“In a Mirror, Darkly”
Written by Mike Sussman
Directed by James L. Conway
Season 4, Episode 18
Production episode 094
Original air date: April 22, 2005
Date: January 13, 2155
Captain’s star log. We open in Bozeman, Montana in 2063, the familiar tableau from First Contact of a Vulcan ship landing and making the titular contact with Earth. But then Cochrane whips out a pistol and shoots the Vulcan and the humans board the ship and take it over. Yup, we’re in the Mirror Universe…
We jump to 2155 and see the I.S.S. Enterprise, under the command of Captain Max Forrest, heading to a rendezvous with the assault fleet. Major Malcolm Reed and Doctor Phlox show Forrest and his first officer, Commander Jonathan Archer, their new toy: the agony booth, a much more effective disciplinary tool than what they’ve been using. They’re testing it on a Tellarite crew member, and Reed can’t even recall what it was the Tellarite did to deserve being tortured.
Archer reiterates a request he made to Forrest to go to Tholian space. Archer has received intelligence of a technology in their territory that will give them an edge against the rebels. Forrest refuses, and threatens Archer with the agony booth if he doesn’t shut up about it.
The captain’s woman, Hoshi Sato, joins Forrest in his quarters and distracts him from work. Forrest reveals that the Terran Empire is having trouble putting the rebellion, despite the official reports to the contrary.
On his way to the bridge, Forrest is ambushed, his MACO bodyguard killed, by Reed and Sergeant Travis Mayweather. Archer is taking command, ordering Forrest to be put in the brig, not killed. (Reed wants very much to kill the captain.) Archer insists he has orders from Starfleet to enter Tholian space and retrieve the technology they believe is there. Neither Second Officer T’Pol nor Sato know of any such communiqués, but Archer insists he got it on a private channel. Archer promotes T’Pol to first officer and orders her to pull a Suliban cloaking device out of storage and to help Chief Engineer Tucker install it.
Archer promotes Mayweather to be his personal bodyguard, and also makes it clear that he’s keeping Forrest alive in order to get Sato to cooperate with him, starting with her sending a message to Admiral Gardner.
Buy the Book
Exordia
Enterprise finds the warp signature Archer is looking for, but they’re also ambushed by a one-person Tholian craft. They exchange weapons fire, and the Tholian tries to self-destruct to avoid capture, which the transporter renders a failure. The Tholian is beamed to the decon chamber, where Phlox indulges in torture. The prisoner eventually reveals that the Terran ship they captured is in the Ventaak system.
Heading there, the cloak is overloaded. Archer looks into it, including asking Forrest if he is responsible. Or maybe Admiral Black’s spy on board did it. Forrest points out that, if Black sent a spy, Forrest wouldn’t have the first clue who it was.
Reed then provides evidence that Tucker was responsible, which leads to Tucker being put in the agony booth for four hours.
T’Pol frees Forrest and he takes the ship back—but Archer anticipated that. Enterprise is locked into a course to the Ventaak system, and no one can change it. Not even Archer, who installed a random code to lock it out. It will take T’Pol weeks to decrypt it.
Forrest puts Archer in the agony booth, but releases him on Admiral Gardner’s orders. The admiral was intrigued by Archer’s data and wants Forrest to continue to pursue it. Archer briefs the senior staff, explaining that the Tholians created an interphasic rift that led to a parallel universe. They lured a ship through with a phony distress call. According to Archer’s intelligence—gained from a slave of the Tholians—the ship was quantum dated and it’s not just from another timeline, but from a hundred years in the future.
Archer is to lead the away team onto the ship. Forrest orders T’Pol to accompany him and make sure he doesn’t make it back alive. Tucker confronts T’Pol about how he suffered in the agony booth for no reason, but T’Pol reveals that she mind-melded with him to mentally force him to sabotage the cloak, and then did another mind-meld so he’d forget. So he really was guilty, even if he doesn’t remember it.
The Tholian prisoner is able to send a distress call biologically, so Phlox is forced to sedate it. But it fights past the sedation, leading Phlox to kill it—but not before it gets a message out.
Sure enough, Enterprise is attacked, but since they’ve arrived at their destination, Forrest has control again. The Tholians, however, make short work of Enterprise.
Meanwhile, Archer and his landing party are on the U.S.S. Defiant, where they find the corpses of the crew who succumbed to the brain-damaging effects of interphase. And then they’re forced to watch as Forrest orders the crew to abandon ship and Enterprise itself blows up.
To be continued…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently MU Starfleet doesn’t shield as well against delta rays as the mainline universe’s Starfleet, as Tucker is disfigured by multiple exposure to such.
The gazelle speech. The MU Archer is not particularly ambitious, but that may have been an act to get Forrest to trust him. Either way, he shows plenty of ambition and gumption here, and Forrest and T’Pol are both gobsmacked by it.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol is perfectly happy to use mind-control on Tucker, and also use him for sex, in order to remain loyal to Forrest.
Florida Man. Florida Man Victim Of Mind Control By Alien Seductress!
Optimism, Captain! Phlox helped design the agony booth and made sure to make it a pan-species torture device, and also one that would have long-term efficacy by working on different nerve clusters.
Good boy, Porthos! In the MU, Porthos is a snarly rottweiler.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Let’s see, we’ve got Sato going from sleeping with Archer to sleeping with Forrest to going back to sleeping with Archer, we’ve got T’Pol using Tucker to help her through pon farr, and we’ve got the sexualized women’s Starfleet uniforms from the original series’ “Mirror, Mirror.”
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… After Zefram Cochrane’s successful warp flight, Vulcan made first contact, as they did in the mainline universe, but this time Terrans kill the Vulcan pilot and take over his ship.
Also T’Pol declares that the Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that there are no parallel universes, because of course they have.
More on this later… This episode tells the other side of the story of the original series’ “The Tholian Web,” establishing that the Defiant was lured by a distress call into the interphasic rift, which was caused by the MU’s Tholians doing crazy-ass experiments.
In addition, we learn that the agony booth that was used on the I.S.S. Enterprise in “Mirror, Mirror” was invented by Phlox and Reed.
I’ve got faith…
“They call this ‘progress’.”
“There’s something to be said for a good old-fashioned flogging.”
–Archer and Forrest discussing the agony booth.
Welcome aboard. Vaughn Armstrong returns for what is his final Trek appearance to date as the MU Forrest, while Franc Ross plays the big bearded guy who leads the charge against the Vulcan ship in the teaser. James Cromwell and Cully Fredrickson appear via archive footage from First Contact as Zefram Cochrane and the Vulcan captain, respectively, though stuntman Steve Blalock plays the Vulcan captain when he gets shot.
