1 week Ago By Alex Ritman
SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses major plot developments in the “ Black Mirror ” episode “Plaything” currently streaming on Netflix. Will Poulter had heard hints that the character of Colin Ritman — the genius early ’80s games designer-character from the interactive 2018 “Black Mirror” episode “ Bandersnatch ” — might not be gone from Charlie Brooker’s twisted satirical universe for good. “I accidentally came across an interview with Charlie where he alluded to the fact that Colin appearing in ‘Black Mirror’ was possible because he was — and I guess this was alluded to in the episode — a bit of a time traveler,” he says.
“And that just got me very excited, even as a prospect.” Indeed, the various story paths that viewers can choose in “Bandersnatch” see Colin jump back and forth in time (although all in 1983) and even return to life after leaping to his death from a London balcony. “But I didn’t really take it to be anything more than that — a prospect, a hypothetical that was exciting to imagine,” notes Poulter.
And of course, “Black Mirror” doesn’t do sequels. Or at least it didn’t, not until Season 7, its latest. But while the return of Season 4 favorite “USS Callister” for another adventure into virtual space may be grabbing the headlines, Ritman also makes a triumphant comeback in “Plaything.
” Set 10 years after “Bandersnatch” in the slightly less 8-bit video game world of 1994, the episode is a sort-of sequel, based around a new project from Ritman called “Thronglets” in which an ever-growing number of tiny creatures must be fed, watered and bathed in order to survive (a sort of Tamagochi-meets-Civilization). Despite appearance, it’s very much “not a game,” Ritman — with the same bleach blonde hair, now a little longer — explains to nervous reviewer Cameron Walker (Lewis Gribben). Instead, it’s a program designed to “improve us, as human beings” and features the “first lifeforms in history whose biology is entirely digital.
” There’s no goal — the creatures thrive with interaction, replicate, evolve beyond their original coding and become a “harmonic throng.” Ritman is in the episode only briefly, but it’s a few crucial minutes. And in full disclosure, Brooker has based this character on my uncle Jon Ritman (who was a well-known games designer in the 1980s).
Having introduced “Thronglets” to Walker from his large, red-walled office, he leaves the room, allowing the jittery critic to swipe the CD and run. Back home, he begins to nurture his own tribe of digital beings — eventually learning how to speak to them (via a helpful dose of LSD). Decades later in a bleak, dystopian-looking near-future London, Walker — now disheveled with long, grey hair (and played by Peter Capaldi) — has dedicated his entire life to growing his thronglets across his expanded array of computers into a major civilization of powerfully intelligent beings (that he’s also physically connected to using a surgically implanted socket in his neck).
After intentionally getting himself arrested, he uses the police station camera — connected to the powerful state computer — to disseminate the throng across the world so they can merge with humanity. “It’s an upgrade for all of us, an end to conflict!” he says as white noise roars across the planet. “Plaything” is one of the most contained episodes in “Black Mirror” so far, mostly confined to the Walker’s bedroom and the interrogation room.
“And yet you feel like the future of humanity is at stake,” says Poulter. “And I love the fact that message was one of promoting a bit more empathy and humane treatment, even to digital things and the technical world. I think there are some very obvious and real life message to be learned in there.
” Despite his near-cameo role, a lot of thought went into Ritman’s character — and how he’d changed since “Bandersnatch.” It’s referenced that he’d suffered a very public mental health breakdown in the decade between the episodes (he actually leaves his office in order to take his medication), something Poulter acknowledges would have been “highly taboo” and “more stigmatized” at that time. “So there is a hidden meaning beneath the theater of it all, a serious message — at least to me — in the construction of Colin,” says Poulter, who himself has been open about his own struggles with mental health.
“It’s really interesting also to think, in the context of the story, what is mental health? And what was actually Colin revealing a truth that people are misdiagnosing as a mental breakdown?” Despite his god-like status in the episode, Ritman isn’t the central figure in “Bandersnatch” either, but still Poulter put in time to research the early video game world of the 1980s. Ritman’s voice — slightly nasal, a little robotic and somewhat patronizing — he said came from watching documentaries of game developers from that era. He even tried to learn to code himself.
“Charlie very kindly gave me a massive book on coding — and I had bought myself a much thinner, 10-page book on it. But I was embarrassingly bad,” he says. “So that was where most of the acting strain was — I was trying to pretend I knew what I was doing with all those different numbers and letters.
” While set in the same world, “Plaything” is very different from “Bandersnatch,” and there aren’t any interactive elements. But yet, the scene where Ritman leaves the “Thronglets” CD for Walker to steal feels very much like a key decision-making moment straight out of the 2018 standalone episode. “I think [Colin Ritman] wanted, in a quite Bandersnatch-y way, to encourage him to make a choice and set up a scenario where he can make a decision for himself,” says Poulter.
“That was my take on it.” Poulter acknowledges that he never tried to work through the various storylines available on “Bandersnatch” but he watched others do so. “I sat with various friends and family members who played it next to me, and it was quite a humbling experience,” he says.
“Like when you’re sat next to a loved one when they choose to kill you.”.
