TV Obsessive
This week, on The TV Obsessive Podcast Episode 96, Caemeron and Ryan revisit a few episodes of Black Mirror in preparation for Season 7. But first, in the news:
- A trailer for The Rehearsal Season 2 has been released
- Rick and Morty Season 8 will premiere in May
- Dexter: Original Sin has been renewed for Season 2
- Production of House of the Dragon Season 3 is underway
- Citadel has been put on hold by Amazon
- And, Juno Temple is set to star in The Husbands on Apple TV+
On Black Mirror: USS Callister, Bandersnatch, and Men Against Fire
Black Mirror Season 7 comes out on April 10, so we wanted to look back at some existing episodes that might inform the new season. We know, from the trailer and other things that have been released, that S7 will include a sequel to “USS Callister,” and it seems that an episode will somehow play with “Bandersnatch,” or at least include characters from it. So, we’ll be discussing those two episodes, plus “Men Against Fire,” which I just have some kind of feeling about based on the Season 7 trailer.
In “USS Callister,” Robert Daly created a bubble version of the game he had also made for the public, called Infinity. He then inserted various co-workers into his game by copying their DNA to create virtual versions of them. His purpose was basically to psychologically abuse them/assert dominance, but at the end the virtual copies gained the upperhand and escaped the bubble through a wormhole/game update. Daly was trapped and presumably died in real life, as he was unable to exit the game, had a Do Not Disturb on his door, and was on a 10 day vacation from work for Xmas. The episode was loosely based on Star Trek/had those vibes, but one has to wonder about how “USS Callister: Into Infinity” will proceed, given that this whole Space Fleet thing was a mod that Daly had created for himself.
You’ll recall that “Bandersnatch” was Netflix’s first attempt at an interactive TV episode, which makes it somewhat complicated to talk about. But the gist is that Stefan is trying to create a Choose Your Own Adventure game based on a book of the same title. It seems like a couple of characters are going to be in an episode of Season 7, and thus that Black Mirror might be canonicalizing an ending of “Bandersnatch,” or at least ruling some of the possibilities out. If you watched (or played?) “Bandersnatch” and took the acid (which, why wouldn’t you?), you’ll recall Colin talking about every possible reality existing, so we could think about it that way, but I can’t help but wonder how direct of a line there will be between “Bandersnatch” and “Plaything.”
In “Men Against Fire,” we follow Stripe, who is a soldier who’s had an implant they call Mass put into his brain, which makes it such that the government can control his sense experience. The primary goal is to help him (and others) kill Roaches, who are actually just human beings they’ve determined have bad DNA. Real eugenics vibes, or, I mean, real eugenics at the barrel of a rifle.
- On the moral status of digital copies
- How will “Bandersnatch” fit in?
- Watching “Men Against Fire” now as opposed to when it was released.
Next Time on The TV Obsessive Podcast…
We begin to discuss Black Mirror Season 7, which we will be working through episode by episode.
