Thoughts on “USS Callister” (“Black Mirror,” Netflix)
Of all Black Mirror season 4’s episodes, “USS Callister” is probably my favorite for a few reasons:
Jesse Plemons (“Breaking Bad,” “Friday Night Lights”) is pure gold as a creepy evil character.
It’s so vastly different from other Black Mirror episodes (the whole Star Trek riff).
It has a feel-good ending with a cool cameo.
I’ll admit I’ve never watched much Star Trek, but I appreciate a good riff now and again.
For those who haven’t seen it, I’m going to spoil it soon so best click away. But first, a quick and harmless overview/synopsis:
Using really advanced technology, a CTO of a popular VR gaming company clones some of his co-workers and proceeds to torture them in a never-ending game of Star Trek (which is called “Space Fleet” in the episode). The original co-workers don’t know they’ve been cloned, but the clones know they’ve been cloned and are fully aware of their dual-selves. Apparently their cloned self is capable of feeling pain, humiliation, and have a complete memory of their lives intact - just like their original selves. So for all intents and purposes, their cloned selves are their original selves but stuck in another universe.
That universe is a modified VR game where the CTO presides as “Captain Daly” of “USS Callister” - a space vessel. The captain requires everyone to play along or he can do horrible things to you like turn you into a giant monster bug (and have you feel everything) or clone your child and throw them out of the space vessel airlock while you are forced to watch.
This is all taking place undisturbed for a good while until a new employee named Nanette starts working at the company. She praises the CTO for his coding skills and for one reason or another is cloned into the VR game where she learns of the indescribable events that are taking place in this virtual hell.
Nanette refuses to let the charade carry on and devises a plan to allow their cloned selves to escape the space vessel.
From within the game, Nanette figures out a way to communicate with the outside world (outside of the VR game, that is). She ends up contacting her real self and provides instructions on how to defeat Daly.
The plan works and Daly is trapped in his modified VR game for eternity.
I’ll start with Daly at the end of the episode.
Daly can’t escape his own game because of an update patch that deletes his modified code. So now there are two Daly’s: one in the real world and one in the VR game. Unfortunately the episode ends without explaining this, but to me it seems like the real Daly will forever sit in his chair and eventually die of malnourishment? What would happen to the cloned Daly? I assume he would remain in the game because the game “exists” somewhere.
However, are there really two Daly’s? If you think about it, Daly never cloned himself. He only uploaded himself into the game. Since the “exit game” commands no longer work, Daly’s brain still exists in the game but will eventually die with his body.
Does the Daly from within the game realize this? He must.
Onto Nanette’s mission. Her real-world self breaks into Daly’s apartment and steals the DNA-covered items from the fridge. But did she need to do that when they ended up trapping Daly in his game anyway? Maybe they didn’t know that Daly would get trapped in the game and took the fridge items just to be safe.
But if that was their original plan, the real-world Daly (assuming he was able to “exit game”) could have just re-cloned his co-workers. The real world co-workers had no knowledge of the virtual hell. The same scenario would just replay itself.
I’m confused why Daly cloned Nanette at all. She was very nice and appreciative of him in the real world. I thought he only did that to people that spited him?
That being said, I can’t figure out Daly’s motive for all this. Is he a creep that preys on people he can’t be with? Is this legitimate revenge for him being mistreated or overlooked? Or is he just insane?
It has to be insane because there is no rhyme or reason why certain people make it into his space vessel. For example, the secretary that always lets him in despite the fact he doesn’t have his pass. What did she do wrong? And then the guy that brought him the wrong coffee - for real?? Get your own coffee, Daly. Those futuristic coffee machines look like you only have to press a few buttons.
But the CEO I understand why he was cloned. He treats Daly like shit. Plain and simple. But overall the writers didn’t do a good job depicting why Daly is doing what he is doing. It’s just off-the-wall bizarre.
At an hour and 16 minutes, this episode is practically a movie. Other Black Mirror episodes also clock in at over an hour, but “USS Callister” didn’t drag too much for me.
There are some language things I noticed in regards to programming and code. As a programmer I have some objections.
Nanette mentions that Daly has “beautiful, just beautiful code.” And also that it is one of the reasons she wanted to work at that company.
What does “beautiful code” even mean? I can picture what it might mean, such as nicely indented and spaced so it’s easy to read. Or perhaps the syntax and logic is so clear and obvious, that it’s familiar to those didn’t even write it. I think if Nanette provided just a couple examples, this phrase (“beautiful code”) would hit home a little more instead of feeling so flowery and over-the-top.
And the whole notion that she saw his source code before she started working there? Um. Really? Would any company release their source code to the public? Unless it’s an open-source product, not a chance.
The ending has a cool cameo from Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”) that lightens the mood and gets everyone back on the same page.
