Charlie Brooker breaks down Black Mirror's không gian saga 'USS Callister' and reveals Daly's final fate 

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Warning: Do not read this article until you have watched

\'s season 4 opener, \'USS Callister\' – it contains SPOILERS

-inspired space romp we were all expecting and something else entirely.

A twist minutes in to \'USS Callister\' reveals the intergalactic antics of dashing Captain Daly and his crew to be a simulation, powered by the mind of the real Daly (Jesse Plemons), a man with a genius intellect but no social skills.

As the episode continues, Daly\'s true motives and the extent of his corruption is revealed without our sympathies shifting from him to the virtual prisoners he\'s torturing.

is a a difficult show, generally, to promote without spoiling what\'s going on," reveals series creator and \'USS Callister\' co-writer Charlie Brooker. "So we\'ve had to be very careful and it\'s been really good fun keeping that secret."

The impetus for \'USS Callister\' was Brooker\'s desire to do a space opera but with a

twist. "We don\'t tend to do what I would class as \'regular\' sci-fi, so then we discussed the possibility of it being VR and then it sort of fell into place quite quickly from there."

The inspiration for the tyrannical Daly, Brooker says, came from a few different sources. "There\'s a brilliant

episode about a little boy who has sort of God-like powers, and so I thought, \'That was chilling, I want to do something like that!\'

character called Playtime Fontayne, who\'s an adult who forces people to join in with playground-style games. I sort of thought, if you had someone who\'s running a world like that, where they\'re completely all-powerful, they can become a tyrant quite quickly.

"There was something very appealing about the idea of the \'hero Captain\' figure being a wanker. Being just a

Daly is seen taking out his frustrations with his own life in the virtual world, punishing the USS Callister crew for perceived slights committed by their real-world counterparts – even something as trivial as forgetting his coffee order.

is more hopeful now because the world is more depressing

"He\'s kind of like someone going online and venting," Brooker says. "He\'s deeply unhappy and not very well, and he\'s venting all of that in this angry fantasy world.

"If you had somebody who\'s in this sort of situation, who\'s quite damaged, and they have this incredibly immersive fantasy world, what might they get up to with that? I was thinking about dictators and things like that – the thought of everyone having to smile and applaud for 15 minutes every time Kim Jong-un makes a pun, because they\'re terrified."

Originally, the script contained hints early on that Daly was a monster, but Brooker reveals that these were "scaled back" to deliver a bigger twist later on.

"We made him more sympathetic in the office in the start. That was a decision that came in later – because orginally there were a few glimmers of it early on that we deliberately stripped back, so that it was more of a shock when he grabs Walton (Jimmi Simpson) by the throat.

"Your sympathies seem to lie with him a little more at the start, so it\'s more of a shock later on."

Despite the episode\'s dark themes, Brooker considers \'USS Callister\' to be "the most mainstream story" that

has ever done. "It\'s got some of the beats of a summer blockbuster... and it\'s got a hopeful ending."

The nailbiting climax sees Daly defeated, his mind trapped forever in the fantasy world, while the crew of the

– led by Nanette (Cristin Milioti) – escape being deleted as rogue code and head onwards to new adventures.

, with the crew escaping from surroundings resembling the original series

and into a new existence that bares a closer visual resemblance to the more recent

"They\'re in what we call \'JJ Land\' at the end," Brooker says. "They go through the wormhole and end up in JJ Abrams lens-flare land."

? Brooker says it\'s not out of the question. "We don\'t rule out revisiting them, so we could. But you\'d have to have a really good idea."

Daly, though, is probably done for. \'USS Callister\' ends with the villain in a coma, but Brooker confirms that he\'s "probably going to die" – after all, with his company on Christmas break, no-one will disturb him for ten whole days.

"He\'s going to starve to death," Brooker says. "Because he put \'Do Not Disturb\' on his door."

The lessons here? Don\'t let resentments fester. Never take an obsession too far. And don\'t shut people out, because you never know when you\'ll need them...

Black Mirror s4 "explicitly" confirms shared universe

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