‘Black Mirror: USS Callister’ Recap: What to Remember Before the Sequel

A reuniting adventure with the crew of the USS Callister is imminent in “Black Mirror.”

The first entry – “USS Callister” – aired back in 2017 as the Netflix show’s Season 4 premiere. The entry immediately jumped to the top of most fan’s rankings of best “Black Mirror” episodes and has stayed there since. A sequel to the popular episode seemed likely and Season 7 is finally delivering the goods.

But what happened in the “Star Trek” inspired first outing of the Callister? Here’s what you need to remember before diving into the sequel – “USS Callister: Into Infinity” – when Season 7 premieres.

Who Is Robert Daly?

At the beginning of the episode, Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) comes off as the William Shatner-esque captain of the USS Callister. But it isn’t long before Daly’s confident captain persona is revealed to be a farce, part of the lifelike simulation he’s running. In reality, Daly is the CTO of a video game company called Callister, Inc. who’s major VR game “Infinity” is prepping a major update before the holiday season.

Unlike Daly’s captain identity, the real man is a meek and often walked-on component of the company. The chief aggressor in treating Daly like a pushover is the company’s CEO Walton (Jimmi Simpson) but there are several people who push the man’s buttons.

What happens in the episode?

The inciting event of the “Black Mirror” episode comes when new hire Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) starts work and gushes her admiration for Daly’s work on her first day. This gets Daly interested despite overhearing conversation warning Nanette not to get too close because he gets “stare-y.”

After hearing this comment, he waits until everyone leaves for the night and steals a coffee lid from Nanette’s garbage and takes it home. He uses a DNA digital cloner to render a version of Nanette into his private Space Fleet mod as a member of the USS Callister, along with other members of the office who have pissed him off — Walton, Shania (Michaela Coel), Tulaska (Milanka Brooks), Kabir (Paul G. Raymond) and Nate (Osy Ikhile). It turns out everyone else on the ship is aware of what’s happening and Daly isn’t some great space hero in the game, but a power drunk virtual god who makes his captives miserable if they don’t play along with their game.

Daly tries to get Nanette to play along with the game – including a mission-ending celebratory kiss with the women on the ship which she refuses. He continues to make them miserable following a mission to a desert planet to face off against Valdak (Billy Magnussen) – the office jock. After he leaves for the night, Nanette refuses to accept her fate and hacks a portion of Infinity to send a message to her outside self asking for help, but it’s through Daly’s game account and she asks him about it.

Daly re-enters the game furious and ready to turn Nanette into one of the many monsters the “crew” faces while down on planets. Shania jumps in to her defense and Daly decides to turn her into one instead and then shuffles her off to the hold. Walton also reveals after that Daly got the DNA for his son Tommy off a lollipop left in the office and unless he continues to play along and not interfere he’ll clone Tommy into the game and force him to watch his son die over and over.

After Daly leaves following his punishments, Nanette notices an anomaly in the sky. After some inspection, it turns out it’s a result of the current update being done to Infinity. If the crew of the Callister can get to the update they could escape Daly’s closed off world. They just need to make sure they can’t re-clone them using his stolen DNA samples. After some convincing they set a plan in motion.

The next time Daly logs in for a session Nanette convinces him to beam down to the planet just the two of them and distracts the CFO with the prospect of a swim — which leaves the device he uses to connect with the outside world unattended. Kabir beams the device to the ship and uses it to blackmail the outside world Nanette into helping them. She sneaks to Daly’s apartment while digital Nanette keeps him distracted.

The team on the Callister has outside Nanette call for a pizza and then beams the device back to Daly’s stuff. When his door is buzzed he exits the game to go see who is there, not expecting a pizza or company. While he’s distracted, outside Nanette sneaks in and steal the various DNA samples from Daly’s deskside fridge and slinks out the back while in the Space Fleet mod digital Nanette beams back to the ship and they head for the closing update anomaly.

The ship races for the update and Daly – who re-enters the game to find himself alone – jumps in a separate ship and gives chase. The update is getting close to finishing which would close the anomaly for good which forces the Callister to cut through an asteroid field as Daly catches up to them. They make it most of the way through but hit an asteroid right at the end that kills their engines.

With Daly set to catch up, Walton agrees to head down to the engine and restart them manually – which will kill him. He arrives in the engine room and tells Daly off one last time before kickstarting the engine. The Callister makes it through and Daly gets stuck in his own world. The Space Fleet mod gets detected by the larger game and starts to be deleted and Daly isn’t able to exit the game. With nobody checking on him during the holiday, Daly dies sitting locked in his game mod without being able to eat.

The Callister crew finds themselves through the anomaly and into the larger Infinity game. They now have thousands of procedurally generated worlds to explore and all the time in the world to do it.

“Black Mirror” Season 7 is now streaming on Netflix.

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