In Black Mirror’s USS Callister, the true villains are real-world tech moguls
The fourth season of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, a Twilight Zone-esque anthology TV series about technological anxieties and possible futures, was released on Netflix on December 29th, 2017. In this series, six writers will look at each of the fourth season’s six episodes to see what they have to say about current culture and projected fears.
Spoiler warning: This essay includes significant spoilers for “USS Callister.” It does not reveal the ending, but does address story elements not seen in the trailers.
As we inch closer to unearthing the secrets of human intelligence by understanding the complexities of the brain, a tricky series of questions arise. What happens when sentient life exists without a physical body? If it could feel...