Black Mirror: USS Callister

[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?

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.

I too can't stand Black Mirror. The only episode that I think it's good is Nosedive and that's because it's a good mirror (no pun intended) image of the most toxic elements in current day social media.
BM's issue is that it suffers greatly from plot-induced stupidity or Idiot Ball, whatever is called. The humans just don't act like humans, they act like plot-squeezed characters, there is very little flexibility to the story. A piece of technology could be used to cause harm in some way? Why, it can ONLY be used for that! Could it be changed so that it doesn't? Nah, let's just adjust the plot and add in some other characters just to make things worse, so something worse happens! But who would do such a thing? Won't the population have some concerns about the technology and demand change, like it happened with many inventions throughout the history? Naah, it'll be fine!
So when the humans act like idiots in BM, and people gloss over that, yeah, the message that "all technology is bad" is visible. But on a closer look, it's clear that the there's just a lot of idiot ball bouncing around. The problem is that the writers don't seem to either grasp or actually believe that's how humans act in face of a new technology, so they do seem to send the message that "all technology is bad", not helped by the fact that everything in the plot is focused to make things worse. And even episodes where the technology is less involved, the character interaction feels either forced or again dumbed down to fit the plot. So I feel that even if the writers did not intend that "all technology is bad", it all ends up "no, except yes".
I have a feeling that if HISHE would do BM videos they'd have a field day since it's just too easy.

EDIT: Upon reading more about the creator of BM, I now have a better understanding of some of the show's "dark" aspects. He comes across to me as Zach Snyder-esque, only with less slowmo and less Martha!, but still having the same level of superficiality.
"My favourite Twilight Zone is the one where a nuclear bomb goes off." Sums up BM to me.

[Riedquat]

yA piece of technology could be used to cause harm in some way? Why, it can ONLY be used for that! Could it be changed so that it doesn't? Nah, let's just adjust the plot and add in some other characters just to make things worse, so something worse happens! But who would do such a thing? Won't the population have some concerns about the technology and demand change, like it happened with many inventions throughout the history?

Not always, no. Sometimes some things simply can't be put back in the bag (can't uninvent nuclear weapons for example). Other times people simply don't recognise them as bad and stick with them for their immediate appeal. Of course your mileage will vary depending on your views of any particular piece of technology but I get the impression that that's the premise of the show, and it's not a new idea in science fiction to do that.

[FaxModem1]

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.

Yes, there's so much of that in the show that College Humor made a skit about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1aSqZ23ydk

[unknownsample]

I have to admit I'm amazed at how people on here can look at this and go the real villains are Daly's co-workers.

[Mickey_Rat15]

I have not seen the actual episode, just reviews like this one. Star Trek itself has done this story with "Hollow Pursuits" and "Charlie X" except in both those cases the Barclay and Charlie are at least made sympathetic while still recognizing they were in the wrong. This seems to go out of its way to paint Daly as irredeemable. To the extent it has been embraced as some sort of "take that" to genre and gamer culture just seems mean spirited, like a revenge fantasy for extraverts against introverts and the socially awkward. Daly's talents are the driving force behind the company product despite apparently getting little respect from his partner and workers and this seems to justify him never deserving respect or much consideration because he always was a monster inside.

While the personality clone from DNA is silly from a hard science fiction view point, it is not much different from how, say, "other memory" works in the Dune series, especially from the third book on, so I don't find it that grating.

[Riedquat]

I have to admit I'm amazed at how people on here can look at this and go the real villains are Daly's co-workers.

It doesn't look like anyone's said that explicitly, but it's a valid position to argue for IMO. It depends whether the characters he creates really are anything other than video game NPCs which look like people he knows, and whether or not he realises it. But his coworkers are a bunch of jerks, they don't get let off the hook for that even if Daly is a bigger one.

[Mickey_Rat15]

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.

I was thinking that Daly was supposed to be a Wozniak expy to his condescending partner's Steve Jobs, at least inerms of their work relationship.

[Worffan101]

I thought Chuck's perspective was interesting, because this show clearly wanted and intended to be about "those horrible sexist nerds who use "being socially awkward" as an excuse to be evil and hateful to anyone who isn't a straight white guy, and REAL people who matter aren't obsessed with these dorky old shows and like things flashy and chrome and JJ Abrams style."

I felt it was pretty much...Black Mirror. Wanting to be about something Deep and Meaningful and Current, actually being about something else entirely, good cast, cynical message, intentionally provocative without actually being as smart as it thinks it is. The quintessential TV for our times, really.

[Worffan101]

I have not seen the actual episode, just reviews like this one. Star Trek itself has done this story with "Hollow Pursuits" and "Charlie X" except in both those cases the Barclay and Charlie are at least made sympathetic while still recognizing they were in the wrong. This seems to go out of its way to paint Daly as irredeemable. To the extent it has been embraced as some sort of "take that" to genre and gamer culture just seems mean spirited, like a revenge fantasy for extraverts against introverts and the socially awkward. Daly's talents are the driving force behind the company product despite apparently getting little respect from his partner and workers and this seems to justify him never deserving respect or much consideration because he always was a monster inside.

While the personality clone from DNA is silly from a hard science fiction view point, it is not much different from how, say, "other memory" works in the Dune series, especially from the third book on, so I don't find it that grating.

In Hollow Pursuits it's not even that Barclay is "wrong" (since he keeps his fantasies strictly to himself and never acts in a deliberately harmful way to real people) so much as Riker is a massive douchelord and Barclay needs help but isn't getting the help he needs--but because it's TNG and not a cynical piece of cynicism written by 50 year old adolescent boys, Picard, LaForge, and Troi are more than willing to help and try to figure out what kind of help Barclay needs. Hell, LaForge even makes a point of being nicer to Reg once he realizes the guy's actually having mental health issues AND even though he's pissed at Barclay showing up late for work not only is less in-your-face about it than Riker the douche despite having more immediate responsibility for Barclay, he even keeps the holodeck fantasies as close to the chest as he reasonably can, and at no point mocks Barclay for them.

Charlie X is literally just a kid who was raised wrong, and he's evil but he's human enough to realize it in the end, even out of cowardice.

IDK. This show IMO clearly WANTED to be a spite piece by mainstream extroverts ranting about how shy nerds are the devil, but instead became a very specific piece about a lone crazy guy becoming a supervillain and being defeated, which has very little real-world messaging and has little impact in general.

Still better than the usual Black Mirror, which tends to be incoherent and offensively stupid.

[TGLS]

In all honesty, I think the real problem with Daly is that he's just a bad person. The show is framed so it looks like Daly is being treated like crap with an escape, like Hollow Pursuits, but then it subverts things and show Daly is really horrible. I think it's pretty doubtful that Daly would be that good at keeping his nastiness behind a mask; that's why people are treating him like crap, but only in ways that can't get them fired. If I recall there was a scene where the secretary/front desk person was warning the female lead away from him.

Daly would be a bad person even if he wasn't introverted or a sci-fi fan. The difference is that an extroverted Daly would be belittling and firing employees in front of everyone and making advertisements declaring how he was going how he was going to make gamers his bitch.