Black Mirror Is Going To Have An Episode That Looks Very Familiar in Season 4

Black Mirror is set to return to Netflix for a fourth season. During a recent panel attended by The Hollywood Reporter, the show's creator, Charlie Brooker, offered some spoilers about an episode in the upcoming season of the successful anthology.

The episode is called "USS Callister," and upon first glance, it looks very familiar. When Netflix released a video teaser, fans were quick to point out the similarities between the episode and Star Trek. In a quick look at the cast photos, the similarities are noticeable. In particular, the fans pointed out their uniforms and the feel of the spaceship itself.

During the panel, the creator and executive producer acknowledged the homage to the sci-fi classic and admitted that he was terrified of Star Trek as a child. "The episode came about when we were on set the previous season," Brooker told THR. "The idea came up in conversation and it struck us. We hadn't done a space epic before and we thought, how would that work in the Black Mirror universe? What sort of tone would it have? We ended up in this strange place."

To maintain an air of unpredictability and avoid repetition, the creators of the series that preys on the public's paranoia surrounding technology strove for a more cinematic approach to the episode similar to the fan-favorite episode "San Junipero."

"It's still a very personal story about Jesse's [Plemons] character, but to do it properly, you have to have this big epic. So that's a bit of a shift. I don't think we've done anything like it," Executive producer Annabel Jones said of the process telling THR that they shot it in both the United Kingdom and Spain's Canary Islands.

Careful to not give away plot details, Jones explained that "USS Callister" addressed "tyranny and abuse of power." You may be wondering if they had any particular, current world leaders in mind when writing it, but show creator Charlie Brooker was quick to clarify that though he wrote the episode right around the time of Trump's election, the story isn't "explicitly about anything politically in the real world." Adding, "all of that real world stuff tends to seep in."

There's a lot coming this season and Brooker doesn't expect everyone to like every episode saying, "There's ones that people will love, ones that people will hate. No two people will agree and in that respect, it's traditional Black Mirror."