Black Mirror Returns With A USS Callister Sequel, But Star Trek Is No Longer The Main Target

This post contains spoilers for "Black Mirror" season 7.

Despite being known for its creepy shared universes and slyly placed connective Easter eggs, "Black Mirror" has never actually delivered a true sequel episode until this week. Season 7, the latest chapter of Charlie Brooker's long-running dystopian anthology show, ends its mixed-bag run with a clearly branded, feature film length sequel: "U.S.S. Callister: Into Infinity."

A follow-up to season 4's "Star Trek" homage "U.S.S. Callister," the new chapter picks up about a year and a half after its events, filling in any gaps our memories might have of the original episode (which somehow aired eight years ago) with plenty of mini-flashbacks and exposition. The sequel immediately reunites most of the crew of the Callister, a virtual spaceship designed by incel programmer Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) for the purpose of terrorizing and exploiting digital versions of his coworkers while playing a Captain Kirk-like smarmy space boss. Cristin Milioti returns as heroine Nanette, while Jimmi Simpson, Billy Magnussen, and the majority of the original cast also reprise their roles (though Michaela Coel is absent – and sorely missed).

Unlike lukewarm LSD trip video game saga "Plaything," which airs earlier in season 7 and does little to add to the world of "Bandersnatch" that it pulls from, "U.S.S. Callister: Into Infinity" shows signs that both this fictional world and "Black Mirror" itself have changed in the years since "U.S.S. Callister" aired. The evil, eccentric tech CEO played by Simpson gets more outlandish to match reality, while the world of "Infinity," the in-world video game, also shifts. It's a massive multiplayer online game, after all, so it only makes sense that the sequel would focus on one of the biggest online games in the world right now: "Fortnite."

The parallels between "Infinity" and "Fortnite," Epic Games' hugely popular battle royale franchise, become clear early on in "U.S.S. Callister: Into Infinity." The shiny silver title typography for the episode may borrow from the look of Kelvin timeline "Star Trek," but gone are most of the references to Gene Roddenberry's much-loved series. That was, after all, Robert's personal pop culture fixation, and he seemed pretty dead the last time we saw him. In the new storyline, Nanette's digital crew is still trapped in the world of "Infinity," but it's been heavily monetized — and they can't get the loot they need to survive if they aren't legitimate human players.

"Into Infinity" uses the language and aesthetics of "Fortnite" as the bleak but funny backdrop to a story about a crew on the brink of poverty and starvation. When the team robs real-world players, their loot and weapons fall on the ground, allowing the Callister crew to make off with it before the players respawn. The gamers they cross paths with are colorful, decked out with stylish gear like chunky pink guns or neon green punk mohawks. For anyone who's played "Fortnite," these folks look a lot like the game's near-endless supply of character skins, and they use gamer tags to identify themselves, too. Late in the episode, one character even mentions spectator mode, an option (in both "Fortnite" and "Infinity") that allows a defeated player to watch the rest of the game through the eyes of whoever killed him.

"Black Mirror" changes enough about "Fortnite" to make its fictional hyper-popular online game fall short of copyright infringement; it doesn't explicitly talk about things like in-game advertising, brand collaborations, and the battle royale gameplay approach. It is pretty clear in its parody, though, and even mentions features options like solo and party gameplay modes. The parallels are interesting, but they're ultimately nowhere near as richly developed as the "Star Trek"-inspired world of "U.S.S. Callister." While that episode used the '60s sexism of "Star Trek: The Original Series" to tell a powerful, harrowing story about insidious "nice guy" behavior and gendered power trips, "Into Infinity" simply makes its "Fortnite"-lite world a plot device. At its best, the monetization of "Infinity" — what one character calls a "cost of existence crisis" — could be read as fleeting commentary on a tanked economy, indifferent overlords, and the fight for autonomy in the face of it all.

That's certainly not nothing, but the episode still never manages to use its "Fortnite" connection as much more than window dressing. Without a long-running, heartfelt sci-fi franchise like "Star Trek" at its foundation this time around, the sequel's pop cultural allegory ultimately gets, well, a little bit lost in space.