Black Mirror: USS Callister

[Fianna]

"My favourite Twilight Zone is the one where a nuclear bomb goes off." Sums up BM to me.

They're gonna need to be way more specific about it.

[Mabus]

"My favourite Twilight Zone is the one where a nuclear bomb goes off." Sums up BM to me.

They're gonna need to be way more specific about it.

I didn't get it if he was talking about "Time enough at last" or some other episode. But to me that feels like he has a superficial understanding of what The Twilight Zone was about.
Unlike Black Mirror, TTZ never had a big budget. It also ran at only 25 minutes. And I think that helped. As they say, less is more. By keeping the story short, it's more tight. Remember Aesop's fables? Like The Frog and the Scorpion? It's memorable because it's short, like all Aesops are. TTZ is the TV format of those old Aesops. TTZ used its limitations to maximize its theme/aesop: fewer characters means the dialogue is tighter and more direct, lower budget means they had to improvise and thus think many things over again, shorter run time means less filler and more plot-relevant dialogue/action.
Black Mirror on the other hand is twice as long, and with a bigger budget they seem to indulge themselves into big sets, expensive shooting locations, better special effects, while running the plot in parallel. It's not exactly bad or lazy writing/producing, but it feels like it could do more. It's nice that they show a bigger world, but I feel that this is a distraction, and thus it dilutes the the episode.
A good story doesn't need to rely on eye candy, it needs a simple and clever script.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Really this is just about as importantly a piece about video game culture, more important to the darker side of the pathological nature compared to that of Trek fandom.

Nothing about Trek fandom goes to depravity to these kind of lengths in society. Black Mirror is a pretty sharp satire from what I can tell, and this isn't how society sees Trekkies. Video games however have been all over controversy to the nature of this guy.

[Chaltab]

I generally don't like The Black Mirror for its nonsensically bleak and contrived take on technology's dangers, and this episode does have some... issues with the whole DNA thing being complete nonsense, but overall I did enjoy this episode.

That said, I do think there's a case to be made for Daly's misogyny. It feels like that he is by and large a 'missing stair' within the company, someone that we see the female workers warning each other about. But no, misogyny isn't the only thing wrong with him, or even the worst thing: as Chuck says he's clearly an outright sociopath and revels in torturing others regardless of sex.

Hopefully, if a spin-off does get made, the average quality of the episodes is better than the series it originated in.

[Darmani]

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.

I disagree, it doesn't come off that way because Daly is so antithetical to it that it's more a case of 'i didn't think I had to point it out" he even outlays what star trek represents when talking about spacefleet before screaming at them for ruining it and turning one of them into a beast. Having her be as big a fan would have been an interesting dynamic but explicitly pointing out that he's a monster and not what the moral of the show was would have been ham fisted.

As it is so subtle restrained and even tempered otherwise?
Villifying illtempered geeks to win social brownie points is a decade old activity for the geek media providers for me at this point. I am no longer eager for the weird you are a monster my fans thanks for my TED-talk/testimony takes. It reeks of taking your Twitter argument to market. A ripped from your RSS feed. And frankly I want more abusive females and their easily mocked insecurities and boundary violations and social shit stirring ESPECIALLY without yass queen presentations before I give this very overdone plot a benefit of the doubt.


If need reason DNA works? The system is gene-tuned. He is getting a clone by indexing system so all users or their data get a facsimile uploaded and copied into the SIM.
It's the key to get a profile not the source of the profile.

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.

Chuck's wrap-up where he points out that his co-workers don't like him because he really is that bad of a person and they've caught on to it is what bothers me most of all. Because effectively that says without genuine judgment assessment of him what they're doing and why they do it is GOOD and WISE. Someone can judge you, push you aside, and that's good because they're keeping themselves safe from the dangerous prickly bomb person.
All the worse because he's not torturing people he's torturing digital clones of people. We've seen how this is bringing out the worst of him but this is deliberately equated to who he is in real life. Where we then see a bunch of petty or bad at elements to his character but relatively tame things. oh no he doesn't tip the pizza delivery guy! Oh no he wishes the girl that was nice to him thought he was sexy and became upset! So he created a virtual version of her in order to work out all of his wrath and issues without actually having to socialize. and killed a kid.

