Black Mirror : Pitch a Black Mirror episode

Pitch a Black Mirror episode

Since it seems that every week or so these days that a breakthrough is made in technology or that something ridiculous happens in the realm of politics or the media, I'd say Charlie Brooked and his team of writers have a lot of inspiration for upcoming episodes. Feel free to comment below any sort of topics or issues you'd like to see touched upon in the future.

I'll get the ball rolling and mention a concept I think could be developed upon to be a cool episode.

Everyone is aware of deleting your internet history and when it isn't deleted this can cause tension in relationships if one of them has been unfaithful or has been watching porn or something.

I'd like to see this fleshed out similarly to the memory technology seen in the Entire History of You episode, but instead in an abusive relationship. So every time one of the partners threatens to leave, the dominant abuser can selectively remove certain memories from their partners memory so that they have no recollection of the abuse they've suffered.

I think this could make for a very tense singular episode as the submissive partner slowly tries to piece back together what has happened, be it through noticing bruises or small ticks in their partners behaviour that would suggest they weren't all they seemed to be.

Anyway that's my idea, any other ideas comment away!

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

An episode with a bunch of weird stuff going on and people think ghosts or something supernatural is going then the twist is simulation theory. It seems like a popular theory but I've never really seen it on a show or movie. People are stuck indoors or underground due to the environment in the future, so people do intense VR to escape. The main character is actually old, out of shape and unattractive in real life.


I never saved anything for the swim back.

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

Your idea sounds kind of Matrixesque, but just different enough to make it interesting.

I have an idea based on a Red Dwarf episode. A man provides a service where he swaps bodies with his client to help them overcome a physical weakness they don't have the willpower to do themselves, for example losing weight, getting fit or giving up smoking. He'll spend anywhere from a week to a few months in their body, for a significant fee, while he makes the desired changes.

One possible plot development could be the client doesn't tell anyone that they're doing it, so the main character has to pretend to be the client, and he gets so involved in their life that he doesn't want to leave. Or the client could be hiding the fact that they have just a few weeks to live and they run off with the main character's body leaving him to die in theirs.

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

I love that idea, actually got chills just thinking about it!

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

Thanks. Your idea is pretty neat too, kind of like Memento but different. :-)

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

That's a great idea for a story.

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

there is a book, a novel by Sheckley with very similar idea titled Mindswap.

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

Thanks, I'll see if I can find it.

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Swapping bodies, like in that outer limits episode. Could be done, but I don't think it would be original. I think it should be something to do with near future technologies, like nanomachines or virtual reality which was already done in episode two and it was brilliant and nightmarish.

I guess artificial intelligence episode is bound to happen soon.

What I would love to see maybe an episode about religion, but not like a cult following i.e. Apple heads, more like the flying spaghetti monster, it has to be kooky at first but then make you wonder... what's the difference? In that vibe.

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

Maybe not the religious angle you wanted, but how about this? There's a digital afterlife, similar to San Junipero, but run by the state instead of a private company, and guaranteed to all citizens as a reward for a good life. But as well as a 'heaven' there's also a 'hell' simulation for criminals and people deemed as enemies of the state.

Maybe the hell-simulation would be living as helpless civilians in an everlasting warzone, maybe a punishment like the woman got in White Bear, or maybe a repetitive and soul-destroyingly boring type of hell like the cookies received in White Christmas.

At first the punishment of hell was only for the most dangerous and violent of criminals and terrorists, then for people with 'radical' political beliefs, and eventually for anybody considered an enemy of the state and all prisoners with a life sentence. Maybe there could be two case examples running concurrently through the story, one of a dangerous and violent criminal who we have no sympathy for, and one of a political activist who we do sympathise with, who are both tarred by the same brush by the system and are both recreated in digital hell.

The main character somehow manages to shut down this digital hell. Maybe he works for the government in programming it or maintaining the servers it's run on, and he uses his inside knowledge to shut it down. But he's faced with a dilemma; he can delete everybody in digital hell, or he can transfer them to digital heaven. He can't go through them individually and decide who lives and who dies; it's all or nothing. Maybe he's personally affected. Maybe his wife was a political activist and she was murdered, and both she and her killer were sentenced to hell. The main character can transfer her to heaven, but he knows he'll be transferring her killer too, giving him almost Christ-like status in being able to 'forgive' criminals and 'sinners'.

