Black Mirror S03E04

An under 2000 character Review on Anthologies. Number 11, Black Mirror S03E04 – San Junipero – Directed By: Owen Harris – Written By: Charlie Brooker – Release Date: 10/21/2016. Originally Posted on 6/22/2020. Black Mirror is a UK retelling, of sorts, of the Twilight Zone.

After the Red Pill and the Blue Pill “Matrix” came out in 1999 people have been trying to reinvent the wheel. I have already written about Black Mirror and the Matrix concepts in Playtest but San Junipero goes even a step farther and proves to be an interesting alternative tangent to what the Matrix proposed in 1999.

We believe we are in the 1980’s in a small town, 1950’s style but 80’s. Young people everywhere, partying, dancing, drinking, playing video games. Things do not even start getting weird till about halfway through the episode. The town of San Junipero is not your average town. In fact, it isn’t a town at all.

It is a construct of a purely digital world. In this Future Earth, or at least the United States, we now have technology that allows your perception/soul/awareness, whatever title you want to put on it, the ability to visit or live in this platform. Not much is said to what extent the platform exits, but from what I see in the episode and what is discussed is it is one town in different eras; 80’s – 90’s – 00’s.

The people are there are two classes. Lifers and Tourists. The lifers are people that have been downloaded into the matrix and no longer live in the real world, we are not told what year Earth is here, but the future. Tourists are people that are sick and dying and are uploaded into it temporarily while their body rests in six-hour allotments that have to be separated by two weeks due to the brain’s addiction to the matrix.

It is here two tourists meet, and fall in love. On the outside a person dying of old age waiting to die in the real world to rejoin their spouse in heaven and another, elderly, but paraplegic since she was 19 and has not experienced life and interaction most of her life. She is living for the 1st time… Everything is new.