After a two-month wait, Star Trek Discovery returns with new episodes and answers several questions while asking three or four more, and also, sadly, providing us with a TV Trope that I’m not entirely sure Trek needed to participate in.
The big thing, though, is that we’re back in the Mirror Universe, making Discovery the fourth series to visit that particular alternate timeline established in 1967’s “Mirror, Mirror” on the original series, and the ninth single episode to deal with the MU. And since Discovery is still in the MU at episode’s end, and the previews include Sarek with a goatee, then we’re guaranteed to hit double digits in MU Trek episodes in a week’s time. Yay?
The episode opens by establishing that Discovery isn’t actually lost in space, as I feared at the end of “Into the Forest I Go,” but rather in the right place in the wrong universe. They’re at the coordinates intended, but there’s no starbase, and there is a graveyard of ships.
They soon learn that the ships are crewed by Vulcan, Andorian, and Klingon rebels against the Terran Empire, as first seen in “Mirror, Mirror.” Lorca realizes that they need to assimilate into this universe and blend in until they can figure out a way home so they can get their intel about the Klingon cloaking device to Starfleet to win the war. Stamets is in no shape to run the spore drive again, so they need to find an alternative.
To episode writer Sean Cochran’s credit, this episode makes good use of all the past MU episodes, as well as another episode that was all about many-universes theory, “Parallels” on The Next Generation. Saru determines that they’re in another universe by the quantum signature of the matter around them (also how they did it in “Parallels” with Worf), and it is the discovery (ahem) in the records of one of the derelict rebel ships that they learn of their universe’s U.S.S. Defiant that somehow wound up in this universe’s past (as established in TOS’s “The Tholian Web” and Enterprise’s “In a Mirror, Darkly” two-parter). On top of that, the episode uses the plot device from Deep Space Nine of our star disguising herself as her dead MU counterpart—Sisko in “Through the Looking Glass” and “Shattered Mirror,” Burnham here. And we get all the usual Terran Empire stuff from “Mirror, Mirror,” including the salute, ascension by assassination, and the agony booths. (Though instead of uniforms that reveal more skin, we instead get uniforms that are better armored, thus retroactively making the MU Starfleet smarter than the mainline one…)
Lorca even is kind enough to lampshade the structural absurdity of the MU, as it makes no sense scientifically that a universe that is so much different would have the same people in it mostly arranged in the same manner as they are in the mainline universe. I have to confess to really enjoying Lorca saying to Burnham, “Geez, that’s really weird,” and then moving on.
One of the themes of “Mirror, Mirror” was spoken by Spock at the end: it is easier for a civilized person to pretend to be a barbarian than the other way ’round, and we get two entertaining examples of it here. Burnham is scarily effective as Captain Burnham of the I.S.S. Shenzhou, but that’s as nothing compared to the perverse delight of Cadet Tilly pretending to be Captain Tilly—or, rather, the deliberately unimaginatively nicknamed “Captain Killy”—of the I.S.S. Discovery. The line about cutting out tongues and using them to lick her boots was epic, and I must confess that the thing I’m most looking forward to next week is more of Captain Killy. (They also establish that, just as in “Mirror, Mirror,” the two Discoverys switched places, and I wonder if, unlike the TOS episode, we’ll actually see the I.S.S. Discovery in depth in the mainline universe.)
The fun of MU episodes is getting to see the characters we know and love in different situations, though there hasn’t been much of that yet, beyond the play-acting. The only people we see actual MU counterparts of are Connor and Detmer, who are minor bridge characters (though it was cool seeing an unscarred Detmer on the I.S.S. Shenzhou bridge when Burnham had just left the mainline one on Discovery’s bridge). But, as I discussed when going through DS9’s MU forays, particularly “The Emperor’s New Cloak,” once the novelty wears off, there isn’t a lot of there there, and the fact that this seems to be a multipart storyline is irritating.
The other big reveal is that, yes, Tyler is really Voq. Unfortunately, something’s gone wrong with the conditioning. L’Rell says the key phrase that will restore Voq’s personality—a prayer to Kahless—but it doesn’t work. At least not entirely. Tyler blacks out periodically, but he doesn’t revert to Voq as L’Rell expects, though the conditioning is there enough to protect himself from being discovered.
That latter is the big elephant in the room, as Tyler kills Culber to keep Culber from removing him from duty.
On the one hand, this is a very effective character death, because Culber is someone we care about, and Tyler—even if it’s an artificial personality overlaid over Voq’s—is also someone we care about, and the latter kills the former in order to protect the secrets of the real personality under Tyler’s. Like the death of Georgiou—which has hung over every episode like a shroud—and unlike the death of Landry—who was redshirted after being established as unlikeable anyhow, so who really cares, which is entirely the wrong way to do this—Culber’s death packs an emotional wallop.
On the other hand, does television really need another LGBT character to be fridged? Removed from the context of the rest of television, this is a powerful and effective scene, one that had me and my wife both literally gasping out loud in shock and anguish. Leaving aside any other considerations, Culber is a fun, interesting, likeable character whom it was fun to get to know. And now we won’t get to. Plus, having him be a victim of Tyler makes sense because, as a doctor, he’s in the best position to expose Voq.
But can one entirely remove it from the context of the rest of television? Hell, Discovery’s storytelling mode is very much dictated by the rest of television, as it’s very much Trek as a 2010s TV show. Unfortunately, the 2010s are littered with LGBT corpses, and it grows wearisome.
Because Discovery is a 2010s TV show, of course, we don’t have the whole story yet. These reviews of mine have been full of complaints and speculations and criticisms that have turned out to be unfounded because of what was revealed later, and most of those revelations have been good ones, so I’m willing to give a conditional benefit of the doubt, especially given my own conflicted feelings about Culber’s death. (It really was incredibly effective from a storytelling perspective. But Jesus fuck, people, really?)
Having said all that, most of my issues with the episode were ones I didn’t even really start thinking about until after it was over. While I was watching it, I was completely absorbed, to the point that I was stunned to realize the episode was almost over when Burnham killed Connor. Ever since he cut his teeth going behind the camera on TNG, I have found Jonathan Frakes to be one of the finest television directors extant, and his superlative career since then has only solidified this opinion (he’s currently an executive producer and regular director on The Librarians). This definitely goes in the upper echelon of his Trek directing work, along with “Reunion” and “Cause and Effect.”
Now we just have to see where this goes……
Since he last reviewed a Discovery episode, Keith R.A. DeCandido has started a Patreon, where he’s providing a bunch of different things, including monthly movie reviews (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), weekly TV reviews (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., MacGyver, The Librarians, and Doctor Who‘s Christmas Special), excerpts from his works in progress (currently his urban fantasy novel A Furnace Sealed), monthly vignettes featuring his original characters (a holiday bit featuring Cassie Zukav, weirdness magnet), and tons and tons of cat pictures, with more to come. Do check it out!
Maybe consider avoiding spoilers in the post title and at least saving them for the text?
In both episodes of genre television I watched last night (this, and Friday’s episode of Agents of SHIELD), I also was stunned to find that the episode was almost over at the end, so engrossed in the developing story was I.
And like our humble recapper, I too was absolutely floored when “Tyler” killed Culber. To the extent that I found myself sitting in front of my computer with my mouth agape halfway through the ensuing commercial break. And even after I noticed it, it was still several seconds before I could move myself to close my mouth. I agree, the fridging of a queer character is quite unfortunate (and Stamets looked utterly devastated on the preview for next week’s episode), but I also want to see what happens next.
Since I first heard the theory, I didn’t like the Tyler is Voq angle, and I’m still not certain how I feel about it, especially considering the growing relationship with Burnham, but I do find myself intrigued, and genuinely curious as to how it will play out. Bring on next week (but please get them out of the MU soon; it’s much better as a side dish than as the main course, although I do like the nods to previous MU episodes, especially the fate of the Defiant).
I gotta say, Jonathan Frakes is a god among men when it comes to directing Trek.
I was shocked they killed the doctor, or I”m just used to main characters not dying in Star Trek. At least it was an effective death.
As Mirror Universe episodes go, this was surprisingly bland. The crew had too much of a cushion, getting most of an episode to learn about the MU in privacy and talk about it endlessly and get a lot of advance preparation, unlike Kirk’s crew or the DS9 crew who got thrown in the deep end and had to learn as they went. It was mostly just setup for next week’s episode. I guess it’s similar to Diane Duane’s MU novel Dark Mirror, in which the Enterprise-D was thrown into the MU and the crew similarly had a lot of advance preparation allowing them to get into character and infiltrate the mirror Enterprise without being discovered, but that kind of slow pacing works better in a novel.
It doesn’t really offer all that much that’s new, either. Okay, refitting the entire ship to look like a Terran Empire ship is a novel touch, but it’s superficial. At the core, this is basically the same plot as “Mirror, Mirror,” the characters getting swapped with their counterparts and having to impersonate them, just writ large and on a more impersonal scale until late in the episode.
Also, I’m getting really tired of Discovery stealing the Enterprise‘s thunder as the first discoverer of various things. If the Disco crew found out this much about the Mirror Universe, how come it’s so new to Kirk & co. a dozen years later?
Plus, I’m irritated that Burnham actually used the word “mirror” to refer to the alternate Discovery. Nobody in canonical Trek has ever, ever actually referred to the so-called “Mirror Universe” that way in onscreen dialogue until now; it’s only been called a parallel or alternate universe, with “Mirror” metaphors only being used in the episode titles.
The bit about the Empire being humans-only seemed odd, given that the ISS Enterprise actually had more Vulcan crewmembers on it than Kirk’s ship did (Spock plus his Vulcan security detail). It works as a commentary on current events to make the evil empire defined by racism and exclusion, and it works as an extrapolation from “In a Mirror, Darkly,” but I wonder how it can be reconciled with TOS. Maybe it’s not the same Mirror Universe but a slight variant? Or maybe next week we’ll see the rebellion actually succeed and lead to some reforms in the Empire.
Assuming it is the same timeline, I’d speculate that the reason these two particular timelines keep connecting is because the original Defiant crossover created some kind of bond between them.
So who do you think the secretive Emperor will turn out to be? My guess is Georgiou.
Oh, and I entirely agree with Keith about Culber. Bad enough that Trek is decades behind the curve on finally getting around to including LGBT characters, but now it’s perpetuating one of the worst cliches of TV portrayals thereof.
Good guess about the Emperor’s identity!
If you look around the internets, you will find that one of Discovery’s show runners is gay, he deliberately set out to have “a gay couple save the universe,” and Culber is still very important to the story (and seemingly will be seen again in some form, or at least Culber will in some way be involved in Stamets’ recovery.
Whether this works for any particular viewer is, of course, up to them.
Star Trek – “We’re finally going to introduce a gay character. As a matter of fact, we’re going to introduce a gay couple in a normal, stable relationship. And then we’re going to kill half the gay characters we’ve ever seen in all of Star Trek just because we can.”
Well done <Slow clap>
Oh look, Tilly’s just like JT Kirk from the JJverse, a cadet who goes right to captain. Because it made so much sense then, we’ll do it again. Maybe it’s a Starfleet ting, graduate at the top of your class and you’re made a Captain as a reward.
Frakes has really shown himself to be a top notch director. He’s not going for flashy camera angles or lens flares or any of that. He’s just really effective at presenting the story.
Oh look, Tyler is really Voq. Everyone who’s surprised, raise your hand. Anyone?
