Either Charlie Brooker has run out of ideas, or pop culture has finally eclipsed "Black Mirror," his technophobic-cum-miserabilist science fiction series that just dropped its seventh season on Netflix. After a decade and a half spent giving Luddites nightmares about the many ways our gadgets, gizmos and gigabytes may betray us all, the show is at the edge of obsolescence; gimmickry only goes so far for so long, especially when drawn from the same sling bag of tricks.
Granted, it’s fitting that Brooker’s fearmongering approach to speculative fiction should outdate itself; our phones, computers and video game consoles are likewise outdated by tech consumers’ hunger for shiny new toys, which the tech industry is too happy to feed. Maybe it’s inevitable that "Black Mirror," once upon a time a show of unnerving political and social prescience, would become not simply passé but past expiration. Technology, after all, advances quickly. In fact, it’s advancing faster than ever. Pop culture develops at a sluggish pace by comparison, but the clip that TV and movies have kept up for the last couple of years has pushed them ahead of "Black Mirror" by a wide margin in the “future is bleak” space. Brooker, meanwhile, appears content playing the hits.
