Black Mirror S4 E1 USS Callister Part One (Netflix)
The plot of USS Callister goes a little something like this:
Robert Daley (Jesse Plemons) is the inventor/programmer that gave the Black Mirror Universe the full-immersion virtual reality game world depicted in Playtest (and suggested in a few other episodes). His partner Walton and everyone else at the company they built together hate Robert viscerally (Walton was in charge of the business and marketing end of brining the game to market etc.).
<If you haven’t seen Playtest the game in question links a human brain to a computer game in a computer-generated virtual reality world. During the time a human is playing the game, they appear to be physically asleep (or unconscious) in the “real world” while they play the game in the computer-generated world>
Despite his status as one of the co-creators of the company Daley is treated horribly by even his low-level employees (at one point the receptionist seems indifferent to even letting him in the building when his ID stops working) which seems to suggest he does not have the power to hire or fire.
Anyway, Robert Daley, nearly simultaneously, also appears to be the Captain of an interstellar spacecraft (The USS Callister) where he is absolutely adored (a little too much) by his crew (who seem to cheer his every move as if he were in sole control of all the water on a desert planet).
The two Robert Daley’s are bridged when we find out that “programmer Daley” created a gated area in the larger Infinity game world where only he can play and where he is the beloved and all-powerful Captain Daley.
In other words, the same Daley that created the game is also the Daley who is the Captain of the USS Callister inside the game (but the rest of the worldwide players can’t see him because his game area is walled off from the rest of the Infinity game universe).
Programmer Daley modeled his gated area after a beloved long-canceled television show called “Space Fleet” (clearly 1st Gen. Star Trek as all the sets are spitting images of early Star Trek sets and Plemons does a spot-on Kirk impression throughout).
One other important little detail I probably should mention here…
Daley has also stolen DNA samples of all the people who work at his company and made “clone digital uploads” of them to live (and to serve him) in his game world.
Yup, in order to get revenge on his real-life employees and co-owner, he humiliates and tortures the “clones” of them when he is inside the game.
I am very familiar with uploading (started reading about the possibility of uploading consciousness into a computer in the early 1990s) but I have never read about the possibility of creating a digital clone using DNA before seeing USS Callister.
I think this is probably because it is impossible or at least highly improbable. As Mike Murphy (another tech-commentator) mentioned in a recent article:
“I feel like if we’re at a point where we can instantaneously analyze someone’s DNA and copy it well enough to mimic their consciousness, we’d probably have achieved the singularity and be able to upload our own minds into the cloud. So we’d probably have transcended making video games.”
The best explanation I have heard of how neural mapping would be accurate enough to upload a copy of someone’s brain involved nanobot sized scanners (Ray Kurzweil of Google has suggested this as the most likely means of uploading).
Anyway, the reason his crew seems so fawning and dedicated to Captain Daley is that inside the game’s parameters he has godlike powers (he programmed the game and them and they are totally under his control).
Enter Nanette…
Nannette Cole (Cristin Miloti) is a brand new employee at Infinity games (guess the stuff about potentially getting cloned wasn’t in any online reviews about Infinity Games), introduces herself to Daley and tells him that she admires his code (suggesting that she is also a programmer).
Daley, excited to meet someone who doesn’t immediately loathe him, sneaks into the hallway after she leaves and strategically overhears her talking with a co-worker about him saying that she doesn’t like him she just “likes his code.”
Uh-Oh…
So, Daley sees her leave a cup of coffee on the table, takes it home with him and puts it in what looks like some kind of digital scanner. A few minutes later and — PRESTO — a digitally cloned digital copy of Cole appears in his USS Callister game world along with digital clones of all the other employees of Infinity Games.
Let the fun commence (more on this in Part Two).
So, why did Charlie Brooker choose to base this in the Star Trek universe?
One obvious reason could be that Brooker is a huge Star Trek fan and this is an homage to Star Trek and Captain Kirk <Kirk, for instance, confronted an uploaded adversary was back in the “What Are Little Girls Made Of” episode of the original series in the late 70's>.
But there is clearly something else hiding under Brooker’s criticisms here.
Captain Daley makes multiple references to the “ethics” of Space Fleet and I suspect this is a reference to how well-defined ethical systems operate on Star Trek (and in real life).
Star Trek’s “Prime Directive,” for example, prohibits Star Fleet personnel from directly interfering with the internal development of alien civilizations but we see Kirk play God all the time whenever it suits his purposes or whenever it is necessary to save The Enterprise from certain destruction.
My best guess is that Brooker is suggesting that Federation history is written by Starfleet and that the Prime Directive (like so many of our own ethical codes) is written in the shifting sand of circumstances not etched in the deontological steel of undying devotion.
To simplify…Star Trek’s ethics are a moveable (and easily manipulated) feast.
Daley loves the strict code of ethics of, for lack of a better term, the Federation but carries out coercion, tortures, and brutalities without ever seeing the contradictions.
Daley is no different than anti-sexists who wholeheartedly participate in structures riddled with sexist disparity (imagine the progressive chief operating officer of a progressive company like Vice for instance).
Daley is no different than the people who claim to be defenders of the Constitution when it comes to the 2nd Amendment but are actively working against (or ignoring) threats to the Fourth Amendment, the First Amendment, and every other Amendment (especially those involving race).
Kirk is not different than these people either (I probably am not either). We humans have a great deal moral clarity when we are tasked with the ethics of specific situations or in judging someone else’s moral failings than we do when asked to evaluate our own behaviors using a wide-view lens.
Okay, part two is about similarities and overlaps between the USS Callister and White Christmas episodes of Black Mirror.
Next up: Black Mirror S4 E1 USS Callister Part Two
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Portions originally published at onpiratesatellite.com.
