Black Mirror: USS Callister

[Thebestoftherest]

I think a missed opportunity was for the main character to also be a 'Space Force' fan, and keep on harping about how, "This isn't how the show is, you're just sick."

Without that, it seems like a meanspirited jab at Trek fans because Cole's liking of the Star Trek pastiche is quickly dismissed as something she saw once upon a time, whereas Daly is a fan, and he's quickly proven to be what's wrong with society.

The episode isn't saying that Star Trek fans are bad. It's saying that fans who behave like Daly are bad. Star Trek isn't alone in having toxic fans.

Yeah, think about it if you replace the gerne with super hero, ww2, modern day, fantasy the story would be more or less the same.

[Riedquat]

...
I was sick of those people after that. And wondered why he made his bridge crew look like people that treated him like they would laugh and point if he was on fire.
Then Daily came in and he was no saint either. For all the living breathing folk in the real world did to him. His revenge was a thousand times worse. Because he went out of his way to just abuse them.

This episode pulled on my strings in several directions and left me loathing everyone but Daily.

I had similar thoughts, based on just the review. It just left the question as to whether or not he knew that the electronic crew were sentient and sapient or just more complex versions of NPCs we have today. If it's the latter it paints a different picture (although I'd say someone who get a kick out of throwing even a pretend kid out of an airlock is a jerk).

Mind you I also find people who like to play arseholes in real games a bit disturbing.

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

This might be a small thing but I find Daly's position at the company to not match up with the rest of his personality/behavior.

I get that the writers needed him to be a tech person for the stereotype and for him to be brilliant to explain how he's doing all the tech things but the position of CTO implies certain things which don't work with the rest of his character.

To be CTO at a minimum implies that only the CEO could bully him at the workplace and even that is something a real life CEO wouldn't do.

CTO implies at least a modicum of leadership potential which doesn't seem to exist at all in Daly, ok maybe CTO is just a ego boost title because he's the technical founder but again given all the founder and technical genius aspects of the character you really wouldn't expect him to be treated the way he is.

What would happen in reality is that Daly either would have people sucking up to him at the office or he would have been poached by another firm who offered him better conditions.

The script would have worked better if Daly wasn't such an important person to the firm.

[Zargon]

This episode could have worked with any fictional setting. After all the setting of the game virtual reality is just window dressing: it would not change the story. It would work just fine during the Civil War, WW2, Camelot, or even just a copy of the Real World.

Having a CTO be an awkward anti social person is unrealistic, but then it's TV so just about everything is unrealistic.

The DNA copy is really just magic, and it's no different then a day dream or him just making a ''virtual person". The show puts up the weird idea that the ''copy" is a real person...but that is a bit of a stretch. Of course the show needs that for the Edge: if he just made characters that looked like his co workers no one would care.

[King Green]

It also poses insight of why Daly is being an ass of a god, he simply chose to be a fan AND chose to be prideful of self.
Its easy to be a god, but to be a parental and benevolent person with god-like power is hard.

When I started to experience and empower myself with lucid-dreaming, the first choice was for me to wake up. Not in my body, but in myself to wake up and take things in new paths. Then I chose to create an entire self-aware species of arachnoids (basically spider-centaurs) that acknowledged that they did exist in my dreams but still loved me, because I did not let subjugation infect myself from both society and alternative actions. I did struggle after the many attempts of minor bigotry from my creations when I experimented on new ideas and different sub-species of spiders but I didn't let that self be weaker than me, to taunt me of the primal idea in all men: Slavery.

Ever forward I still dream, whether I'm 22 or ageless, I'm still a parent to my creations. And who should any of you know, I could either be a good or bad parent to my kids, however the baseline is that I care for them.

[Mabus]

I might be in minority, but I honestly didn't get what the message of the episode was. Like at all. Even after carefully listening Chuck's speech.
Is it that liking one fictional show (too much) turn you into a monster?
Cause in that case Daly should have been more like Sheldon Cooper as opposed to a semi-successful CTO/CEO or whatever Meth Demon's character was.
That you should no have any control over you fantasy and that the people in your fantasy are sentient?
Because 1) That's painfully stupid and 2) His fantasy was only possible because apparently soul-stealing tech exists, which means it's not a fantasy at all.
That relying on fantasy to unload yourself is unhealthy and very dangerous?
Because that would imply some sort of arc for the protagonist, and there clearly wasn't. Also undercut in that the real versions of the characters have little impact on the story, save for one.
Is it a comment on toxic fans, incels, toxic masculinity, workplace harassment, bullying, anger management, narcissism, fanaticism?
Because to me the episode seems to, what's that expression, "start too many, finish none".

So then all there's left is "a crazy/sociopath person does monstrous things to some people", which doesn't sound very deep, especially since I don't see a clear aesop, other than being a monster is bad and you should have more emergency escape failsafes when you're torturing people so you won't die like an idiot.

[Stinkehund]

I might be in minority, but I honestly didn't get what the message of the episode was. Like at all. Even after carefully listening Chuck's speech.
Is it that liking one fictional show (too much) turn you into a monster?

The same "message" that every other Black Mirror episode has: Technology is bad and people are inherently evil. There's nothing deep or profound in that show, no moral ambiguity, no aesop, no meaning. Technology is bad, fire is scary and Thomas Edison was a witch. Star Trek's about how humanity can better itself and strive towards utopia; Black Mirror is how we're doomed from the start and shouldn't even fucking try - that's why i hate that series with a passion.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Yeah, the DNA thing is a huge and obvious hole, but that's pretty much par for the course with Black Mirror. Black Mirror does superbly in setting up the themes of its episodes. Subtext, visual clues, subplots, set-up and pay-off, those all tend to be textbook. The show's plots, on the other hand, tend to be thin.

I will say that the episode seems uniformly unsympathetic and mean-spirited in its depiction of Daly in a way I don't really care for. Granted, there's been more than a few shows, particularly sci-fi, that have pandered to socially-awkward, nerdy misfits, so showing that Daly really is that much of a creep is a bit of a twist. Even so, I tend to like villains that are a bit less one-dimensional, particularly for a show that's trying to do a real cultural critique.

[Rocketboy1313]

I would argue that a big hole in a misogyny argument is the completely sexless fantasy he is in.

No one has genitals and none of them are sexual objects to the bad guy beyond the hero being kissed.

[chaos42]

its more a power fantasy of him being able to do what ever he wants. I find it like a child with a toy he just breaks for fun then wants a new one-known some kids like that total psychos.

Also i agree this is just a psychopath who happens to like a star trek like show not a psycho star trek fan. Though some of the people there like the guy who actually treated him bad, doesn't deserve the child killing torture, but he probably should have been nicer to the guy. We should also not forget that psychos aren't always born that way they are made, the trivial stuff is trivial but some people become like that through abuse physical or mental. I think that is something we should consider that being a jerk to someone might make them a jerk to others or even a full on psycho later in life.