User Reviews

Wow, not a lot of love on this board for 'USS Callister'. I thought it was a blast right out of the box, knowing that the opening sequence was some sort of spoof that was going to be carried out through the rest of the story. As a fan of the original 'Star Trek' series, I enjoyed the characters and the similarities they shared with their Enterprise counterparts from the 1960's, especially actress Michaela Coel's resemblance to Nichelle Nichol's Uhura. The distracting thing though, was Robert Daly's (Jesse Plemons) resemblance to Matt Damon. That's who I kept thinking whenever he came on screen. The story itself you could poke holes through left and right. It doesn't make sense to me that a digital clone of someone would have that person's memories or share the same hang-ups their human counterparts would have. In service to the story though, this was an entertaining exercise that deviated from the often bleak, dystopian world that makes up much of 'Black Mirror'. The writers even managed to insert some sci-fi gobbledy-gook that I enjoy so much, such as when Captain Daly ordered the Callister into that asteroid gas cluster charged with ionized pyron particles, thereby increasing the ship's photon intensity. Too bad about the plasmorthian crystal though, they never did manage to get hold of it.

The first episode of Black Mirror's fourth season, entitled USS Callister is one I was extremely excited to see; I was immensely curious as to how Charlie Brooker would incorporate advanced technology into a seemingly space centric episode. Upon finishing the 76 minute episode, I was very pleased to see Brooker taking a leap with this episode. It's definitely the most cinematic episode of Black Mirror's run so far; and the story it has to tell - and the questions it asks - is one I was not expecting to see.

The episode centres on Robert Daley, a reserved and bullied CTO and an advanced gaming company; he's the butt of all jokes, targeted by his superior. So to cope, he retreats to a fantasy world: an in-depth simulation of his favourite TV series, 'Space Fleet' where is the captain of his own ship - with the company members he feel have mistreated him as his crew for him to rule over. Complication comes in the employment of perky Nanette Cole, a great admirer of Daley's work; upon Daley's insertion of her consciousness into the game - after she rejected his attraction - she decides to aid the crew members in fighting back against him to escape.

One of the questions this episode asked that I found so thought-provoking is this: is Daley the villain? Come the episodes end, I found myself conflicted on the topic of Daley's real life fate. In his defense, he's a man slighted by most he encounters at the company he has built - in particular his superior, who's taken the attention for the game that truly Daley deserves. However, does that defend his actions? This is one of the episodes strongest points; as Daley is left trapped in the game - and as a result left in a coma like state in real life - I found myself thinking that it all didn't seem fair.

From a technical stand-point, aforementioned this episode is the most cinematic of Black Mirror's run. The 'Star-Trek' inspired look of the game is great fun, and aids in the many comical scenes this episode includes. The performances to are great; Jesse Plemons, Jimmi Simpson, Michaela Coel and Cristin Militia the definite stand-outs here. And the writing, especially the ending, left a lot up for interpretation - classic Black Mirror.

Overall, USS Callister is a grand start to Black Mirror's fourth season. With a thought-provoking moral dilemma, light-hearted humour and a nice dose of Black Mirror's token darkness, USS Callister starts the season on a high.

The technician Nanette Cole arrives at the Callister Company to work with the lonely and shy nerd Robert Daly that she worships, who is the owner with his partner Walton. They are working in the update of the game Infinity created by Daly that must be released before Christmas. Soon Nanette learns that Daly is a patsy guy and the coworkers mock him. When Robert overhears her conversation with a colleague, he catches a cup of coffee in her garbage and brings home. Nanette awakes at an Enterprise-like spaceship called USS Callister and learns that her colleagues and she are crewmembers and Robert Daly is the fearless captain of the ship. Further, he controls their lives with infinity power and they shall obey him to avoid tragic consequences. What will Nanette and her friends do?