I was really, really, REALLY hoping that it wasn’t going to be the Mirror Universe because I’m really, really, REALLY tired of it. But it was telegraphed so far in advance that it wasn’t a surprise, just disappointing. And based on the differences with MM, I see this as A mirror universe as opposed to THE original mirror universe.
Of course, I see DSC as being from a slightly alternate universe from TOS so it’s no biggie.
Shouldn’t being gay be about equality? I.e. being gay is as unremarkable as being straight. So gay people on TV should automatically be granted plot armor because…? Only straight, Caucasian males can be killed now?
When you’ve only had 2 gay characters in the 50+ yeas of your franchise and you kill off 50% of them shortly after their introduction, that’s not plot armour. That’ being tone deaf to what you’re telling a large percentage of your viewership.
The death rate of LGBTQ characters on TV is MUCH higher than it is for your straight white males example.
It would be like TOS killing off Uhura halfway through the first season.
@7/Austin: The problem is that the majority of heterosexual Caucasian males in TV do not get killed off, while the same cannot yet be said for LGBT characters.
I understand the frustration behind the death. I just don’t think people should automatically get upset when a LGBT character is killed. Heck, even Keith admits how effective the death was. The sexuality of the character really shouldn’t matter, but I know it does.
That being said, I’m very confident that a new love interest will be introduced relatively soon.
@4/Christopher: “If the Disco crew found out this much about the Mirror Universe, how come it’s so new to Kirk & co. a dozen years later?” – Yes. I had so hoped that they wouldn’t go there.
Also, the TOS Mirror Universe wasn’t a place where women could be captains. It was a misogynistic society where female crewmembers were expected to sleep with their superior officers.
I’d say they killed Culber because he was a likeable character without any personal problems, and we can’t have that.
I’m not convinced. Per this interview, Frakes himself says, “It was a great death, but is it a death?”
https://www.trektoday.com/content/2018/01/frakes-expect-surprises-in-despite-yourself/
JanaJansen @@@@@ 11 – But realistically, isn’t the “no woman captains” issue the same as Janet Lester in “Turnabout Intruder”? If I remember correctly, the “In a Mirror Darkly” 2-parter in Enterprise ended with Hoshi assuming the title of Empress. I’d have to assume, with that being the case, that Captain is no problem.
@10/Austin: The point is, it’s not the individual death that’s the problem, it’s the larger context it’s in. If it happens every damn time there’s an LGBT relationship in a TV series, then there is a problem, and pretending that any single example exists without context is a deliberate attempt to ignore the problem. When the killing off of LGBT characters in healthy relationships is the rule, then we bloody well need more exceptions.
@11/Jana: “Also, the TOS Mirror Universe wasn’t a place where women could be captains. It was a misogynistic society where female crewmembers were expected to sleep with their superior officers.”
Do we know that? Maybe the female captains demand that their male subordinates sleep with them. Look at “In a Mirror, Darkly.” Hoshi was the “captain’s woman,” but she ended up assassinating him and declaring herself Empress.
Mirror Universe AGAIN! Oh. God. Why?
Of course Tyler is Voq.
Well I was wrong. I thought it was Stamets who was going to die. Being gay is still dangerous to one’s life.Is Stamets next? Maybe taking out Voq-Tyler. Is the cast of Discovery going to kill each other off until nobody’s left?
Georgiou as Empress would be a cool twist, but I’m guessing it’ll be Emperor Saru. There’s no better reason other than rank paranoia for the Emperor to conceal “his” name, face, and identity, unless it was as defense against his own xenophobic people.
It would also give an ironic twist to the “ruled by fear” description Burnham gave.
To Discovery’s credit, this episode felt the most Trek-y that the series has been to date. This is the first one I can say I really enjoyed. It was light on the elements I find ridiculous (the new Klingons and the mushroom teleporting) and made good use of some old series staples.
It’s also reassuring to see Tilly growing out of her more annoying traits and stepping up on her way to becoming a more mature officer.
Culber’s death isn’t an issue for me. With the Tyler-is-Voq plot now confirmed, it made complete sense from the moment the doctor started running his tests. And with Frakes’s hints that the series isn’t done with Culber, I’m not worried. In a show that has already killed off a pretty decent number of characters, Culber’s death demonstrates that gay characters are fully-realized human beings performing dangerous jobs in the line of duty too.
I’m also surprised that the major ethical issue of Culber providing medical care to someone he’s in a relationship with didn’t come up much earlier.
I think this was an outstanding episode, with crackling dialogue, good direction, some powerful moments, and real challenges for the characters.
I disagree with Keith and @@.-@ that this uses the Mirror universe generically or blandly; I think they’ve set up something interesting thematically here. A central theme of the episode is loss: Burnham and Lorca both reveal (briefly but effectively) a painful yearning for those they have lost and might see (which is why I think the Emperor has to be Georgiou as that will most potently challenge Burnham); Culber loses his life and Stamets his partner; Stamets his anchor in reality; Tyler starts to lose his identity; and everyone on the crew imitating the Terran way faces a loss of their humanity. Indeed, the episode makes an explict plea against Spocks point that Keith mentions, that acting the barbarian is taxing and corrosive of the self. This raises the interwoven theme of fear in the episode, how living in fear eats away at one’s self and society, analogously to being stuck in one of those agonizers.
There were some nice touches in here. When Saru’s threat ganglia rise, we think this has to do with the approaching ship, but notice that just at that moment Tyler enters. The agonizers could have been cheezy but I found that entire scene and the image of Lorca strangely powerful. That Tilly line was great.
The data core giving them so much information was rather contrived, but it allowed them to raise the stakes of all subsequent encounters. The place feels dangerous. Even delay in a hail can be deadly here.
The scene with the Doctor was shocking and sad but also contrived. With that finding, there is no way the doctor would approach Tyler alone or would fail to indicate to the captain at least that there is a security risk. (I suppose his distrust of the captain could account for that, but it would be better to make that explicit, I think.) I predict that we will see the Mirror counterpart of the doctor, perhaps as one who joined the rebellion, and that he may join the crew of our discovery. This would not fully escape the unfortunate trope but would be positive.
The characters have started really clicking here. Martin-Green has found a good balance for the character and continues to impress. Isaacs has been amazing — conveying Lorca’s charisma, grit, and intelligence through a wounded nature and ethically questionable acts, making us feel loyalty to him despite his very serious flaws.
One other thing I thought about – Is this the first time Saru’s spidey sense kicked in when Tyler entered a room? And if so, what about this particular instance was enough to set it off this time when they’ve been serving together for months at this point? My only guess, but it wasn’t made clear, is that it’s somehow able to distinguish Tyler’s frame of mind, and so is able to determine that he’s more of a threat now than he has been prior.
@12/Dan Styer: “I’m not convinced. Per this interview, Frakes himself says, “It was a great death, but is it a death?””
Yeah, I’m hearing buzz that Culber may not be permanently or actually dead. The thought occurred to me that maybe this whole thing is just Stamets experiencing a possible reality in his head and it’ll all be reset at the end — which would resolve my question about why the MU isn’t already known about in TOS.
He’s only mostly dead….
(Spoilers possible)
Interview with Wilson Cruz (Dr. Culber)
For what it’s worth, I think I read a while back that the stock TV/movie “snap the neck in one quick twist” move is pretty much a myth; you’d need superhuman strength to pull it off. Now, yes, Tyler is a Klingon, but he’s been extensively modified to pass a medical scan as human, so presumably his bone structure and musculature have been reduced to human norms. It might be nice if they subverted the cliche and revealed that it wasn’t a fatal attack after all.
“It’s OK. It’s just a 24 hour case of death. Get some rest and have some soup. You’ll be right as rain before you know it.”
@23: Are Klingons even suppose to be that strong? Both TOS and DS9 showed humans regularly holding their own against Klingons whenever the two species met in hand to hand combat, so I never got the impression that Klingons had any kind of exceptional strength.
Why not Emperor Lorica?
@26 The episode gives the impression that Mirror-Lorca’s coup attempt against the emperor failed. I suppose that could be a ruse causing a bit of a problem with the captured Lorca plan…. I’m still voting Georgiou because from our Burnham-centered perspective, this will confront the character with a serious moral challenge, especially if her actions endanger mirror-Georgiou’s life.
Ugh, I think I might have scared the neighbours by yelling at the screen when Culber was killed (I really hope he gets better). They built up the suspense in that scene quite well, but I really did not expect them to go that far.
The Tyler/Voq thing was expected, but I still don’t like it. I was really hoping for a different explanation, mostly because I really like the Ash Tyler personality.
Loved Lorca’s scottish accent (a little nod to another scottish engineer) and I’m pretty sure the phrasing of “Make it so we look and act like we belong here” was on purpose as well.
I agree that they seem to be setting up for Empress Georgiou though I kind of hope that it is not the case. So far, we’ve had two big fan conjectures confirmed (MU and Tyler); I’d love to have one surprise twist that we all got wrong. Along those lines, it might be interesting to see Empress Cornwell instead.
Also, they showed a very quick wireframe of the Defiant. Did anyone catch any differences from what we would expect of a TOS ship?
@13/JamesP, 14/Christopher: Sure, it can be retconned. And perhaps it already has been – I haven’t watched “In a Mirror, Darkly”, so I don’t know if it portrays a gender-equal empire or just an exceptional woman rising to power in an otherwise misogynistic one. (This has been known to happen in real life.)
My point is that it shouldn’t be retconned. IMO the Terran Empire’s treatment of women is one of its defining characteristics. The men are constantly backstabbing and murdering each other; the women are in constant danger of being sexually harrassed or assaulted unless they become proactive and find a powerful protector. (This happens in real life too. A lot.) It’s supposed to be the quintessential cruel society, and as such, it shouldn’t have gender equality, because the worst societies on Earth rarely do.
@30 JanaJansen
I understand where you’re coming from. For me, I think it would be a suitably dark echo of Star Trek’s hope for humanity if we managed to overcome our internal divisions over race and gender without expanding that understanding to other species.
A Terran Empire with gender equality is believable.
@29/John Ruschmeyer: “Also, they showed a very quick wireframe of the Defiant. Did anyone catch any differences from what we would expect of a TOS ship?”
The saucer had cutouts sort of like the “battleship Enterprise” April Fool redesign TrekMovie released back in 2007, and its pylons had a crook-angled shape sort of like Voyager‘s. The deflector dish assembly seemed to be more protruding/tapering too.
@30/Jana: “My point is that it shouldn’t be retconned. IMO the Terran Empire’s treatment of women is one of its defining characteristics.”
Is it really, though? Or is that just a reflection of how TOS approached women in general? I mean, the way Prime-universe women were treated in “Mudd’s Women” wasn’t that much better than the way Uhura and Marlena were treated in “Mirror, Mirror.” So I wouldn’t call it a defining property that differentiates the Empire from the Federation, just a defining property that differentiates TOS from later shows.
I was excited by the wireframe of the Defiant. It’s been my suspicion that Discovery’s showrunners were going to “modernize” the look of even TOS era tech like the Constitution class. My gut says that they’ll just do it and basically tell everyone to get over it. I’m actually pretty ok with that.
I guess there’s always the explanation that the Empire has modified the Defiant.
The MU was always a place of sexual abuse, but not necessarily of misogyny. Intendant Kira proves that sufficiently. In ENT “In a Mirror, Darkly” I rather got the impression that while women had the additional problem of objectification by the males around them, they could rise if they just showed the “MU virtues” (competence and ruthlessness) to a degree higher than others — pretty much a comment on women’s situation now.
