to the 2/10-4/10 territory I would still watch this since I need a sci-fi anthology series in my life. I was very worried after Season 3, but now I'm hopeful again regarding the future of BM. I can't wait for Season 5!