Not everyone gets along with their co-workers. But how many can say they’ve stolen their colleagues’ DNA, created virtual copies of them, and then tormented those digital replicas in a video game reskinned to look like their favorite sci-fi show?
That’s the grim reality of “USS Callister,” Black Mirror’s Season 4 premiere. Debuting in late 2017, the episode centers on brilliant programmer Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons), who feels overlooked and underappreciated in his everyday life and vents his frustrations in a twisted way.
Hailed as the acclaimed series’ “most cinematic episode to date” (The Independent), “USS Callister” instantly became a favorite with critics and fans alike. It won four Primetime Emmy Awards in 2018, including Outstanding Television Movie and Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special.
Before you leap into Season 7 of Black Mirror, which premieres April 10 and features the sequel episode “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” let’s revisit the widely celebrated original episode.
Directed by Toby Haynes (Doctor Who, Sherlock), the episode satirizes the retro, 1960s sci-fi series Star Trek and mostly takes place aboard the fictional spaceship USS Callister. Captain Daly (Plemons) enters the bridge, where his attentive crew informs him that their enemy Valdack (Billy Magnussen) has tracked their location. The scenario plays out like a fever dream in which Daly heroically steers his ship to victory, basks in his crew’s overly enthusiastic praise, and then kisses the women on the bridge as a reward.
Real life, however, is an entirely different story. Daly is the nerdy Chief Technology Officer of the video game company Callister Inc., where his colleagues, including CEO Walton (Jimmi Simpson), view him as a quiet pushover hiding in his office.
Enter Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti), the company’s newest programmer, who visits Daly on her first day and reveals that she’s a big fan of his work. Daly shows her his extensive collection of VHS tapes, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs of his favorite series, Space Fleet, about a crew aboard the spacecraft USS Callister (he persuaded Walton to name the company in tribute).
As Daly watches Nanette interact with her new colleagues, including Walton, he absentmindedly agrees to push the release of a much-anticipated update to their popular video game Infinity by an additional week. After work, Daly logs into his offline, modified version of Infinity — featuring digital clones of his co-workers and refashioned to look like Space Fleet — where he berates the USS Callister crew and uses Walton as a personal footstool.
Daly is dismayed the next day when he overhears Nanette telling Shania (Michaela Coel) that her admiration for Daly is strictly professional. After everyone in the office has left, he fishes Nanette’s coffee cup lid out of the trash and swabs her DNA, which he then uploads into the game.
Nanette’s digital copy is disoriented when she awakens aboard the USS Callister. The situation devolves as Captain Daly arrives at the bridge and the crew, except for Nanette, take their positions. Nanette refuses to play along with Daly’s twisted game, prompting the captain to remove her facial features so she can’t breathe or see anything — perpetually suffocating without the ability to die. This forces her to submit, and Nanette is then pulled into an over-the-top scenario in which Captain Daly exchanges words (and gunfire) with Valdack on a strange planet.
Daly pauses the game to collect his pizza in the real world, leaving his digital self frozen mid-game. The crew members are free to be themselves for a brief moment, and Walton greets Valdack’s henchman, a monster called an Arachnajax, who’s actually Gillian from the marketing department — Daly turned her into the hideous creature because she refused to play along.
After resuming the game, Captain Daly again defeats Valdack, who begs to be killed, only for Daly to remind him that it’s against Space Fleet code. As the crew celebrates on the bridge, Nanette refuses to let Daly kiss her, meeting his unwanted advances with a firm slap. Although this angers Daly, he decides to show her “mercy” — but promises he won’t be so benevolent next time.
Nanette is further horrified when Shania and Walton reveal that, because they exist in a wholesome universe, none of them have genitals. Furious and motivated to stop Daly once and for all, she hacks Infinity’s code and sends an invitation to her real-world self containing a message supposedly from Daly about being trapped in the game. When the real-world Nanette asks Daly about the strange invite, he brushes it off as a spambot.
Infinity powers up earlier than expected, and Nanette’s digital clone is ecstatic because she thinks help is on the way. But the mood immediately shifts when Captain Daly appears, enraged by the unauthorized invite. Nanette confesses to sending the cry for help, but Shania leaps to her defense and is promptly turned into an Arachnajax as punishment.
After Captain Daly leaves, an upset Nanette notices an anomaly in the sky: the update patch has manifested as a wormhole. She’s convinced that if the crew flies through it, their rogue code will be deleted; it will ensure their deaths, but at least they’ll be free. Everyone is on board with her plan except for Walton, who thinks they’ll fail because Daly is unstoppable. He recalls when Daly made a digital clone of his son Tommy, released the boy into space, and made Walton watch him die. And Walton makes a valid point: What’s to stop Daly from bringing everyone back, including Tommy, to do whatever he wants with them, since he still has all of their DNA in his fridge?
Walton eventually caves when Nanette assures him that they’ll his son’s DNA, along with everyone else’s.
Captain Daly returns to Infinity and Nanette throws herself into character, even coaxing Daly to take just her for their next mission. When the duo reaches the planet’s rocky surface, Nanette lures Daly into the water for a playful swim to distract him while Kabir (Paul G. Raymond) teleports Daly’s omnicorder — a handheld communication device connected to the outside world — back to the ship’s bridge. The crew, with digital Nanette’s help, blackmails real-world Nanette with racy images from her hacked iCloud, forcing her to sneak into Daly’s apartment, accept their game invite, and order a pizza to pull Daly away while she reclaims their DNA.
When a distracted Daly resumes the game, he realizes that real-world Nanette is missing and snaps into action in the game, chasing after the crew in a shuttle to prevent them from reaching the in time. The USS Callister gang is so close to escaping, but the ship sustains significant damage while traveling through an asteroid belt and their engine loses power. As Daly celebrates his victory, Walton volunteers to manually power up the engines (and tells Daly off), burning away in the process.
The crew members, who successfully make it through the wormhole, now find themselves free from Daly’s modifications and back to their regular bodies. And they have an entire universe at their disposal. Daly, meanwhile, is stuck inside his modded version of the game — which then gets deleted after the update rolls through. In the real world, Daly is rendered physically and mentally inert, permanently stuck in a milky-eyed state.
Now connected to the online world, the USS Callister crew finds that other players aren’t so friendly. As one gamer threatens to blow them up, they blast off to a different part of the galaxy for their next adventure.
With Daly dead, the follow-up episode “USS Callister: Into Infinity” finds Nanette taking over as captain as the crew faces a new threat: death.
“They’re virtual clones, but they’re effectively humans in a video game,” series creator and executive producer Charlie Brooker said. “For the other people playing [Infinity], it’s no bother to them if they shoot people because they think they’re just playing a game. But to Nanette and co., it’s life or death. There is no out of the game for them.”
Black Mirror returns for Season 7 on April 10.
