Black Mirror Episode Idea: "The One"

Synopsis

A man and a woman have shared the same workplace in a high-tech office space for some time and he has developed very strong feelings for her, having been on many social outings with just the two of them together. He tells the woman how he feels but despite all his efforts and time spent, the woman rejects his advances, saying that she only wants to be friends. The man cannot accept that; fighting back his emotions, he bids her farewell and returns to his apartment, slumping to the floor in tears. For him she was “the one”, a woman who he feels is perfect for him in every way imaginable. From here a chronic obsession begins as the man endlessly looks over older pictures of him and the woman on his phone at night, the times they spent together and endlessly ponders over what could have been. He tries the occasional online dating service but because he still thinks about “the one”, the man quickly becomes disconnected. Eventually the woman forms a relationship with another man and the central character falls into despair, refusing to move on from the rejection. He even grows callous towards some of his friends over their efforts to cheer him up.

The man soon wanders into a bar alone to drink away his sorrows and in a chance meeting, he comes across a rather conspicuous individual who notices his sombre mood and takes him to the side. The stranger is a member of a secretive society that offers cloning of particular individuals for a high price. He offers a more engaging, albeit illegal alternative to the cheap sex robots that have flooded the markets for hopeless romantics. The man is convinced to go through with it and he goes about collecting samples of the woman’s DNA at social gatherings, most notably her hair. This quickly devolves into stalking but the man is so desperate at this point that he can no longer see the difference. All the while, the original woman is unaware of the man’s motives, believing that he has simply accepted her choice.

A clone of the woman is grown and her mind is carefully tailored to believe that she is romantically involved with the central character, while also having an easy-going lifestyle working at home. The man is overjoyed to have the woman he always wanted and at first it works out well; they live together, sleep together and do everything a happy couple would. But it doesn’t last; eventually the clone’s free will takes hold; she wishes to change her look and style as time goes on but the man starts to be controlling. The obsession with making the clone look, dress and act exactly like the original woman starts to take its toll and the clone begins to suspect that she may not be all she seems. She randomly looks over the man’s social network photos one day and is shocked to discover a woman that looks exactly like her. The times where the man goes out to an undisclosed location (To visit the original woman and see how the clone compares) certainly aren’t helping either.

After around a year and a half, the clone finally meets her template; the original woman confronts the man but in a violent rage he demands that both of them keep his dealings a secret. The original woman wishes to avoid a major fight and says that she never wants to see the man again as he pulls the clone out of her apartment. The clone becomes miserable after the incident and soon another problem arises; she begins to suffer from Werner’s syndrome, an on-set of premature aging. The man reaches out to the stranger to find some kind of solution, only to be told that the aging process is a rare and unintended side effect which cannot be stopped. At this point the man becomes hysterical, once again unable to deal with the facts in front of him. He violently beats the clone and this draws the attention of the neighbours who call the police. The man is arrested and the authorities eventually learn of the cloning process and sentence him to prison, the case gaining massive media coverage in the process.

The man is eventually released but the clone has passed away and the original woman, not to mention everyone he knew, wants nothing to do with him. The man ends up back where he started in the bar; once again mourning the loss of “the one”, only this time we see he has a police tag on his leg, forever branding him as a violent offender who is shunned by all of society.

Themes

Obsession and control: “The One” is very much like Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo in this regard. The man becomes so obsessed with the clone that he wishes to control everything about it to resemble the original woman he loved. This deludes him into thinking he never failed with her and the overall theme builds throughout the episode. At first the audience is sympathetic with him over the rejection but then comes to loath him over the distances he will go to satisfy himself.

Secret thoughts and hidden motives: The difference between what people say and do in front of others and what gets bottled up in the mind can result in some sinister consequences. When away from the clone, the man acts just as he did before the rejection with the original woman, a fronted persona to hide his internal jealousy and later to conceal his controlling ways at home. All through the episode the man is riddled with paranoia because of his thoughts and not sharing them with others; first from the woman’s rejection and then from the possibility of others finding out about the clone he created.

Lust, selfishness and jealousy: These careless emotions prove to be a highly controlling factor for the man; his initial jealousy of the woman’s new relationship causes him to spend almost all his income on creating a clone in the perfect image of the original woman. Just as he wishes to control the clone, so too is he influenced by selfish desires. These thoughts are entirely internal, tying in with the previous theme of secrets.

Denial and an inability to accept things: Some individuals can end up shaping and moulding their entire lives around a single person without living for themselves first. Others refuse to move on from a particularly difficult rejection. “The One” aims to show the darker side of constantly looking to the past instead of moving forwards. Denial itself can also drastically alter a person’s mannerisms, making them callous to others. The episode shows this gradual process as the man spirals downwards.

Other notes

• “The One” could be considered a reversal of “Be Right Back”; but rather than doing something out of grief and missing a lover, the man creates the clone purely out of selfish desire.

• The episode would be based in a more realistic setting, rather than the hyper-future portrayed in “Nosedive” and “Fifteen Million Merits”.

• When looking at speculative fiction, there is already word of so-called “sex robots” being produced to pleasure individuals. Would loneliness cause individuals to take even more drastic measures when they suffer rejection? The entrance of cloning into the proceedings questions this.