Trivial matters: This is the first of two parts, to be continued next week. It’s also the seventh episode to involve the MU, following the original series’ “Mirror, Mirror,” which introduced the concept, and the DS9 epsiodes “Crossover,” “Through the Looking Glass,” “Shattered Mirror,” “Resurrection,” and “The Emperor’s New Cloak.” It’ll be seen again when the U.S.S. Discovery winds up in the MU at the end of “Into the Forest I Go,” and stays there through “Despite Yourself,” “The Wolf Inside,” “Vaulting Ambition,” and “What’s Past is Prologue,” with a version of it also showing up in the “Terra Firma” two-parter.
This is the first episode to take place entirely in the MU, a distinction it and Part 2 will retain until Discovery’s “Despite Yourself.” This two-parter is the only MU story to date that has no characters from the mainline universe in it. (Well, no living ones, since technically the corpses they find on Defiant are from the mainline universe, but you know what I mean…)
The MU has appeared in tons of tie-in fiction: see the Trivial Matters sections for both “Mirror, Mirror” and “Crossover” for a detailed listing.
The teaser mixes footage from First Contact with new material.
The opening credits are redone, with different music (thank goodness) and visuals that emphasize Earth’s history of warfare. Archival historical footage was used, as well as bits from the 1980s TV series Call to Glory, the 1927 film Wings, the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October, the 2000 film U-571, and the 2005 film The Jacket, as well as battle scenes from Enterprise and Voyager.
In addition to being a prequel to “Mirror, Mirror” and the other MU episodes, this serves as a sequel to the original series’ “The Tholian Web.” The two crew members on the bridge are an attempt to re-create the two corpses on the bridge in that 1968 episode, though it’s not quite accurate. For one thing, the Defiant crew have a different logo on their uniform, even though they had the same delta as Enterprise crew in the original series episode. (The notion of different ships with different insignia was only seen in the second season. In seasons one and three, everyone had the same insignia on their uniforms.)
This is the first full appearance of a Tholian, after only seeing the head of one in “The Tholian Web,” and not seeing a specific (only their ship) in “Future Tense.” Amusingly, the original conception of “Future Tense” was for the Defiant to be the ship they found.
It’s been a long road… “Will you kindly die?” I find myself less enthusiastic about this two-parter than I was when I first watched it when it debuted in 2005, or when I watched it again a couple years later when I was gearing up to write my own fiction in the MU. I think at least part of it is that I’m well and truly sick of the MU at this point. DS9’s forays into the MU were a case of diminishing returns prior to this, ditto Discovery’s subsequent to this.
But I think the biggie is that the MU doesn’t really bear rewatching. On first watch, you get the novelty of seeing familiar characters in new roles, but once you know that’s coming that novelty has worn off. While dramatic fiction about horrible people can work—shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and The Shield, e.g.—they work because the characters have depth and complexity.
MU Trek characters have no depth to speak of. That’s part of the point, as mentioned by Spock in the very first MU episode in 1967 with his line about how civilized folk can pretend to be barbarians more easily than the other way ’round.
Having said that, “In a Mirror, Darkly” does have more than a few redeeming features, the two biggest being at the episode’s commencement. The reworking of the denouement of First Contact is a masterpiece, and I can’t say enough wonderful things about the opening credits. I mean, anything that gets that fucking song out of there is automatically an improvement, and the choices in visuals are inspired, showing us the much more warlike Earth of this timeline.
It’s great to see Vaughn Armstrong back, and I like that he’s very similar to the mainline Forrest in terms of temperament, but he’s still a cruel bastard, as is fitting for a Terran Empire shipmaster. Connor Trinneer beautifully plays the beaten-down engineer, Jolene Blalock and Linda Park nicely dig their teeth into the more manipulative characters they’re playing (and Blalock looks so much better with the long hair), and John Billingsley and Dominic Keating are effectively nasty as the sadistic versions of Phlox and Reed.
The weak link here is Scott Bakula, and this will come as no surprise to anyone who’s followed Bakula’s career, because even at his best, he’s always been horrible at playing angry mean people. Probably the worst acting in his career prior to 2001 was in the Quantum Leap two-part Lee Harvey Oswald episode, where Oswald’s personality was bleeding into Sam Beckett’s, and Bakula was just dreadful. (That storyline had plenty of other problems too, as it was less a story than an excuse for producer Donald P. Bellisario to give a middle finger to JFK assassination conspiracy theories in general and Oliver Stone’s JFK movie in particular.)
And he’s just awful here, looking less like a conniving MU Starfleet officer and more like a teenager who just got cut from the football team. The only moment that works is his fuck-you to the just-freed Forrest when the latter finds out that Archer locked Enterprise on course. His “The bridge is yours” to Forrest is his best (and arguably only good) moment in the episode.
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges everyone to pick up Star Trek Explorer #9, which has, among other things, Keith’s new Discovery short story “Work Worth Doing,” which explores the backstory of Federation President Laira Rillak. It’s the first Discovery story to appear in the magazine.
“This technology would give us a tactical advantage. We could end the war tomorrow.”
As someone who’d established the first contact between humans and Vulcans as the point of divergence between the two universes, I felt vindicated by the opening here. Admittedly, I’d said the change was that the Vulcans were warlike in the other universe, but given Archer’s comments here, that’s probably what Imperial propaganda says anyway.
(In an attempt to pre-emptively answer the inevitable “It’s not the point of divergence!” posts. Yes, the title sequence shows things that didn’t happen in our reality. It’s a title sequence, it’s not necessarily meant to be taken literally, and I’m not sure there’s anything different that couldn’t take place after 2063 anyway. Yes, in the next episode Phlox notes classic literature is different between the two universes. I’m quite willing to believe they were rewritten to suit the tastes of the Mirror Universe: After all, the Victorians rewrote King Lear to give it a happy ending. Yes, tie-ins tend to portray the Mirror Universe as some weird quirk of physics where the same people did the same things at the same time but in a more evil way from the beginning of history. Personally, I prefer DS9’s treatment of the concept, where instead of just giving us Commander Sisko of the Imperial Space Station Deep Space 9, they looked at what the universe was like in the 23rd century and extrapolated from there what it would be like a century hence.)
Mind you, I had a character born in the 20th century having a different middle name in the Mirror Universe, so I guess I kind of contradicted myself.
By now, we know all these characters well enough to be able to see the more negative traits of their prime universe counterparts coming to the fore. Archer is even worse at making speeches than his counterpart, but also shows himself to be more intelligent than those around him assume. Reed has even more of a penchant for violence (even smirking when his own ship blows up!), Tucker is more sleazy, Phlox is more of an experimenter. Forrest keeps his counterpart’s avuncular nature but with a harsher side. And T’Pol’s disdain for humans is evident but nevertheless she remains loyal, and she also retains her refusal to believe in things that everyone else in Star Trek treats as proven fact.
It’s another one of those weird fannish table sessions, which this time apparently started with the question “What happened to the USS Defiant when it disappeared into the interphase?” and somehow came up with the answer “It ended up in the Mirror Universe.” But what the heck, it leads to a fairly compelling episode. We get to see a Tholian properly for the first time, and their web gets an update from being one of the most painfully slow death traps in television history to being a serious threat.
