Black Mirror creator breaks down the difficult way USS Callister sequel came about

Season seven of Black Mirror on Netflix has brought us a sequel to USS Callister, which is widely regarded as one of the best episodes the show has ever created. So, you might be a little shocked to know creating the follow up episode wasn’t without major difficulty.

The synopsis for USS Callister: Into Infinity reads, “Robert Daly is dead, but the crew of the USS Callister — led by Captain Nanette Cole — find that their problems are just beginning.” The episode is an hour and a half long, basically serving as a feature film to round off the season.

In an interview with Deadline, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker has opened up about how the episode came about. He said they’d been thinking about making more of this story, as soon as the first episode was produced.

“Of all the stories we’ve done, this one [the original USS Callister] ended as though we were setting it up for the sequel,” Charlie explained.

“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.”

via Netflix

He also explained the writers considered turning USS Callister into its own limited series. Or even releasing a sequel as a feature film, separate to Black Mirror season seven.

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Black Mirror EP Jessica Rhoades added: “Charlie gets to write these incredible scripts and create these abundant ensemble casts, and then he waves goodbye to them.” But it looks as though they might not say goodbye too soon, as there are talks for USS Callister to become a trilogy!

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, director Toby Haynes said: “It was fully explored as a series. We were talking numbers of episodes, how many I could direct. It was fully conceived as a miniseries.”

I need more!

Black Mirror season seven is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.