Well no need for you to worry about why you don't like that introverted of weirdo who has an obsession or does this or that thing that sent you off. You're just that damn woke you can realize all those awful personality traits that he has and if you get close to him he's going to rape you or turn you into a monster or is otherwise Psychopathic. That introvert and frustrated nerd guy? totally psychopath you know because he's sullen and tips poorly and looks at porn!

Just be glad you're not closer to him or he doesn't have more power over you. And this is where it really breaks down in this instance. As CTO he does have that power over them. We don't see him abusing people in real life. At best he does his one creepy hobby take a bit of them and then create effigies in which to torment.
Even This Thread makes a big deal about the fact that he killed a kid. He did not kill a child he killed a video game character that looked and acted like a kid.

And then it's summed up that all this virtual bad behavior where he's pretty much powerless and doesn't have any real impact on their actual lives. Means that he's such a bad person that it's okay if someone systematically mistreated him or just hate him for the same s*** that we hate about him such as flirting with coworkers. Or snubbing them. And he deserves braindeath for violent isolated fantasies!
editted for aesthetics and corrections.

[SpacePaladin]

I guess the reason some people might take umbrage at the Daly portrayal, is because while he might not represent what they or anyone they know are, he can be seen as a representation of what they think others think they are.

As a comparison, in Psychonauts had starkly different portrayals of Raz's dad and Raz's mental image of his dad, and when said dad sees said image, he says sadly "Is that really how I look in your mind?" People who see a bit of themselves in Daly probably are like that.

[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.

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

Interesting I was reading about Wozniak (he mentions Star Trek as a influence on him) and his life matches what I see as a more realistic scenario for Daly, doesn't like his current job leaves and can quickly found or be hired somewhere else.

[JonathanVik]

I've been listening to a lot of DnD horror stories lately, and Daly reminds me of murderhobos that play the game so they can have power fantasies. They always ruin everyone else's fun because they only care about their own enjoyment and no one else's. They always get upset when you call them out on their selfishness and throw hissy fits when they don't get their way. Sadly, people like Daly exist in real life. The only thing I find unrealistic is that he doesn't come off as oily and creepy in real life. People like him are very bad at hiding their true nature.

[remagynona]

People like him are very bad at hiding their true nature.

That was my biggest problem with this episode. Sociopath's are usually superficially charming at first glance but when you work in an office with them every day you quickly come to know exactly what they are and how to keep them at a distance as much as possible. Nothing Daly did in the office scenes indicated that he was one of those people. As Chuck said, the worst thing we ever see him do outside the game is not tip the pizza man.

This show just has a chronic problem with strawman characters and vapid plots, but I don't necessarily think it's intentional. The creator, Charlie Brooker is a solid writer with the ability to distill the familiar into a witty and coherent satire but it doesn't seem to come across very well in Black Mirror. It may be that the tech and cultural issues covered in the show just aren't his thing.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

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.

Yeah, the attack here is aimed at those nerdy types who are perceived to be sexist, gatekeeping a-holes who objectify women in their pasttime but want women and minorities to be kept out of their favorite past time. The sort of people who complain about Captain Marvel, Ghostbusters, Rey, etc., and never want their beloved franchise to move beyond it's problematic past. This is not to say that I don't think that there are legitimate reasons to complain about many of those things, but I do think that's clearly the perceived target they're aiming at.

I think that you're exactly right in this being a spite piece, and that's the issue (or one of the issues) I have with it. It's a vindictive, mean-spirited takedown. That turns it into an overly broad piece with a villain that is far too one-dimensional for effective social commentary. I don't think Brooker needed to be overly sympathetic with a viewpoint he considered to be toxic, but I do think there needs to be a connection made between personal shortcomings, attitudes, and behavior. Because he doesn't do that, it comes across more as an insult (and again, a pretty mean-spirited one) than a critique.

As it is, not many people at all would identify with the Daly seen in the episode, outside maybe a couple of broad personality traits, which makes the episode ineffective on that level.