I believe William Shatner was invited to appear in this episode but had no interest in the idea he was presented with. I’m guessing the intention was to have Captain Kirk fall through the interphase along with the Defiant, although how him being older and needing to return to his place in canon would have been factored in I’m not sure.
Anyway, the episode oddly manages to get us rooting for these darker versions of the familiar characters, even if the cliffhanger doesn’t quite hit the mark.
I liked that this one explained how the Terran Empire managed to maintain technological parity with the Federation despite the fact that a social structure based around ruthless egoism and assassination for career advancement doesn’t exactly seem like it would lend itself well to scientific advancement, but yeah; after the whole arc with Lorca and Georgiou on Discovery and its extreme overexposure in recent IDW comics, at this point, I just wish that Mirror Universe would just go away.
I did like seeing the Tholians again (and the Gorn in the second part), and that it gave Linda Park something to do, even if none of it matters because it’s not “real” Hoshi.
Incidentally, I had misremembered one thing about this episode: I thought that Mirror!Trip was suffering from theta radiation poisoning (the kind that the Malon had issues with on Voyager) when in fact he was suffering from delta radiation poisoning (the kind that incapacitated Chris Pike). You’d think that they would only have needed one kind of made-up deadly warp-core radiation, but there you go.
Does the Tholian overcome the sedative, or is the doctor hurting it first, for his own sick reasons, and thus starting the sequence which led to the discovery of the ISS Enterprise? And breaking the 4th wall, it is hard to tell when an actor is acting, but I got the impression that Billingsley did enjoy becoming a genuine mad scientist for once. The vivisectionists’ lab in sickbay, and all that.
On a different note, I’m re-watching this on old-fashioned DVDs, and the stack is sadly shrinking. The finale is coming soon. Do you have a plan for the next rewatch?
I’ve always found the MU episodes to be among the dopiest versions of Star Trek, but they can be fun, and I think the reason this two-parter is so memorable is that Enterprise was not a very fun show in general (the same allegation has been tossed at TNG, but I find TNG to be a lot of fun, even if at first it was mostly unintentionally so).
I believe this is the episode Connor Trinneer mentioned on his podcast about joking to the director that he play his alternate self “like a pirate” and was stuck playing it like that for the whole two-parter. As a result, he hated making it. But Trinneer tells it much funnier than I ever could.
o.m.: The full sequence is, Phlox tortures the Tholian for information (which, of course, works, because television), then they detect the signal, then he sedates the Tholian so as not to give away their position, but then the Tholian battles through the sedation and re-sends the signal, and then Phlox kills the Tholian. Cha cha cha.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The whole time I was watching this episode I was waiting for the reveal that it was normal universe Archer stuck and trying to get back because it’d explain why Archer was so much nicer and so insistent on getting to the Defiant.
Otherwise an okay showing but suffers from the same thing a lot of Enterprise two parters do where they came up with one and a half episodes and then stretched it to fit two full episodes.
@6 This would have been a really good time to have the torture not work for information extraction.
“I find myself less enthusiastic about this two-parter than I was when I first watched it when it debuted in 2005, or when I watched it again a couple years later when I was gearing up to write my own fiction in the MU. I think at least part of it is that I’m well and truly sick of the MU at this point.”
I think this pretty much sums up what I was going to say. It was an entertaining exercise in nostalgia, and a cool recreation of the original sets and all, but it’s pure self-indulgent nonsense without a lot of substance, and — much like DSC’s MU arc stretching 2 episodes’ worth of story out to 4 episodes — it took up too much of the limited time the season had to tell stories in the main universe. And it’s less enjoyable in retrospect, not only because I’ve gotten sick of the MU, but because I’ve gotten sick of franchises rehashing their own pasts instead of moving forward.
Still, it does slightly help explain the illogic of why the Empire has the same starship designs as Starfleet despite the centuries of divergence — if they copied the Defiant and just kept the same designs for a century, it would explain it. Or so I thought until DSC showed Imperial ships having the same designs as 2250s Starfleet ships.
One thing about this 2-parter that’s had annoying consequences: It’s the first time the Empire was called the “Terran Empire” onscreen. It had been called that in the Shatnerverse novels that the Reeves-Stevenses co-wrote, but in “Mirror, Mirror” and DS9, it was just “the Empire.” DS9’s Mirror characters used “Terran” as an ethnic slur against humans, in keeping with the general science fiction practice of using “Terran” as a term that aliens and other outsiders used for Earthlings (although previous Trek series had often had human characters use the term). The fact that humans in the DS9 MU used the term too just illustrated how the Alliance’s culture and terminology had come to dominate. “Darkly” was the first time it was established that the humans of the Mirror Universe called themselves Terrans by choice, which is pretty much missing the point of DS9’s usage. And that led to the really dumb practice in Discovery of using “Terran” to refer exclusively to Mirror humans, as if it had never been used for anyone else.
The wrong insignia used for the Defiant is based on the Starfleet chevron seen on top of the red “racing stripes” on the sides of the Enterprise and its shuttles, and on the wall behind Starfleet admirals on the viewscreen in TOS. They used it because the glimpses of the standard arrowhead insignias in “Tholian Web” were too hard to see in standard definition, and because Bob Justman’s production memo correcting season 2’s mistaken use of varying insignias hadn’t come to light when the episode was made. Anyway, I excuse it by figuring that this Defiant is from a slightly alternate timeline like in TNG: “Parallels,” which makes it easy to reconcile with the SCE story in the Pocket novelverse where the Defiant is recovered in the Prime universe.
@1/cap-mjb: The opening scene is definitely not meant to suggest that first contact was the point of divergence. After all, if the timeline was exactly the same before that very moment, there’s no conceivable catalyst for Cochrane and his crew to arbitrarily decide to be violent in one timeline and peaceful in the other. There’d have to be a different history leading up to that moment to produce such a different outcome.
The point was simply to surprise the audience by showing them a scene they thought was familiar and then revealing how much worse it went in the MU compared to the version we knew.
Is there any continuity-relevant reason why the temporal cold war couldn’t have been about establishing the existence and precedence of mainline/mirror universes right from Enterprise Season 1?
I was thinking the other day, that’s what I’d do if I was lumbered with that plotline by the execs and it strikes me as surprisingly elegant even if you would have to retcon a couple of things.
@10/zegmustprovebrains: “Is there any continuity-relevant reason why the temporal cold war couldn’t have been about establishing the existence and precedence of mainline/mirror universes right from Enterprise Season 1?”
I don’t see any reason why they would’ve done that or what benefit it would’ve had. “Mirror, Mirror” may have been remembered fondly, and revisited a few times in DS9, but multiverse stories in general were not yet the obsession they’ve become in sci-fi screen culture of recent years. If anything, at the time, focusing on parallel universes might’ve seemed too similar to Sliders, which was still fairly recent.
Also, though they are related ideas, travel to the past or future and travel into alternate presents are two distinct subgenres of fiction.
