the theme for each episode is … … the writing staff has no more ideas

Great points! For me personally, E1 was also about mocking the concept of "being the main character", which is what we've been told over the past years on social media. It was also mentioned during Joan's therapy sesh. Like what can actually happen when you become the main character.

epi 3 theme, can u explain that one like i’m five? how did the fake become real?

otherwise, i love this! it’s brilliantly simple.

This is very good. Well thought out and thanks for sharing

These are very shallow takes

This is pretty good. I would just argue that AI and "HBIAC" are higher level categories of the theme "What is human consciousness". I think a lot of people confuse Brooker's portrayal of AI and instances which characterize a copy of a human consciousness, like in White Christmas or USS Callister. And AI like in Be Right Back. FWIW most episodes have multiple themes, but IMO the underlying theme is human(s) living in a dystopian situation more often than not brought unto themselves. Prolly why most every1 can relate.

everything in misc is 'technology gives people in power a way to exploit the general public' and it includes common people, uss callister, white bear, white christmas and men against fire

cool chart, i like how some of these episodes have conflicting opinions despite being in the same section

Beyond the Sea had no AI, just teleoperated robots.

It’s not “technology bad” it’s “human bad” and technology just helps humans be bad.

It would probably be better represented as a big Venn Diagram because there's overlap between aspects and themes of pretty much every episode. Black Mirror has never really been about 'technology bad' but about how technology can be used as a tool to exploit and harm others, and occasionally do some actual good. Sometimes it's about progress (San Junipero), sometimes it's pure capitalism (Common People, Fifteen Million Merits), sometimes it's personal revenge (Shut Up And Dance, Bête Noire), sometimes it's interesting toys (Playtest, Hotel Reverie).

Different stories have different levels of integration between the human and the computer, with stories like Nosedive and The National Anthem at one end, Men Against Fire and San Junipero at the other, and anything with Grain or Grain-like tech at various points in between.

Keep in mind "black mirror" refers to a phone screen. That kind of sets the tone.

let us know your thoughts!! iirc the setting & tone of Metalhead is kind of an outlier for Black Mirror, which are usually more in a "not so distant future"scape.

You might also enjoy Fifteen Million Merits & White Bear which take it a bit further from our normal society, but still focus on humans in a fairly recognizable world

It’s really about technology run amok.

Not really, "Fifteen Million Merits" is much closer

I have no idea why you were expecting Dune-esque far future lol. Yeah, that's the show, it's largely near future/reasonably possible technology and how people interact with it, usually negatively. With a few exceptions. I can think of exactly 3 that even have space travel, and 2 of those don't even really count.

Almost all of them are ‘near future’ settings, more or less like our current world with one or two tech innovations beyond our level. Some are just exactly our current world.

If you’re after fantastical alien cultures, this isn’t the place to find them I’m afraid.

Death,greed,dolls,the health system,a cure for psychological illness,a fantasy world,a animated episode,the racism,sexuality,environment,a sitcom-style episode,etc...

Hated in the nation had a bit of this vibe but i would like an episode fully centered around an incel, preferably set in current time with current tech. I feel like it has potential

A society where the school system has completely disappeared, being replaced by "Knowledge Packages" that are bought by wealthy parents and are then downloaded into their children's brains, making them extremely smart.

The price point for these packages are far too high for the working class, so poor families are destined to only ever work lowly jobs serving the rich.

This would lead to a revolt where the poor manage to steal a device containing the knowledge packages.

The twist would be that the rich anticipated the whole revolt due to their advanced intellect so they lured the poor into a trap. The packages the poor stole contain viruses that essentially turn the children that download them into compliant slaves to the rich, as well as wiping all their personal and dna data from databases, basically erasing their existence. The poor children would be shown at the end in underground sweat shops, doing repetitive menial jobs, now programmed to only answer to the wealthy.

