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mikemefistous
Reviews
Black Mirror: USS Callister (2017)
The Plotholes of the 1st Episode, are bigger than it's Wormholes
Great Concept, familiar and charismatic top-tier actors, improved visual quality and use of CGI, but overall it was poorly executed due to it's plotholes that get progressively worse as this episode approaches it's conclusion. Nonetheless a decent way to start off this season.
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It starts off really interesting and you get a glimpse of the intriguing possibilities after the basis of this futuristic world scenario are explained in it's First out of Three Acts.
Only a few minor flaws for the First Act, which derive from small plot holes that can be easily ignored and looked over for the sake of the scenario.
Stealing someone's DNA and creating a digital clone version of them, then merging their digital clones in a video-game world/simulation, doesn't mean also getting their Memories & Personalities copied as well. Especially the memories up until the point the DNA detaches the body, and gets stuck onto a foreign object, that is to be later retrieved and used to clone someone...
Up until the Second Act, you soon realize, the player, aka Game Developer is the God of his game/universe whenever he connects himself in it, unlike the Digital Clones that are existing and constantly living in it this online, cloud powered universe. He can control and do pretty much whatever he wants in it. He can make someone's eyes/nose/mouth disappear just by thinking about it. He is invincible and he has enough strength to lift up someone by the throat and have them choke, effortlessly. He can turn people into ugly alien spiders out of spite etc. Imagine Darth Vader force Choking someone with his mind, you get the point.
Then on the 3rd act, for some unknown reason, the player/developer/GOD stops using his Godlike capabilities and gets tricked inside his own universe... Despite that not being the case earlier on, the player/GOD cannot/will not do anything godlike in his own universe in this act, unless he uses a made-up, in-game phone-like gadget...
He ends up having his gadget stolen by the digital clones so for some reason he loses all of his in-game privelleges?
And get this...apparently, since he lost that in-game communication gadget, he cannot even give a command to his real-life computer to pause or exit the game... Then the episode ends uneventfully with his physical lonely self, rotting away in his home, sitting motionless in his real-life desk chair... because he can't unplug himself from this futuristic gaming device and exit the game...
Silly Things like that, along with the whole concept of this game developer being some super introvert Genius, that can program his own alternative universes, but cannot program a better way to exit his game... They don't make a whole lot of sense for someone of his intellect to get screwed over by them or because this futuristic gaming device couldn't possibly have a fail-safe option to allow people to unplug and stop playing the game at will....
Not even EA could mess up their games to the point where they forget to add an "exit game" option, an option so vital that can result in their customers getting stuck in the game and dying in real-life...