@9/CLB: “After all, if the timeline was exactly the same before that very moment, there’s no conceivable catalyst for Cochrane and his crew to arbitrarily decide to be violent in one timeline and peaceful in the other.”
Except that’s exactly how parallel universes and points of divergence tend to work in fiction: That someone made one choice in one universe and the other choice in another universe and that’s how they came into existence. I think the very fact that we’re shown things happening exactly as they did in the other timeline before then implies that things were the same.
(That said, I’m kind of assuming that, since the Federation doesn’t exist in the future of the Mirror Universe, this Cochrane didn’t have the Enterprise-E crew turn up and say “It’s okay, they’re friendly”, hence him reacting with fear and violence to a bunch of strange aliens turning up without warning. So I suppose technically that would mean the timeline had been different for a day or two.)
I always read the beginning of this episode as implying that the humans of the MU were already awful when the Vulcans arrived. Am I missing something? Isn’t that what the credits sequence implied? Maybe I just misunderstood.
To piggyback off my previous comment, it’s possible the point of divergence was when people in the MU went too far with Talk Like a Pirate Day.
These mirror universe versions tend to be marked by silly beards and facial scars. A friend of mine and me disliked them so deeply that we decided to grow, as we called it, pervy beards.
Well, it didn’t work out as I found my facial hair lacks a certain density when let loose. Thus the possibility of this one turning into a baddy mirror universe was thwarted.
So go, Zefram, go! Let’s get a Warp drive, we’ll be the good ones.
I do, by the way, still shun any mirror universe episodes, never watched a single one for more than a few minutes. Just not my cup of tea.
@13: Well, obviously other people have read it that way, so you’re not alone in that. I guess my view of the opening titles is that it’s showing that this universe places more emphasis on their history of warfare and conquest than on their history of exploration, not that those aspects don’t feature in both universes. (Obviously, the stuff at the end with Enterprise leading battle fleets and bombing cities is unique to the MU. Goodness knows what the Empire flag on the moon means. Maybe they redecorated.)
I suppose I just find it unlikely that Earth would have had a vastly different history up to that point and yet Zefram Cochrane would still have met the Vulcans in the same place on the same day for presumably the same reasons. Maybe there were some small changes but I see it as things having been at least broadly the same up to that point.
MU characters may not have much depth, but it’s always fun to watch MU stories just to see the writers trying things they would never be able to in the main universe, whether it’s Tucker being tortured, Sato sleeping her way to the top, or seeing the NX-01 being blown to bits. It’s pure comic book-esque entertainment.
And after the diminishing returns on the DS9 front, especially on the heels of the underwhelming “Emperor’s New Cloak”, this two parter felt like a return to form as far as the MU is concerned. Connecting the MU to the Tholian situation from the original series was a clever bit of plotting. You can tell not only the cast had fun doing this, but Sussman clearly enjoyed putting this one together. And of course, Conway’s no stranger to big episodes, having done the MU-centered “Shattered Mirror” 9 years before.
Archer may the be weak link, but the rest of the crew more than makes up for it with some fun interactions (and the occasional torture and seduction). Of course, you can’t apply a lot of logic to the MU. One wonders how Starfleet functions at all given how casually they torture their engineers for not foreseeing every problem. I can’t imagine a lot of people would sign up for this. Then again, I’m not one to assume how people will behave in a parallel universe where everyone is violent and scheming.
Things I adore in this two parter. First: the opening credits. I always enjoyed the Diane Warren theme, but I get a real kick out of the redone intro. This would never, ever have happened during TNG or DS9‘s run. Rick Berman would have nixed it for being too costly or for confusing viewers. With Enterprise being given the axe, there was nothing stopping them from doing this now. A perfect marriage of violent visuals with one of the best music tracks I’ve heard on any Berman-era Trek show. Easily one of Dennis McCarthy’s best efforts in 18 years (with Kiner’s help, evidently).
And that ending? I just love the images of the NX-01 being torn apart, while the surviving crew gets a second chance on the old TOS bridge set. Yeah, it feels nostalgic, but I wouldn’t say that in a negative sense in this case. This was 2005. Nostalgia wasn’t quite yet the crutch that would hamper a lot of media properties over the following 18 years. And besides, at least this time it wasn’t Wrath of Khan nostalgia. It plays and feels like a literal visual transition from the ENT era to the TOS era that feels both natural and logical.
@12/cap-mjb: “Except that’s exactly how parallel universes and points of divergence tend to work in fiction: That someone made one choice in one universe and the other choice in another universe and that’s how they came into existence.”
Yes, when there’s a reason that it could go either way. If the probabilities are equally balanced so the person is equally likely to make either choice, like in Doctor Who: “Turn Left,” or like the various tiny, inconsequential decisions in TNG: “Parallels” that cumulatively added up to very different timelines. In my Myriad Universes: Places of Exile, I had VGR: “Scorpion” go differently because Chakotay was torn about whether to keep confronting Janeway or back down and try a more conciliatory approach, so it came down to a mental coin flip and he went one way in the episode and the other in the novel, which catalyzed two completely different outcomes.
But there’s just no logical reason why Cochrane and his team as seen in First Contact would suddenly, without any motivation, turn into a murderous mob of pirates. A group of people capable of greeting their first alien visitors with friendship and openness would not be equally likely to gun them down and raid their ship. That’s far too huge a difference to put down to random chance.
No matter how crazy the physics in your fictional universe, the character motivations should make sense. And it doesn’t make sense for a character to make a choice that’s in character in one fork of the timeline and one that’s wildly out of character in the other. Human beings are not flipped coins.
@16/cap: “Well, obviously other people have read it that way, so you’re not alone in that.”
Which doesn’t mean they’re right; it means the writers tried to do something clever that didn’t quite work because it could be easily misinterpreted. After all, they did have Phlox exposit that the MU’s history was different going back centuries, and no matter what handwaves you try to concoct after the fact, there’s no reason the writers would’ve included those lines in the first place if they hadn’t been intended to be believed by the audience. Or rather, if they had been intended as false, we would’ve been told as much. Since we weren’t, we can assume Phlox’s statements about MU history are supposed to be accurate.
“I suppose I just find it unlikely that Earth would have had a vastly different history up to that point and yet Zefram Cochrane would still have met the Vulcans in the same place on the same day for presumably the same reasons.”
No more unlikely than all the TOS characters serving together on the Enterprise two centuries later, or the DS9 characters even being born in the wake of the Empire’s conquest by the Alliance. The whole idea of the MU is nonsensical. These days I tend to fall back on Lex Luthor’s line from the Arrowverse’s Crisis on Infinite Earths: “The multiverse has a way of aligning fates.” The Kelvin films implied that too, that there are forces of probability that push people toward the same connections and outcomes in different timelines. Maybe something to do with the “currents of time” Spock talked about in “City on the Edge.”
