USS Callister
"USS Callister" is the first episode of the fourth series of the anthology series Black Mirror. Written by series creator Charlie Brooker and William Bridges and directed by Toby Haynes, it first aired on Netflix, along with the rest of season four, on 29 December 2017.
The episode follows Robert Daly, a reclusive but gifted programmer and co-founder of a popular immersive virtual reality-based massively multiplayer online game who is bitter over the lack of recognition of his position from his coworkers. He takes out his frustrations by simulating a Star Trek–like space adventure within the game, using his co-workers' DNA to create sapient digital clones of them. Acting as the captain of the USS Callister starship, Daly is able to order his co-workers around, bend them to his will, and mistreat them if they get out of line. When Daly brings newly hired Nanette Cole into his game, she encourages the other clones to revolt against Daly.
In contrast to most Black Mirror episodes, "USS Callister" contains overt comedy, and it has many special effects. As a fan of Star Trek, Bridges was keen to introduce many details from the show into "USS Callister", though the episode was conceived mostly with The Twilight Zones 1961 episode "It's a Good Life" and the Viz character Playtime Fontayne in mind. The episode's reception was overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the allusions to Star Trek, the acting, and the cinematography. Some critics saw the episode as being about male abuse of authority, and compared Daly to contemporary events surrounding internet bullies and sexual abuse committed by Harvey Weinstein. In 2018, the episode won four Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Television Movie and Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special, and was nominated for three other Emmy Awards. A sequel episode, titled "USS Callister: Into Infinity", was released as part of the seventh series of Black Mirror, making it the only episode to receive a sequel.
Plot
Aboard the spaceship USS Callister, Captain Robert Daly and his crew destroy their arch-enemy Valdack's ship, but he escapes. The crew celebrates, with Daly kissing both female crewmates.The real-life version of Daly is CTO at Callister Inc. The company was co-founded by Daly and James Walton, the company's CEO, which produces the immersive virtual reality-based massively multiplayer online game Infinity, in which users control a starship in a simulated reality. Daly is treated poorly by his fellow employees, who appear identical to Captain Daly's crewmates.
New programmer Nanette Cole praises Daly's work on Infinity, but the more assertive Walton interrupts to show her around the office. When Daly returns home, he opens a development build of Infinity which is modded to resemble his favourite television show Space Fleet. As Captain Daly, he berates the crewmates, strangling a subservient "Lieutenant" Walton.
After employee Shania Lowry warns Nanette to beware of Daly, he takes a discarded coffee cup of Nanette's and uses her DNA to replicate her consciousness within his development build. As "Lieutenant Cole", Nanette finds herself aboard the USS Callister, where "Lieutenant" Lowry explains that they are digital clones of Callister Inc. staff members. Confused and distraught, Nanette attempts to escape the ship but is teleported back to the bridge. She refuses to obey Daly's commands, so he removes her facial features, suffocating her, until she relents.
The crew embark on a mission in which they apprehend Valdack but spare his life. After Daly leaves, Nanette finds a way to send a game invitation containing a message for help to the real-world Nanette. When the real-world Nanette asks the real-world Daly about the message, he dismisses it as spam. Daly enters the game to interrogate his crew and transforms Lowry into a monster when she defends Nanette. Once Daly departs, Nanette identifies a distant wormhole as an uplink to Infinitys next update; she surmises that by flying into the wormhole, they will be deleted and therefore die. Walton is very hesitant to help; he explains that Daly has previously recreated his son Tommy within the game, throwing him out of an airlock to punish Walton. He also points out that since Daly still has all their DNA, he can just recreate them and punish them further. Nanette promises the crew that they will recover the lollipop containing Tommy's DNA.
When Daly returns, Nanette persuades him to take her on a mission to Skillane IV alone. She strips to her bathing suit and runs into a nearby lake, enticing a reluctant Daly to swim with her. He leaves behind the omnicorder, which allows him to control the game, on the shore. The crew teleports the omnicorder onto their ship and uses it to access sexually explicit images of Nanette on her PhotoCloud account. They use those photos to blackmail the real-life Nanette into ordering a pizza at Daly's apartment and stealing the DNA samples while he answers the door. The cloned crew then teleport digital Nanette onto the ship.
As Daly resumes play, he discovers the crew are escaping. He commandeers a crashed spaceship to pursue them through an asteroid belt. The Callister collides with an asteroid; Walton repairs the thrusters manually, incinerating himself, and the ship accelerates into the wormhole. The firewall detects Daly's modded build and locks his controls, rendering him physically unable to exit the game as it is deleted around him. In the real world, Daly is left sitting motionless, implying he has died from the side effect.
