Spoiler alert: this article digs deeply into “Bête Noire,” an episode of season 7 (the most recent season as of this writing) of Black Mirror.

Black Mirror is a fun, clever take on the sci-fi/horror anthology show, à la The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. It can be pretty heavy. My wife and I typically have to watch it slowly…one episode every so often…never binge-watched. But we enjoy it nonetheless.

Sadly, the recent season 7 was far from my favorite. In fact, with one exception I’d say that every episode fell far short of my expectations. To be sure, there was some fun in there, some good ideas, and even one true gem of an episode: the magnificent and touching “Eulogy,” starring Paul Giamatti.

But it felt to me as if most of the episodes lacked a certain polish, as if each had been hurried into production without that last pass which might have made a mediocre idea good, or a good idea great.

Today I’m going to dig into one of those episodes, “Bête Noire,” in order to demonstrate how to look at and think about a story’s spine.

In Story, Robert McKee defines the spine as:

…the deep desire in and effort by the protagonist to restore the balance of life. It’s the primary unifying force that holds all other story elements together. For no matter what happens on the surface of the story, each scene, image, and word is ultimately an aspect of the Spine, relating, casually, causally, or thematically, to the core of desire and action.

Put more simply, the spine is the main set of events that advance the plot in support of both character and theme.

My intent is not to denigrate any creator fortunate and talented enough to have their work seen — hopefully appreciated — by way more people than anything I’ve ever done. I apologize in advance if you liked this episode…even more so if you were involved in creating it. (Seriously, Charlie Booker himself wrote this script, and I’m sure he’s forgotten more about storytelling than I’ll ever know.) This story isn’t bad, but I do think it’s weak and I hope it might be instructive to explain why I say that and how I’d think about strengthening its spine.

The point I want to make is about how stories are structured and how this story could have benefitted from a little extra consideration of its spine. Perhaps it might give you some ideas to improve your own story.

Here, briefly, is the story of “Bête Noire” as it appeared on screen.

“Bête Noire” the story

Maria (Siena Kelly) develops candy for a chocolate company. During a focus group trial of one of her new recipes, Verity (Rose McEwen) shows up late, but somehow the group is able to accommodate her. Rose and Verity knew each other years ago at school, and Maria tells her boyfriend that she always found Verity “strange” and a “computer nerd.” We also learn that back at school Maria had started a vicious rumor about Verity.

Very quickly, strange things begin to happen. The group doesn’t like Maria’s new candy, but when Verity says it’s good, the group agrees with her. Verity gets a job at the company even though there are no positions available. Even more troubling, small but crucial details begin to change inexplicably: the ingredients in Maria’s candies, important instructions in emails, even the details of pieces of clothing. Even worse, others around Maria seem to remember the past differently, forcing her to begin questioning her own mental state. Things come to a head as Verity, who has a nut allergy, drinks an entire carton of almond milk and blames Maria for it. Even the security camera footage agrees with Verity’s version of events. A Google search reveals that nut allergies aren’t even a thing! Maria’s confidence in her own sanity rapidly deteriorates.

Fired for her erratic behavior, Maria is nevertheless determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. Suspecting that a pendant Verity wears allows her to alter reality, she breaks into Verity’s (strangely palatial) home, discovering a powerful computer system. She steals one of the pendants. But Verity discovers her and reveals that the pendant is only a remote control, activated by her thumbprint. Her computer system allows her to jump into any possible reality and she’s been using it and the pendant to drive Maria insane as revenge for her vicious behavior back at school.

In a final struggle, Verity is shot, Maria uses the corpse’s thumbprint to alter reality so that the pendant obeys her commands, and finally — based on an idea Verity mentioned moments before — shifts to a reality where she becomes Empress of the Universe.

My analysis: broken spine

There’s a lot to like here, but also — in my view — some key missed opportunities.

This story rests on three core pillars:

1. Our protagonist works as a high-flying confection-maker.
2. An old classmate, our antagonist, reappears out of the past, a person with the power to change reality by speaking into a more-or-less “magic” pendant.
3. We learn that the antagonist wants revenge for unkind words which the protagonist uttered years ago.

Two of these three pillars make a lot of sense together.

Pillar three is something we’ve all experienced: our reality gets changed by someone else’s words. Often these words are unkind, and we can all imagine (and usually recall) the anger and frustration of having our reality harmfully altered by a bully, a parent, a boss, a friend. We may even harbor fantasies of redressing that past crime.