KRAD, I slightly disagree with your usage of “denouement” to refer to the Landing Scene in First Contact. I think it’s pretty clear that the scene depicting first contact with the Vulcans (in a film called First Contact, no less) is the climax, as everything has been leading up to that point. The denouement would be everything after that – which, albeit, isn’t much, but still fits the definition of wrapping up the plot better than the scene depicting what they went back in time to ensure in the first place.
E. of Greg: I disagree. The climax is the confrontation in Engineering with the Borg Queen. The denouement is first contact.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think that the Mirror Universe is an idea that works as a plot device for an episodic morality play in the 1960s, but which just absolutely falls apart when you try to consider it on its own terms. It belongs to the same category as, say, the Roman planet or the transporter mishap that splits you into Jekyll and Hyde duplicates. You can kind of get away for it when you play it for camp (as, I would argue, is being done here and in its Deep Space Nine appearances), but I think it was always a mistake to try to take it seriously outside of its original context.
@19/Echthelion: No, I think Keith is right. The climax of the story is when the conflict is resolved, when the characters take the decisive actions that determine what the outcome will be. The decisive moment in First Contact was Cochrane and Riker successfully making their flight and the Borg being defeated. The Vulcan contact proceeding as planned was the aftereffect of that, so yes, it is the denouement. The word doesn’t just mean “wrapping up,” it refers to the actual resolution of the plot, the scenes showing the outcome or payoff of the story’s events.
Well, since it’s been a while and we’re nearing the end of the Rewatch, it’s as good a time as any for one more romp with SF Debris and Chuck Sonnenburg’s thoughts on this two-parter.
As far as First Contact is concerned, the climax of the plot itself is the Borg Queen’s demise. There’s no question there. Picard and Data are the protagonists, and her death closes their story.
But it could also be argued that Picard and crew being able to witness history in the making serves both as the denouement and also as an emotional climax for them. This is especially true for Zefram Cochrane himself – Riker tells him the Vulcans are waiting to meet the man who invented warp drive, and he has to make a decision that very moment: either run away yet again (potentially causing major timeline alterations) or take responsibility and face the new challenge. He then briefly touches Lily’s hand and steps forward. There’s a reason Jerry Goldsmith’s score rises to the occasion. It’s a different kind of climax.
The footage from FIRST CONTACT includes some of Jerry Goldsmith’s music from the movie. The legendary composer had passed away the summer before this episode originally aired, so I was moved on first viewing to realize his music was once again being used to accompany a “new” piece of STAR TREK.
The “In a Mirror, Darkly” 2-parter are some of my favorite episodes of Enterprise (and there really are so few) for a number of reasons but primarily just because of how much fun they are and how much energy they have. Those are things that Enterprise as a whole tended not to have. It’s a big nostalgia hit too and wonderful to see a Constitution Class ship again (in high-def no less), the redone sets, the original uniforms, and how they all connect to a TOS episode. The cast is having fun chewing the scenery, Blalock looks so much better with her new look, Linda Park finally has a substantial role and does it with aplomb, and even Anthony Montgomery seems more interesting playing a baddie. I loved seeing the updated Tholians (I enjoy non-humanoid aliens a lot in general) and their updated web, as well as the Gorn (next episode). The teaser and the redone credits and theme song were also wonderful creative touches. I also noted how Captain Forrest seemed relatively honorable compared to everyone around him and how he genuinely loved Hoshi (and she actually had some level of concern for him). But I actively disliked MU Archer and was always rooting against him, whether it be in favor of Forrest, or the alien officers/alien rebels trying to take down the Terran Empire. All the back-stabbing and bed-hopping was silly, but again, different for this series, so a nice change of pace. There was really nothing for me to dislike. Okay, well, Bakula seemed amateurishly bad playing evil. But the actor is so likable I don’t want to hate on him too much. I’d give this episode and it’s follow up both 9’s.
The MU as an alternate universe makes so little sense that I came up with the theory that it is actually something else. It is a parasitic extradimensional entity that latched itself to the main ST universe and in the process of drawing power from it, copies it, but not very good. The people it creates are still real people, but they are influenced by the events of the main universe without knowing it.
@24/Eduardo: I think there’s a perception that “denouement” implies a less important, expendable tag to the story, just cleaning up the loose ends, but in fact it’s frequently the most important part to the characters, since it’s where they experience the outcome of the conflict, achieve the goal they were striving for, face their failure to achieve it, or whatever. It’s the resolution of everything, including the main story goal, so it’s not “less” than a climax, it’s just a different, equally important stage of the story structure. You don’t have to call it a climax to say it’s important to the characters.
Granted, sometimes the denouement is a smaller part of the story than others, creating the illusion that it’s less important. For instance, in the original Star Wars, the denouement after the Death Star blows up is pretty brief, without a lot of exploration of the aftermath — just a quick reunion and the medal scene. But in The Wrath of Khan, the denouement is arguably everything after the Reliant blows up, because that’s the peak of action and tension where the outcome of the conflict is decided, and everything else is about showing its consequences. So the denouement includes the death of Spock, the formation of the Genesis Planet, the funeral, and the characters’ emotional resolution. Even if you reject that and insist that the death of Spock is part of the climax, the scenes that come after it are still important to the story and the characters’ emotional journeys. The denouement can easily be the most emotionally intense moment to the characters, because it’s where the impact of the climax sinks in. Especially if the climax has a delayed effect, like Spock’s fatal radiation exposure or the arrival of the Vulcans hours after the warp flight.
I think we can safely say that Porthos is the only character in this two-parter who may be nicer than he looks (I was, in fact, quite surprised at home creepy it was to see the Mirror Universe crew do their very worst; one had not realised how genuinely fond of the NX-01 crew just being themselves I had grown over the course of this rewatch).
Also, I have to admit my reaction to Doc Cochrane pulling a shotgun was less “Never!” and more “Zeke had a Bad Day and now things get much worse” (The man does have a history of rather erratic behaviour); it also bears pointing out that the people leading the mob as it raids that Vulcan shuttle aren’t necessarily the same people who took the lead welcoming those Vulcan scouts when things went the other way – Every human population has the potential for Good and for Ill, after all, even though individuals have that potential in differing proportions.
A few thoughts that occurred to me:-
– It struck me that ISS Enterprise, as a flagship of the Empire, would almost certainly attract the most ambitious and shamelessly grasping personnel: doubtless every vessel would have it’s schemers, but it makes sense that the local Enterprise is all scheming, all the time.
– Mayweather rather suits the earring: it’s something his Main Timeline counterpart might like to experiment with off-duty (It gives a little hint of ‘Star dog/sea dog’ energy).
– Interesting question: would mainline T’Pol wear Command gold or Sciences blue when wearing Starfleet uniform? (If I remember correctly she has been depicted wearing gold in the various alternate timelines to date).
– Doberman Porthos is still cute, he’s just a little more butch.
– Mirror Reed is the perfect epitome of my “Reed is a much, much better man when he does his best to pretend he doesn’t actually have a personality” running joke.
