Warning: mild spoilers follow for season four of Black Mirror.
Even though part of a recent episode of Black Mirror was based on a short story written by magician Penn Jillette, we feel the folks behind the Netflix series may owe a thank you to comedian Karl Pilkington. “Black Museum” is the sixth episode of season four of the sci-fi and horror anthology series, Black Mirror. The episode consists of a few stories (it’s an anthology in an anthology) showcasing proto-versions of futuristic tech we’ve seen in other episodes with some downright awful revelations of what can be done with them. They all, in some way, revolve around the transferring of consciousness. One story tells the tale of a coma victim’s mind being uploaded into the mind of her husband while the other, the one based on Gillette’s “The Pain Addict,” deals with a doctor being able to feel what a patient is going through.
And Pilkington shared the seeds of those ideas in 2007 and 2008.
Pilkington spelled out the two concepts on the HBO comedy series The Ricky Gervais Show. The show animated the hijinks of the podcast and radio program of the same name and gave audiences a deeper look inside the mind of co-host Pilkington. His ideas were often, if not always, ridiculed for being incredibly dumb by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. They should apologize if they gave Pilkington a hard time about these concepts. You can see the idea for the coma victim cut together with Black Mirror in the above video by YouTuber Matt.
It makes us wonder what other ideas we could mine from Pilkington’s unique way of thinking and turn into hit TV show plots. If you need us, we’ll be working on writing the next sci-fi horror story about the “Pilko Pump Pant!” They’re inflatable pants, but what happens when the pants start inflating you!?
Is Black Mirror just a look inside the mind of Pilkington? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Image: Netflix
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