Black Mirror on Netflix: 3 episodes that predicted the future

Warning, spoilers. It is advisable to have seen the 3 episodes of Black Mirror mentioned below before continuing your reading.

Anthology series created by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror flooded our screens with terrifying and disturbing dystopian stories about the excesses of technology and its use in society. With its very dark and satirical tone but its very relevant anchoring in what is best and what is worst in humanity, the Channel 4 and then Netflix series has often shocked by its reversals and its amazing twists.

But there are episodes which have left more indelible traces in our lives and which have even been “precursors” of technological innovations and the amazing uses of some of them. A look back at 3 episodes of Black Mirror which, so to speak, predicted the future. When reality surpasses fiction, there is something to shiver.

The Waldo show (season 2 episode 3)

Broadcast in 2013, the last episode of season 2 of Black Mirror features Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby), a comedian specializing in motion capture who animates and lends his voice to Waldo, a blue bear in computer graphics. During his participation in a fake children’s show, he ridicules, through Waldo, Liam Monroe (Tobias Menzies), a representative of the British Conservative Party.

It’s immediate success for Waldo, who is thrown into the political arena by the show’s producers. Very quickly, Waldo, led by Jamie, finds himself a candidate in the current local election campaign. But Waldo’s success doesn’t sit well with Jamie, especially when an “Agency” seeks to make Waldo the international face of the political opposition.

Through Waldo, she can convey any message, whether drawn from Google statistics or various opinions from Twitter. Uncomfortable, Jamie tries to get out of this political trap but is attacked. When he wakes up in the hospital, he understands that Waldo has indeed become a protest icon since the blue bear in computer graphics (not so far from the blue bird of Twitter) came second in the ballot.

If no synthetic bears have presented themselves in any election, it is clear that comedians or entertainment clowns have acceded to positions of power years after the broadcast of the episode “The Waldo Show” then that seemed impossible.

In the lead: Donald Trump, billionaire businessman, television host and producer who ran as the Republican Party candidate for the US presidential elections in 2016. And while no one expected to see Donald Trump in the White House, he was indeed the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

Another example: Volodymyr Zelenskky, comedian, producer, actor, screenwriter and director who became president of Ukraine in 2019. The comedian was the main actor of “Servant of the people”, a sitcom in which he played a teacher who became a president expectation. Very popular in his country, Volodymyr Zelenskky launched his political party, taken from the television series, using the image of his character fighting against the corruption of the elites, and thanks to an atypical electoral campaign he became Ukrainian president.

Freefall (season 3 episode 1)

First episode of the Netflix version of Black Mirror, after the acquisition of the broadcasting rights formerly held by Channel 4, “Freefall” launches season 3 of the series of Charlie Brooker on the hats of wheel with a terrifying dystopian universe.

We follow the daily life of Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) in a society governed by personal rating, that is to say that each person rates the others from 0 to 5 and the highest rated have access to better services. Lacie has a score of 4.2 but she wants to access a higher quality of life. She will therefore do everything possible for this and modify her profile accordingly.

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When her 4.6-rated childhood friend Naomi (Alice Eve) contacts her to be a best man at her wedding, it’s a dream come true for Lacie, who dreams only of improving her social status. But on D-Day, Lacie makes a series of blunders and bad interactions that significantly lower her grade.

It’s the descent into hell for Lacie, who sees his privileged access disappear. Naomi then forbids her to come to the wedding and explains to her that she only invited her because she had a grade of 4.2. Betrayed and depressed, Lacie somehow ends up at the ceremony where she delivers a scathing speech before being arrested and imprisoned.

Impossible in our society? Not for China, which announced in 2014 the deployment of a lifetime (!) rating system for its citizens. This Chinese government project, inspired by the Credit Score of the United States, rewards people and companies that respect the rules laid down and penalizes those who do not respect them.

After experimentation in 2014 and test phases in 2018, the system was applied to the whole of the People’s Republic of China in 2020. However, there is no national standard. The system takes different forms depending on the city; some pay particular attention to innovation, others to compliance with the highway code and others to morality. And failure to comply can prevent some citizens and businesses from accessing loans and government aid.

Metal Head (season 4 episode 5)

In episode 5 – almost silent and in black white – of season 4 of Black Mirror, Bella (Maxine Peake), Tony (Clint Dyer) and Clarke (Jake Davies), three looters in search of resources, explore an abandoned warehouse to find a specific cardboard supposed to ease the pain of a certain Jake.

But the three friends don’t just find the cardboard, they also come across a “dog”, a quadruped robot that patrolled the warehouse and has the particularity of killing any human being it spots. The dog quickly kills Tony and Clarke and chases after Bella, who managed to escape without the box.

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If she manages to lose the dog by knocking him off a cliff with a car, she knows full well that she has little time in front of her since the dog has planted a beacon in her. She manages to extract it with a knife but the blood she loses gives the dog a lead to follow.

Then begins a long and painful chase between the dog and Bella, who uses all possible stratagems to blur the dog’s vision and to ensure that its battery is discharged. Unfortunately for her, Bella ends up in an abandoned house where she is attacked one last time by the dog before she shoots him down.

She realizes that the dog has had time to plant several tags in her, which attracts many other killer dogs, leaving Bella to her sad fate. The episode ends by showing us the contents of the box for which Bella, Tony and Clarke gave their lives: teddy bears.

Even though the dogs in Black Mirror were based on Boston Dynamics robots, like the BigDog, reality very quickly overtook fiction. However, the technology has come a long way since then and the firm has developed a smaller, more dynamic version of the BigDog. Entitled SpotMini, the four-legged robot prototype, even closer to the style of dogs.

This very clever version freaked out netizens when a test video was uploaded. But it’s not the only artificial intelligence to have created a panic on the networks since an MIT robot called the Mini Cheetah has also sparked by being able to run, jump and even play football!

All six seasons of Black Mirror are available on Netflix.