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This cult-favorite series has won six Emmys, including two for Outstanding TV Movie ("https://wu.edu.vn/black-mirror-season-4-episode-1/imager_1_20934_700.jpgUSS Callister"https://wu.edu.vn/black-mirror-season-4-episode-1/imager_1_20934_700.jpg và "https://wu.edu.vn/black-mirror-season-4-episode-1/imager_1_20934_700.jpgSan Junipero"https://wu.edu.vn/black-mirror-season-4-episode-1/imager_1_20934_700.jpg).
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Jesse Plemons
Cristin Milioti
Jimmi Simpson
Michaela Coel
Rosemarie De
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Douglas Hodge
Andrea Riseborough
Brenna Harding
Owen Teague
Andrew Gower
Kiran Sonia Sawar
Georgina Campbell
Joe Cole
Maxine Peake
Jake Davies
Clint Dyer
Letitia Wright
Babs Olusanmokun
Bryce Dallas Howard
Alice Eve
Michael Kelly
Cherry Jones
Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Mackenzie Davis
Wyatt Russell
Benedict Wong
Kelly Macdonald
Faye Marsay
Madeline Brewer
Hannah John-Kamen
Malachi Kirby
Alex Lawther
Jerome Flynn
James Norton
Rory Kinnear
Lindsay Duncan
Daniel Kaluuya
Jessica Brown Findlay
Rupert Everett
Toby Kebbell
Jodie Whittaker
Hayley Atwell
Domhnall Gleeson
Lenora Crichlow
Michael Smiley
Daniel Rigby
Chloe Pirrie
Jason Flemyng
Jon Hamm
Oona Chaplin
Rafe Spall
Anthony Mackie
Yahya Abdul-Mateen IITammy Brown
Andrew Scott
Damson Idris
Topher Grace
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Madison Davenport
Angourie Rice
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Samuel Blenkin
Myha'la Herrold
Aaron Paul
Josh Hartnett
Kate Mara
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Clara Rugaard
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Emily St. James was a senior correspondent for wu.edu.vn, covering American identities. Before she joined wu.edu.vn in 2014, she was the first TV editor of the A.V. Club.
This article is a recap of Black Mirror’s season four episode “USS Callister.” It contains spoilers và discussion regarding the episode’s plot.
“USS Callister” is maybe the most hopeful Black Mirror episode this side of “San Junipero.” The premise: Everybody will be happier after trắng men die.
The trắng men who are good will bravely sacrifice ourselves so that the people of màu sắc and women might live. The white men who are terrible will have our minds wiped by our rage và desire to lớn possess those we feel have slighted us. (Okay, I guess the handsome, lunkhead jock gets khổng lồ survive. A victory for white mankind!)
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In đen Mirror season 4, humanism triumphs over nihilism — but only barelyThis is normally the point at which I get a bunch of emails taking me to lớn task for reading themes of racial & gender representation into a work that didn’t require it, except everything I just described is the text of “USS Callister,” right down to the rage-filled trắng nerd whose mind is destroyed by a đoạn phim game.
What’s more, “USS Callister” was co-written by one powerful white guy (Charlie Brooker, who became well-known thanks to his writing about video clip games) và directed by another (Toby Haynes). (I could not tell you the race of a co-writer, William Bridges, so I won’t speculate.) và I should mention that I, your humble critic, am also a trắng man.
All I’m saying is 2017 is wild.
“USS Callister” savages the limitations of nerd imagination
But there are very good reasons the episode paints the seemingly mild-mannered genius programmer Bob (Jesse Plemons) as the very worst sort of human being, who literally desires to lớn possess the people in his office, but especially his xinh đẹp new coworker, Nanette (Cristin Milioti).
Nanette loves Bob’s code, and it’s not hard lớn think, in the early going of “Callister,” that it might be about Bob coming out of his shell, or leaving behind his nerdy affection for the obvious Star Trek ripoff Space Fleet, into which he invests many hours each night, playing a hacked online virtual reality simulation of the cheesy ’60s series.
Except no, not really. Bob is stealing the DNA of his coworkers, feeding it into his computer, then introducing digital clones of all of them into the world of the USS Callister, the USS Enterprise of Space Fleet.
He doesn’t want to get to know Nanette, or even go out with her. He wants to lớn possess her, and the boss khủng he feels humiliated by, and the receptionist who never greets him as effusively as he’d like, and the underling he never pays attention to. The world, for Bob, isn’t one of infinite possibility. It’s one of infinite disrespect.
I should be clear here that the incredibly lacerating portrayal of Bob feels lượt thích a Brooker special. Brooker often lays most heavily into the cynical geeks he could have been a member of, but for the fact that he created a massively popular TV show (or two). Và as a slightly-less-cynical-but-still-pretty-cynical geek myself, I cringed a bit at Bob.
Bob’s sexlessness, for instance, felt a little strange. Why would he want all of his creations to lớn be sans genitals, other than the writers’ need lớn eliminate as much horrifying sexual nội dung from an already horrifying scenario as possible?
