USS Callister consistently ranks among the best episodes of Black Mirror. The episode proved so popular that it’s actually getting a sequel in the upcoming seventh season, but creator Charlie Brooker told Deadline that he once considered expanding it into a limited TV series or even a feature film.
“Of all the stories we’ve done, this one ended as though we were setting it up for the sequel,” Brooker said. “It went through various guises but in the end we made it feature length within the season. It took so long getting it together — we had the pandemic, writers’ strike and then had to get everyone’s schedules lined up, and that was its own Rubik’s cube on a unicycle.“
A USS Callister spinoff series could have been too much of a good thing, but it’s safe to say that the sequel, titled USS Callister: Into Infinity, is the most highly anticipated episode of the new season. The synopsis reads: “Robert Daly is dead, but now the crew of the USS Callister – led by Captain Nanette Cole – are stranded in an infinite virtual universe, fighting for survival against 30 million players.“
While speaking with THR last year, Brooker said that he knew he wanted to return to USS Callister as soon as the filming had wrapped. “This has been brewing for actually quite a long time. And it’s partly because of the way that it ends. The first one ends like you could just carry that story on and follow where they go now. So it was always like, ‘Hmm, I’m going to do that,’” Brooker said. “It was something we were looking at for quite a long time. There were various iterations it went through, various versions we wanted to do and were discussing on and off for several years.“
Brooker continued: “But there are a lot of schedules to sort out, and then the pandemic got in the way. It was something that looked like it wasn’t going to happen, and so I was delighted when it did. So, it’s been a minute. But even writing the characters is a luxury I don’t often get. I’ve never had it before on Black Mirror, to have a character that survives beyond one episode! So that’s been a lot of fun, and then seeing them all on set has been fantastic.“
Will there be more USS Callister on Black Mirror? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see where the episode leaves us when the entire season debuts on Netflix on April 10th.
