Be Reel Blog- Black Mirror: USS Callister

Be Reel Blog

Black Mirror: USS Callister

Recently I had the pleasure of watching the raved Season 4, Episode 1 of Black Mirror, USS Callister. Written by series creator Charlie Brooker and William Bridges and directed by Toby Haynes, this episode plunges into a new world of gaming and societal issues. This episode revolves around an intelligent programmer named Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) who is co-founder of a revolutionary online game, Infinity, and does not receive any recognition for his work. His life around his office is very hostile, as he is mostly mistreated by the co owner and other workers.

(THERE ARE SPOILER ALERTS SO BEWARE)

The episode starts off with a Star Trek-like spaceship adventure where Robert Daly is a very cleaned up and handsome captain (aka Captain Daly) and leads his fleet to destroy an enemy ship. He is well respected and his team cheers on Captain Daly for his brave actions. However, the scene cuts to black as it shows a normal Robert Daly, where he looks almost homeless as he walks into his work. From here, the work environment seems to neglect Daly as he walks to his office. Though he is not well respected here, a new worker, Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) knocks on his door to admire his work as he is an extremely talented coder and programmer. He begins to feel a pleasing connection towards Nanette and appreciates her admiration. However the co-founder of the game comes in and explains to Daly how the new update for the game must be completed by Christmas Eve. It is not a simple interaction, as the co-founder demands his claim in a very harsh tone, frustrating Daly. This is when things begin to get weird.

Daly goes home from work and enters his apartment, where he turns on his laptop and opens up a modded version of the game, Infinity. Here he places two white circle mechanisms on his temples and leans back into his chair as he enters this virtual world. Here he becomes Captain Daly again, in charge of the space fleet, however now you begin to realize that the characters apart of the fleet are the same people from his office at work. He ends up telling the crew that he they are useless and imbeciles, most likely due to his rough day at work. He exits the game and continues to work the next day.

Here, Nanette shows her flirty self again as she offers Daly coffee, and as the day of work goes by, things get even weird with Daly. He ends up staying a little after work until everyone has left, and here he steals Nanette’s coffee cup, brings it home, and sets up his game again. Now, he swabs the DNA on the coffee cup, and converts it in this machine that he has. As it analyzes over night, he continues to work the next day.

What comes next really shocked me as I did not see it coming. Once the analyzation of Nanette's DNA completes, the screen cuts to black and she wakes up in a room in a “Space Fleet” uniform and looks as if she is in Star Trek. She gets up and quickly realizes how she is now aboard of the USS Callister Ship that Captain Daly is in charge of. She is now somehow in the video game. She enters the main room where the rest of the fleet crew is, and they quickly welcome her as she is stuck in denial of this situation. They explain to her that those that are left in this virtual world are completely separate from the ones in the outside world. They unfortunately are stuck there forever.

Now this seems absolutely terrifying, and it is, but it gets even more terrifying. Robert Daly gets home from work and routinely gets into his chair and enters the video game. Nanette tries to escape, however she is quickly turned around as Daly holds his hand up, snaps his fingers, and her face disappears. She is left gasping for air with no eyes, nose, or mouth. This intense scene shows how powerful Daly is as he controls this game, and that it is very unpleasant if one does not cooperate in it. He snaps her back to normal and she begins to cooperate. Each fleet member is forced to act a specific way and tend to Captain Daly, otherwise they will be tortured.

Over the course of the episode, as they go on missions in this virtual world, Nanette begins thinking. Due to her knowledge of Daly’s coding skills, she realizes that she can contact the outside world through the messaging software inside the game. She sends a message to herself in the real world, and her real self asks Daly about it where Daly quickly shuts it down and says it is a spam bot. He realizes that the characters in the virtual world are up to something. Everytime Daly is out of the game, the fleet begins planning an escape. This escape requires them to get past a wormhole on Christmas Eve when the update comes out and if they do so, they will be set free.

It starts with Anette blackmailing her real self in order to communicate with her. Once they get in contact with her, they tell her directions she must follow otherwise they will release nude photos of herself. They tell her to go to Daly’s house while they distract Captain Daly in the game and real world, and take all of the DNA evidence and replace his game piece so he cannot enter the game again. As the distractions work, he cannot resume the game due to a decoy piece, however he has a backup. This backup allows him to get back into the game just in time to follow the space fleet as they try to enter a wormhole and escape the update in order to be free. More events occur and the team outsmarts Captain Daly and eventually enter the real world, leaving Daly stuck in the virtual game, and alone in his home office with no one to save him, evidently leaving him to die.

This show really got my gears going as I was on the edge of my seat the whole time as the suspense built to defeat Daly. The whole plot line of being trapped inside of a game was so intriguing to me and I believe the story line was well executed and kept me interested the whole time. The acting, the different camera angles and the sequence of events really emphasized the conflict of the episode and broke down the journey to the solution which was really well done in my opinion. Overall I thought this episode was a very interesting episode and one of my favorite Black Mirror episodes of all time. I would definitely recommend it even though I pretty much spoiled the whole thing! 10/10 rating and a GOOD/GOOD episode.