– It never ceases to amaze just how much damage a little tweak to ‘Faith of the heart’ does to my enjoyment of the ENTERPRISE credits sequence (I’ve had to skip them ever since the new version was introduced and I actually LIKE the opening credits for this show – I’d argue they belong in the top tier of STAR TREK titles).
– Having said that, if any Starfleet crew from a later era pays a visit to Museum Piece NX-01 there just has to be a singalong to ‘Faith of the Heart’ (Preferably while what the audience hears on the soundtrack is a variation on ‘Archer’s theme’, ideally during one of those ‘Point of View character devours a starship with their eyes’ flyby scenes).
I’m not insisting on it, it’s just a Fact!
…
Also, is it fair to say that (After Doctor Phlox, SADISTIC Mad Anatomist) the creepiest thing about this episode was … actually it was probably Trip sleazing all over T’Pol, but (dis)honourable mention to Bad Sato smooching Bad Archer: there’s nothing inherently repellent in the spectacle, but after four seasons of Archer/Hoshi being pals it just feels so wrong to see their counterparts going at it, isn’t there?
On the other hand T’Pol absolutely does suit the longer hair (I’d have suggested something slightly shorter, with a headband to keep things tidy and add a little retro-60s flourish for Prime Timeline T’Pol), so one must take the good with the EVIL.
What IF the Borg in the MU never tried to stop First Contact because they had been defeated by that point in the timeline? Following on that theory, let’s say that in 2063 Bozeman Montana was a Xenophobic Militia driven enclave in a post WW3 dystopia. With no Enterprise-E crew around to tell Cochrane that the Vulcans are “friendly”, Cochrane and his followers decide to take the ship and use its technology to build a “New Murica” in their image. Remember that in First Contact, we meet Cochrane AFTER the Borg had attempted to destroy Bozeman via orbital bombardment. He’s sloshed because at this point his dreams are going up in smoke. Take away both the Borg and Enterprise-E and maybe you get a far more confident Cochrane with an American Exceptionalism mentality. The Phoenix has a successful first flight, the Vulcans land and Cochrane decides that “We don’t need any Pointy Eareed Hobgoblins spoiling my triumph” and being a “Murica First” guy, decides to shoot first and ask questions later.
Also along those lines, it would have been interesting to see a MU Enterprise-D in the TNG episode Parallels (assuming that the MU is simply another quantum reality).
Also
@32/Charles Rosenberg: Except the whole reason the Borg went back to stop First Contact in the first place was because the original history without Borg intervention led to the Federation, not the Mirror Universe. Unless you’re arguing that the Borg were mistaken in assuming that because the E-E’s intervention was part of the timeline all along, like in “Assignment: Earth.” Except that doesn’t work either, because then the timeline with the Borg and without the E-E is not the Mirror Universe, but the assimilated-Earth timeline the E-E crew glimpsed after the Borg sphere went through the time fissure.
And either way, it’s still saying that the reason for the divergence happened before the scene shown in the teaser, even if it was only a couple of days before. The point remains that the scene depicted was not the actual moment of divergence itself.
@29/Capeträger – I’ve had the same thought about the Mirror Universe. I’m not convinced that it has any independent ‘reality’ outside of the people and things that cross over from the prime timeline
@34/jaime: My Mirror Universe handwave, when I feel like bothering with one, is that the presence of the Defiant in the MU created an ongoing probabilistic resonance that “anchored” the MU to the Prime timeline and caused certain events to go similarly despite the overall differences.
Wow, I want thinking these episodes were this late in the series, too the point where I could’ve sworn the reviews of them had been posted already. But probably just people were talking about them.
As for the nature of the MU, I always got the impression that it encapsulated a completely different set of universes, and not that it was merely an alternate timeline where someone made a different choice. For example, when all the different Enterprises show up in “Parallels,” an MU version wouldn’t be among them.
Didn’t they speculate that it was an “antimatter universe” in “Mirror, Mirror”? In that sense, it would make sense that they needed the transporter to get there–their consciousnesses swapped bodies (they had each other’s uniforms). However, frim DS9 onward, it seems like the players can physically move between universes without blowing up. In any case, whether antimatter or not, I always understood it was meant to be some completely different thing from the big bang, and not your run of the mill AU or alternate timeline.
@32 and 33: Yes, that’s pretty much what I suggested up thread, that this is a Zefram Cochrane who never had his optimism ignited by the Enterprise-E crew. It’s worth noting that, in “Relativity”, Seven more or less states that the Borg accidentally created the Federation by going back in time to stop First Contact and instead caused the Enterprise to go back and make it happen.
@36/crzydroid: “As for the nature of the MU, I always got the impression that it encapsulated a completely different set of universes, and not that it was merely an alternate timeline where someone made a different choice.”
Except that makes no sense. An unrelated universe wouldn’t have the same planets, species, individuals, and technology designs in it, any more than Mars has its own Mississippi River or Eiffel Tower or that little shop on the corner that you like. Yes, some people (including the guy who wrote the Kelvinverse IDW comics) try to argue that in an infinite number of universes, any given reality will inevitably exist through pure chance, but the flaw there is that if there’s an infinite number of universes, the probability of finding or interacting with a specific one that coincidentally resembles yours is effectively zero. The only valid possibility for two interacting timelines to be so similar is if they diverged from a common origin.
“Didn’t they speculate that it was an “antimatter universe” in “Mirror, Mirror”?”
No. You’re thinking of “The Alternative Factor,” or maybe “The Counter-Clock Incident.”
On Discovery, Georgiou indicates that the Terran Empire had worked to suppress humanity’s natural impulses towards altruism “centuries ago,” so that seems to imply that there was a divergence point, but it happened deep in the past (supporting what Phlox observes in the next episode). I will note that she also has “Augustus” amongst her names and is called “Daughter of Rome” by Stamets (though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, since claiming to be the successor of the Roman Empire is actually pretty common in real-life history).
T’Pol with the long hair is magnifique. It’s also funny how despite us getting Mirror Universe Enterprise Era uniforms, we also got the crew in Prime Universe TOS Era Uniforms. A nice touch, and I’m sure Ms Blalock appreciated getting to rock the classic minidress.
Mad scientist Phlox was an excellent edition of our brilliant doctor, and perhaps the most successful example of the inversion of morals MU characters are supposed to represent. Hoshi’s arc is fantastic, and I like the idea that at this point that Terran Empire doesn’t actually have a firm grip on space yet. For establishing a history of the Terran Empire before Mirror, Mirror this episode really doesn’t do bad.
Notes from Star Trek Online. Expanded Universe materials including STO create a different flavor with this episode. Specifically the revelation that the Tholian Assembly is a single entity across the multiverse. No matter what timeline the Tholians consider it to be the same entity as they are only a single entity. The Federation and Terran Empire are lumped together, the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance and the Klingon Empire and Cardassian Union, are considered the same. That also means that the Tholians that intercepted the Enterprise when they came looking for the Defiant knew damn well what the Enterprise was there for and all that territorial bluster was them trying to cover their tracks.
