SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses main plot developments within the “Black Mirror” episode “Plaything” presently streaming on Netflix.
Will Poulter had heard hints that the character of Colin Ritman — the genius early ’80s video games designer-character from the interactive 2018 “Black Mirror” episode “Bandersnatch” — may not be gone from Charlie Brooker’s twisted satirical universe for good.
“I unintentionally got here throughout an interview with Charlie the place he alluded to the truth that Colin showing in ‘Black Mirror’ was attainable as a result of he was — and I suppose this was alluded to within the episode — a little bit of a time traveler,” he says. “And that simply acquired me very excited, at the same time as a prospect.”
Certainly, the varied story paths that viewers can select in “Bandersnatch” see Colin soar forwards and backwards in time (though all in 1983) and even return to life after leaping to his loss of life from a London balcony.
“However I didn’t actually take it to be something greater than that — a prospect, a hypothetical that was thrilling to think about,” notes Poulter.
And naturally, “Black Mirror” doesn’t do sequels. Or at the least it didn’t, not till Season 7, its newest. However whereas the return of Season 4 favourite “USS Callister” for one more journey into digital area could also be grabbing the headlines, Ritman additionally makes a triumphant comeback in “Plaything.”
Set 10 years after “Bandersnatch” within the barely much less 8-bit online game world of 1994, the episode is a sort-of sequel, primarily based round a brand new venture from Ritman referred to as “Thronglets” through which an ever-growing variety of tiny creatures should be fed, watered and bathed with a purpose to survive (a form of Tamagochi-meets-Civilization).
Regardless of look, it’s very a lot “not a recreation,” Ritman — with the identical bleach blonde hair, now a bit longer — explains to nervous reviewer Cameron Walker (Lewis Gribben). As a substitute, it’s a program designed to “enhance us, as human beings” and options the “first lifeforms in historical past whose biology is completely digital.” There’s no aim — the creatures thrive with interplay, replicate, evolve past their authentic coding and change into a “harmonic throng.”
Ritman is within the episode solely briefly, but it surely’s just a few essential minutes. And in full disclosure, Brooker has primarily based this character on my uncle Jon Ritman (who was a well known video games designer within the Eighties).
Having launched “Thronglets” to Walker from his massive, red-walled workplace, he leaves the room, permitting the jittery critic to swipe the CD and run. Again residence, he begins to nurture his personal tribe of digital beings — finally studying tips on how to converse to them (through a useful dose of LSD).
Many years later in a bleak, dystopian-looking near-future London, Walker — now matted with lengthy, gray hair (and performed by Peter Capaldi) — has devoted his whole life to rising his thronglets throughout his expanded array of computer systems into a serious civilization of powerfully clever beings (that he’s additionally bodily linked to utilizing a surgically implanted socket in his neck). After deliberately getting himself arrested, he makes use of the police station digital camera — linked to the highly effective state laptop — to disseminate the throng internationally to allow them to merge with humanity.
“It’s an improve for all of us, an finish to battle!” he says as white noise roars throughout the planet.
“Plaything” is likely one of the most contained episodes in “Black Mirror” up to now, largely confined to the Walker’s bed room and the interrogation room.
“And but you’re feeling like the way forward for humanity is at stake,” says Poulter. “And I really like the truth that message was one in all selling a bit extra empathy and humane therapy, even to digital issues and the technical world. I feel there are some very apparent and actual life message to be discovered in there.”
Regardless of his near-cameo position, a number of thought went into Ritman’s character — and the way he’d modified since “Bandersnatch.” It’s referenced that he’d suffered a really public psychological well being breakdown within the decade between the episodes (he truly leaves his workplace with a purpose to take his remedy), one thing Poulter acknowledges would have been “extremely taboo” and “extra stigmatized” at the moment.
“So there’s a hidden which means beneath the theater of all of it, a critical message — at the least to me — within the development of Colin,” says Poulter, who himself has been open about his personal struggles with psychological well being. “It’s actually fascinating additionally to assume, within the context of the story, what’s psychological well being? And what was truly Colin revealing a reality that persons are misdiagnosing as a psychological breakdown?”
Regardless of his god-like standing within the episode, Ritman isn’t the central determine in “Bandersnatch” both, however nonetheless Poulter put in time to analysis the early online game world of the Eighties. Ritman’s voice — barely nasal, a bit robotic and considerably patronizing — he stated got here from watching documentaries of recreation builders from that period. He even tried to be taught to code himself.
“Charlie very kindly gave me an enormous guide on coding — and I had purchased myself a a lot thinner, 10-page guide on it. However I used to be embarrassingly unhealthy,” he says. “In order that was the place a lot of the appearing pressure was — I used to be attempting to faux I knew what I used to be doing with all these totally different numbers and letters.”
Whereas set in the identical world, “Plaything” could be very totally different from “Bandersnatch,” and there aren’t any interactive components. However but, the scene the place Ritman leaves the “Thronglets” CD for Walker to steal feels very very like a key decision-making second straight out of the 2018 standalone episode.
“I feel [Colin Ritman] wished, in a fairly Bandersnatch-y means, to encourage him to choose and arrange a situation the place he can decide for himself,” says Poulter. “That was my tackle it.”
Poulter acknowledges that he by no means tried to work via the varied storylines obtainable on “Bandersnatch” however he watched others achieve this.
“I sat with numerous family and friends members who performed it subsequent to me, and it was fairly a humbling expertise,” he says. “Like while you’re sat subsequent to a cherished one once they select to kill you.”
