I agree that this was a major weakness of that episode. For me to watch it to the end, I had to convince myself that DNA can magically store memories. Which isn’t satisfying at all.
It would have worked better if Todd (sorry, Daly) had figured out a way to get into their brains without them knowing and then obtained enough information about them to simulate them digitally. Like, why not have them all log into Infinity for a work-related training, and while their bodies are all reclining and white-eyed, have Daly stick another disc on the heads that exports information rather than imports. He could use digital photos of their faces to create their avatars. Or maybe Infinity already has the faces figured out since they are employees and required to be in the database.
The problem with this is that they would never be able to defeat Daly without intentionally killing him. Because he’d always have that information stored somewhere–no doubt backed-up in the Cloud-- whereas the DNA is (conveniently) only kept in a mini-freezer. And I don’t think nudie pictures would be enough to convince any decent protagonist to kill someone. So DNA it must be, I guess.
But I found the episode enjoyable because I liked the goofiness of it all. It cracked me up when they were talking to the “monster” from marketing like everything was totally normal. I liked how the coworkers fundamentally got along with each other and tried to make things work as much as they could, despite being in a truly shitty situation.
Best not to think too much about the DNA: once it’s sequenced, and we see a machine doing just that, it’s just digital information that can be stored and copied without reference to the original sample. I had the same reaction you did to it being a lame plot device that could be improved with a couple of minutes of writing.
Plus, take it a step further: their plan wasn’t to leave him trapped (or else they wouldn’t bother raiding the mini-fridge), and wasn’t to survive (but they still cared about him using the contents of the fridge to create new duplicates).
But getting a discarded coffee cup was of course trivially easy for the guy; and, as far as I can tell, the Thought-They-Were-Doomed contingent didn’t leave behind helpful exposition to clue in their real-world counterparts.
To be fair to them, I think only one of them (the guy with the son) really cared about getting the DNA, specifically his son’s. The “get the DNA” thing was thrown in there to convince him to get on board with the mutiny. The others just wanted to either “die” or just get away from Daly. So I would say they were largely successful in getting what they wanted. I know that if I had been in their shoes, I wouldn’t have cared so much about subsequent versions of me being played with. I would only care about me.
Okay. Finished Arkangel. Much better and much more (thematically) than the heads up had me thinking it would be.
This is more what I was hoping for from the season - using the possible technologies to visit more classic human relationship themes, and they did it well. The lecture being on Oedipus, a classic version of parents trying to control the fate involving their children and more so of the consequences of being able to get answers to questions, the Arkangel system in this case serving the role of oracle: asking it for information to avoid tragedy causing tragedy to occur.
The blocking of unwanted information bit was used before but the ep was not about the technology.
Callister OTOH while cute, was more about having sentient avatars and how we would treat them. Many use “videogames” now to act out aggression and do so in ways they’d never do in the real world to real people - as the AI running the agents in these games develop emerging sentience (which we may not be aware of when or where to call it such, Turing test be damned) or even more our own sentiences cloned in a digital world … but they did that exact exploration with a personal assistant agent theme already and best yet in the love story. If this came before those it would be one thing, but it didn’t.
I just watched the first episode. I’m going to post my thoughts about it, but then won’t venture back into this thread until I’ve seen the whole season, to avoid spoilers. (I think for this show in particular, it would be nice to have one thread per episode, but whatever…)
So, overall, I was disappointed. It was a neat premise, the acting and production values were great (I loved how deliberately 60s the spaceship effects were). But, several major problems:
(1) Plot/feasibility holes galore. That’s not how DNA works. At all. I’d much rather have some technobabble where people get a brain scan before they can go into Infinity, and the bad guy has been illicitly copying them, or something like that. And it makes no sense that they are able to make a phone call to the real world, and instead of having the CEO guy call up the real life CEO guy and say “hey, it’s me”, they go with this overcomplicated blackmail scheme. And how does it make sense that the bad guy actually gets trapped and died? Who would ever put that device on their forehead if a code bug of some sort could literally trap and kill them forever?
(2) I feel like “someone cloned and trapped and suffering in someone else’s VR is something they’ve already done a lot”
(3) I dislike how absolutely moustache-twirling evil the bad guy was. There’s an interesting story to tell where he just wants to have star trek adventures, and wants the rest of the crew to play along, and then loses his temper, but really wants them to be his friend, yada yada. Instead he was just an asshole god, which made it less interesting.
So, overall, I’d say C-.
It was to affirm what you said: the “insecure nerd” stock character turns out to be a toxic asshole and worse, and the “womanizing boss” stock character turns out to be an appropriately(?) behaved, charismatic family man.
Despite this twist, I have to go along with the criticism laid out by MaxTheVool; the plot does not bear thinking about– they really should have tried a bit harder– and the story has been done before and more effectively.
A bizarre detail in ep. 1 is that there really was (or is) an “infinite procedurally-generated universe” prototype called Infinity in which you could fly through solar systems and land on planets. I wonder why the show used the name of a real game engine? Coincidence?
One neat little Easter Egg I noticed in the USS Callister episode- the Callister office was specifically mentioned in the elevator as being on the thirteenth floor.
…using pseudo-science to fudge over details in service of the story is part-and-parcel of the genre. That isn’t a plot-hole. One of the most horrific parts of the story was that Daly was both stealing and storing DNA without their consent. Changing the story so that everybody got a brain scan (and would probably have signed a release to allow Callister to do what they liked with the scan) takes that horrific element away. The invasive nature of what Daly has done: taking/using/storing the DNA without consent, is an integral part of the story.