Although it isn’t entirely consistent, STO’s Tholians are violently against Time Travel, whether that’s a result of lessons learned here or just them trying to maintain a monopoly was blurry, but recent events indicate that it’s because due to their multiversal awareness they’re also able to catch damage done to the fabric of space time by time travel.
@40/mr_d: “the inversion of morals MU characters are supposed to represent.”
This is misunderstanding what the Mirror Universe is supposed to be. It’s not an “inverted” universe; we see in “Mirror, Mirror” that the Halkans’ morality is unchanged, and DS9 established that Klingons, Cardassians, Ferengi, etc. were still culturally the same even if their political circumstances were different. And characters like Spock and O’Brien were basically the same people at heart, just with different upbringings. The only real change between the Prime and Mirror Universes is in human history and culture. Humans embraced dystopia and tyranny instead of freedom and justice, and the difference in every other species is a consequence of how they were affected differently by humans, e.g. Bajor being conquered by the Empire and liberated by Cardassia.
People forget that the title “Mirror, Mirror” is a line from Snow White — the invocation of the Magic Mirror that speaks only the truth. So the title wasn’t meant to say “These people are our opposites” — on the contrary, the point was that the Mirror Universe revealed the unvarnished truth about humanity, that our savagery is closer to the surface than we like to admit. Assuming it’s just some magical “moral inversion” universe is missing the whole philosophical point.
As for STO giving the Tholians “multiversal awareness,” I think that’s also missing the point of “The Tholian Web,” where the Tholians seemed just as unfamiliar with the interphase zone as the Enterprise crew was. After all, Spock wouldn’t have been able to use the interphase to escape the Tholians if they’d understood it better than he did.
Really like this two-parter. The opener with the Vulcans really hits if you have seen First Contact but aren’t aware this is an MU story. The reworked credits are just so brilliant. I’m generally pretty lenient on the acting as I see MU episodes as an excuse for the cast to really ham things up. The script doesn’t usually leave much room for nuance and subtlety. Half expect dialogue to be “Why am you destroying that ship?” “Because I’m evil!”
Semi off-topic, but every rottweiler I’ve ever met thought it was a lap dog. Just big goofy loving puppies.
@43. wiredog: In my experience to date Big Ferocious-looking Dogs generally benefit from their Intimidation Factor, because owners have a built-in motivation to be Very Careful with their training (Whereas merely small, silly-looking dogs tend to be overindulged, sometimes to the point of viciousness).
@41. ChristopherLBennett: In al fairness, STAR TREK ONLINE is set roughly a century and a half after the misadventure of NCC-1701 into the Tholian web, so it’s far from impossible that they could have developed the society described by @mr_d during that period.
If nothing else, this characterisation of the Tholian polity is an interesting notion (and less profoundly misguided than making the STRANGE NEW WORLDS Gorn all Magog, all the time).
The opening and the credits are really the only thing worth seeing here, but they are extraordinary.
Even seeing MU in the TOS after school I could not figure out how it could be the same if the whole thing was a culture based on murder and one-upmanship assassination. How could there be progress? There would be no United States if Adams killed Jefferson.
It is a fun diversion. I guess bringing the Emperor back to mainline adds a facet to Discovery, but if she stays true to character (spoiler: does she really?) she is just a plot device to constantly have an out for our true blue heroes to cheat without cheating.
@45/Bill: That’s why I do support the idea that much of the MU’s history before the divergence point has been rewritten to fit the Empire’s ideology, since it doesn’t make sense that it’s always been like that. I certainly don’t believe the teaser was intended to depict the actual divergence point or anything close to it, but I do think there must have been a divergence point somewhere, some point where fascism won out over democracy. (It seems disturbingly like we may be heading for such a decision point in the near future.)
I always interpreted the opening credits as suggesting that something went terribly wrong during WWII, like the wrong side won, or the right side went to far or something, because by the time of the Moon landing, you’ve got the Imperial logo on the flag.
@CLB: RE: Antimatter Universe–yeah, I couldn’t remember if the said that here or if it was a phrase used somewhere else. Thanks for the clarification.
As for the totally different arrangements of the universes–I actually agree with you on an intellectual level. But the same is true of divergent timeline universes. If we have this universe where Earth is a brutal Empire, officers rank up by assassinating superiors, Captains have their own women, insubordination is punishable by torture–then I just don’t see a universe where the same couples are even hooking up, let alone passing on the same combination of genes. It’s a hard pill to swallow that there’s a genetically identical copy of Sisko, O’Brien, Bashir, etc., and they all wind up on Terrak Nor. But if we can use our imaginations for the sake of the television show in this instance, then I’m ok with doing it in the other as well.
@CLB: RE: Antimatter Universe–yeah, I couldn’t remember if the said that here or if it was a phrase used somewhere else. Thanks for the clarification.
As for the totally different arrangements of the universes–I actually agree with you on an intellectual level. But the same is true of divergent timeline universes. If we have this universe where Earth is a brutal Empire, officers rank up by assassinating superiors, Captains have their own women, insubordination is punishable by torture–then I just don’t see a universe where the same couples are even hooking up, let alone passing on the same combination of genes. It’s a hard pill to swallow that there’s a genetically identical copy of Sisko, O’Brien, Bashir, etc., and they all wind up on Terrak Nor. But if we can use our imaginations for the sake of the television show in this instance, then I’m ok with doing it in the other as well.
Well, seeing as the Earth is rotating in the opposite direction of ours, I’d say that the MU was always like that and there was no divergence.
As far as Cochrane shooting the Vulcan emissary, perhaps mirror Picard and crew were there like in First Contact but they convinced him that the Vulcans were dangerous.
As a Lensman fan, I believe that Roddenberry stole the whole Mirror empire from the Bostonian empire of the Eddorians. Which if logic was applied wouldn’t work either. All Boskonians advanced their careers by stabbing those above them in the back. Under the premise the strongest should be in charge.
@51/Joseph McGuire: “As a Lensman fan, I believe that Roddenberry stole the whole Mirror empire from the Bostonian empire of the Eddorians.”
Jerome Bixby created the Mirror Universe, based on a concept he originally used in his 1953 short story “One Way Street.” His original version was benign, but the evil-empire element added in rewrites may have been influenced by Harlan Ellison’s original “The City on the Edge of Forever” script in which we saw the Enterprise turned into a sort of pirate ship in the altered timeline. Roddenberry revised Bixby’s outline, but Bixby’s teleplay was revised by D.C. Fontana and finally by Gene L. Coon.
Roddenberry’s original 1964 pitch document for ST does include a story-seed paragraph called “The Mirror” involving the crew meeting a duplicate of their ship and themselves, but there was nothing in it about an evil empire; it sounds more along the lines of Voyager: “Deadlock.”
