USS Callister

Aboard the spaceship USS Callister, Captain Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) and his crew destroy their arch-enemy Valdack's (Billy Magnussen) 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 (Jimmi Simpson), 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 (Cristin Milioti) 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 (Michaela Coel) 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, which they then use to blackmail the real-life Nanette into ordering a pizza at Daly's apartment and stealing his 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" (Aaron Paul). ==Production==

Whilst series one and two of Black Mirror were shown on Channel 4 in the UK, Netflix commissioned the series for 12 episodes (split into two series of six episodes) in September 2015 with a bid of $40 million, The six episodes in series four were released on Netflix simultaneously on 29 December 2017. 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". Though sometimes very bleak, the episode has comedy that may be considered atypical for the show, 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. 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 [fighting] against a small-minded, misogynist bully". Simpson was ill with the flu during filming but noted that his character was intended to be skinny. 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. 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. 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. 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. Inspired by the style of 1960s television, the episode used Dutch angles during the spaceship scenes. Cinematography towards the end was designed to evoke Star Trek. Haynes was a fan of Star Trek, and helped to add details, such as putting Lowry in a red uniform since she was the first to be killed off. A number of Star Wars references are also included. Brooker says the episode features more special effects than any previous episode of the show. Music British composer Daniel Pemberton composed the episode's score. A fan of Black Mirror, Pemberton had worked with Brooker before on a video game magazine in the 1990s. Pemberton was between compositions for ''Molly's Game and All the Money in the World, but despite being busy he accepted the job for "USS Callister". Pemberton says the score consisted of three styles: the Space Fleet'' music, the real world and Daly's video game. He also describes the soundtrack as "almost like two film scores that slowly collide". A vinyl version of the soundtrack, featuring as its cover the Butcher Billy-designed Space Fleet poster seen on the episode, was released on Record Store Day 2019. Marketing In May 2017, a Reddit post unofficially announced the names and directors of the six episodes in series 4 of Black Mirror. The first trailer for the series was released by Netflix on 25 August 2017, and contained the six episode titles. In September 2017, two photos from the fourth season were released, including one from "USS Callister". Beginning on 24 November 2017, Netflix published a series of posters and trailers for the fourth series of the show, referred to as the "13 Days of Black Mirror". The art for "USS Callister" was released on 4 December, and the trailer on 5 December. The following day, Netflix published a trailer featuring an amalgamation of scenes from the fourth series, which announced that the series would be released on 29 December. Prior to the series' release, "USS Callister" was described as the "most anticipated new episode" by one source; ==Analysis==

plays Robert Daly, who takes his anger out on virtual clones due to unhappiness in real life. The episode is an homage to Star Trek. Additionally, it evokes Toy Story. "USS Callister" has been called "the most cinematic episode to date" for the show, Charles Bramesco of Vulture noted that despite the fact that Daly never actually rapes any of the female members of the crew, he exhibits psychological traits associated with rape culture. Brooker noted that coincidentally, news of allegations against Weinstein first broke when Brooker was on his way to a premiere of the episode in New York. Joho called Walton "arguably the true hero of the story", for sacrificing himself to fix the ship at the climax of the episode. Walton is absent from the ship once the characters make it into the online Infinity game; it can be interpreted that his code was deleted from Daly's modded game. However, Simpson believed that his character remains alive, continually tortured from the pain of the incinerators. The episode has also been analysed as an on-screen rewriting of the myth of Don Quixote in the digital age, re-interpreting the figure of the Don as a monomaniacal gamer obsessed with space opera in a way comparable to the hidalgo's obsession with chivalric romances. According to an article by Miguel Sebastián-Martín, published in Science Fiction Film and Television, "USS Callister" "updates the myth for a satire of the male gamer/geek/nerd stereotype, who is reimagined as a quixotic embodiment of neoliberal, patriarchal individualism in the digital realm." ==Reception==

"USS Callister" received critical acclaim, with several reviewers considering it the best episode of series four. On Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 38 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.3 out of 10. It received a four-star rating in The Telegraph Cross called the episode "surely one of Black Mirrors best". Saunders thought that the male abuse of power is "prescient" and "topical", with Statt calling it an "unabashed love letter to Star Trek", while Franich described it as a "knowing parody" and "loving hyperbolization". Oller called them "heavy-handed", believing they overshadow the episode's message. In a negative review, Whitley opined that although the episode has the right number of references, they are used in a "cruel parody and even a misandrous attack on male science-fiction fans". "USS Callister" is more comedic than previous episodes of Black Mirror and explores a genre which is new for the show, both of which were well received. Statt described it as "laugh-out-loud funny"; and, in a negative review, Oller wrote that the "comedy is far better than the actual story". while Statt called it "refreshingly different". The ending and DNA cloning technology have both been highlighted by critics, garnering mixed reception. Saunders said the episode's ending "might not feel very Black Mirror" but is "the kind of story it would be good to hear more often". Handlen called it "magic that you either go with or you don't". Stolworthy wrote that Coel's performance as Lowry stands out. • 1st – Travis Clark, Business Insider • 2nd – Charles Bramesco, Vulture • 3rd – James Hibberd, Entertainment Weekly • 6th – Matt Donnelly and Tim Molloy, TheWrap • 7th – Aubrey Page, Collider • 7th – Corey Atad, Esquire • 8th – Morgan Jeffery, Digital Spy • 13th – Eric Anthony Glover, Entertainment Tonight Proma Khosla of Mashable reviewed each of the 22 episodes by tone, ranking "USS Callister" as 5th least pessimistic. Other critics compared the six episodes of series four in isolation, with "USS Callister" placing as follows: • 2nd (grade: A−) – TVLine • 4th – Christopher Hooton, Jacob Stolworthy, The Independent Awards "USS Callister" was nominated for several awards in 2018: ==Sequel==

After its release, Brooker and Jones said "USS Callister" would be the episode most suited to a sequel. Brooker said the final scene leaves the characters "in a universe of infinite possibilities" with "a lot of question marks". The series was about to enter development in 2023 when it was derailed by the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, and the ideas pitched for the series were reworked into a single television film. In March 2024, Netflix announced that a sequel, titled "USS Callister: Into Infinity", would air as part of the seventh series in 2025, marking the first Black Mirror story to receive a continuation. Alongside a 30-second announcement trailer, a spokesperson said: "Robert Daly is dead, but for the crew of the USS Callister, their problems are just beginning". With a runtime of 88 minutes, it is the second longest Black Mirror episode after "Hated in the Nation". ==See also==