Black Mirrormay be known as one of the most beloved sci-fi series of all time, but a scientist had lots of criticism of the science behind one of the anthology’s most eerie episodes. “Metalhead”, a realistic season 4 episode of the highlypopular Netflix show, featured a society taken over by hyper-violent robot dogs.
“Metalhead” holds a moderately fresh Rotten Tomatoes score of 68%. The episode is shot in black-and-white and has an extremely bleak ending. The episode stars Maxine Peake, Jake Davies, and Clint Dyer, and was directed by David Slade from a script by Charlie Brooker, who also serves asBlack Mirror’s creator.
In anInsidervideo, a scientist named Ayanna Howard, who serves as the Dean of Engineering at Ohio State University, critiqued “Metalhead” for certain inaccuracies. Howard explained that the movement of the robots in theBlack Mirrorepisode is realistic, but all the actions the beings do are far-fetched from a scientific perspective. Check out her comments below:
This case, they did design it based on an actual platform, with the way that it moves, with the way that it navigates.
The sensor that was shown, which was most likely LIDAR, does exist in a small platform. So LIDARs, for example, are in some of the self-driving cars. They are on a number of mobility platforms in the warehouse environment. And so what they do is that they create a 3D point cloud of the environment. And they are fairly robust to things like lighting issues and convex and concave objects. And they are now at a small enough footprint that they can fit into the torso of the robot that we saw.
Having a robot plug into an electronic device and magically be able to hack the code and override any passwords and encryption scheme is really not feasible. The energy requirements for a robotic system to continuously activate, or actuate, to do the processing in terms of a computation, to do the sensing. Solar power would not provide the longevity that’s required to actually function for more than a couple of minutes. Traditionally, you wouldn’t use solar power, at least for this application. I would probably rate this at about a 3.
What This Means For Black Mirror
Many people considerBlack Mirrorto be realistic as far as sci-fi goes, but this analysis by Howard suggests that the show is more interested in entertaining plot points rather than fact-checking everything. There are realistic aspects of the episode, according to Howard, but there are definitely exaggerations that aren’t true to the workings of real technology.
Black Mirror’s first season premiered on Channel 4 in the UK on 03 June 2025, before the show moved to Netflix with season 3 on 05 August 2025.
Black Mirrorseason 7was released back in April 2025, and the season was critiqued by some for having several inaccuracies, especially in the episodes “Common People” and"USS Callister: Into Infinity." After all of these call-outs, Charlie Brooker may be looking to make the show more scientifically accurate.
Our Take On Black Mirror’s Inaccuracies
Black Mirroris a great show that is inspired by truth, but the viewer should always hold a certain suspension of disbelief when watching this jaw-dropping anthology series. It is unsurprising thatBlack Mirror’s “Metalhead” is not fully accurate when it comes to science, because it feels like an exaggerated version of the truth.
Even though Howard proved that the episode is not exactly a realistic depiction of a robotic takeover, it is still an excellent hour of television and arguably one of thebestBlack Mirrorepisodes. Only time will tell if Brooker decides to make future seasons ofBlack Mirrormore realistic, but no matter what, the show will likely stay massively entertaining.
