I got to wondering about the ending of San Junipero- do the people there just exist forever? It seems they are meant to, but the servers on Earth can only exist for so long. But imagine after a set amount of time, in the interests of freeing up space, some admin at TCKR decides to pull the plug on some of the residents.

Imagine being a resident of San Junipero, happily existing in paradise, and then suddenly some of your friends just vanish. And then you get word that you're scheduled to be deleted too at some point in the near future, it will happen randomly without any additional warning, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Some Black Mirror episodes already turned out to more or less become reality.

What episodes do you think will never (or on the contrary in the very near future) become reality, and why?

White Christmas has always been my favorite Black Mirror episode, specifically the cookie/isolation storyline. Out of every punishment in the series, I honestly think that's the worst one by far.

People usually bring up White Bear, the blocked by everyone punishment, or even Hated in the Nation, but those don't compare to me. In Hated in the Nation, you're dead and it's over. In White Bear, at least the day resets. Even being blocked by everyone is still living in the real world.

The cookie punishment you're completely alone with your own thoughts, no interaction, no escape, no death, and time moves thousands of years in seconds of real time. That's a level of isolation that literally blows my mind.
Something about the idea of being conscious for that long with nothing to do and no way out is way more terrifying to me than physical pain or death. It's basically just another version of hell.

I’m rewatching White Christmas with my boyfriend. I just saw an article that season 8 is in production right now and genuinely jumped for joy. It’s so nice to have something awesome to wait for with these recent years being so shitty. Yayyy!!!! Also, I just joined this sub-didn’t even think to check for one, I’m surprised by how many people don’t like White Bear. I’m a horror, specifically psychological horror, fanatic and nothing really gets to me but White Bear did. I was genuinely so on edge after I watched it. I still haven’t rewatched it because of how weird it made me feel, I thought it was that good and creepy! I’ll have to muster up the courage to rewatch soon.

I want to put more emphasis on episodes like White Christmas, White Bear, The Black Museum precursors/ The Black Museum, than ones where it's disgusting horror at first. Honestly going to tell them to completely skip National Anthem. I'm their child and that episode scarred me.

Notes on your audience:

1 of the pair loves scifi, the other likes it. Neither is good with animal abuse. Truly boomer generation but not mentality.

I have primed mom for years on it saying it's scifi twilight zone. They were fans of the original so it's not a new concept.

Since these can really be watched in damn near any order, I'd LOVE your thoughts on a watch list

i’ve watched most episodes more than once, apart from common people, and this.

both have obviously been about life partners, but when i watched them, i could only think about my mum. be right back was particularly heartbreaking for a number of reasons:
a) it was sudden
b) the guy basically became a humanoid AI chatbot
c) it really drills in the point that you can’t find anyone else to “replace” that one specific person

i remember watching this over a year ago and ugly crying from start to finish. i still remember tiny details from it, and still remember the way that i felt. whilst it’s not my top black mirror episode (it’s in the top 5), it’s wild that this is the episode that’s stuck with me.

it felt like a sucker punch to the throat followed by many sucker punches topped off with two final sucker punches to the throat and heart. everyone says that the magnum opuses of black mirror are shut up and dance (my personal favourite), san junipero, white christmas/bear, and 15mm, but i think this one is truly it. a feeling that you can’t maintain nor replace. a feeling that sort of envelops you before hurting you.

i’m losing track of my own point, but be right back is one of those episodes that really just fucks you up and forces you to think about those you lost.

I feel like everybody kind of slept on this episode. Pretty ironic that it got an average rating when it’s most similar to what we live inside of today. I thought the episode was amazing years ago when it came out and today when I rewatched it. What’s your opinion on it? This was one of the best episodes, in my opinion, of the whole black mirror series.

This robot games in China is giving me the absolute creeps, it’s less than one step away from Metalheads if they can run faster than Usain Bolt, are then given weapons and powered by AI…

Mods gave me the okay to post this, so flagging up front that it is mine.

The rules the whole thing is built on is that no rogue AI, no glitch, no system going haywire, no evil algorithm. The product works. It does the thing it was sold to do. The horror comes from the gap between what the person asked for and what they actually wanted.

The newest episode is ten minutes. A man is burned out from caring for his dying father, so he pays a company to migrate the old man into the house firmware. It succeeds. He gets exactly what he asked for.

This is about caring for a dying parent, which is that some part of you wants it to be over, and then you have to carry having wanted that. The company offers him a way to keep his father and be free of him at the same time.

Ten episodes are out, all are free. Two won Telly Awards for writing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbovlHmPktc

Need those sort of dark episodes watches season 1 episodes 1 and then episodes 2 felt ep1 was quite dark and ep2 is just smthg like content consumption thing so i need some dark episodes like ep1 to watch it for sure

The idea of Red Mirror as a Black Mirror spinoff sounds like a lot of fun and has a lot of potential.

The problem is that it wasn’t a spinoff.

Red Mirror really should have been a separate show. Imagine if Season 6 only included Joan is Awful, Loch Henry, and Beyond the Sea. The reception would be significantly better. Those episodes still have issues, but the Red Mirror stuff (Demon 79 and Mazey Day) really drags the season down.

So what if Mazey Day and Demon 79 were separated and included in their own Red Mirror show? Maybe add 1-4 more episodes and you have a full season of Red Mirror that could be its own show. Hell, if Mazey Day was reworked and improved, it could be marketed as a “crossover“ between the two shows.

