I should have started blogging about various Black Mirror episodes back when I first started watching, so that's what I get for being lazy. I will start with the season four premiere, and then at some point this year go back and muse over the likes of "Fifteen Million Merits," "White Christmas," "Men Against Fire," etc. As always, there are spoilers.
Season four starts with "USS Callister," about a tech genius, Robert Daly, who created the code for a massive online multiplayer game platform called Infinity. The episode begins with Robert as captain of the Callister, guiding his small crew through an easy engagement with a known villain; we then see that it is his own personal version of the game, which he gets to go home and 'play' every evening. Aww, sweet.
In real life Robert is quite socially awkward, with none of the bravado he can display on the Callister (nor anyone fawning over his more mild accomplishments, as the ship's crew does). It's easy to see that he can be the confident hero in the game that he cannot be in life, something that we are perhaps too familiar with in this contemporary world. However, the true Black Mirror hitch comes to the fore soon enough: Captain Daly's crew are digital copies of people he knows from work at Infinity. Digital copies who are aware of their existence and retain memories of their life outside of the game.
Overall the episode is already one of my favorites, not just because of but due in part to its homage to the original Star Trek series, and it hits just the right notes without being hammy or heavy-handed. There's a Khan-like enemy, southern California-cum-alien planet locales, and a climax that includes every element necessary to be the average climax (trickery, a race against the clock, a closing wormhole, a dangerous shortcut). The switch to the new, J.J. Abrams style at the end, with the giant lens flares, high-key palette and swooping camera movements was absolutely spot-on.
By virtue of the, for all intents and purposes, sentience of the digital copies, "USS Callister" also features one of my favorite plot conventions, which is showing how characters behave in two vastly different situations (much like the before-and-after lives of Walking Dead characters). Most of the ship's crew come off as upbeat, carefree, shallow people at their jobs at Infinity, but placed inside of the game (due to crossing Robert in some truly minor way), the shallow become deep; the carefree, sacrificial; the meek, brave. They become versions of themselves they would otherwise never know, face fears they would never contemplate, the irony being that back in the real world, they are none the wiser.
The episode also deals with one of my favorite quandries, the 'dying to escape' option. It is an echo of the general idea that life is a prison we can only escape through death; for the digital copies, the Callister is that very real prison, and with Captain Daly ruling as an 'asshole god' their only hope to be free is to ultimately delete themselves. They know this is an action, like death, they cannot undo; furthermore, even if there were an afterlife, it does not exist in the realm of artificial intelligence. There is no hope, and yet the crew chooses to abide by the old Klingon maxim: "It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
But there is yet much more to this episode, much to ponder, so it's time to go down the rabbit hole.
