Over a decade into making “Black Mirror,” creator Charlie Brooker’s goal was to make episodes that felt like “O.G. Black Mirror.”
“Last season started out as a season called ‘Red Mirror,’ they were all going to be horror, crime, supernatural stories, etc. And then I inconveniently thought up the episode ‘Joan is Awful,’ which was none of those things and was a ‘Black Mirror’ episode,” Brooker told TheWrap.
“[This year,] I wanted every story to be about the kind of technical breakthrough that explodes into some characters’ lives and upends everything,” he added.
“That’s the basic starting point — it was back to basics.”
Brooker quite literally went back to basics by pursuing a sequel episode for “USS Callister,” which first debuted in 2017 with Season 4, which he said the original episode naturally called for. “They’d literally flown to a wormhole,and we’re in a whole new universe, and then we immediately hit them with the problem that they’re in a universe full of players who think they’re dispensable, so it made sense to do that,” he said.
For the sequel episode, titled “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” Brooker brought back director Toby Haynes as well as its stacked cast, including Cristin Milioti (Nanette Cole), Jimmi Simpson (Walton), Billy Magnussen (Karl/Valdack), Milanka Brooks (Elena Tulaska), Osy Ikhile (Nate Packer) and Paul G. Raymond (Kabir
Dudani).
“It took a while to get the story right, because we wanted to make sure that it was a story that hopefully matched the original and also extended it in a different way and did some slightly unexpected things, or certainly made full use of the premise,” Brooker said.
Brooker also revisited a character he introduced in the interactive, standalone episode “Bandersnatch” in Will Poulter’s Colin Ritman, whom the writer said was “one of [his] favorite characters [he’s] ever written across the seasons.”
Brooker admitted he wasn’t initially thinking of returning to “Bandersnatch,” but when he was drawing from his own background as a video game journalist in the ’90s to combine video games and AI in “Plaything,” Colin came to mind.
“It looks like more of a sequel, in a way, than it was necessarily anticipated to be,” Brooker said, pointing to returning cast members Poulter and Asim Choudhury, who reprises his “Bandersnatch” role as Mohan Thakur, as well as returning director David Slade.
“As an anthology show, you don’t often get to write for returning characters, so if I get that opportunity, why not take it?” Brooker said. “It’s been weird, because across my career, very rarely have I written for returning characters, unless you count Philomena Cunk from a completely different show, which is the character I’ve probably written for the most across my career.”
As Brooker wove in AI across the season, he merged ideas he had about throwing someone into the lead of a “James Bond”-esque movie and a more horror-centric idea about a digital ghost coalescing into “Hotel Reverie,” which stars Emma Corrin, Issa Rae, Awkwafina and Harriet Walter.
“Sometimes the stories come out in a different form to how I necessarily would have expected going in,” Brooker said. “I couldn’t quite work out how to make either of these work, and then I watched ‘Brief Encounter,’ this British romance from the 1940s, and something went zoink! And these two ideas glommed together.”
While Brooker tackled issues of AI replicating one’s likeness in Season 6’s “Joan Is Awful,” “Hotel Reverie” comes at the topic from a different, more optimistic angle, with the episode throwing a Hollywood A-lister (Rae) into the high-tech remake of a vintage romance movie.
“The notion was this is a world in which it’s illegal to just digitally paint people in, which is partly why they come out with this more fantastical way of doing things, which is more immersive,” Brooker said. “It’s almost like a fairytale that you get to enter a sort of magical kingdom, but we’re doing it with what feels like a palpably near-AI computer basis.”
Brooker clarified that “Hotel Reverie” is a different interpretation of how AI is impacting the real world, which he notes is “more sinister,” saying “everyone can feel it breathing down their neck, and that’s worrisome.”
“I can see that it could be a powerful tool in the hands of creative people, I just think that you always want creative people in the kitchen,” Brooker said, likening AI to a blender or a liquidizer that still needs a human to operate it and determinate its taste. “I can see the value of AI generally as a tool, you just don’t want to erase humans from that equation, either, creatively, physically or financially.”
With the additional episodes featuring stars like Paul Giamatti, Chris O’Dowd, Rashida Jones, Tracee Ellis Ross and Siena Kelly, Brooker hopes the six-episode Season 7 achieves some balance, with fans find new favorites.
“We’ve got a couple of episodes that are gut punches, we’ve got some episodes that are melancholy and bittersweet, and we’ve got some that are kind of romps in a way,” Brooker said. “Hopefully we’re making you feel all sorts of things.”
“Black Mirror” Season 7 premieres Thursday, April 10, on Netflix.