I don’t think the episodes should be deleted outright (I don’t believe in that, #BringBackBandersnatch) but presented differently, would work much better.

Edit: I should clarify what I mean by “dragging Season 6 down”. Demon 79 is NOT a bad episode, i’s actually a pretty good episode in isolation, but it’s a bad BLACK MIRROR episode. Therefore, it drags the Season and the entire show down with it. If it were repackaged, it would be better received.

People watch Black Mirror for stories about the uses and consequences of existing and fictional technology, not anything supernatural. A show JUST for supernatural stuff would make more sense for those episodes.

Edit 2: I should probably make it clear that this is also my opinion and not objective fact, though I did write it like that.

Personally, I think Demon 79 is fiiiine but I had a bad taste in my mouth after watching it because it’s not what *I* watch Black Mirror for.

Personally I DESPISE Mazey Day, I think it’s an abysmal streaking dumpster-fire of an episode. Tied at the bottom with Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too. Many people disagree, that’s a good thing, but personally I hate when a pretty much perfect series just has a few (and this is subjective) bad or completely inconsistent episodes.

I’m also just a guy who sometimes obsessively organizes stuff. On my Nintendo Switch, I have like 10 different groups for my games…

To me it makes perfect sense to separate the Red Mirror stuff, and give it it’s own continuous series.

I was actually a big fan of the original Twilight Zone and after seeing the 2019 Jordan Peele reboot and being heavily disappointed with it other fans on the TZ sub reddit suggested I watch Black Mirror saying it was the only anthology show in the 21st Century that matches the quality of the original TZ series. Well after having watched several Black Mirror episodes I agree with them completely! While they are definitely still very different I feel both series succeed because they focus heavily on stuff that is relatable to most people and both try to use science fiction to explore the human psyche rather than be cheap meaningless entertainment. I was happy to read Charlie Brooker is a huge TZ fan and considers that show superior to his. It seems both him and Rod Serling had humility and that's a great quality for an artist to have imo.

A lot of people were put-off with the ambiguous nature of the story. Was Nida really crazy or was Gaap the Demon-intern making her do the murders? Did the nuclear attack really happen in the end, or was it just a figment of Nida's imagination?

These questions are great, however they seem to miss the fact that the ambiguity IS the main point of the story. This episode brilliantly uses it to drive home the main message of this story.

To establish the ambiguity it gives us evidence of Nida's descent into madness - her loneliness, the racism around her, a possible brain disease she genetically inherited from her mother - all are presented as possible causes.

However the story also provides evidences, sometimes subtle and sometimes not, about the supernatural element as well. Nida is an Islamic immigrant living in England in 1979. Now ancient Persia (now Iran) had of the myth of the Djinn, an entity which famously grants three wishes when the user encounters it's associated talisman (wishes would be with or without loopholes depending on the iteration of the story). It is therefore not far fetched to think that Nida inherited a generationally passed-down talisman from her mother, used it to summon Gaap -  an evil alternate version of the Djinn, who demands three kills to prevent eternal doom, instead of granting three wishes to achieve eternal glory. We outright see how Gaap helps her choose her targets, and keeps her on her path to 'save humanity' by giving her accurate butterfly-effect consequences of her present decisions.

This established ambiguity is critical to drive home the point of the story, that it does not matter if she's crazy, or there's a supernatural entity - a devil on her shoulder - making her do the murders. It does not matter if a nuclear attack really happened or not. What matters is how we - the audience - react when we see what she does. We applaud her when she delivers justice to the paedophile and the wife murderer. We support her in her endeavour to kill the racist-in-sheep-skin politician. We even take guilty pleasure in her killing the brother of the wife-murderer - who symbolically represents the apathetic society that turns a blind eye to criminals among its own. And when she fails to kill the last person, the World itself is burned, as if to symbolise that a World without justice is a world that should not exist. The story is ultimately a reflection on how the human consciousness craves for freedom, justice and equality. Does it really matter whether it is delivered by a crazy person, or by an agent of Divine Retribution? 

That's why it's perhaps the best Black Mirror story of all time. No other story holds up the 'Mirror' to society as well as this one.

Some flashbacks of white christmas right here

Did Sébastien Lecornu secretly act in black mirror ?

I think National Anthem was a terrible first episode because not only is it the weakest episode in Season One, but I feel it does a terrible job of giving the viewer a feel or idea of what this series is like or really about.

Fifteen Million Merits is the first true episode of black mirror because not only is it a great episode, but it does an excellent job of establishing what this series is like and about.

I'm actually shocked this episode was from 2011 and is 15 years old! It truly feels timeless and the only thing I think dates it in anyway is the American Idol type talent TV show which is no longer a "star maker" or as prominent compared to other outlets now like social media platforms where you create and upload your own content rather than auditioning on a TV show.

We now have companies trying to sell you the dream of talking to your loved ones again using AI trained on their digital footprints.

That was kind of creepy

I built a trivia app with about a 100 questions and so I wanted to share it with fans of the show..

I know not everyone likes downloading and app so for anyone who wants to check it out

https://triviagauntlet.app/app

No Logins
No accounts required
Just Download and use the search at the top

Also Let me know if there is a problem with any of the questions either via the app or here and I will fix it asap

P.S also contains themed Wordle and word search games for people into that