Marie has her assessed by a child psychologist who concludes that Arkangel is responsible, revealing the controversy stemming from the ethical concerns surrounding it stopped it from being released and it is soon to be banned altogether. She runs up to stop Sara from hurting herself, but she slaps her mother when Marie attempts to stop her. Marie gets a high stress warning from the tablet and sees what Sara is doing. That evening, she pricks her finger with a pencil in an attempt to produce blood, and, when it too gets blurred out, she begins stabbing her hand repeatedly. She grows frustrated at being unable to view the contents of a shock site, to have its contents explained to her, or to even illustrate blood on paper. Years later, after her grandfather's death, Sara (Sarah Abbott) has become socially outcast and emotionally immature due to lack of exposure to stressful stimuli and the fact everything she sees and hears can be monitored. The Arkangel system proves initially successful, censoring an intimidating neighborhood dog however, flaws in the system present themselves, such as the obscenity filter preventing Sara from reacting appropriately to her live-in grandfather's stroke (the program censors him, and Sara cannot hear him telling her to get the phone and call for help.) The representative also demonstrates an option to view Sara's immediate eyesight, record and replay everything she has seen, and censor obscenity and other stressful stimuli with pixelation and audio distortion.
Fearing future crises, Marie signs up to participate in a limited-release free trial of Arkangel, a revolutionary tech-integrated child monitoring system.Īn Arkangel representative administers Sara a neural implant, which enables Marie to monitor her geolocation and medical state in real time via an included tablet computer. Marie becomes hysterical and calls out for Sara, but she is recovered shortly without incident. Three years later, Sara goes missing one day at a playground, chasing after a cat. Protective single mother Marie Sambrell (Rosemarie DeWitt) gives birth to her daughter Sara. It was a really harmonious production and watching Jodie Foster with the young actors was just a joy to behold.”
It follows a mother who has a young daughter and faces that perennial question of how to look after a child in an increasingly technical world it taps into helicopter parenting… I always hope that whatever we tackle, it’s never on the nose and just more in the background but this episode asks how do you be a responsible mother in a world in which you can be all-powerful and omnipresent? How do you exercise responsibility? How do you ensure you give your child independence in a world in which you can have a lot of control? Charlie’s very technical - I’m a little bit technical - but none of these stories really ever have technology screaming down the lens.
“This one’s like an indie movie set in blue-collar America, even though we filmed it in Canada. Prior to its release, co-creator Annabel Jones disclosed the following information about the episode: