Stick us in hyperwarp and let’s just . . . **** off somewhere.
The fourth season of Black Mirror gets off to a rollicking start with this magnificent episode that takes on sci-fi icon Star Trek and I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream and makes its points with charm, wit and the darkness we’ve come to expect from Black Mirror. In this episode, Jesse Plemons plays a genius game developer that’s been manipulated by his more charismatic business partner; he plays out revenge fantasies in a game universe of his own design where he is the stalwart, Shatner-esque captain of the USS Callister, a ship populated by digital versions of the people who belittle him in his normal life. But when a new crew member joins, played in a tour de force performance by Cristin Milioti, the world of the USS Callister is threatened.
This episode is really fantastic. The script at first tries to get us on the side of Plemons’ sad-sack character and you do feel sympathy for him, but then the episode unfolds exactly what happens when this powerless man actually has power and it’s not good. Plemons is absolutely perfect in all three modes; the sympathetic sad-sack, the charismatic cheesy captain and the terrifying villain. Cristin Milioti is given an even harder role I think and she pulls it off to perfection. She’s the most compelling protagonist of the series so far, I think, and watching her character change over the course of the episode is wonderful. Jimmi Simpson is great as Walton; he has a monlogue late in the episode that just really takes things to a whole different emotional level and, if what I read online is true, he actually had one take to get that monologue and he did it, which makes it even more incredible. Michaela Cole, who had a scene stealing part in the third season opener Nosedive gets more to do here. The cast is also game for a lot of comedy and, as we all know, when drama series’ decide to do comedic episodes, things often don’t work, but it really does here and the comedy is hilarious without taking away from the darkness of the episode. This is, on the whole, a really wide-ranging episode in the emotional sense, more so than a lot of them and it’s beyond auspicious to begin the fourth season this way, though it does raise the uncomfortable question of whether the show will be able to live up to the high standard set by the Callister. 4 stars.
tl;dr – Trek-esque space opera is thrilling, hilarious, disturbing and brilliant all in one; an incredible cast create some of the series’ best characters so far. 4 stars.