Is Black Mirror the 21st Century Twilight Zone?

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The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror are very similar in their overall premise and how they convey messages to their audience. While The Twilight Zone was made much earlier, many parallels can be found between the two shows. It’s obvious to see that Black Mirror was heavily influenced by The Twilight Zone. They are both anthology series, meaning each episode has a completely different story with different characters. In terms of genre, they both combine Sci-fi with horror and thriller. Conversely, The Twilight Zone is more based around magic and the supernatural, whereas Black Mirror uses technology as its instigator. The goal for shows like these is to always keep the audience in suspense and to never allow them to predict what is going to happen next. With Black Mirror’s “White Bear” episode, you don’t realize that everything is a simulation to torture a former criminal until the very end. In The Twilight Zone’s “I Shot an Arrow”, you are led to believe for most of the show that the men have crash-landed on an asteroid. In reality, they had just crashed back into Earth and were close to Reno, Nevada.

What happens in present-day seriously influences entertainment. Around the time The Twilight Zone was created, America was trying to get a man into space to beat the Russians (which we failed at), also known as the Space Race. The Twilight Zone profited on a very popular topic of its time with the “I Shot an Arrow” episode. During the time of Black Mirror, technology had become an essential part of everyday life. We have become obsessed with technology and have enhanced our sense of spectatorship, which is highlighted in Black Mirror. Television used to be about joyful entertainment and family values, and The Twilight Zone, having extremely disturbing content at times, shifted television’s focus. There was a serious decline in the “father knows best” television scenario following it. We now like intense, disturbing shows instead of just wanting kitschy, happy-go-lucky families filling up our screen.

With each story, we see characters that struggle with their morality. In The Twilight Zone, Corey is extremely selfish and only cares about his own survival. He ends up killing off both Pierson and Donlin so that he could last longer on the “asteroid”, only to find out a few minutes after he shot Donlin that they were still on Earth. This episode shows that stressful situations can bring out the worst in people, and that people are selfish, immoral and will do whatever it takes to survive. Eventually, Corey realizes when he stops at the top of the mountain that he had done something terrible and that there would be consequences for what he did. In Black Mirror, you feel bad for Victoria at first as she goes through this hell of trying to escape being murdered and filmed. However, this feeling changes at the end when you discover that she filmed her fiancé murdering a little girl they kidnapped. This then brings up the question of whether or not she deserves constant psychological torture for the cruel things she did to the little girl. Here, you don’t realize that Victoria was a bad person until the end. In The Twilight Zone, it is clear throughout the entire episode that Corey is a selfish, mean person.

There are several production elements that help the storytelling of each episode. Both shows dolly into the characters’ faces to show intense moments in certain scenes and how the characters react to it. The voiceover at the beginning of The Twilight Zone provides context to their situation instead of having to take up time showing the details of the mission and crash landing. They also use their depth of field wisely in The Twilight Zone, being able to frame Donlin, Pierson and the injured man in the foreground and Corey in the background to contrast the sympathy of Donlin and Pierson to the anger and selfishness of Corey. To convey a sense of emptiness and loneliness in their wasteland setting, there are many wide shots of the “asteroid”. Conversely, in Black Mirror, they want to convey that she’s always being watched, hence why several people are always chasing her with their cellphones pointed at her.

If you were a Twilight Zone fan in the past, then I'm guessing you'll find a lot to enjoy about Black Mirror.