The “faceless emperor” bit sounds really interesting, and I hope this will be followed up.
I think that the slow pace of this exposition-heavy episode makes sense. If anything, the previous MU episodes in DS9 and, yes, TOS portrayed the MU inhabitants as easily gullible by crossover people who still had to learn about this universe while going along. DIS, obviously, does not go for a corny idiot MU, but wants to preserve a sense of danger; thus it is necessary to prepare our heroes. As a bonus, they can reflect about their feelings of the MU, and I hope we will be shown the toll taken by longtime posing as MU monsters. Captain Killy is great, and I hope Tilly will struggle with all the evil stuff before taking the best of it. The title of the upcoming episode (“The Wolf Inside”) somewhat points into that direction.
@31/Halien: It probably is. It just takes something away from “Mirror, Mirror” which I don’t want taken away.
@32/Christopher: Just – no. Women in TOS were not treated like that at all. Not even in an episode as sexist as “Wolf in the Fold”, and most episodes were much, much better than “Wolf in the Fold”. I’m not sure about “Mudd’s Women” because I never watch it, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to, but generally women in TOS were treated with respect. And they certainly didn’t have to be afraid to go to work like Uhura in “Mirror, Mirror”.
@34/Lúthien: I was only talking about the Terran Empire, not about the DS9 episodes. The original “Mirror, Mirror” was a serious political-allegorical story; the later episodes were mostly having fun with giving everyone an unexpected role to play.
@35/Jana: I do see where you’re coming from, but the thing is, men in the MU had plenty of reason to be afraid of going to work too. Look what happened to Chekov. The Empire is a society where everyone with power exploits and victimizes those underneath them. As Burnham said here, their facade of strength is a cover for their constant fear of being betrayed or victimized by one another. So everyone has reason to feel afraid and threatened by their superiors — not to mention their peers and their underlings. Sexual harassment is just one of the many ways it manifests. TOS wouldn’t have shown it, but I’m sure that powerful men in the Empire sexually exploit their male underlings too, and powerful women probably exploit both the men and women under them, just as Intendant Kira did a century later. (I think Pocket Books’ extended Mirror Universe continuity has portrayed it somewhat like that.)
@29/ John Ruschmeyer , regarding the USS Defiant it looked a bit more swoopy than the TOS Constiturion class, a bit more like the Kelvin timeline version crossed with the Galaxy class.
Yeah, killing off a black gay character is pretty poor in societal terms I think.
I was surprised by this episode. It, more than most Discovery episodes, had me enthralled from the get-go, despite me finding out about Culver’s death beforehand from an LGBT RSS feed (grumble). The end felt a bit odd – I personally thought it should have ended on the scene of the Shenzhou jumping to warp, the Burnham/Tyler scene after felt a bit of a slow-down again.
Regarding the MU canonically, I think this isn’t totally unreasonable. The armour does make sense, but perhaps the emperor decided that there wasn’t enough turnover in the ranks so decreed less armour. Perhaps mirror Kirk is just a lech.
Ten Isiks on Commodore Decker as the Emperor.
@25: The old series were wildly inconsistent with whether Klingons were stronger than humans or not. Several times they are shown as pulling off superhuman feats of strength (IIRC, Kruge threw a massive boulder at Kirk in ST3 and would have won the fight if the planet hadn’t been blowing up around him, which Kirk took advantage of) and other times they are show as getting their arses handed to them by Kira, Dax and O’Brien (in DS9‘s Way of the Warrior), hardly the physically largest or most intimidating crewmembers. In terms of the “neck snap” thing, though, Worf did kill Weyoun Seven with a single neck twist when he insulted Ezri Dax (complete with Damar’s awesomely funny reaction to Weyoun Eight’s introduction – “Well, hellllloooooo!”).
Candidates for Emperor: Georgiou, potentially, but I think it’d be cool if it was still Empress Sato. She’d be 125 or so, but could have been preserved by the Defiant‘s superior technology. Plus Linda Park was invited to the Disco premiere (which isn’t conclusive as other past Trek stars were there, but not all of them).
More intriguing: is Lorca the Mirror Universe original? That would make sense: he found his way to our universe (by accident or deign), somehow, killed his counterpart and replaced him before manipulating the situation so he could get home again, possibly to continue his rebellion against the Emperor/Empress. He reaches the conclusion that they’re in a parallel universe very quickly and he seemed to “forget” that he and Cornwell had had a previous relationship. Crucially, this would also explain why he got hold of Burnham: he knew alt-Burnham was dead or missing and he could use “our” Burnham to infiltrate the Mirror Universe.
I also find it deeply entertaining that this episode continues a storyline begun in The Tholian Web which aired 50 years ago this year and ended with people asking, “Gee, I wonder what happened to the Defiant in the end?” Looks like we’re going to find out.
#38
I think you’ve got that backwards. A massive boulder threw Kruge at Kirk.
@39. Haha. I’d forgotten that. I just had to look it up on YouTube. Hey, that fight holds up pretty well in HD (well, the background and stuff blowing up around them, Shatner’s hand-to-hand combat style not so much).
Saru: I just scanned the ships, their quantum signature is different from that of the Discovery.
Burnham: That’s impossible! All matter in the universe shares the same quantum signature. Which, when I come to think of it, makes it pretty bizarre that we even have long-range quantum signature scanners. I mean seriously, who put that in?
@@@@@41 ghostly1
The Quantum Signature already appears in TNG “Parallels” (an excellent episode). So, probably Brannon Braga invented it.
@42: Yeah, but that’s a century later, a point in which parallel universes were widely known to actually exist and be visitable. In Discovery’s timeframe, it’s at best theoretical, and Vulcan’s probably consider it impossible.
@43/ghostly1: As a matter of fact, in “Mirror, Mirror,” Kirk, Scott, and the others figured out the whole parallel-universe business quite easily, as if the theoretical concept were already familiar to them. For that matter, when Kirk asked the ISS Enterprise computer if a transporter malfunction could cause a universe crossover, it promptly answered in the affirmative, and was easily able to calculate how to replicate the effect. There were also the bits where Scotty casually tossed off technobabble about the “field density” between the universes. So if anything, “Mirror, Mirror” implied that both the Federation and the Empire were already well-acquainted with the physics of parallel universes. It was never treated as a novel or unfamiliar principle. So there’s no inconsistency there. The inconsistency I remarked on was regarding the novelty of this specific parallel universe. Kirk & co. took the idea of crossing universes in stride, but a universe with an evil Terran Empire and malevolent counterparts of themselves was unfamiliar to them.
ghostly1: While I agree with you in theory, they’ve only got an hour to tell the story, and the quantum signature thing was already established back in “Parallels,” so why not use that bullet in their gun when it’s a quick and easy way to let the characters know they’re in another universe.
Having said that, I had to deal with a similar thing in my novel Q & A:
So yeah.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It seems kind of strange that there would even be equipment designed to identify an object’s quantum signature, given that it’s something common to everything in the universe.
Looks like I addressed that question in a post further down in the list.
Yeah, it’s not a huge problem, I just thought it was funny to step back and consider that Federation starships just casually scan quantum signatures even though they have no real reason to assume that they’re ever going to be different (yes, theoretically you might run into them, but if you stocked your starship with something to scan everything you might theoretically encounter you’d probably have no room for the meat).
But the comment is just a playful little thumbing at the silliness of SF TV, not my main problem with the episode which is the prequelitis already mentioned. I can’t wait to see the Discovery crew discover the Borg first, and find a wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant, and meet Q.
@38: About Mirror-Lorca, I agree that they’ve been laying clues to that effect as well as plausible paths. It would explain much of Lorca’s behavior, (mirror) Lorca blowing up his ship (with “our” Lorca in it, perhaps), his research into other universes that he showed Stamets, his love of deadly weapons and hatred of Klingons, recruitment of Burnham, the admiral saying he’s not himself, his fiddling with that keypad before the last jump, …. That would be intruiging, but if that’s their plan, I hope we don’t lose Lorca — he’s an interesting character.
(Tried to post this at 10:00 am, Tor’s captcha behaved oddly for me. Now 12 hours later and trying from home. For brevity: MU=mirror universe, TE=Terran Empire, TESF=Terran Empire Starfleet.)
I dig the reimagined TESF uniforms, and I bet cosplayers will have a lot of fun with them. (Laser-etched EVA foam sheets?) The gold-colored segments don’t look like “armor” to me, just ornamentation, and there’s at least three variants for the captain rank, so maybe TESF permits this degree of personal taste. I expect to see replicas of the TESF sigil and ornaments on Shapeways.
The redesigned TE (TESF?) sigil has the “Earth impaled on a sword” motif, but the “inverted Starfleet chevron” addition is the logo equivalent of Evil-Spock’s goatee (gah!).
The wireframe image is labeled “U.S.S. DEFIANT / NCC 1764 / CONSTITUTION-CLASS” and shows several features unlike TOS and ENT “In a Mirror, Darkly” (4.18-19): notches in the saucer section, elbows in the nacelle pylons, and cylinders there (like the megaphasers at the corners of the Reliant’s rollbar). So either (a) it’s another case of DSC visual canon divergence, (b) this is a different MU, or (c) it’s a TESF refit of the ship that arrived a century earlier (but then, why “U.S.S.” and not “I.S.S.”?).
Add me to the chorus of groans in the key of “the writers just had to revisit the MU again, didn’t they?” Although it’s not actually that often — one ep in TOS, five in DS9, a two-parter in ENT, and some novels; but not during TNG or VGR.
Characters holding the idiot ball, part 1: Why is the Workbee mission to retrieve the data core piloted by Tyler, when he was suffering PTSD just a few hours earlier? Even if he were healthy, why him instead of an engineering specialist? Why don’t they retrieve the whole Raider by transporter? –it’s about the size of the Gormagander space-whale. (Because it’s an expedient way to remind us of his PTSD/leaking engram-overlay.)
Part 2: Why doesn’t L’rell have a guard in the brig? (If Tyler dismisses the guard, why no mention? Is anybody going to belatedly review the security cam footage after Culber’s body is found?)
Part 3: Why does Culber confront Tyler about his surgical alterations alone? For that matter, why have we never seen any other medical personnel, including the CMO?
Technical nit 1: *Why* would the data core of a Klingon Raider (as opposed to a capital ship) contain all of that intelligence?
Technical nit 2: *How* is something that small able to contain it, when starship computer cores are (according to, mostly but not entirely, tie-in books) *huge*? However dense Trek’s memory tech, it seems that data expands to fill the available space. I was expecting Tyler’s mission would retrieve something the size of a tanker truck.
Technical nit 3: Burnham and Tilly examine the data core in Engineering, which continues a long tradition of using that set instead of a proper lab. (Geordi: “Let’s test-fire this captured Romulan-made phaser rifle just a few meters from the warp core.”) Why not redress Lorca’s study-of-war room?
Technical nit 4 (not unique to this ep): Is the Spore Drive meant to occupy the same space as the conventional warp engine? Dialogue hasn’t really said, one way or the other, but I hope not — it’s not like the Spore Drive is an improvisation; there’s plenty of room for both, and you’d expect they’d have separate staffs. OTOH, there’s been no mention of a chief engineer, although logically there must be somebody responsible for the conventional warp drive and other systems. (As with the invisible CMO, DSC is trying to differentiate itself from the standard ensemble of the prior shows.)
