Every Episode of Black Mirror Defined By Its Theme

 Ephraim Belnap 

The hook of Black Mirror is,

“what if our worst aspects of ourselves collided with our worst fears about technology?” 

-- 

Striking Vipers - what if our sexual dissatisfaction in our marriage collided with our ability to feel vividly in a video game?

USS Callister - what if our worst incel tendencies collided with the ability to hurt people in video-games? 

White Bear - what if our ability to commodify people via entertainment collided with our desire for gross retribution? 

Fifteen Million Merits - what if our semi-selfish desire for fame collided with our “free with commercials” business scheme?

Be Right Back - what if our desire for a lost loved one came up against our ability to simulate living things? 

Metalhead - what if our desire to kill our enemies collided with our ability to make robots do it for us?

 Hang the DJ - what if our increasingly advanced decision-aiding apps collided with our desire to be lazy in our romantic choices?

Shut Up and Dance - What If our ability to be a troll on the Internet collided with our desire to look up things we shouldn’t on the Internet? 

The National Anthem - what if our ability to broadcast to everyone combined with our desire to delight in seeing people fail? 

Bandersnatch - what if our ability to create choice-based narrative games collided with our own fears about whether we control our OWN lives? Notably, this choice-based narrative’s only positive ending (spoilers) still involves dying, cutting off choices from everyone

The Entire History of You - I don’t like this one, but I’m pretty sure it’s, “what if our increasing ability to record the past combined with our own worst tendencies towards our romantic partners?” 

The Waldo Moment - what if our own apathy about the political process combined with our ability to sway large audiences with cartoonish-seeming figures? (this is quite relevant with Internet cuture)

Nosedive - what if our own desire to be judgmental and clique-y combined with our ability to rate places or people via app? 

Playtest - what if our ability to simulate reality combined with our desire to not follow authority? 

San Junipero - Uuh, this is actually a happy ending story, so I’m not sure if it counts at all. It’s really more a “what if our ability to simulate reality combined with our ability to start life with a loved one anew?” Not QUITE so sad...

Men Against Fire - what if our desire to utterly destroy our enemies combined with our ability to simulate reality for others? 

Hated in the Nation - what if our tendency to proclaim death for someone combined with our ability to target people in increasingly accurate ways?