The crew reawakens in the un-modded version of Infinity with Plowman and Lowry restored to human form. Now free, they continue their adventure, with Nanette leading them, after interacting with an annoyed user, "Gamer691".
Production
Whilst series one and two of Black Mirror were shown on Channel 4 in the UK, Netflix commissioned the series for 12 episodes in September 2015 with a bid of $40 million, and in March 2016, Netflix outbid Channel 4 for the right to distribute the series in the UK. The six episodes in series four were released on Netflix simultaneously on 29 December 2017. "USS Callister" is listed as the first episode, though as each episode is standalone the episodes can be watched in any order.Conception and writing
The episode was written in November 2016 by series creator Charlie Brooker along with William Bridges, who previously co-wrote series 3 episode "Shut Up and Dance". Brooker said that the episode was based around doing "a 'Black Mirror' version of a space epic", an idea that began during the filming of series three episode "Playtest". Inspired partially by "It's a Good Life", a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone about a boy with "God-like powers", and partially by Viz character Playtime Fontayne, an adult who makes people participate in childish games, Charlie Brooker compares Daly to dictator Kim Jong-un and to "someone going online and venting". Brooker said that they also at times called the episode an "adult Toy Story", making the comparison between the toys in Andy's room having to hold still until Andy leaves, and the virtual crew having to hold back their true thoughts until Daly left the simulation. Though sometimes very bleak, the episode has comedy that may be considered atypical for the show, and Brooker thinks it is the most mainstream episode of the show. Additionally, Brooker compares it to series 3 episode "San Junipero" in that both were "a conscious decision to expand what the show was and then upend it."As a big fan of Star Trek, Bridges suggested many elements from it that are incorporated in the episode, as well as borrowed concepts from the film Galaxy Quest, which involved normal people suddenly pulled into an inescapable science fiction setting. Brooker tells Den of Geek that the episode is not intended as an attack on Star Trek, a show that was "wildly ahead of its time". Originally, Daly's character was more unlikeable from the episode's beginning, but this was changed so that Daly strangling Walton would be more of a surprise. Brooker states that Daly dies of starvation after the events in the episode, due to the "Do Not Disturb" sign he puts on his door. Haynes considered ending the episode with the shot of Daly in his apartment, rather than the happier scene of the crew playing Infinity, but Brooker reassured him that not every Black Mirror episode had to end unhappily.
In the episode's initial draft, every character had a "Grain" implanted in them—a device that recorded their vision and hearing, similar to what was featured in the series one episode "The Entire History of You". This explained why virtual Nanette had the memories of real-life Nanette. Brooker decided that showing the Grain contents alongside Daly getting each person's DNA was too much detail, which led to the Grain aspect being cut. Shania says "It's a fucking gizmo" in response to a question from Nanette about how Daly's technology works, as a way to comment that the technology not making sense did not matter.
Casting
"USS Callister" stars Jesse Plemons as Captain Daly and Cristin Milioti as Lieutenant Nanette, both previous stars of Fargo. Director Toby Haynes notes that "they always wanted Jesse Plemons for the role of Daly", and that the filming dates and other cast were based around him. Milioti accepted the role having only seen a few pages of the script; she said in an interview that Nanette is "a woman in charge against a small-minded, misogynist bully". Jimmi Simpson, formerly known from Westworld, and Michaela Coel of Chewing Gum are also main characters in the episode; Coel had appeared in the previous Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" as an airport worker. Simpson was ill with the flu during filming but noted that his character was intended to be skinny. The episode's main cast is rounded out by Billy Magnussen, Milanka Brooks, Osy Ikhile, and Paul G. Raymond.Aaron Paul makes a vocal cameo appearance at the end of the episode, whilst Plemons' fiancée Kirsten Dunst makes an uncredited appearance in the office background early on, after asking the director while on set. The director had to ask for the single shot she was in to be re-added after the continuity department edited it out. Paul's character "Gamer691" was initially supposed to be a "geeky kid", but Brooker believed that the perception of video gamers as creepy was wrong, and "he felt like it was talking down to the audience" as he is a gamer himself. He then came up with the idea that the best voice would be Paul's character Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad, a show that featured Plemons in the role of Todd Alquist.
The production approached Paul, who was a fan of Black Mirror and had already auditioned for a different episode but withdrew due to commitments with Welcome Home. Paul accepted the part on the condition that his appearance in this episode did not preclude him from being part of another Black Mirror episode. He later starred in the space-themed series six episode "Beyond the Sea". The part was one of the last elements of the episode to be finished, and it surprised members of the cast when it was screened.