Technical nit 5: Binging the show, I’ve noticed it’s sloppy with technical dialog. During the Workbee mission, Tyler extracts the data core with a “laser cannon” instead of a “laser cutter.” Culber explains that Tyler’s “radius, femur, and even spinal cord” have been shortened — “spinal column” would make more sense in a list of skeletal elements.
Technical nit 6: Just how reliant is Culber on standard medical scans? I expected him to say something like “on second look, your liver is the wrong color, the processes and fossas on your axial skeleton are the wrong shape, and half your DNA is non-human.” In a world with protoplasers, why would there be any scar tissue? Maybe the techniques of L’rell’s clan rely on knowing the blindspots of UFP tech? The whole exchange sounded like another human had been surgically altered to resemble one Lt. Ash Tyler, rather than a Klingon.
@43, 46 – My take exactly: Why would you even have a sensor protocol for quantum signature, and under what circumstances would you use it? I also don’t like the idea that it can done remotely (as opposed to with a tricorder sensor wand), but that ship long ago sailed over the horizon of expositional expediency.
Along with USS instead of ISS, I’m surprised the Terran Empire would still refer to the Defiant as a Constitution Class. I don’t think they’d have much use for the Constitution. Unless maybe it was written in blood. ;-)
Love, love, LOVE the way this episode is setting things up. As crazy as the stuff they’ve pulled out of their asses so far has been, I’m betting 100 bars of gold-pressed latinum that we’re going to run into Emperor Tiberius, somehow! 1k bars on Empress Georgiou, but a cameo appearance from The Shat would make most everybody shat themselves!!!
I’m guessing Mirror Culber will turn out to be a rebel, and he’ll go back with Discovery. Might also allow for some much-needed character development for both him and Stamets.
38. Werthead: “More intriguing: is Lorca the Mirror Universe original?” Yes, I’ve been thinking along the same lines.
And 47. chisquare05: Yes, that’s a good breakdown of many loose ends revolving around Lorca, especially his fiddling with the coordinates before that last spore jump.
Also, the his tribble makes an appearance again on Lorca’s desk, then disappears again. Has Tyler ever been in its presence? Would Lorca know about the reaction to Klingons already? If so that implies he knows Tyler’s secret. In the mirror universe, Tyler/Voq would be a rebel ally against the Emperor.
I’ve been thinking about the whole “quantum signature” thing — why would sensors be designed to scan for something that never varies within a single quantum reality? It occurs to me that maybe they aren’t scanning for the signature per se. Maybe they’re doing scans of other quantum properties, but if the thing they’re scanning is from a different quantum reality, its different signature will create some kind of interference in those other scans, like the beats you can hear when two strings are vibrating slightly out of tune with each other. And scientists or computers would be able to calculate that the mathematics of the interference pattern correspond to the theoretical interference that would exist if matter from a different quantum reality crossed into ours. So you’re not scanning specifically for a quantum signature — you’re scanning for quantum properties in general and seeing if the interference pattern crops up. Saying “Scan for the quantum signature” just means “Pay attention to whether that specific interference appears in the quantum scan.”
Of course, it might be more than just theory. Archer’s Enterprise did encounter beings from not only a different quantum timeline, but a different universe altogether, the Sphere Builders who engineered the Xindi conflict. So T’Pol could’ve discovered the difference between the signatures of matter from different universes during that sequence of events. Or they could’ve learned it through their encounters with Daniels and the Temporal Cold War, some of which involved people from different future timelines. If alternate branching histories with a common origin have different quantum signatures, then it follows that the quantum signature of the universe is not fixed over time. Which might also be the basis of the “quantum dating” that allowed Archer to prove that the Xindi weapon had components from the future — in which case the theoretical concept would’ve been around before they met the Sphere Builders after all.
Plus, of course, logically other starships must’ve had adventures that we didn’t see on TV or film. So some other ship could’ve had an encounter with a parallel quantum reality sometime between ENT and DSC.
Fans were right about Tyler = Voq. Very likely they’re right about Lorca = MU. I am so glad I am not paying for this.
54. princessroxana, I’ve got to ask, why do you continue to voice disdain for a show that you are not even bothering to watch?
Disappointment. I’d have liked to have a Star Trek I could like. I probably should just ignore DISC though.
But how do you actually know if you like it or not unless you’ve seen it? Descriptions only take you so far. Unless, like many others, you’re determined to hate the show. I recommend giving it a chance beyond the first episode. It may be different and modernized, but it is very much Star Trek.
One thing I’ve been particularly impressed by in this series, which Krad refers to obliquely, is that while plot points may be predictable to us after some thought & discussion, the emotional weight of them isn’t. Tyler=Voq was fairly obvious to viewers, but it didn’t make the Discovery crew look stupid. I was surprised & impressed by the number of episodes they spent setting up the character & his relationship with Burnham to the point where the point where he kills Culber, it really feels like a shock and a blow to my sense of him. Great characterisation.
Same with those who were grumbling about the harsh welcome Stamets gave Burnham in episode 3, who later relented when he turned out to be a well-developed & intriguing character.
Maybe I don’t watch enough TV to be sensitised to these tropes, but Disco has subverted expectations enough that I’ve got faith in its storytelling. My gut tells me Culber is far from casually “fridged”.
As anticipated, my worst fear comes true. MU again and quite possibly the dumbest episode ever set there – not an easy feat considering that all the episodes I hated the most in DS9 where set in the MU (yes, even more than that thing where Sisko sings in falsetto while jumping on one foot…). I can’t find a single thing that’s likeable or interesting in this mess of a plot, it’s all surprise twists, unconsequential character “evolutions”, utter nonsense and action, action, action. So lifeless, so soulless. I’m seriously considering stopping here, and it’s a pity given how much I liked how DIS had started.
@57, I have strong objections to the whole premise and it’s all been done; Vulcans, Klingons, War, and now the MU. No thank you.
58. zegmustprovebrains – And taking a POW that you know has been tortured by the Klingons and not only immediately returning him to duty but making him chief of security isn’t stupid? Sure, there’s a war on but it’s not like there’s not a single person available who could fill the role better than someone who, at the very least, should be thought to be suffering from PTSD?
It’s as stupid as Picard staying in command of the Enterprise after being assimilated by the Borg. Sorry, but one fight with your older brother in a muddy field doesn’t make you fir for duty. And as we’ve seen, he’s still suffering the effects of it.
#60
I wish I could disagree with you. I’d hoped Discovery would have more new in it, similar to how TNG tried to distance itself from TOS and DS9 from TNG, but so far they might as well call this series Star Trek: Callback… or Call Forward.
Such is the problem with prequels.
Maybe the entire run of the series is the Discovery being stuck in the mirror universe or at least jumping around to parallel universes trying to get back to the right one but never finding the Prime universe and that’s why in TOS no one’s heard of the Mirror Universe, or the spore drive, or Klingons that look like orcs from The Lord of the Rings, etc.
Late to the party but here’s my two cents.
So we went to the mirror universe… I’m guessing the reason Kirk et al don’t know about it is why would you look for it. I imagine when Discovery gets back it’s report gets classified, and Kirk doesn’t have any reason to go looking for it, not does anyone have any reason to tell him.
Culber continues the trope of confrontation without bothering to get a back up. I don’t know about anyone else, but if I’m confronting someone I believe isn’t who they seem but are in fact a heavily modified enemy I’m doing it a) after I tell the captain and b) with a bunch of guys with phasers around. Then again I expect Culber to be either not dead or replaced by himself.
Those nitpicks aside I did enjoy the episode… the one thing I’ve enjoyed about discovery is the episode pacing as well as the fact that everything seems suspicious. Whereas even ds9 and TNG could feel predictable and you knew what lanes the characters would stay in, Disco seems to keep us all guessing, and that’s a good thing
@1: Why come to this forum before you’ve seen the episode? That way you won’t be spoiled on it even from the post title.
@3: I would say Culber is a secondary, albeit, important character. Main characters would be the ones portrayed by the six stars of the series: Burnham, Lorca, Stamets, Saru, Tyler, and Tilly. But yes, I too was shocked by Culber’s death and did not see it coming.
@@.-@: I agree with you that the reveal of the emperor (empress) will be Georgiou. It has the emotional resonance for Burnham, the heroine and star of this show, to have to face off against this alternate “eeeevil” version of her dead main timeline mentor/maternal figure. We already saw how disconcerting it was for Burnham to see a resurrected Connor and have to kill him (the second time he’s died before her eyes. Ouch!) It would be to me, a disappointment and a missed dramatic opportunity for the series if the emperor turned out to be anyone else but Georgiou.
@5: Exactly. In Star Trek, no character is ever truly dead. We can see Culber again in this Mirror Universe at some point, any number of parallel universes, time travel to the past in the main timeline, flashbacks, dreams, and the funky mycelium plane business, and who knows what else!
@10: I’m going to wager you’re a straight Caucasian male? Just because the death of this gay character was a dramatically effective one doesn’t mean that it’s any less upsetting or disappointing to real-life viewers who’ve been championing and supportive of seeing a gay relationship in mainstream dramatic television which is still sadly very rare. Being gay myself, I was very excited to see a relationship like this finally being played out on my favorite franchise so it is pretty disappointing for me to see it come to an end, at least in its immediate physical sense. And you say you’re confident that a new love interest will be introduced relatively soon. I would find that both unrealistic and insulting to the audience if Stamets were to just move on to the next gay guy to come along when the love of his life had just been murdered. Something like that has to be mourned for a very long time.
@16: I don’t see how Saru could ever rise to the position of emperor in the very xenophobic Terran Empire.
@18: I believe it was specifically addressed by the showrunners on the program After Trek that Culber’s mirror universe counterpart would not be depicted on the series. A storyboard sketch of Culber in MU garb was also shown but apparently that concept was abandoned.
@19: Perhaps Saru’s threat ganglia only went off for the first time with Tyler because only now is the underlying personality of Voq beginning to fully assert itself. Or Saru just detected that Tyler was considerably tense and agitated.
@23: I would feel pretty cheated if it wasn’t a fatal attack. I find it pretty annoying when a TV series goes to great effort to make a character appear to be dead, and then in the next episode(s) they go “fooled ya!” It’s dramatically bankrupt. As much as I find the Culber death upsetting, they went with it and should stick to it.
@24: I don’t know where that quote is from but it’s hilarious!
@27: I don’t think it’s a ruse because then why did Captain Connor of the I.S.S. Shenzhou go along with the ruse? It would have been blown as soon as he saw the captured Lorca.
@30: The “In a Mirror Darkly” two-parter is wildly entertaining and a real Trek-valentine! You should check it out if you have a chance!
I have this story idea that once the Discovery gets back to its proper universe it meets up with the Defiant (Constitution Class) on some mission where they have to work together before it’s thrown back into the MU past and the Discovery crew has to struggle with revealing the Defiant crews’ fates because of their impending demise.
And I’m also very curious as to what the repercussions to Tyler will be in regards to murdering Culber. I mean, it’s going to be found out, right? Are we getting a new chief of security? With Culber out of the picture will we finally meet the CMO? Who’s the acting chief engineer while Stamets is in his altered state?
@64/MikeKelm: “Whereas even ds9 and TNG could feel predictable and you knew what lanes the characters would stay in, Disco seems to keep us all guessing, and that’s a good thing” – I think it’s a bad thing. Believable characters that feel real are an important part of any story, and that brings with it a certain amount of predictability. Surprise twists only work once, but good characters and good plots can be revisited again and again.