Pillar two is a science-fiction premise which, like much good sci-fi, takes a recognizable sin or desire and expresses it literally, the sin made manifest. Much as Maria changed Verity’s world with her scandalous rumor, Verity can now change reality by speaking into her pendant. These two pillars are, I would say, cleverly balanced thematic ideas.

But what of pillar one? Seriously, how on God’s green earth does being a confection-maker connect to the core theme of this story? We open with a focus group, suggesting that maybe this is a story about people’s opinions (an idea which would have rhymed much better with the season 3 opener, “Nosedive“). I guess there’s some vague connection to opinions as people’s feeling about Maria begin to deteriorate, but that’s not what the story is about.

No, this is a story about how words create reality. As such, I contend that there’s something fundamentally broken in the story’s implementation, and this makes the narrative ultimately far less effective than it could have been.

There’s also a weird asymmetry problem. Verity has invented a universe-defying magic machine so powerful it essentially makes her a god. Maria is a successful candy-maker. I like a David and Goliath story, sure, but if we’re going to put a human up against a god, let’s at least amp up the stakes on the human side of the equation. One alternative might be to really put Maria at the bottom rung of society. One can make a thematic point by mitigating a difference or exacerbating it, but Maria’s role makes her neither one thing nor the other.

And indeed the asymmetry doesn’t end with the two characters. There’s also asymmetry between the sin and the consequence. The premise here is that Verity created a universe-altering supermachine, and the best thing she can think to do with it is to take revenge on a girl who was mean to her when they were kids? I mean, yes, it’s possible within the story’s world, but it feels indescribably improbable.

Finally, I have a big problem with the ending. Maria ends up as Empress of the Universe. Fine, I guess, but she only decides on this because she heard Verity mention moments before that she’d tried that reality herself: I recall nothing in the preceding story which suggests that Maria actually aspires to great power. Win, lose, or draw, your protagonist’s endpoint should be a reflection of their character, their desires, goals, and fears.

Straightening the story’s spine

In Save the Cat, Blake Snyder talks about the importance of straightening a story’s spine. This means figuring out what the story is truly about and then aligning the elements to make the story about that thing. Often in a story’s creation, the writer has a lot of ideas and they don’t all perfectly align with a fundamental theme. Quite often, we as writers are too close to our creation to really see what’s relevant and what’s not.

I think that happened here.

In the case of “Bête Noire,” the story is very much about the power of words to change reality. As such, surely the logical protagonist should be someone whose words do exactly that, someone whose words influence reality. So who in our society uses words this way? A few which come to mind…

• Social media influencers
• Lawyers
• Judges
• Politicians
• Critics
• Journalists
• Authors

I’m sure there are others, but the point is that the second you go down this path, you very quickly see how to straighten the spine of this story. The protagonist must be someone who uses words to change reality. Perhaps they’ve used this power well, perhaps badly (and this being Black Mirror we can assume the latter), but the thematic presence of their occupation clearly matters if the overall effect is to land with full force. Lacking that dimension, the spine isn’t straight and the story impacts with a dull thud.

So let’s try the story again, this time with Maria as a politician…and not just any politician but a highly successful one.

I call this version “Sticks and Stones.”

(As a side note, I really like the idea of Maria as a social media influencer…especially when the series is so much about our obsession with screens…but my ideas around it didn’t feel as strong as what I have below.)

“Sticks and Stones” the story

Maria is prime minister of the UK, and her government is slashing programs. Following a combative press conference in which she announces draconian homeless benefits cuts, James, her private secretary informs her that she has a meeting with Verity Greene who Maria recalls, none too fondly, from school: Verity was “weird” and “a computer nerd.” Maria doesn’t remember the meeting being on her agenda, but dismisses this owing to her busy schedule. Verity runs a quantum research lab whose funding has been cut by Maria’s government. She implores Maria to restore the program. At home Maria tells her husband that she took some satisfaction both in turning down Verity’s request and in putting the awkward, still nerdish girl in her place; it reminds her of a time in school when she had had to do something similar with Verity.

Then strange things begin to happen. Little things at first: instructions Maria gives her ministers and civil service workers have slight but significant errors. Verity is bizarrely hired as a maid at Number 10. Maria has her removed, but day after day she shows up, working in different capacities, each time a little higher up on the food chain. Recordings, interviews, even trusted colleagues’ memories begin to differ from what Maria knows she did or said. She begins to doubt her own sanity, but reasons that all of this somehow points to Verity. She investigates, learning that Verity’s lab was researching ways to alter the very fabric of reality. To her husband, Maria confesses that she promoted a salacious rumor about Verity back at school. The matter comes to a head during Prime Minister’s Question Time when Maria claims that a Russian military operation poses a grave threat to the whole of Europe. The opposition leader derides her, shouting “What is Russia?!” In the press, Maria is mocked as an unhinged maniac imagining an enemy no one has ever heard of.