Yet I’ll admit lớn feeling a little upset when the episode ended with his mind wiped & forever trapped in a rogue universe of his own creation, one deleted by the endless possibility of a world open to everyone. It felt cruel to me khổng lồ close him off from that possibility, but, then, Black Mirror often does feel cruel, và if any of its characters is a stone-cold villain, it’s Bob. I, perhaps, recognized just enough of myself in him, and that must be Brooker and Bridges’s nastiest trick.
The most savage takedown in “USS Callister” isn’t even its depiction of white guy nerds’ toxic sense of entitlement because they’ve become so lost in pop culture. It’s the portrayal of their lack of imagination.
Something lượt thích Space Fleet was so seemingly catered khổng lồ Bob’s desires that he doesn’t aim lớn improve upon it, or bend it, or subvert it. He longs khổng lồ slavishly recreate it, then disappear into it as its protagonist. He doesn’t want to lớn be an author; he wants to lớn become part of the canon.
This is why the depiction of clone Nanette, a smart programmer herself who immediately starts fucking with Bob’s plans when she pops up in a scenario where he’s a literal god, is so important khổng lồ the episode’s ultimate success.
Nanette has to lớn adhere to lớn certain elements of Space Fleet canon — how the giải pháp công nghệ works, for instance — và has to work around the fact that Bob’s centrality lớn this scenario allows her only so much latitude. But she immediately starts crafting fanfiction within a universe she’s just coming lớn understand, learning how to write her own stories, with herself at the helm.
And her reward for it is a whole other universe, one full of infinite possibilities, where she isn’t just a digital puppet but someone who has her first taste of không lấy phí will — once she jets away from an enraged bạn (voiced, in a cheeky cameo, by Aaron Paul), of course. Everywhere you go, foul-tempered dudes are there khổng lồ ruin your fun.
It’s impossible to play video games và not have some of the thoughts that spurred “USS Callister”
You know, for instance, that the denizens of the little houses in The Sims aren’t actual people, but I’ve always felt that brief twinge of wrongdoing when I yank away the ladders as they swim, ready khổng lồ watch them drown with no way lớn get out of the pool. (Also good: Setting a room on fire & removing the door.)
Black Mirror is perpetually interested in inhumanity, và “USS Callister” is interested in the early days of digital sentience, in people who are people but maybe seem lượt thích they should be slaves, because you can’t be “real” if you live inside a computer, right?
This is perhaps why I lượt thích “USS Callister” but don’t quite think it achieved everything it set out lớn do. I have no idea, for example, how the cloning technology, which seems to insert Bob’s coworkers with their full memories intact, is supposed to work.
Another problem: Nanette, Bob, & the CEO played by Jimmi Simpson — who profited off Bob’s code without really cutting him in and, thus, is doomed to lớn be tormented endlessly in the Space Fleet reality — are fleshed out, but the other characters are mostly quick sketches. They exist mostly to serve the episode’s symbolic ends và little else. (Also very strange: Bob turns one minor character into a monster, which feels like it’s supposed lớn mean something but then is largely ignored by the episode.)
Similarly, a mid-episode complication involving a young boy who exists (or maybe doesn’t) within Space Fleet reality mostly just extends the episode’s running time past the hour mark (thus allowing it to lớn compete as a TV movie at the Emmys). It drives home that Bob is horrible, but that’s something I was already on board with.
“USS Callister” does better in shifting its focus from Bob lớn Nanette when she arrives in the simulation, the way the center of the story’s gravity shifts khổng lồ her. I like the elaborate escape plan at the episode’s end, too, which has the form and function of a movie prison break, but like no other movie prison break you’ve seen, given that it involves two planes of reality.
And I love Plemons’s performance, which blends a surprisingly great William Shatner riff with a slow-building sense of odiousness. Plemons, outside of his somewhat unconvincing work on Breaking Bad, has mostly played good dudes; “USS Callister” made me think he has a full Bryan Cranston-style villain in him.
Mostly, I liked how much fun everybody making “USS Callister” is clearly having with creating a Star Trek riff, but also tweaking it just enough to lớn serve their own ends. I called the episode hopeful because it depicts a world largely không tính tiền from the toxic influence of white men who mean well, but only when they get their way.
The episode is kept from becoming a sociopolitical screed in the way Brooker, Bridges, and Haynes broaden that depiction. Those left unspared include trắng men who fancy ourselves allies & everybody who has ever failed to question the righteousness of their nguồn over others, which is to lớn say, almost everybody alive.
Watching “USS Callister,” I couldn’t help recalling the simulated universe hypothesis, the idea that we might live inside a digital universe, on a computer in some other universe, which might be on a computer in some other universe, and on, ad infinitum. Were this to lớn ever be proved as our reality (and it’s, I should say, distinctly unlikely that we do live in a simulation — nor would it matter for our ethics và morality if we did), we would always be looking for a giant hand khổng lồ come down và pluck out our ladders while we were having a swim.
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“USS Callister” has it truer than most depictions of this idea, I think. If we create miniature digital people, they will have our best impulses và our worst ones. They will reflect everything we are. We might create some universe existing within this one, hoping it will right our wrongs, only khổng lồ be bitterly disappointed when new men are created in the image of new gods.
We might look khổng lồ a universe above us to lớn see bitter, frustrated men, who don’t quite catch their reflections in their bitter, frustrated creations — an endless continuum of male frustration, all the way up và all the way down. And, standing beside, the many people who have to live with us.