People need to stop talking about Roddenberry as the sole creator of Trek. Not only did he have multiple collaborators on staff, but TV back then was much less staff-driven and more freelancer-driven. Paul Schneider created the Romulans. Gene Coon created the Klingons. Stephen Kandel created Harry Mudd. David Gerrold created tribbles. D.C. Fontana did more to develop Spock and Vulcans than Roddenberry ever did, and created Sarek and Amanda, while Theodore Sturgeon created T’Pau, T’Pring, and pon farr. And so on. Roddenberry was the team leader. That doesn’t make him the whole team.
Joseph McGuire: what Christopher said. Roddenberry was not the auteur of Star Trek.
See also my commentary on the original series episode “The Omega Glory”:
https://www.tor.com/2016/04/12/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-the-omega-glory/
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I should no better. Thanks for the correction. And my language toward Roddenberry was a bit on the strong side. But it is interesting that the Empire is so close to that portrayed by Doc Smith’s evil Empire. There could have been some influence to one of the writers and creators of the episode. I have personally not been exposed to such system of advancement by assassination in any post world war 2 science fiction. The tendency is to use fascism or specifically NAZIism as an evil empire. Anyway just my 2 cents.
@54/Joseph: “I have personally not been exposed to such system of advancement by assassination in any post world war 2 science fiction.”
TNG: “A Matter of Honor” established that Klingons advance through assassination in the same manner as in the Mirror Universe. And it’s not as uncommon as you think. The Tarkans in Burroughs’s Barsoom novels used a similar system, and it’s common in any fictional (or real) culture with warrior or dueling traditions. TV Tropes has a whole page on its various uses in fiction: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KlingonPromotion
@41, ChristopherLBennett,
In my defense that’s usually how it’s treated. Though it is fascinating the cascade effect a human empire has on the rest of Galactic Civilization. The rebellion against the Terran Empire led by Klingons interested in unity could very easily be interpreted as Mirror Universe Klingons being more peaceful and amiable as opposed to it being a reaction of needing to have allies after the obliteration of Qo’nos.Therefore in both universes humanity’s actions catalyze the creation of a multi-species alliance, though with differing results.
There are other details too that make me think that it’s more than just humanity’s mirror. Mirror T’Pol is actually a melder as is Mirror Sarek and Spock despite there being no benevolent Archer to discover the Kir’shara and restore Surak’s original teachings.
I don’t think the history was rewritten not because it was out of character for a fascist dictatorship, but because I think they would celebrate the victory of the Empire’s ideology over the “weak” ideas of the past.
@56/mr_d: Given that Earth apparently conquered Vulcan some generations before, it stands to reason that Vulcan history would have been different in a lot of ways that could have led to either the melder stigma being removed earlier or to T’Pol discovering her melding potential earlier in life. It’s not like the absence of Archer was the only change, not by a long shot.
“I don’t think the history was rewritten not because it was out of character for a fascist dictatorship, but because I think they would celebrate the victory of the Empire’s ideology over the “weak” ideas of the past.”
Would they? It’s hardly unusual for an oppressive regime to rewrite history to eliminate ideologically undesirable ideas. It isn’t even limited to dictatorships. Look at the Southern “Lost Cause” narrative, the generations-long lie propagated by works like Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind claiming that the Confederacy was a noble cause and slaves were happy and well-treated. Or look at how Japan resists acknowledging the atrocities its Imperial government and military were responsible for in WWII. If historical revisionism like that happens even in democracies, it’s certainly plausible that a dictatorship would propagate lies about its history even more aggressively.
And it’s definitely far more plausible than Mirror Earth just being intrinsically “more evil” since the dawn of time. That just doesn’t make sense. I mean, Mirror Spock himself said the Empire was unsustainable. It wasn’t the eternal state of Mirror human civilization, it was just a dictatorship that had arisen sometime in the past and hadn’t yet suffered its inevitable fall.
@57, ChristopherLBennett,
All true, but the Empire revels in the atrocities it commits. It isn’t trying to clean up history to make it palatable, their culture is that the strong side won, and that strength is the only real virtue.
You yourself has reminded us that despite how awful people think the world is today, on the historical scale humanity has made great leaps and bounds in peace and ethics. The Terran Empire just seems to be a humanity that chose a more savage a cruel path each time, instead of just once.
As far as the sustainability, I agree. What I think transpired is that every time an empire fell, a new dictator, a new strong man rose up. The Terran Empire probably lasted as long as it did because they had new planets to conquer. But I do see what you’re saying it is much more accurate to showcase that tyranny like that is temporary and just causes damage in the long run instead of stability. Even Empress Georgiou had come to that conclusion.
Which if that’s the case, makes it funnier that the Empire’s revision team looked at Shakespeare and said, “No, the Bard is good.” Which makes sense, as even Klingons, ostensibly a highly similar culture also holds Billy boy in high regard.
@58/mr_d: “All true, but the Empire revels in the atrocities it commits. It isn’t trying to clean up history to make it palatable, their culture is that the strong side won, and that strength is the only real virtue.”
That is one possible interpretation. That doesn’t make it the only one, nor does it rule out the possibility that they rewrote their history. I say again, the idea of Mirror Earth being “just evil” since the dawn of time is nonsensical on many levels, a fantasy idea that doesn’t belong in the Trek universe. The MU is bad enough as it is, but at least assuming a recent divergence makes it slightly less nonsensical.
“You yourself has reminded us that despite how awful people think the world is today, on the historical scale humanity has made great leaps and bounds in peace and ethics. The Terran Empire just seems to be a humanity that chose a more savage a cruel path each time, instead of just once.”
We don’t have enough data to assume “each time.” And it doesn’t hold up to analysis. If they’d made the worse choice every time, then they would’ve destroyed all civilization when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. Humanity is alive today because a few people in October 1962 made the better choice against all odds. So Mirror humans could only exist in the 22nd century or after if they’d had the same 20th century as ours, at least up through 1962. The divergence had to be later.
Besides, one thing I learned as a history major studying non-Western societies and cross-cultural interactions: it’s always a mistake to assume that the way a society is at the time you contact and observe it is the way it’s been throughout all eternity. Societies don’t work that way. All you can say is that it’s that way now, and anyone either inside or outside of the society who claims it’s been that way since the dawn of time is merely claiming that because it suits their agenda. Go back 200 years and you may find a very different subset of the culture in ascendance. No culture is monolithic; there’s a gamut of belief systems in any of them, and they rise and fall in status relative to each other from generation to generation.
“As far as the sustainability, I agree. What I think transpired is that every time an empire fell, a new dictator, a new strong man rose up.”
No, that’s missing the point. Kirk and Spock weren’t just saying the Empire was unsustainable; they were saying that that kind of system couldn’t last in the long run because it was intrinsically self-destructive and wasteful. So a world where all societies work that way is just as unviable as any single one. There have to be more constructive, viable alternatives existing in between the dysfunctional, cancerous societies like the Empire.