Episode 56: Black Mirror, Part I

You pull a face and poke it towards the stage and la-di-da we sing and dance and tumble around and all you see up here, it’s not people, you don’t see people up here, it’s all fodder. And the faker the fodder is the more you love it because fake fodder’s the only thing that works anymore, fake fodder is all that we can stomach — actually not quite all. Real pain, real viciousness, that we can take.
— Bing to the judges, Episode 2, Fifteen Million Merits

As technology progresses in new, often fascinating and liberating ways, it is worth considering the role it has in our lives. Several works of science fiction have shown these advances and our reactions to them to be somewhat predictable. Black Mirror, a satire and dark comedy made by the BBC, offers many such conclusions in the form of troubling television episodes reminiscent of the Twilight Zone. In this conversation, we discuss the first season of the show. We will be examining the second season later in November. As a warning, we do cover various crucial plot points in our review. If you would like to watch the show, please do not listen to this first.