@65/GarretH: I agree with you about Culber, but this show loves its surprise twists, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t really dead.
Is the Empire xenophobic? Spock and the Vulcans seemed to be quite respected in “Mirror, Mirror”. They never even call it the “Terran Empire”, only the “Empire”.
And thanks for the recommendation concerning “In a Mirror, Darkly”. I assume it can be watched without having watched the rest of Enterprise first?
@65/GarretH: “I don’t see how Saru could ever rise to the position of emperor in the very xenophobic Terran Empire.”
I’m reminded of the infamously trashy ’80s Trek novel Killing Time, which asserted that the Romulan Empire was deeply misogynistic (in contrast to the way TOS and The Making of Star Trek depicted it), yet the Commander from “The Enterprise Incident” (called “Thea” in the book) had somehow secretly managed to become the Praetor, even though everyone assumed the Praetor was male.
Of course, that isn’t a book I’d recommend anyone should emulate. And it would be a bad idea to make Saru the Emperor here. Playing up the Empire’s xenophobia is clearly meant to be a commentary on current events in the US, and it would undermine that if the xenophobic ruler were actually an alien.
As for the neck snap, I was not seriously suggesting that it would turn out to be non-fatal. After all, most TV writers and viewers take it for granted that the sudden neck snap maneuver equals instant death, in the same way they take it for granted that any car crash or fire will result in a massive explosion, or that someone can be knocked unconscious repeatedly yet not suffer brain damage. I’m just pointing out that it’s a myth, a fictional conceit that’s totally unconnected to reality, and humorously suggesting that it would be a refreshing change of pace if, for once, some TV writer would actually treat it as a myth. But of course they won’t, because TV writers get into the habit of using these cliches without questioning them.
@67/Jana: “Is the Empire xenophobic?”
There’s no indication of that in “Mirror, Mirror,” no, but there is an element of it in “In a Mirror, Darkly.” As I said, DSC is probably playing up that element to resonate with current events. Maybe next week’s episode will show some kind of reform setting in, some resolution of the rebellion that will lead to the more integrated Empire of “Mirror, Mirror.”
“And thanks for the recommendation concerning “In a Mirror, Darkly”. I assume it can be watched without having watched the rest of Enterprise first?”
Hmm, interesting question. On the one hand, it’s set entirely in the MU without any crossover with Prime-timeline ENT, so it’s basically a fully self-contained story. On the other hand, you might lose something if you weren’t familiar with the Prime versions of the characters and their relationships, and how their Mirror versions contrast or resonate with them. I guess that’s not a deal-breaker, though. You could still follow the story; you might just miss out on some of the nuances.
Regarding the Saru as Emperor theory: I thought they said the only people on DSC that did not have Mirror counterparts were Burnham and Lorca, due to their counterparts being dead/missing. That would perclude Saru from being the Emperor. I agree that the Emperor will end up being Georgiou, but I think it would be cool if it ended up being someone we are familiar with, but haven’t seen in DSC, like Robert April.
@67/JanaJansen: like ChristopherLBennett mentioned, the “In a Mirror Darkly” two-parter is self-contained in the MU and doesn’t feature any of the Prime Universe counterparts so you don’t have to see the rest of the series but I agree with CLB that it’s a better experience being able to contrast the MU characters’ personalities and also just the differences in their looks (makeup, hair, costuming) with their mirror versions. So maybe at least watch an additional episode or two from the third or fourth seasons of Enterprise which were the stronger seasons and the characters’ personalities and relationships with each other are already pretty well-established.
@68/Christopher, 70/GarretH: Thank you! That isn’t a problem then, I know the characters. I’ve watched the first season and a few second season episodes. I’ve also read the first four Rise of the Federation novels, starting with Uncertain Logic because it had such a beautiful cover.
@37: Dr. Culber isn’t black. The character much like the actor who plays him, Wilson Cruz, are Latino. But yes, killing of a gay character, much less a gay character that’s also a POC, continues an unfortunate dramatic television trope.
@71: Great! Then I think you’ll fully enjoy the “In A Mirror Darkly” episodes. They’re a lot of fun, the MU characters are more interesting than their Prime Universe versions (you can just imagine the actors are having a lot of fun with them too), and then there’re all the tie-ins to “The Tholian Web” and other TOS versions. I don’t want to give anything away but there are just particular scenes that bring a smile to a fan’s face or at least mentally delights himself/herself.
*tie-ins to other TOS elements
“Mirror, Mirror” just called it “the empire,” but all the DS9 episodes referred to Terrans as the former rulers of the empire that was overthrown. “In a Mirror, Darkly” played up the Terran aspect, too.
Also do keep in mind that the logo of the empire as seen all over the place in “Mirror, Mirror” is the Earth with a sword through it, so it’s not exactly a stretch to say that it was Earth-centric, at the very least.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I was thinking more that Saru Prime was (IIRC) known as the only Kelpian to leave his homeworld.
I could see that playing out in the MU as Saru being enslaved and brought to the Emperor as a curiosity, then manipulating himself into position as a useful advisor (someone who can sense impending danger), then gradually isolating the Emperor by feeding their paranoia until nobody realizes that their “pet” is the one calling the shots.
This could also tie into Mirror-Lorca’s fate, if Saru was the one who exposed his attempted coup.
Tyler killing Culber barely shocked me. Instead, I just mentally checked both the “POC character death” and “gay character death” boxes. That’s what happens when tropes get overused: they lose their shock value. Which makes the death almost pointless. Had it been Stamets dying (for the same reason, since he keeps talking about “the enemy among us” just in front of Tyler), that would have been more interesting, as that would raise the question of how they are going to leave this universe. Here they’ve just killed the doctor (which means someone else will be promoted), and Stamets emotional anchor (which means they’ve prevented some interesting developments between them and Lorca).
I’m not sure about Georgiou being the Emperor. The first to hold that title was Sato, and she called herself Empress. If I’m not mistaken, according to the novels, one of her clones should be in power right now. So it would make sense to have the fans expect the Empress to be Sato, and then reveal her to actually be Georgiou. But I don’t see why they would call her Emperor. Saru would be an intriguing possibility: his state of constant fear could make him flourish in such a dangerous environment. But the show would have to justify how he got to this position (Cybersnark’s theory does make sense, similar rises to power from nothing have happened in our world), and why he would keep such a xenophobic approach.
@41: it doesn’t seem strange to me that a scientific ship working on projects so esoteric would have such a scanner. Who knows what strange matter they could find on their journeys? It’s certainly not meant to be used on ships, but if they have the sensors, why not use them?
If Discovery do return to the prime universe using information regarding the Defiant then surely the Department of Temporal Investigations would get involved (assuming they exist at this point). The Disco crew would know of the fate of the Defiant so this would result in all records being classified to everyone (even Captain Kirk) then it slowly becomes de-classified as the need to keep it secret is gone. This could explain Kirk not knowing about the mirror universe but being known in DS9.
@75/krad: Yes, that’s true.
The Vulcans’ status in that universe is interesting. Mirror Spock clearly uses “Some of [my operatives] are Vulcans” as a threat.
@77/Athreeren: “I’m not sure about Georgiou being the Emperor. The first to hold that title was Sato, and she called herself Empress.”
Sato was hardly the first Terran Emperor/Empress. “In a Mirror, Darkly” repeatedly referenced an existing Emperor whom Archer intended to overthrow using the Defiant‘s weapons. Hoshi ended up killing Archer and executing his plan for herself.
“If I’m not mistaken, according to the novels, one of her clones should be in power right now. So it would make sense to have the fans expect the Empress to be Sato, and then reveal her to actually be Georgiou.”
Keep in mind that typically only 1-2% of the TV viewing audience pays any attention to the tie-in novels. If you mentioned the clones of the Empress Sato to the typical viewer of this show, they’d have no idea what you were talking about.
This was boring crap. Tons of exposition on the Terran Empire (if you want to give me a fascist empire, show don’t tell. Just having them salute doesn’t make the cut). Tilly being captain was kind of cool but also utterly predictable. The show didn’t make me care enough about Culber for his killing to have any effect on me (but I do agree with the criticisms about killing off a LGBTQ PoC).
I wanted to give it a chance after the Christmas break, but I’m more or less signing off on ST:D.
I don’t follow social media like I used to, and I mostly avoid it for Star Trek to keep free of spoilers, so I had zero foreknowledge of Culber’s incredibly violent death. I sat frozen for several seconds, mouth gaping, my wife wondering what the hell my problem was (she doesn’t watch Discovery; I showed her the first episodes and she’s wanted no part of it since. We do, however, enjoy The Orville together). Culber was the only person on this show I loved unconditionally, so of course he had to die. All I could think was why, why?!!
I also don’t watch After Trek (I suppose I should since I’m paying for it), but all the dancing around from the writers I’ve seen posted from others does NOT make me feel better. “We haven’t killed Hugh, we’re just gonna Tasha Yar him,” i.e. alternative versions of Hugh or some other b.s. Definitely NOT going to be worth having fridged a gay man of color.
Why, why?!!
I was completely engrossed until that moment yanked me back to reality, like a kick in the face. I watched the rest of the episode and felt almost guilty for mostly enjoying it; that violent, needless death hanging over it like a pall.
Man, I really want to like this show. There was some really good stuff in this episode. Lorca has definitely grown on me, and Michael got to be front and center halfway through.
And, oh yeah, “Tyler” is actually Voq, blah blah blah.
Terran Empire, yadda yadda yadda.
Of course the highlight is Captain Killy, and that was fun to watch. But man that’ll get old really fast if we spend too much time in this universe.
Star Trek: Discovery, please, give me something
I’ve never been a big fan of MU episode, but the recipe
for these has always been: (1) it should be exciting both
for the characters and for us to explore another reality
(even if it’s a bad one), and (2) the actors should be
having fun playing the polar opposites of their
characters. In this episode, neither of these happened.
In this episode, exploring this other reality went a bit
like this:
-We’re in a parallel universe, we’ll that’s mildly
interesting
-Hey, there is this handy data bank telling us everything
we need to know
-Let’s have the characters talking for 20 minutes,
explaining the contents of this data bank to each other
YAAAAAWN!
And with the possible exception of Tilly (like I said,
even that was by-the-numbers) none of the actors were
having fun. Where are the normally good guys who now get
to play an over-the-top goatee-wearing villain? Heck, they
didn’t even get to kill a Ferengi!
Despite having been done too often, parallel universes can
still be an interesting concept. But this episode was an
exercise in how to st
@83/LeRoc: “Where are the normally good guys who now get to play an over-the-top goatee-wearing villain?”
“You’re a man of integrity in both universes, Mister Spock.” (Kirk in “Mirror, Mirror”)
I’ve never been a big fan of MU episode, but the recipe for these has always been: (1) it should be exciting both for the characters and for us to explore another reality (even if it’s a bad one), and (2) the actors should be having fun playing the polar opposites of their characters. In this episode, neither of these happened.
In this episode, exploring this other reality went a bit like this:
-We’re in a parallel universe, well that’s mildly interesting
-Hey, there is this handy data bank telling us everything we need to know
-Let’s have the characters talking for 20 minutes, explaining the contents of this data bank to each other
YAAAAAWN!
And with the possible exception of Tilly (like I said, even that was by-the-numbers) none of the actors were having fun. Where are the normally good guys who now get to play an over-the-top goatee-wearing villain? Heck, they didn’t even get to kill a Ferengi!
