Demon 79 story
A title card introduces the episode as a Red Mirror film. In 1979, Nida works at a department store. People at her job, the National Front, and the Conservative politician Michael Smart make it clear she is not welcome in England. She discovers a talisman that unleashes a demon, Gaap, on his first assignment. With the appearance of Boney M.'s Bobby Farrell, Gaap tells Nida she must kill three people in as many days to stop the world ending. Nida kills a passerby who molests his daughter. A man who murdered his wife invites Nida to his house for sex; she kills him and his brother, who arrives as she is leaving. The murderer's death is discounted, so one killing remains: Nida targets Smart, who is seen in a premonition to become Prime Minister with an ultra-nationalist agenda. She runs him off the road but is apprehended by a police officer before his death. At midnight, with Nida in the interrogation room, nuclear warfare begins. Nida joins Gaap, who is outcast by the demons, in an eternal void. Directed by: Toby Haynes. Story by: Charlie Brooker & Bisha K. Ali.
20 total · 2 choice · 10 major · 8 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| compromising one's ethical principles vs. great need | choice | The perpetual dilemma illustrated was whether Nida should kill various, mostly wicked, people in order to prevent the end of the world the demon Gaap claimed would happen otherwise. |
| what if the fate of the world was in my hands | choice | The demon Gaap declared that the end of the world would take place in three days, should Nida fail to ritually sacrifice three people within that time frame. |
| demon | major | The demon Gaap of Misophaes appeared and took the form of a gaudily dressed character from the music group Boney M. |
| hallucination of a non-existing person | major | The viewer is purposely left wondering whether the demon Gaap might be a figment of Nida's over-active imagination until the very end when it became apparent that Gaap was real. |
| human sacrifice | major | It fell on Nida to murder three people to prevent the world ending in a nuclear holocaust. The killings were explicitly characterized as human sacrifices in the story. |
| killing to survive | major | The perpetual dilemma illustrated was whether Nida should kill various, mostly wicked, people in order to prevent the end of the world the demon Gaap claimed would happen otherwise. |
| murder | major | Nida went on a killing spree, convinced that the sacrifice of three evildoers would stave off the end of the world. |
| nuclear holocaust | major | The story culminated with Nida failing to fulfill her requirement of sacrificing three people, and therefore the world ended in a nuclear conflagration. |
| racism in society | major | Nida had several encounters with covert racism. For example, her white British coworker and, likewise, her white British boss inconvenienced her at work because of ethnic food she ate. The conclusion of the story hinged on her trying to save the world by assassinating a white-supremacist politician who was destined to become a Hitler-like figure in history. |
| the religious end of the world | major | The demon Gaap declared that the Christian End of The World would take place within three days, should Nida fail to commit a murder a day for that very duration. |