Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

We show you Callister’s crew when Daly’s not around. The idea was that it was like Toy Story , when Andy’s out of the room and all the toys are talking, and then when he comes back in, they all go, “Oh fuck!”. So you’re given information about the crew that humanises them a bit more.

Cristin Milioti:I tried to make subtle differences between Nanette in the real and virtual worlds, in terms of posture and mannerisms. In the office world, she doesn’t allow herself to speak her mind. There’s a moment when Walton puts his hand on her back and she just wants to be left alone to do her job, whereas in the space world she’d have karate-chopped his arm off.

Charlie Brooker:I think you forget that there’s a real Nanette out there until later, when she tries to communicate with herself. And it comes as a surprise: “Oh fuck, of course!”. Because our POV has jumped into that of Virtual Nanette, you get slightly removed from Real Nanette, who suddenly seems like an idiot who doesn’t know what’s going on. You’re annoyed with her, because she messes things up. What’s happening to her feels almost less real than what’s happening to her in the game.

Cristin Milioti:One of my favourite parts of the episode is that Nanette becomes her greatest self in the space world. She realises her fullest potential because she’s pushed into it.

Charlie Brooker:Incidentally, people have pointed this out, and I know it doesn’t make sense: if Daly has swabbed a cup and grown a copy of Nanette from her DNA, how does she know who she is when she wakes up in Callister? We did actually work out an explanation, which used the Grain technology from The Entire History of You . In the original script, everyone had these Grains and we went out of our way to explain this to you. In that version, Daly had to do two things: get the DNA and download the contents of your Grain. But it was just too much business. Eventually I went, “Oh sod it, let’s just say he gets their DNA and grows them all in a magic machine.” When Shania says, “Whatever, it’s a fucking gizmo”, that was me letting on that I knew it didn’t make sense, but still you see people complaining. I know it doesn’t make sense! It’s just that I don’t care.

Cristin Milioti:It was a very charmed experience to be part of that cast. I knew Jesse Plemons, because we shot the second season of [the US TV anthology series] Fargo together. Billy Magnussen and I had done [the 2012 fantasy-thriller film] The Brass Teapot together. Me and Jimmi Simpson, who plays Walton, have a bunch of mutual friends, so it was a blast! We hung out a lot and went out on weekends.

Toby Haynes:Because of the Star Trek homage, we had our compliance lawyers on speed dial throughout the whole process. The way I understood it, as long as we weren’t taking exact Star Trek colours, typefaces or whatever, it was going to be okay. I was concentrating on making the best show I could, and so I was going to carry on until someone told me to stop! Our producer Louise was the one fretting about it.

Louise Sutton:You never know whether you’re going to inadvertently breach copyright, but we were very, very, very careful. Every decision we made, we ran it past the team of lawyers at Endemol. That went across the board, from costumes to sound effects to Daniel Pemberton’s music.

Toby Haynes:Daniel gave us this incredibly punchy, amazing score. It was one of the greatest moments of my career, sitting there in the recording studio as they played the Space Fleet theme! So cool.

Daniel Pemberton (composer):I wanted Space Fleet to have a Star Trek -esque theme that could be wrapped around the score, but at the same time it obviously couldn’t be a rip-off of that show or theme. So I just wrote a big brass fanfare that works really well at evoking that world and time. That theme is echoed throughout the journey, culminating in the ‘alive’ version of it when they come out of the wormhole at the end.

From a musical point of view, USS Callister is possibly one of the most insanely complicated episodes ever. If the Space Fleet music didn’t feel like it could be music from a show like that, of that time, it would stand out very quickly as the weak link and destroy the illusion. So you basically had to write and record a major orchestral film score or it’s going to feel flat. You also had to score the other world, the modern world of this huge game company and everyone who works there. Finally, it was about meshing those two worlds as the show went on, until they became one.

Maja Meschede (costume designer):I focused on making 1960s fashion work in space. To create an artificial Barbie look, I chose neoprene as the main fabric for all costumes. The neoprene was dyed into deep, glowing colours. For the ladies, I took inspiration from 1960s high-fashion designers such as André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin, who celebrated space and future in their creations. For the men I designed fitted, impractical, generic space outfits.

Tanya Lodge (hair and make-up designer):One of my priorities was to make the characters instantly recognisable, both in the office and Daly’s virtual world. I created a receding hair line and bald patch for Daly in the office, to make him appear a little vulnerable. That contrasted with his look in the game, in which he has a perfect veneer and a toupee as he pays visual homage to Captain Kirk.

Maja Meschede:The entire virtual crew had to look ‘weaker’ than Daly, so I designed his costume to make him look like a space Ken doll. A notably better version of himself. His costume heightens his shoulder width and chest so he appears to be very strong and well built. His top and trousers are fitted to enhance his muscular physique.

Annabel Jones:I think it’s fair to say Jesse wanted to pay homage to Shatner’s Captain Kirk. It absolutely wasn’t in the script. He worked with a vocal coach for a few weeks to find the right cadence and watched a lot of Star Trek . I think he was even listening to audio clips of Shatner on set in between takes. I remember Jesse telling us that Shatner was a Shakespearean-trained actor and that he treated the Star Trek scripts as if they’re Shakespeare. Shatner took it all very seriously and very theatrically, and you could definitely see Jesse channelling that in Space Fleet mode. Jesse was incredibly generous and would say things to Toby like, “If you ever need me to turn up the Shatner, I can do that for you.”