Despite having been done too often, parallel universes can still be an interesting concept. But this episode was an exercise in how to strip every ounce of excitement from it. Blagh!
85. LeRoc: ” Where are the normally good guys who now get to play an over-the-top goatee-wearing villain?”
They call it the Mirror Universe, not the Mirror Polar Opposite Universe. And it’s simply an alternate universe, one of many variations. May turn out to be a different one than the OS one. Why use the concept of other universes and then restrict yourself to just two?
It’s called the Mirror Universe because of the moral reversal, right the reversal of the reflection. So yeah, polar opposite ‘verse.
@87/Roxana: But it isn’t, at least not on an individual level and not in the original episode. Mirror Spock isn’t the polar opposite of Spock – according to Kirk, he’s “a man of integrity”. We don’t learn much about this universe’s Marlena Moreau, but the episode seems to suggest that she’s a decent person just like her Mirror counterpart. The Halkans are exactly the same in both universes. The reversal is on the level of societies – the Empire as the Federation’s dark mirror image, and how they have shaped their respective inhabitants.
The interpretation of the Mirror Universe as “Polar Opposite Universe” has never been correct. As Jana says, many individuals are basically the same people (Spock, O’Brien, Tuvok), and many species other than humans are basically the same (Halkans, Klingons, Cardassians, Vulcans to a degree). It’s not magic opposite-land, because this isn’t a fantasy show. It’s an alternate timeline where Earth had a more violent history. Individuals turned out differently because they were raised in a different social context, and those civilizations that had the most interaction with humans, such as Vulcans, turned out differently because humanity was different.
Indeed, part of the point of “Mirror, Mirror” is that the humans of the Empire aren’t that different from the humans of the Federation — the same savagery is inside everyone, it’s just that the Federation’s humans control it better. After all, remember where the title comes from — Snow White‘s “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” The defining attribute of the Magic Mirror in Snow White was that it spoke only the absolute truth. So the title “Mirror, Mirror” doesn’t refer merely to an inversion — it refers to the exposure of hidden truths.
You know when I thought about it, Discovery has been offing all of its prominent characters that are POC. First, there was Georgiou, the female captain; Landry, the female chief of security, and then Culber, the gay Latino doctor. I’m sure it’s not an intentional design, but still a troubling pattern nonetheless.
Isn’t it a bit early to make a bid for the Mirror Universe?
I’d think STD’s characters would need more time to progress before comparing them against their goatee’d duplicates. I get that’s not really the point of this episode, but it comes off kind of weak as a result. Like they’re struggling to throw in as many references to TOS as they can get early on, without really taking the time to establish the characters and what they do.
And yeah, the Mirror Universe has never been an exact opposite — for example, Mirror O’Brien seems to have had plenty of O’Brien days of his own. And part of the point is that the savagery of the Mirror Universe is just the savagery of Regular Universe’s people brought to the surface. I’m just not sure how effective that concept is when said savagery doesn’t have built-up characters to compare against (especially given several of the characters don’t have mirror versions to compare against, and one gets to know that her “savagery” results in a major early promotion).
Tyler being a Klingon wasn’t a surprise. The fact that they haven’t done anything interesting with that yet is.
Forgive me if this has already been said… but why should DSC’s introduction of the Mirror Universe be any more or less upsetting to the “continuity” of it being new to Kirk and crew than ENT’s introduction of same? Both series set before TOS. It is not hard to imagine (especially in a universe where Section 31 exists) that the Mirror Universe would be kept secret, on a “need to know” basis. Assuming our Discovery makes it back to our universe, it’s not any great stretch of the imagination to think Starfleet classified the incident at high levels. Heck, they did it with the Enterprise’s trip to Talos IV. Political and military organizations all have their secrets, and the MU could certainly be one of them.
Culber’s death was the most shocking moment of the series so far, although I agree with the unfortunate trope being perpetuated (at least for now, or so it appears). LOVED Captain Killy. I think Tilly is my favorite character in this whole thing.
It’s a good show. Not sure it’s my flavor of Trek, really, but it’s mostly well-written, well-acted, and always gorgeous to look at.
@92/Mike: In the ENT episode, nobody from our universe visits the Mirror Universe, so it’s still Kirk and crew who discovered it first.
@93/Jana – Oh, that’s right. “Must be going senile.” ;) Still, it hardly seems like an insurmountable problem to have DSC go there first. Easily explained or explained away, at any rate. No harder than explaining why no one in TOS knows about the spore drive.
87. princessroxana: “It’s called the Mirror Universe because of the moral reversal, right the reversal of the reflection. So yeah, polar opposite ‘verse.”
You’re being overly literal. “Mirror” is used as a metaphor, not a physical property of this alternate world.
This isn’t Star Wars: light/dark, good/evil, with no grays in between. Star Trek is not a children’s fairy tale, with simplistic morals to the story.
Star Trek is complex and subtle, dammit (Jim).
Well, sometimes it’s complex and subtle. Other times… it’s a space fable.
91. Rob: “Tyler being a Klingon wasn’t a surprise. The fact that they haven’t done anything interesting with that yet is.”
Do you mean this literally? Like, nothing interesting, at all? Many viewers found his apparent murder of Culber surprising and effective on a storytelling level. What would constitute “interesting?”
Frankly I’ve never seen a lot of subtlety in any Trek
@98/Roxana: Oh. Not even in “The City on the Edge of Forever” or “Darmok”?
I was thinking more of Let That Be Your Last Battlefield and Omega Glory.
@100/Roxana: Oh yes. Worlds apart.
That’s one of the reasons why I prefer episodic TV. It makes the bad stories easier to ignore.
@94/MikePoteet: “Still, it hardly seems like an insurmountable problem to have DSC go there first. Easily explained or explained away, at any rate.”
Sure, any individual example could be explained away. But one of my biggest problems with DSC is just how many times they’ve had DSC or its characters “get there first.” Cloaking devices. Lorca’s tribbles and Gorn skeleton. Harry Mudd. Time travel of a sort. Spacegoing animals treated as a routine phenomenon. Now the Mirror Universe. The number of episodes has only just reached double digits and it’s already loaded with continuity callbacks. Most previous Trek shows have only worked in a handful of prior-series references in their first seasons. TNG’s first season had McCoy’s cameo in the pilot and “The Naked Now,” and that was it. DS9’s core premise was built out of ideas left over from TNG (Bajor, Cardassia, Trill, Ferengi, wormholes), but in terms of callbacks to specific past episodes, it just had “Emissary” and “Q-Less.” Voyager‘s first season didn’t really have any references to or reused ideas from past series outside of the DS9-set scenes in “Caretaker.” Even Enterprise‘s first season was lighter on callbacks than you’d expect, and often to obscure elements — Zefram Cochrane and Rigel in “Broken Bow,” the Axanar in “Fight or Flight,” the Malurians in “Civilization,” the Ferengi in “Acquisition,” Risa in “Two Days and Two Nights” — and maybe you could count them finally doing something substantial with the Andorians. But that’s still less in an entire season than what DSC has crammed into just its first 10 episodes. This show is far too addicted to continuity porn. And it’s implausible that this one ship is repeatedly coming across so many things that another single ship, the Enterprise, would come across and perceive as new discoveries a dozen or so years later.
Uh-oh, I typed a whole comment and it didn’t post. Is the board doing that thing where it doesn’t show a new comment until the next one is entered? Let’s see…
EDIT: Ah, yes, there it is. Moderators, please note the board is glitching again.
@103, CLB, I agree with you. Only I’d call it discontinuity porn since in many cases there’s a strong implication that the Enterprise encountered these things for the first time.
Every Federation starship has a motto has a motto, inscribed on its dedication plaque. Enterprise is “To boldly go where no man/one has gone before.” Excelsior’s is “No Matter where you go, there you are.” Voyager’s is “For I dipt into the future, far as Human eye could see; Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be…” (Alfred Tennyson).
Discovery’s dedication plaque obviously contains the words “Let’s never talk about what happened here so Kirk’ll think he discovered everything first.”
I wonder if it wouldn’t have been a better idea to have the show take place during the TOS film era. They couldn’t have done “Nobody knows much about Klingons”, nor Harry Mudd being in love with Stella, but many other things would have worked so much better. The spore drive fits in nicely with weird experimental technology like Genesis or transwarp. Michael could be Spock’s ward instead of Sarek’s, although I can’t imagine Spock lying to her the way Sarek did. Cloaking devices, tribbles and Gorn – already known. Stamets’ fascination with all the different universes opened up by the spore drive – hey, we finally have a science of interdimensional travel! The Klingon war could explain why everyone hates Klingons so much in TUC. Even the darkened bridge would fit.
DIS is already so grimdark the MU won’t have anything like it’s usual impact. In fact they should feel right at home.
102, now you made me think of Alexander in DS9 reminding his dad of that one time on the Holodeck when everybody was Data. Would have worked nicely in the wedding episode.
Christopher: On what are you basing the notion that “Mudd’s Women” is the first time anyone from Starfleet has ever encountered Harry Mudd? (The other stuff you listed, yeah, but there’s nothing particularly exclusive or first-timey about the Enterprise‘s encounters with Harcort Fenton M.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@109/krad: Okay, so Harry Mudd doesn’t quite fit with the rest, but he goes into the broader category of TOS ideas that DSC has recycled.
@110/Christopher: I agree. Just like your other examples, Harry Mudd is an example of DSC being derivative. As a matter of fact, so is Michael Burnham. In retrospect, it might have been wiser to give her a different Vulcan family.
I’ve never even liked that Picard met Sarek and Spock and Scotty and Kirk, because it just seemed implausible. This is worse. It’s Star Trek looking inward instead of outward, and that isn’t a good thing.
@111/Jana: I don’t mind tying Burnham into Sarek and Spock. It’s a way to gain new insight into characters that we can’t explore directly anymore, at least not in Prime continuity. And “Lethe” is not only my very favorite episode of this show so far by a huge margin, but one of the most amazing Star Trek stories to come along in decades.
The problem is piling on so many other TOS ties on top of that, which does make it all feel contrived and gratuitous in the aggregate.
@112/Christopher: I kinda liked it myself at first. It’s a rather fanfictiony premise – fanfic writers invent new relatives for established characters all the time – but they could have made it work. The scene where Burnham told Tilly about her adopted brother and Alice in Wonderland was sweet. But I would have liked to see a different Vulcan family even more, because it’s nice to have a big universe.
As for “Lethe”, I must admit that I didn’t like it much. Lorca and Tyler playing Laser tag was too macho for my taste. Then Tilly thought Tyler was hot because he had killed a lot of Klingons. And I don’t really like retcons unless they improve the original story. For me they tend to undermine the sense of a stable world. In this case, I’ve believed for decades that Sarek wanted Spock to become a university researcher on Vulcan, because that’s what we’ve been told in “Journey to Babel”; now, according to “Lethe”, this isn’t true, and he wanted him to go into space instead.