Isolated in her office at Number 10, contemplating resignation or even suicide, Maria watches, aghast, as Verity enters, casually informing her of her day’s schedule, for Verity is now her private secretary, having replaced James. Maria has suspected that Verity’s pendant is somehow connected to her reality-bending ability and tries to use it, but Verity laughs, telling her that it’s keyed to her own fingerprint, that she’d had enough of Maria ruining her life…as she’d done back at school…as she’d done with her life’s work by defunding her lab. Maria calls her guards to remove Verity, but Verity simply reality bends herself to be prime minister, and it is Maria who’s ushered out.

In a final struggle, Maria grabs a gun, shooting and killing Verity. As the guards threaten to shoot her, Maria uses the corpse’s thumbprint to alter reality so that the pendant obeys her commands and shouts “I wish none of this had ever happened!” The pendant vanishes, Maria has a momentary glimpse of herself and Verity back at school, then finds herself on the street, homeless. In a dumpster, she sees a newspaper. The headline shows James, now prime minister, announcing austerity cuts, stripping homeless people of all rights.

Verity happens by, spotting Maria on the street. Recognizing her, Verity offers to take Maria in. “You were always so kind to me.” she says.

Analysis of the revision: spine straightened

I would argue that this version of the story is inherently stronger than the version aired. That’s a bold claim. Of course one might implement either version better or worse, depending on the quality of dialog, research, pacing, cinematography, acting, editing, etc. But the reason I’d say that my version has that inherent strength is that the story elements form a coherent vision, an alignment of narrative elements to support a thematic idea.

The spine is straight.

Maria is a politician, a person whose occupation explicitly uses words to influence reality. And we open with exactly that: her words disenfranchising a whole population, a point we’ll use to bookend the story.

This version resolves both asymmetry problems.

With regard to the asymmetry of protagonist vs. antagonist, making Maria prime minister puts her at the apex of her world. She may or may not be equal to taking on a goddess, but if any human could, it’d be her.

In terms of the asymmetry of the sin vs. the consequence, we see that Maria hasn’t grown or changed since school. She’s still using her power to punish those below her in the social order, including the homeless, including Verity. Verity’s motivation to use her power against Maria makes a lot more sense since she feels actively attacked by the prime minister.

We have ample opportunity to talk about and use words in ways that play to the theme. Granted, many of these are functionally identical to what occurred in the original version, but in the context of a prime minister, these “misunderstandings” take on added weight.

There’s a fun beat I imagine in the climactic confrontation in which Maria asks Verity why she doesn’t simply change what happened all those years ago. Why not go to a reality where Maria never said those awful words? Verity responds that those words inspired her to create her machine. She can’t go back and make that change; doing so would erase the creation of the machine itself. Not only does this motivate Maria’s final action, it acknowledges the ironic power of Maria’s words: reality bends in ways that both benefit and harm Verity.

The resolution aligns with the core theme, channelling Maria’s desires and fears. This woman craves power, has scrabbled to the very pinnacle of success in her world, and now uses that power to crush those below her. In essence, she’s still that mean girl from school. If Verity tells her in the final confrontation “I’ve had power you could barely dream of. I’ve been prime minister, I’ve been dictator, I’ve been Empress of the Universe!” imagine how that would resonate with this power-obsessed version of Maria. And then, ending as a homeless person where every vestige of power is stripped away, imagine how that would hurt. At the conclusion of “Sticks and Stones,” when Verity encounters Maria, I picture the one-time prime minister babbling, “No, I didn’t mean it! Make me empress. Make me empress of the universe!”

Finally, the poetic twist: Verity finds Maria in this wretched state and rescues her. The circle is now complete, for if unkind words can create a reality where Maria and Verity nearly destroy one another, then maybe, just maybe, kindness can have the opposite effect.

Spine tingles

Again, all respect to the creators of this show and episode. Creating any good entertainment is hard, and I can only imagine the pressure of continually living up to expectations for a show as generally well-respected as Black Mirror. The effort here is to point out what I perceive as a weakness so that others might learn from it.

So what do you think? Did you like the original version or my revision? And why? Maybe I missed something. If Maria as a candy-maker makes more sense to you — or if you like my approach better — tell me about it in the comments.

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