"USS Callister" is a big joke with the use of technology and Star Trek. The creative plot is well-written and well-resolved, with an optimistic conclusion for the USS Callister crew. It is also interesting to see the dark side of a human brain since Robert Daly has two opposite personalities that uses his knowledge to live a totally different life at home. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Great Concept, familiar and charismatic top-tier actors, improved visual quality and use of CGI, but overall it was poorly executed due to it's plotholes that get progressively worse as this episode approaches it's conclusion. Nonetheless a decent way to start off this season.

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It starts off really interesting and you get a glimpse of the intriguing possibilities after the basis of this futuristic world scenario are explained in it's First out of Three Acts.

Only a few minor flaws for the First Act, which derive from small plot holes that can be easily ignored and looked over for the sake of the scenario. Stealing someone's DNA and creating a digital clone version of them, then merging their digital clones in a video-game world/simulation, doesn't mean also getting their Memories & Personalities copied as well. Especially the memories up until the point the DNA detaches the body, and gets stuck onto a foreign object, that is to be later retrieved and used to clone someone...

Up until the Second Act, you soon realize, the player, aka Game Developer is the God of his game/universe whenever he connects himself in it, unlike the Digital Clones that are existing and constantly living in it this online, cloud powered universe. He can control and do pretty much whatever he wants in it. He can make someone's eyes/nose/mouth disappear just by thinking about it. He is invincible and he has enough strength to lift up someone by the throat and have them choke, effortlessly. He can turn people into ugly alien spiders out of spite etc. Imagine Darth Vader force Choking someone with his mind, you get the point.

Then on the 3rd act, for some unknown reason, the player/developer/GOD stops using his Godlike capabilities and gets tricked inside his own universe... Despite that not being the case earlier on, the player/GOD cannot/will not do anything godlike in his own universe in this act, unless he uses a made-up, in-game phone-like gadget... He ends up having his gadget stolen by the digital clones so for some reason he loses all of his in-game privelleges? And get this...apparently, since he lost that in-game communication gadget, he cannot even give a command to his real-life computer to pause or exit the game... Then the episode ends uneventfully with his physical lonely self, rotting away in his home, sitting motionless in his real-life desk chair... because he can't unplug himself from this futuristic gaming device and exit the game...

Silly Things like that, along with the whole concept of this game developer being some super introvert Genius, that can program his own alternative universes, but cannot program a better way to exit his game... They don't make a whole lot of sense for someone of his intellect to get screwed over by them or because this futuristic gaming device couldn't possibly have a fail-safe option to allow people to unplug and stop playing the game at will....

Not even EA could mess up their games to the point where they forget to add an "exit game" option, an option so vital that can result in their customers getting stuck in the game and dying in real-life...

Season 4 of "Black Mirror" starts off with this episode, which seems to be a spiritual sister of sorts to the heralded and acclaimed "San Junipero" episode from season 3.

Incorporating a lot of humor into it's dark subject matter, "USS Callister" focuses on a man who is the CTO of a gaming company. A quiet nerd type, he's generally ignored or maligned by coworkers even though he is essentially the top of the food chain at his company. He has created a virtual reality game in which one is completely immersed in a space travel galaxy.

To compensate for this indignity at work, he has created a mod for the game that turns it into a simulation of his favorite classic sci-fi TV show (essentially a parody of classic Star Trek.) He has found a way to take the DNA of unwitting real life people - in this case the coworkers he has felt slighted by - and put them into the game as avatars. He gets this DNA from coffee cups around the office, or similar sources.

When a new, attractive young woman begins interning at the office, the two seem to spark a connection. This is quickly thwarted when another co-worker warns her away from him. Angry at this rejection, he quickly swipes her DNA and puts her into the game too.

The catch? All of these avatars in the game are completely self-aware. They know who they were out in the real world and retain those complete personalities, and they know they are digital copies of themselves. Yet they seem to retain emotion, feel pain, and are essentially slaves to this role playing scenario. If they don't cooperate? Their captor, when he himself is present in the game, will psychologically and physically torture them into submission.

