In the very first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, Holmes says, “There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.” This quote was actually author Arthur Conan Doyle reworking the book of Ecclesiastes from the Bible. So, when Holmes said that back in 1887, the idea that nothing was new was doubly true. But it also didn’t matter. The remix of older ideas into a new context is what made Holmes immortal. He wasn’t created from nothing, he was created from something.
Black Mirror’s seventh season — which has just hit Netflix — is similar. One could easily dismiss it by using institutional knowledge of science fiction or trivia about the franchise to proclaim that there is nothing truly new or groundbreaking about the series anymore. Ever since 2017 or so, new installments of Black Mirror are often regarded by critics with suspicion. If you ask your Google AI if Black Mirror is still relevant, it will tell you — thanks to the arbitrary prioritization of very specific Reddit posts — no, people think it’s not. Essentially, if the internet tells you Black Mirror isn’t Black Mirror enough anymore, that’s the most Black Mirror thing that’s ever happened, and you really should rethink how science fiction works.