Maybe a sort of sad drug addiction tale

I've posted this before but a courtroom drama set in a future where everybody wears eye/ear implants that block out all faces in the courtroom and remove things like race/religion/sexuality/etc. This would remove all bias from the jury/judge but would have negative consequences. Idk how to word this idea.

Also, another idea is haves vs have nots and the choices you make when younger. At age 16, you are now legally allowed a device that shows one statistic for every person you view (current mood, sexual partners, addictions, etc) different statistics cost different amounts of money but you're only allowed one. Some people wait to get this device in their 20s but it's very normal for it to be a coming of age thing at 16. Also poorly worded.

That's the point of the series lol. Social Commentary pointing out where we could be headed in western society. 

In magik, you have to show people what you're going to do to avoid karma. So if people see it and do nothing, it's okay for you to do it. Just like all this soft exposure to things like the multiverse and aliens. But Hollywood want you afraid of aliens.you shouldn't be

That was the point... The show's creators even acknowledge that they were intentionally taking modern issues and just expanding on them in the worst ways.

Anything can be foreshadowing if you look at it as such.

Fortune teller predictions are accurate if they happen... Luckily they're won't far more often.

Black Mirror comes to mind often for me as well, specifically those two episodes you mentioned Also, the first episode, in a more metaphorical sense.

Shut up and Dance is very profound to me. People do not realize how easy it is to blackmail/kidnap people via hacking. Robbing a bank and dueling to the death are high stakes, but what about lighting a fire in California, or self-immolating for a certain set of politics, or driving your car into infrastructure, or murdering someone, etc. And what if it's not your activity, but your child's digital life?

It's a problem.

Nosedive -> 15 million merits -> White Christmas -> Plaything -> Shut up and Dancd

The Entire History of You, White Bear, 15 Million Merits, Nosedive, San Junipero.

The waldo moment, striking vipers, Rachel Jack and Ashely too, mazey day, demon 79

Be Right Back, Hang The DJ, Nosedive, Playtest, Shut Up and Dance

Shut Up and Dance , San Junipero, Playtest,  White Christmas and USS Callister

They treat consciousness as a soul. In several episodes they extract it from a living body allowing it to live in another plane of existence unconfined by laws of our world. Also showed returning it to the body and the ability of multiple “souls” occupying the same body. Thronglets could be viewed as demon possession like “legion” in the Bible.

more like a digital realm full of nothingness . just a good old fear of death .

Interesting, actually.

I've been reading about Roko's basilisk recently as I'm totally deep-diving into and dismantling Plaything at the moment.

From what I've gathered, Roko's basilisk is a version of what's called Pascal's wager. It suggests that a rational person should live as if God exists, even if they're unsure, because the potential rewards (eternal Heaven) far outweigh the risks of not believing (eternal Hell). The cost of believing is small compared to the possible consequences.

Also, recursive logic is literally one of the main thematic engines in the series, which easily relates to the idea of punishment, and thus hell.

(I could go super in-depth about this, but, fair warning, it may end up being a borderline Ritman-esque monologue.)

a sinner's fear of hell and being tortured for eternity mirrored with humanity's penchant for enabling and participating in torture when they deem the offense to be bad enough.

imo this is why harsh punishment and torture shouldn't be left up to humans and should be (and is, in a lot of places) illegal.

What if technology, but too much?

Not mine, but that's the best summary of the show I've ever seen.

“What if phones, but too much?” remains the classic Black Mirror description.

It’s hard to give a definitive thing for every episode though, because some eps are wildly different but still feel like BM.

Not every episode literally, but a majority of them feature the little Nubbin somehow, someway.

Temple device.

Technology go brrr

Maybe How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

If not, check out this post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/14bir2j/books_like_the_netflix_series_black_mirror/

Circadian Algorithms - like a Black Mirror episode about sleep and dreams

Replay by Ken Grimwood

Black Matter by Blake Crouch

Ribofunk is a collection of works that happen in a future world where humans got addicted to gene splicing.

Never Let Me Go could be a Black Mirror episode.