The result is our newcomer guiding her in-game "crew" into a plan to delete themselves completely from the game, a better option than being held captive to the whimsy of the man who brought them there. It's a compelling idea, because in reality what we're watching is nothing more than raw data simulating real people, but we feel for these digital copies as they negotiate their way through a hostage situation.

The "Black Mirror" spin on this is that we're forced to question whether or not our CTO is, in fact, a bad guy. After all, although he has stolen the DNA that allowed him to create these digital copies in his fantasy universe, the copies are, in fact, not real people. By using them to work out his anger and frustrations, isn't he really allowing himself to be a healthier emotional person in the real world?

In the end he is played as the villain and our digital heroes the victims, but though he may seem like the real creep, his actions were truly reactions to the way the very real people in his workplace were cruel to him... so who's the bad guy?

"USS Callister" really starts off season 4 of "Black Mirror" with a phenomenal moral dilemma. The entire cast is superb in their roles, notably Michaela Coel as Shania, the co-worker whose only real offense was rejecting her boss' romantic interest. Set up to seem like a superficial bitch in the real world, her digital version proves that human beings (and their copies I suppose) have far more layers than anyone gives them credit, and Coel manages to take something that could have been trite and make it both tangibly deep and horrific as it unfolds.

Here's hoping "Black Mirror" continues to push these boundaries!

This episode is so much different from your average Black Mirror episode. Much more light hearted than usual. Some complained about its form in their reviews but I didn't have problems with it since the world of USS Callister is a virtual one and the real world is still very much Black Mirror. I always appreciate directors and writers to try something different, regardless the outcome.

Despite the humor and production values I did got annoyed by a few really big writing issues though.

The first one is that in the episode people's DNA is used as a source to create a virtual character with memory and feelings. That is by far not enough information! DNA is 'just' people's building blocks. It doesn't hold up in science fiction, especially 'smart' sci-fi like Black Mirror.

This is even made worse by the fact that DNA needs to be destroyed in order to avoid characters being re-spawned into the virtual world. I would have accepted some sort of weird device secretly 'cloning' an employee at Callister Inc (with some risk to the CTO of being exposed while doing this) and having the protagonist destroying the 'hard copy'.... but not this!

There are some other issues... Why would a software update result in a worm hole being generated in the virtual world? That feels like a typical thing for a writer to do who doesn't know much about software. An update like that wouldn't be visible from the perspective of a user... maybe, just maybe there would be glitches that could be exposed by the users. Let alone the weird idea of flying a ship into a 'patch wormhole'. What is that exactly about?

I also didn't get why the protagonist couldn't 'exit game' despite ending up in a void. Again, this is due a lack of understanding by the writer how software works. 'Exit game' is a command taking place on an operating system level, not an application level. The application might be frozen or rendering a void world, the operating system that runs the application is still very much active. That stuff matters! Especially to this show's audience.

After seeing 'White Christmas' (which provides more emotional impact with fewer 'tricks') this episode is disappointing, despite its best intentions, good acting and great art direction.

With overtones of 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream' by Harlan Ellison this was a superbly written - produced and acted episode.

Whereas in Ellison's apocalyptic masterpiece a computer called the shots - here it was a human although it was hard to tell the difference.

So what happens when you're a bit of a bullied geek in the real World? Well you create your own Universe where you're in total command and have God like powers to bully digital versions of chosen employees from your company.

Perhaps we've all imagined ourselves in an alternative World - free to do as we please - well almost for in this World the poor captives had been given the same tools as Action Man to procreate - a good example of how to make things that can't proceed smoothly.

Could it ever happen? Well media giants are collecting more and more data about us - and already you can leave a digital version of yourself - but can a digital version achieve consciousness? Well we'd certainly would be going to where no one has gone before - and with a limitless digital galaxy to explore I'm sure our digital selves would have a whole lot of fun.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this episode, and the ensemble cast was great! Jesse Plemons, in particular, was incredible. The episode breaks new ground, with tone and style we haven't seen from Black Mirror. A truly enjoyable episode, but I have unanswered questions.

