In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1988 called “11001001,” Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) meets the woman of his dreams on the holodeck. Her name is Minuet (Carolyn McCormick), and one of the first things Riker says to her is, “What's a knockout like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?” This line was meant to evoke a similar line in the classic 1942 film Casablanca, in which Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) says, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” And now, the simulated sci-fi affection for old-timey movies continues with one episode of Black Mirror Season 7, in which an actress named Brandy Friday (Issa Rae) finds herself, thanks to AI tech, inside of a 1940s black-and-white movie titled “Hotel Reverie.”
And just like in many holodeck-gone-wrong stories in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Brandy soon finds herself trapped in this nostalgic, digital simulation. But the twist on this version of the story is that this time, with Black Mirror, we’re meant to wonder if getting stuck inside of a simulation is such a bad thing after all.