@113/Jana: What specific job Sarek had in mind for Spock seems incidental to me; it’s the interpersonal dynamics and emotions involved that really matter. “Lethe” adds a powerful new insight into just why Sarek was so badly hurt by Spock simply choosing a different career path than he’d wanted. It wasn’t just that he was arbitrarily stubborn about not getting what he wanted; it was that he’d made a difficult and shameful choice to sacrifice Michael’s career for Spock’s, so Spock’s choice meant that Sarek screwed over Michael for no reason, which only worsened his shame. And he couldn’t bring himself to admit it — he was willing to die rather than admit it to Michael — so instead it resulted in an 18-year rift between them. That just makes it so much richer and more potent. And it’s the good kind of retcon, the kind that doesn’t change what we knew before, but deepens it and makes even more sense of it. It may be the deftest retcon I’ve ever seen. And it does all that while also being an integral part of Discovery and Michael Burnham’s character development, which is even more deft.
Anyway, what Sarek wanted was for Spock to join the Vulcan Science Academy; “Lethe” established it was something called the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. It’s easy enough to assume that the latter is affiliated with the former; perhaps it’s “expeditionary” in the sense of research expeditions. We know the VSA was involved in starship operations in the 24th century; it commissioned the Jellyfish in 2387, and a couple of TNG Okudagrams referred to the USS Merrimac being on assignment for the VSA.
@114/Christopher: I wouldn’t say that Sarek was “arbitrarily stubborn about not getting what he wanted” prior to “Lethe”. The Sarek of “Journey to Babel” was a traditionalist and a patriarch; he expected Spock to follow his teachings because that was the Vulcan way. There’s nothing arbitrary about that.
So “Lethe” has changed what we knew before. It has changed the reason for the rift between Sarek and Spock, and ultimately Sarek’s personality.
@115/Jana: “The Sarek of “Journey to Babel” was a traditionalist and a patriarch; he expected Spock to follow his teachings because that was the Vulcan way. There’s nothing arbitrary about that.”
For a people supposedly governed by logic, it seems a pretty silly basis for disowning your own son for 18 years. That does seem like a deeply irrational overreaction. Menosky’s revelations in “Lethe” make it more understandable why he reacted so fiercely.
Of course, my thought before then was that it was really because of Sybok — Sarek feared that, by joining Starfleet, Spock was starting down the same path as Sybok, and his fear of losing another son became a self-fulfilling prophecy when he pre-emptively pushed Spock away. But Menosky’s version is even better. I’m really disappointed that he’s apparently no longer with the show.
“So “Lethe” has changed what we knew before. It has changed the reason for the rift between Sarek and Spock, and ultimately Sarek’s personality.”
“Lethe” doesn’t change one thing about “Journey to Babel.” It is still true that Sarek disowned Spock for 18 years because he didn’t follow the Vulcan path and joined Starfleet instead. What we now know is why his reaction to that was so extreme — the reason beneath the reason. Sarek scuttled Michael’s chances to join the Vulcan fleet because he made a choice that it was more important for his Vulcan son to follow the Vulcan path than it was for his adopted human daughter to do so. His desire for Spock to follow the Vulcan path was still his driving motivation the whole time. That’s why he was so betrayed when Spock didn’t follow the Vulcan path — not only because it was “non-traditional,” but because it invalidated the great and painful lengths Sarek had gone to on Spock’s behalf, throwing his other child under the bus for Spock’s benefit. “Lethe” only deepens the character dynamic of “Journey to Babel.” It’s still about Sarek’s hopes for Spock and his cultural values, but illustrated through Sarek’s own actions motivated by those hopes and values, which makes it less abstract, more personal, and more potent.
@116, for a people supposedly governed by logic – the key word being supposedly. Vulcans are not logical, they are merely very good at rationalizing their prejudices. What they are is a highly traditional and rigid culture. I never had the slightest problem believing a father would practically disown his son for disobedience. We have cultures on this planet where such things are done!
@117/roxana: I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with “Journey”’s explanation, as far as it goes. I’m just saying that “Lethe”’s elaboration upon it adds more depth and insight. “Journey” worked great for 50 years, but, well, it’s been 50 years. Taking that old familiar dynamic and enabling us to see it in a whole new light after all that time is a very good thing. If Discovery is going to build stories around familiar elements from Trek’s past, that’s the best possible way to do it — not just using it as gratuitous continuity porn, but reviving it in order to add new meaning to it, to deepen and enrich it. Some of DSC’s attempts to do that have not been very successful — e.g. turning Harry Mudd into a brutal mass murderer — but this one worked brilliantly.
@116/Christopher: “For a people supposedly governed by logic, it seems a pretty silly basis for disowning your own son for 18 years.”
Did Sarek even do that? The way I understand “Journey to Babel”, Spock and Sarek both contributed to the rift. “You haven’t come to see us in four years”; “The Vulcan way […] has kept Spock and Sarek from speaking as father and son for eighteen years.”
“”Lethe” only deepens the character dynamic of “Journey to Babel”.”
It changes the character dynamic. And as I said in my previous comment, it changes Sarek’s character. You find that “less abstract, more personal, and more potent”; I don’t.
@118/Christopher: “Taking that old familiar dynamic and enabling us to see it in a whole new light after all that time is a very good thing.”
I think it’s a bad thing. The Sarek invented by D.C. Fontana in 1967 has been a beloved character for decades. Now he’s been replaced with a different version. I don’t find the new version deeper or richer, just different. This kind of thing is the exact reason why I don’t like retcons.
I’m still sad to hear that Menosky has left. He has written many Star Trek episodes I liked, among them my favourite TNG episode “Darmok”, and I had hoped he would write some more stories I could like.
By the way, I won’t be surprised if the second season has fewer continuity callbacks than this one. Perhaps TAS is a better historical comparison than TNG – the first half had a lot of sequels and variations of TOS episodes, but the second half consisted mostly of independent stories. I think the DSC writers used the continuity callbacks to establish the show, because many people enjoy them despite their implausibility.
@119/Jana: “The Sarek invented by D.C. Fontana in 1967 has been a beloved character for decades. Now he’s been replaced with a different version.”
I just don’t see that. His motivations are exactly the same. We just know more about what his motivations and priorities led him to do, and it adds a new layer to the story that meshes very smoothly with what we had.
@120 “I think the DSC writers used the continuity callbacks to establish the show, because many people enjoy them despite their implausibility.”
As I discussed above, other shows did that too, but they did it once or twice in their first seasons and focused primarily on telling their own stories. DSC has been doing it constantly, as if they’re afraid to function without that crutch.
@48, re the “inverted Starfleet chevron”
After all, everybody knows that in proper evil empires the chevron points to the far right.
@121/Christopher: “His motivations are exactly the same.”
I disagree.
The Sarek from “Journey to Babel” is a stern, stubborn patriarch and traditionalist who believes in the Vulcan way and expects his family to follow it.
The Sarek from “Lethe” is a reformer who wants to change the Vulcan way, who uses his children for his political goals, who is ashamed to admit to failure and prefers lying and making his daughter feel inadequate.
They’re both interesting, they’re both flawed, but they are two very different men.
@123/Jana: Except that well-drawn characters are multifaceted and can have conflicting drives within them. Sarek believed in the Vulcan way and expected his biological son to follow it — perhaps pushing the Vulcan way extra-hard because he was afraid that the half-human Spock might have the potential to be another Sybok. Yes, he was hoping to make Vulcans more tolerant toward humans — and his attempt to do that with Burnham is entirely consistent with the fact that he married a human woman and had a half-human son with her — but despite that, he still had a degree of Vulcan prejudice in him that made him choose his Vulcan son over his human daughter when it came down to it. It was his Vulcan traditionalism and arrogance that caused him to hurt both children. He tried to shape both of them in the Vulcan way, and saw Starfleet as a less worthy alternative to the Vulcan Science Academy and Expeditionary Group. But he made different choices for them because ultimately he still saw his Vulcan son as more deserving of the Vulcan path than his human daughter — which made him feel doubly betrayed when his son then rejected that path.
So there is no contradiction. We just have more context than we had before. That’s what’s so impressive about Menosky’s retcon.
@124/Christopher: Sigh. I have the feeling that we talk past each other. Yes, of course there is no contradiction – the Sarek from “Journey to Babel” can become the Sarek from “Lethe” without changing a single scene. It’s a clever retcon. I give you that.
But my point is that the Sarek from “Journey to Babel”, without the context of “Lethe”, was a different person. After watching “Journey to Babel”, I had an idea who this Sarek was. He was brusque and authoritarian, but also self-assured and honorable. Seeing him in TSFS, TVH and TNG didn’t change this idea. Seeing “Lethe” did. If you don’t see it that way, we just have to disagree.
Let me ask you one last thing. After Burnham learned the truth in “Lethe”, did Sarek ever tell Amanda? If he did, why did she tell Kirk that Sarek and Spock hadn’t spoken for eighteen years because of “the Vulcan way”? And if he didn’t, doesn’t that make the final scene in sickbay, when they all get along and tease each other, somewhat dishonest?
Jana: what in “Journey to Babel” made you think Sarek was honorable? The part where it was established that he hadn’t talked to his son for two decades? The part where he treated his wife like chattel? The part where he hid his fatal heart condition from said wife? Or the part where he made racist remarks about Tellarites?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
My review of “The Wolf Inside” was delayed by real-life nonsense — normally I watch it Sunday night, but I wasn’t able to, so I didn’t watch it until this morning. Writing the review right now, it should be up at some point soonish……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@125/Jana: “But my point is that the Sarek from “Journey to Babel”, without the context of “Lethe”, was a different person. After watching “Journey to Babel”, I had an idea who this Sarek was. He was brusque and authoritarian, but also self-assured and honorable. Seeing him in TSFS, TVH and TNG didn’t change this idea. Seeing “Lethe” did. If you don’t see it that way, we just have to disagree.”
I don’t disagree, I just don’t see why you think that’s a bad thing. What is the point of telling new stories about a character if they don’t tell us anything new about that character? What is the point of fiction that never surprises us?
“After Burnham learned the truth in “Lethe”, did Sarek ever tell Amanda?”
That seems unlikely, given what we know of Sarek. He was willing to die rather than confess it to Burnham. How could he bear to confess it to Amanda? And as Keith points out, he didn’t tell his wife he had a heart condition either. (Which I still think is probably a consequence of the injuries he sustained in “Lethe.”)
“If he did, why did she tell Kirk that Sarek and Spock hadn’t spoken for eighteen years because of “the Vulcan way”?”
First off, I just wrote that whole long post explaining why it’s still because of the Vulcan way, just in a more complex fashion than we thought. Second, even if Amanda knew, why would she reveal her most intimate and painful family secrets to some dude she’d just met?
Of course Sarek never told Amanda, she’d eviscerate him!
@128/Christopher: Sure, I want to be surprised, but that doesn’t mean that I like each and every surprise. I guess it comes down to this: I find what Sarek did to Burnham unforgivable. For all his flaws, the Sarek from “Journey to Babel” wasn’t a villain. So for me, this isn’t character development, it’s character assassination. And if we learn next week that Amanda cooks and eats little children, I’m going to dislike that surprise too.
@126/krad: All of the above, of course :)
Seriously – Amanda doesn’t say that Sarek hasn’t talked to Spock, she says that Sarek and Spock haven’t talked. That isn’t the same thing. And he doesn’t treat her like chattel, he treats her like a child. Again, not the same thing. We can see in the final sickbay scene that he’s actually quite fond of her – or, at least, I think I see it; I don’t know about you.
@130/Jana: Prior TOS canon argues against a romanticized view of Sarek. He alienated Spock. He disowned Sybok. This is not a guy who’s ever been shown to be a particularly good father. And keep in mind that Discovery‘s Sarek is younger than any version we’ve seen outside of “Yesteryear” and the Kelvinverse (and TFF’s brief glimpse of Spock’s birth). So it makes sense that he’s more fallible than the more seasoned Sarek we got to know in TOS and the movies. It doesn’t make him a “villain,” because we know he will get better later in life.