Beyond the DNA not containing memories, which I'm willing to look past, I'm still a bit confused.

They weren't sure what was going to happen if they flew into the update wormhole, so why didn't they get the real blackmailed Nanette to do more? It worked out in the end, but it seemed like a decision that the characters wouldn't have made unless they were positive it was going to pan out. Why not have some sort of contingency? It just felt odd that she didn't do more. Made sense for the plot, but didn't make sense to me logically.

What about all the other people cloned into the game, like the bad guy and that monster on the planet? Happy ending for the main cast we spent most of the time with, but did I miss a line that explained what happened to those guys? It just seemed like a loose end.

Oh, and the self-sacrifice of Jimmi Simpson's character. So there was a place on the ship he could go to kill himself? I thought Daly was the only one who could kill them. Why didn't they try to kill themselves earlier? Again, maybe I missed a line of dialogue?

Those were the major questions I had after the credits started rolling, but I still really enjoyed the episode.

Is intention the same as carrying out the act? If so, then punishing the frustrated bullied person is justified. Daly, like many individuals out there, has trouble fitting in the real world and carries out revenge in the evenings, in his mind. The next day, he goes back to work and gets picked on, again and again. I liked this episode until it came to that ending.

This episode is a mix of Black Mirror's "White Christmas" and, ironically enough, two Star Trek episodes - the Next Generation episode "Hollow Pursuits" (in which a socially awkward crew member who struggles to fit in on the real Enterprise creates a fantasy world on the holodeck and fills it with copies of the crew who adore and look up to him) and the Voyager episode "The Thaw" (in which a small number of people are trapped and abused in a nightmarish virtual reality run by an omnipotent AI who has the power to physically transform them or kill them). The idea of digitally cloning someone from their DNA, including their entire memories and consciousness, isn't one of Black Mirror's strongest concepts - it's "DNA is magic" anti-science of the kind that was the undoing of several Voyager and Enterprise episodes. (Plus why would the physical DNA need to be kept when it's already been digitalized?)

The real theme of this episode is "What if the 'cookie' digital-twin technology from White Christmas got into the hands of a Wolfgang Priklopil-type character?" But USS Callister has no interest in the broader societal ramifications and ethical issues of this question - we spend very little time in the real world and learn next to nothing about the society the episode is taking place in - it's just a hostage/adventure horror-thriller with a Trek visual twist. To its detriment, unlike Hollow Pursuits and The Thaw, USS Callister never makes the effort to get inside the central figure's head, even though that's where we spend the majority of the episode. The fun side of the episode as a hammy Star Trek parody - and there are plenty of jokes here - is a mismatch with the abduction/torture side; you can't enjoy the humor because the situation it's taking place in is so horrifying. Rather than black humor that the characters use to help them cope with the situation (which could have worked), it's "lol Star Trek is corny" humor, which feels out of place given the gravitas of events.

This is the first Black Mirror episode that I felt was conservative and sanitized. Sanitized in the sense that a) someone doing what Daly was doing, having gone to the trouble of digitally abducting people, castrating the men and even murdering a child - would almost certainly have sexually exploited the women; indeed, that would likely have been his prime motivation in creating a simulation with copies of his female colleagues. I get that they were referencing Star Trek's rather asexual sensibility (implying Daly too was a somewhat asexual figure), but it didn't feel credible - Black Mirror has never shied away from grim realism in the past, and someone as malevolent, unscrupulous and entitled as Daly would likely also have felt entitled to the women's bodies. (Even the far less sinister Barclay in Hollow Pursuits reimagined Troi as a "love goddess".) b) The sex and violence is also sanitized - when the characters browse Cole's archive of explicit naked photos, the episode doesn't even dare show breasts, nor more graphic violence when Walton is burnt. As well as belying its harrowing premise with a sanitized treatment, the episode is also conservative in the sense that its politics are unchallengingly right-on - nothing is really examined, probed, or challenged here, save for some lazy stabs at toxic male gamers (a la #gamergate) that have a very recycled and even smug feel to them, and there's not much theme-wise to think about afterwards. The best aspect of the episode is the fact the characters work together in the Trekkian spirit to get out of their predicament. In terms of the characterization, while the performances are fine, all the characters are regrettably one-dimensional - we don't get to know anybody enough, even Cole, the episode's hero. While the simulated Walton has the potential to serve as a positive white male role model and example of fatherhood in contrast to Daly's toxic masculinity, the fact the real-world Walton acts so obnoxiously and exploitatively undermines this.