Another much simpler and humbler storyline could be that there's no plot to shut it down. The man's wife is wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to digital hell, and he intentionally commits a similar crime so he can still be with her, reasoning that he'd rather be in hell with her than in heaven without her.

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

That's really good. I had a similar idea of a simulated hell, or should I say I have channeled it from somewhere. I have a darker twist, with a bit of hope in the end, think adagio for strings.

What if at some point there is a glitch but not an evident one, say the people in hell forget that they are in hell, so although they are in hellish pain, they become numb to it and just live out their lives. In fact they create their own interpretation of pain.

I'm actually reading a book on pain now, and let me tell you pain is a very objective phenomenon. It requires reflection.

SO after thousands of years they create a religion similar to Christianity, with hell and heaven and purgatory. Then they are back where they create this simulation.

In the end the idea of Hell as a punishment is in the isolation from the truth. But ironically an individual creates his own truth, that nothing can be know or proved, he negates the created loop and deletes his own code, thus stopping the cycle of "rebirth" or "hell".

p.s. san junipero was sweet but melancholic and scary as well, as my mind can't accept that a soul can live eternally inside a machine a la Source Code.

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I like that idea. It makes me wonder, are we living in some other world's idea of hell? Have we simply desensitised ourselves to the pain?

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Exactly. The first of the four noble truths in Buddhism is that all existence is pain. But the culturally imposed image of stoicism distorts this truth. Being in pain, but denying it sounds like hell to me.

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"Or the client could be hiding the fact that they have just a few weeks to live and they run off with the main character's body leaving him to die in theirs", that reminded me of "the Switch" a Tales of the Crypt episode.

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I think if you've got an idea good enough to make an episode of Black Mirror from you should be writing your own short story, instead of plastering it on a message board.

--
There's no such thing as the establishment. Everyone knows that!

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

I dabbled in short-story writing as a teenager. They were cringeworthily bad. It's not just having an idea, it's having the literary ability to bring it to life.

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A futuristic society divided among class, and you are conditioned to basically enjoy doing the work of your class (i.e. You are conditioned to love farming and nothing else, no free will). A young men from a higher class who has been privileged his whole life, finally sees the world and the lack of free will, he is disguised by this world. But ultimately doesn't do anything against society.
Basically the "Brave New World" but with a different main character...

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

I like the themes you bring up. As we learn about the mechanisms for how people feel satisfaction and happiness, and sometimes abuse them (casinos, mobile games, achievements), it's not hard to foresee a sort of faux utopia where humanity has really mastered these mechanisms and applied them to the extreme. 15 Million Merits has already covered a lot of good ground with this theme.

I don't have a cohesive plot outlined, but a few of the things I think could be compelling if taken to the logical extreme:

-The shift to a service economy worldwide as automation becomes commonplace. We end up in a world where just about anyone with one of the remaining conventional jobs has about 50 personal assistants, regardless of how menial the job sounds.

-The widespread craving to be a celebrity. A Youtube surrogate creates a massive pool of AI social media consumers, and the world goes crazy vying for popularity from a nonexistent population. (Too similar to Nosedive in theme?)

-People being sheltered from any kind of pain/fear, leading to a shift where things considered mild setbacks today can cause full blown nervous breakdowns. Like characters needing therapy to recover from wi-fi outages or traffic jams.

And one more random thought combining a few of the other themes that have been brought up: Working 23.9 hours a day by connecting to a San Junipero system and then White Christmas fast forwarding it to make you feel like you've had time to relax during 1 minute breaks in which you're rapidly force fed with the efficiency of a Nascar pit stop and pumped full of drugs to eliminate the need for sleep. A protagonist might have the system break and then have to live through a torturous cycle without getting the mental breaks.

Again, I don't have full plots for each of these- just themes I think could be interesting.

Re: Pitch a Black Mirror episode

You have some really interesting ideas. The one about people being sheltered from fear and pain reminds me of Pleasantville. That was a good film.
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