@131/Christopher: I’m not saying that TOS Sarek was a good father. I’m saying that lying to your obedient, hardworking child by telling her that she isn’t good enough for the job she’s trained for is a whole different level of shitty than anything we’ve seen before. TFF Sarek was less likeable than Fontana’s Sarek (I’m thinking particularly of Spock’s birth), but this is much worse.
@132/Jana: Okay, now I think you’re being too hard on Sarek. It wasn’t something he did of his own volition. The arbitrary ruling that only one of Sarek’s children could join was imposed on him by the racists in charge of the VEG. He was forced to make an unfair and impossible choice. And even though it wasn’t exactly his fault, he was deeply ashamed of going along with it, which is why he was willing to die rather than confess it to Michael. That’s hardly the mark of a villain.
@133/Christopher: Okay, I take back “villain”, but it’s still inexcusable. Not the choice, but telling Michael that there was something wrong with her. I think the Sarek from “Journey to Babel” and “Yesteryear” would have simply told her that against expectation, she wouldn’t get the position; she should accept the disappointment with equanimity, because that’s the Vulcan way; end of discussion.
Or he could have put the blame where it belonged, on the SOBs commanding the VEG by making a full disclosure, maybe even asking Michael if she would be willing to sacrifice her chance for Spock, who is after all some four or five years behind her, anything could happen in that time including a change of leadership at the VEG.
@122
Like this one?
Semi-related amusement: when this episode aired, I was on the Star Trek cruise, with Jonathan Frakes on board. (He wore a “DISCO” ball cap a few times.) At one of his talks, he berated the audience for “getting him in trouble” over this episode. Apparently he was called on the carpet for leaking the mirror universe connection well before the episode aired – he’d mentioned it at an event, and someone tweeted about it, and he got a bit of a finger-wagging from the bosses.
He also expressed disappointment that he hadn’t gotten to work with Michelle Yeoh.
Very good episode. I LOVED Captain Killy, Wiseman is delightful in her role, and it gets even better now. The scene between L’Rell and Voq/Tyler is excellent, and yes, the death of Culber is incredible effective. They keep showing it in previous episodes scenes two episodes later, and it still affects me.
Regarding Culber’s death from a LGBTQ* fridging standpoint; I understand what you say, krad, but I don’t think it’s fair to blame Discovery. I know we want to keep Trek’s first canon gay couple, but they made them a normal, happy couple, and made him a likeable character, made his sexual orientation secondary (but completely there)… and then they used him in the way that made more sense for the story, as you well say. I mean, we say we want LGBTQ* characters used as characters, and not as mere colorful plot devices… Culber was used as a character, and died because he did the things his character would normally do (not only being a Doctor, but also keeping potentially dangerous information to himself).
Don’t think I don’t understand the wildly different ratio in LGBTQ* character deaths and straight white male deaths. I really do.
I too want to see the ISS Discovery in the regular universe. Agree on an excellent direction by Frakes, then man obviously knows his craft.
@3 – Loungeshep: Except Culber is not a main character, he wasn’t in the titles, nor is he really central to the plot (not saying he’s unimportant). It’s a testament to how good the character and the actor were, that we think of him as a main character; much like it’s happened to me with Garak in DS9, only to check and be reminded that he’s in like 1/4 of the show’s episodes.
@@.-@ – Chris: My guess was Georgiou immediately, too.
@11 – Jana: Women couldn’t be captains in the MU because the show was made in the 1960s. And Culber did have personal problems: his partner was having serious health issues and he kept them secret even though it endandegered everybody in the ship. And he did the same with Voq/Tyler, and this time he didn’t have the excuse of being personally involved.
@16 – Cybersnark: Saru would be nice, but Georgiou has more emotional impact on Michael.
@17 – Halien: I love Culber and Culber/Stamets, but from the start its made no sense for him to be providing medical care to Stamets (beyond patching up a minor wound or two), when they made it obvious that there are other doctors, and he’s not even the ship’s CMO.
@18 – chisquare05: Agreed with all you said.
@23 – ChristopherLBennett: I kept telling my son that you can break someone’s neck and not actually kill him.
@@.-@8 – phillip_thorne: I do believe there is a conventional engineering section, with a regular warp drive. In “Vaulting Ambition” I noticed a sign in sporengineering that said “aft section engineering” or something to that effect. Yes, it’s the USS Stamets, a mycellial network representation of his psyche, but…
@@.-@9 – Chazwuzzuh: The ship’s class is still Constitution; and you’d be surprised at how many ruthless regimes in the real world have constitutions. Self-serving, oft-ignored constitutions, but still constitutions.
@72 – GarretH: Latino/Hispanic is a culture (or an umbrella for several related cultures), you can be Latino and black, and Cruz definitely looks part black. I am Latino/Hispanic myself, live in a South American country, and know dozens of people who look similar to Cruz.
@76 – Cybersnark: That is a nice plot idea, but again, having it be Saru is less emotionally troubling for Michael, and she is the main character after all.
@90 – GarretH: All prominent POC characters dead? What about Michael and Tyler/Voq?
@119 – JanaJansen: From his very first appearance, Sarek has been a pretty crappy father.
@137 – MeredithP: I’m so envious of you right now. Did you get to personally talk to Frakes? In any case, I love Frakes, but if someone is to blame for the Mirror leak is himself, and only himself.
@138/MaGnUs: Concerning the status of women in the MU, did you read my comment #30? It’s not just that they couldn’t be captains, it’s that they were sexually harrassed and could advance by sleeping with powerful men. That’s a spot-on portrayal of a barbarian society based on violence. It’s what happens in real life when civilisation breaks down. It’s exactly how a ruthless empire that encourages infighting would look like.
As for Sarek, yeah, he has always been a crappy father, but there are degrees of crappy. TOS Sarek I could still like. But I draw the line at lying to your child in a way that makes them feel inadequate for years.
But that’s still because of the show being written in the 1960s. Mysoginy is so real world… it’s a lot more scarier to portray a barbaric civilization where gender equality is real, but they’re still barbarians.
@140/MaGnUs: I guess that’s it – I want Star Trek to be real world. I always complain when it isn’t.
And of course, as a woman, I find the misogynistic dystopia scarier. Much, much scarier. I’m in Uhura’s head when she has to go to the bridge alone, and is frightened, and still goes and does her job. And I feel for Moreau when she wants to leave that shitty place and live in the better world she has glimpsed, and can’t.
Historically, even sexist societies have still had female monarchs from time to time, from Pharaoh Hatshepsut (who had to wear a fake beard and adopt a nominally masculine persona) to Queen Victoria. Any rule can have exceptions, and monarchs generally don’t consider themselves bound by the same rules and limitations that apply to lesser people.
@141 – Jana: Okay, maybe not “scarier”, but still, more interesting, as it gives us something new and still terrifying instead of what we already have.
@142 – Chris: Plus, fanatical supporters of rulers that don’t abide by their society’s tenets will bend over backwards to justify their leaders non-conformance.
@142/Christopher: Or Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Cixi,… I know. I don’t really mind the emperor, although two female emperors in a row are a bit unlikely. More the general position of women, like youthful starship captains and such.
@143/MaGnUs: The thing is that I like “Mirror, Mirror” so much that I’m kinda touchy about its legacy. If they had made it a different parallel universe (they still can do that, although I doubt they will), I might be enjoying the ride.
Russia had four ruling Empresses in a row in the 18th c., interspersed with brief and ineffectual male rulers, two of whom’s only claim to the throne was as consorts. Elizabeth I succeeded her sister Mary I but unlike Mary found a way to make the gender conventions of her time work for her. She used the conventions of courtly love to turn herself into La Belle Dame Sans Merci and her ministers and courtiers into knights servitors. It was crazy but it worked.
@144/Jana: Like I said before, I think it makes more sense to see “Mirror, Mirror”‘s treatment of women as a function of 1960s TV writing rather than an intrinsic feature of the Mirror Universe. For all we know, there are female starship commanders with “Captain’s Men.”
@146/Christopher: And I’ve contradicted you before :). First, I’ve always believed that the Prime Universe has gender equality despite “Turnabout Intruder”, because people there are generally civilised, they treat each other respectfully in the workplace, and Kirk makes clear on more than one occasion that professionally, he doesn’t see a difference between men and women. Things are obviously different in the Mirror Universe.
And second, I see a realism in the respective treatment of men and women in the Mirror Universe that is a big part of why it works as a dystopia for me. I don’t think a predatory society like that could ever have gender equality. “Captain’s Men” sounds like fantasy. I can’t explain it any better – it seems pretty self-evident to me. If you disagree, we probably can’t convince each other.
@147/Jana: “First, I’ve always believed that the Prime Universe has gender equality despite “Turnabout Intruder””
Yes, that’s exactly my point. We can choose to interpret the Federation as less sexist than episodes like “Turnabout” or “Mudd’s Women” portrayed it, because we choose to see that sexism as an artifact of the era in which the show was made rather than an intrinsic property of the underlying universe. So there’s no reason we can’t do exactly the same kind of mental retcon with the Mirror Universe, just as the canonical MU stories have been doing ever since DS9.
As for the latter point, yes, in realistic terms, I agree with you — fascist societies are usually sexist societies. But there’s a lot about the MU that isn’t realistic. Realistically, an alternate timeline that diverged hundreds or thousands of years in the past would not have the same living individuals doing the same jobs in the same places; but the whole appeal of the Mirror Universe, the reason it’s called that, is that it allows the characters (or at least the audience) to meet evil or skewed versions of themselves. And that means that the more strong, central female characters we get in the Prime Universe, the more strong, central female characters we get in the Mirror Universe.
@148/Christopher: Yeah, I see the problem. And I know that for many people, the Mirror Universe’s appeal is what you say, meeting evil versions of the established characters. And of course that’s what DSC gives us here. But for me, that’s always been secondary. I like “Mirror, Mirror” for its reversal of societies. And I thought that the name originally referred to that – the Empire as the Federation’s dark mirror.
I know I’ve said this before – I see many TOS episodes as allegories with real people. They have one unrealistic starting point and then develop a perfectly realistic story from there. “The Enemy Within” is such an episode, “Day of the Dove”, and also “Mirror, Mirror”. It’s a story format quite common in classical SF, it’s a story format I like a lot, and IMO it needs the realism to work. One unrealistic assumption launches an SF story; too many, and it becomes fantasy.
So… I know that Mirror Universe stories make many people happy, but I personally would have preferred it if “Mirror, Mirror” had remained the only one.
Gender relations in the Original Mirror Mirror are slightly confusing. Marlena defines herself as the appendage of a man, when she thinks Kirk has tired of her she talks of accepting a temporary ‘protector’. Captain’s Woman is her choice of career. Uhura on the other hand does not seem to be attached to any man, though Sulu is putting the moves on her he’s getting nowhere.
This suggests to me two possible career tracks for a female officer; she can play the same game as the men rising by treachery and assassination or she can use her sexuality to attach herself to a superior officer which will allow her to bypass a lot of that and rise with him through the ranks, Captain’s Woman, Admiral’s Woman, Empress Consort?
I personally thought it should have ended on the scene of the Shenzhou jumping to warp, the Burnham/Tyler scene after felt a bit of a slow-down again.