How did Cole get into Daly's apartment? Why was her message to herself not more specific? Why did no-one go to the police? Why would a patch manifest as a wormhole? Why would the mod be left running when the player was offline, allowing the characters to plot their escape? Wouldn't a popular commercial gaming system have safeguards to prevent people from dying while using it, like Daly does in the overly neat ending? How come they could use the console on the bridge to send an invite, and give specific commands (beam up the tricorder, fly towards the wormhole etc.) when earlier the buttons were just dummies, and pressing "any button" simply carried out the story's (or Daly's) predetermined command? After the ship leaves the mod, why doesn't "Gillian from Marketing" reappear on the bridge when Shania and the Khan guy do? So many questions. And at the end, they're still stuck in a video game forever. (Except unlike in San Junipero, they didn't choose to be.)

I'm not gonna say the episode misunderstands Star Trek, because that's not the key problem; the key problem is that it misunderstands the reason Star Trek appeals to smart outsiders/geeks/socially awkward people. Because it shows - through characters like Spock, Data, Odo, the Doc, as well as the many ethnic minority and alien characters - a diverse future world where you can be different and still belong, be accepted and be respected, even if you aren't in the present day. When it comes to the episode's treatment of Daly, there's a difference between understanding and sympathizing with a character that's totally lost here. A piece of drama should be interested in understanding what makes its villain tick without necessarily sympathizing with them - it's part of what makes a good villain or just a good character. No-one tries to get into Daly's head; this episode desperately needed some smart, psychologically-driven dialog scenes like those in The Thaw, when Janeway muses on the nature of fear and says "You want this to end as much as we do" to the demonic AI controlling the simulation. TNG's Hollow Pursuits, meanwhile, is both understanding and sympathetic towards Barclay, while also making very clear that what he's doing is wrong and showing how the other characters are impacted by it.

Using the stereotype of a predator as a socially awkward loner is also disappointing writing. As the revelations of recent years attest, predators and abusers are often not awkward loners but highly charismatic individuals who hide in plain sight - think Louis CK, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Jimmy Savile, or a funny and likable teacher I had as a kid who turned out to be abusing another pupil. Instead, the depiction in this episode is more likely to stigmatize autistic men (who already struggle with stigmatization) and Star Trek fans, and even tarnish perceptions of Star Trek itself. It's depictions like this episode that lead to deaths like that of Bijan Ebrahimi, a shy, lonely, single middle-aged disabled man in the UK who was beaten to death by his neighbors because they mistakenly thought he was a pedophile.

Sending out the message "Star Trek is corny and Trek fans are socially awkward white men lol" is lazy (especially for Black Mirror). Sending out the message "Star Trek is corny and Trek fans are socially awkward white men with no possibility of redemption" is reprehensible. Certain lines and scenes feel like they yearn to generate Buzzfeed articles. USS Callister could've been a really good exploration of how some men really do live lonely lives and use virtual reality as an escape, and how and why that happens, as well as a powerful discourse on women's experiences of surviving and fighting back against disturbed predatory men. But it chooses to forego any examination of societal themes in favor of mediocre thrills and gags, glib answers and easy point-scoring. Black Mirror's weaker episodes in the past have at least felt challenging and like they had something to say, thoughts on their mind, as well as having well-developed characters. This is the first episode of Black Mirror that feels unchallenging and with poor characterization.