Well no, the blackmail scheme wasn’t over complicated at all. It was a short cut: a very practical solution that eliminated time-wasting and risk. How would you react if somebody called you out of the blue and said “Hello John, this is John, I’m your clone, I’m flying a virtual spaceship, and I need your help?” Well Cole saw how that played out the first time she tried it, so why would she risk doing that again? She knows herself better than anyone. She knew she wouldn’t be able to convince herself “with the truth” and with a limited time window she went for the jugular.
The actress who played Cole (Cristin Milioti) said this about the character:
"Though the threat of a release of very private photos isn’t an ideal scenario for a woman, Milioti says it felt okay, because her character is in charge here. “So if she has to hurt herself, she’s in control.” “She knows about a weakness that she has and that’s awful, but she needs to get the job done,” Milioti says. “She becomes the captain, even if it’s at her own expense. "
Smart, practical, efficient. I would love to watch the continued adventures of Captain Cole and the crew of the USS Callister. I’d take Cole over almost any other captain (with the exception of Kirk) in the Star Trek universe.
And it will be done a lot more in the future, with varying degrees of success. There are only so many stories that can be told. This is a mish-mash of Star Trek and the episode “White Christmas” and “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” and many different things. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
But Daly wasn’t “moustache-twirling evil”. When we first meet Daly the story sets him up to be the hero. He’s bullied. Treated like shit. Underappreciated. A “nice guy” if you got to know him better. We meet the “romantic interest”. She adores him. Respects him.
We’ve seen this story before. Its Peter Parker meets Mary Jane. Its Jonathan and Nancy from Stranger Things.
But as has been pointed out this story is a portrait of “toxic masculinity”: probably one of the most cutting portraits of toxic masculinity I’ve seen on TV. Daly is the hero of his story. And in real life, in the gaming and the fandom community, we see this all the time. They are the ones that are jumping up and down when the ghostbusters remake was recast with women. Or whatever the current kerfuffle about the latest Stars Movie (I haven’t seen it, so no spoilers) is all apparently about. Daly is a “gatekeeper of canon”. The kind of guy who doesn’t like the new Star Trek Discovery because of “diversity”.
Daly is never moustache-twirling evil in “real life.” And toxic trolls you find on the internet aren’t “moustache-twirling evil” in real life either. The below link is a link to a week of harassment experienced by Anita Sarkeesian: (TW: some nasty, evil comments on the link.)
Those comments are so cartoonishly evil that its hard to believe that actual people actually wrote them. But these cartoonishly evil people not only exist, but they are all over the place in the real world, we interact with them daily, they hold positions of responsibility, they vote.
So I don’t view Daly as a cliched “moustache-twirling evil villain”. Daly is toxic fandom: toxic masculinity personified. If this technology actually existed I have no doubt that there would be people who would do exactly what Daly did in this episode.
In case you hadn’t guessed: I loved this episode. There are a couple of other things I’d like to point out. When the “real world” opens: we are seeing all the other characters from Daly’s “point of view.” Elena thinks she is “so much better” than Daly. Shania is hopelessly self absorbed. But everybody is simply a “product of perception.” And as the episode goes on we become unsure on whether or not what we are being told is accurate.
The conversation between Shania and Cole over coffee is just a brilliant example of this. The first time I watched it I didn’t trust Shania, because I’m a guy, the episode was being framed as “Daly is the hero”, so when she said to give Daly a “wide berth” I didn’t quite believe her. But by the end of the episode I had recontextualised the conversation. This was the whisper network. Shania was telling Cole how to survive at this workplace. Play along with Walton: he will try to sleep with you but he isn’t dangerous. But stay away from Daly, because he might not look dangerous, but he really fucking is. And this is shown again later in the episode when the “self absorbed” virtual Shania stands up to Daly in defense of Cole. (and gets turned into a monster as a result.) Just like the women who are sharing #metoo: Shania is petrified of the consequences of making a stand, but she makes a stand anyway. “Heroes don’t always wear capes.”
I think that this is a remarkable episode released at the perfect time that says a lot about our society. And its also fucking hilarious, and the ending had me feeling so upbeat I punched the air in delight. I’ve had a crappy year. I needed this episode. I didn’t expect to love it so much but I do.
Banquet Bear, I was prepared to distrust Shania too because she seemed so much more self-assured, sophisticated, and cynical than Nanette.
But she wasn’t the “catty mean girl” I thought she was going to be. I feel stupid for admitting this, but I actually got teary-eyed when Daly turned her into a monster. I think I put myself in Nanette’s shoes and imagined myself feeling sad that I wouldn’t have her around to make me laugh at the absurdity of it all anymore.
By the way, the actress who played Shania is Michaela Coel. She stars in her own TV series called “Chewing Gum”, which to my uninitiated eye looks like the British version of “Awkward Black Girl” (if anyone here is hip enough to remember that funny web series). I’ve never watched the show, but now I may have to check it out.
I noticed a couple of easter eggs where other Black Mirror episodes were referenced. For example, in the last ep, in the sequence where the guy has his SO’s consciousness in his head, he’s reading a comic book and she’s complaining that he’s going too slowly. The comic book was “Fifteen Million Merits!” (At least I think it was)
ETA - the broken tablet from the Arkangel ep was in the Black Museum.
It did seem incongruous that Daley would be the sort of guy you’d be warned to give a wide berth to but that we would totally desexualize his fantasy world.
There are a couple of other things I’d like to point out. When the “real world” opens: we are seeing all the other characters from Daly’s “point of view.” Elena thinks she is “so much better” than Daly. Shania is hopelessly self absorbed. But everybody is simply a “product of perception.” And as the episode goes on we become unsure on whether or not what we are being told is accurate.
