Spoilers for the finale of Black Mirror Season 7 are below.
Summary
- "USS Callister," a popular Black Mirror episode, gets a follow-up in season 7.
- In "USS Callister: Into Infinity," Walton's digital self struggles to survive.
- Actor Jimmi Simpson elaborated on the inspiration for a grotesque scene in the show.
Black Mirror has returned to Netflix for its seventh season. One of the series' most highly rated and popular episodes is finally getting a follow-up. The Best War Games was able to speak to one of the episode's original cast members, who spoke about a hilariously twisted moment and the inspiration behind his performance.
"USS Callister" was Black Mirror 's Season 4 debut episode, and it was an excellent initial outing for Netflix's second collaboration with the writer and creator of the show, Charlie Brooker. Black Mirror began as a UK hit on Channel 4 in 2011 before going into hiatus after Series 2. That was until Netflix decided to pick it up, giving it new life on the streaming service. Netflix likely realized the long-term potential of this dark, dystopic anthology series. Each episode acts as its own self-contained story, and with Charlie Brooker's signature writing style tying everything together, the possibilities were limitless. "USS Callister" was an examination of what happens when a shy, quiet, but secretly bitter and malevolent coder, Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons), gets his hands on the DNA of his begrudged co-workers. Daly puts a digital copy of them all into a Star Trek parody game to abuse and torture them for his own amusement.
Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 6 'USS Callister: Into Infinity' Review
The sequel to 'USS Callister' finds Nanette Cole and her crew figuring out how to survive 30 million players and get out of the game universe.
The Best War Games was lucky enough to speak with actor Jimmi Simpson about his return to the show. Simpson played Walton, co-founder of the gaming company Callister, who exploited Daly's coding genius for financial gain. Walton's digital self sacrificed themselves at the end of the last episode so that the rest of the Callister crew could escape Daly's tyrannical rule in a bubbled online universe. They entered the public gaming cloud for Daly's game, Infinity, regaining control of their digital fates. Now, in the follow-up episode and finale to Black Mirror Season 7, "USS Callister: Into Infinity", digital Walton has had to do some fairly horrific things to survive.
The world of the Callister crew has become even more precarious since audiences last saw them. Within Infinity, the crew are every bit as real as people in the outside world. Unlike gamer avatars, the crew members need to eat and drink to survive, collect credits to access vital parts of the game, and most importantly, they will die if they are shot or fatally wounded. Early on, in "USS Callister: Into Infinity", it is mentioned that Michaela Coel's character, Shania Lowry, was "blasted apart" and is confirmed to be dead.
Whilst physical Walton has been thriving on the outside, taking all the glory of launching Infinity in the wake of Daly's death, his digital alter ego has been stranded, forced to eat disgusting squid-like alien creatures on a barren planet.
Jimmi Simpson Talks About The Inspiration For That Hilarious And Gross Black Mirror Moment
When it is revealed that Walton's digital self is still alive in the game, the episode quickly cuts to the planet he respawned on, and it's definitely no picnic. In a visual very reminiscent of Cast Away, Walton scrambles over rocks and hunts in dirty pools of water to find his next meal. He spears a strange, writhing alien mass, which he sinks his teeth into. Simpson doesn't hold back. While the creature is still alive, he gorges himself on its flesh and drinks its blood. The Best War Games inquired about his newfound feral instincts.
GR: There's a scene in the show where you have to really enthusiastically and voraciously chow down on a wriggling, alien creature. You have to drink its blood and really get in there. What was it like shooting that scene? What's the experience having to deal with that kind of prop and perform in that way?
Simpson was delighted to act in a scene that takes Walton's digital character to such a wild place: "I tell you, man, it's fun." He openly discussed the inspiration behind his untamed hunger. Simpson reminisced about a movie he saw when he was twelve called Enemy Mine. The film came out in 1985 and starred Dennis Quaid, who played a spaceship pilot called Willis Davidge. Much like Walton, Willis ends up stranded on an alien world where the environment is relatively hostile.
The film has made quite an impact on Simpson. He cites Quaid's acting as a perfect match for what he was going for in "Into Infinity":
"Dennis Quaid has this quality that's so what they were talking about. He has this hunger for food that is always stuck in my craw. It's one of those things inspired by another actor's commitment to eat this s*** that is insane!"
For Simpson, this was one of the highlights of his part in the episode and his career as a whole. It seems that this alien-devouring moment is "a dream come true", and to be fair, how many other actors can claim to have demolished an alien organism with their bare hands?
"It was like 'Oh my God, I had no idea this is what I was building toward in this career.'... I loved shooting that scene and it was everything I've ever wanted to do."
Fans will have to find out the fates of both the digital and physical Walton for themselves by watching "USS Callister: Into Infinity" and the rest of Black Mirror Season 7, which is now available to stream on Netflix.
- Release Date
- December 4, 2011
- Network
- Channel 4, Netflix
- Showrunner
- Charlie Brooker
- Directors
- Owen Harris, Toby Haynes, James Hawes, David Slade, Carl Tibbetts, Ally Pankiw, Bryn Higgins, Dan Trachtenberg, Euros Lyn, Jodie Foster, Joe Wright, John Hillcoat, Sam Miller, Tim Van Patten, Uta Briesewitz, Colm McCarthy, Jakob Verbruggen, James Watkins, John Crowley, Otto Bathurst, Anne Sewitsky, Brian Welsh
- Writers
- Jesse Armstrong
Cast
-
Cristin MiliotiNanette Cole -
Jimmi SimpsonWalton
WHERE TO WATCH
Source: The Best War Games