Star Trek: Enterprise: In a Mirror, Darkly (Parts I and II) Rewatch
May 10, 2020 12:31 PM - Season 4, Episode 18 - Subscribe
ENT offers its contribution to Trek's Mirror Universe with an unusual twist: it's done from the perspective of the MU crew as they have an encounter with... the brightest timeline.
Memory Alpha remembers when belly shirts were all the rage:
- The title of these episodes comes from a passage in the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:12 from the American Standard Version): "For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known." The same verse (in the King James Bible, the relevant text reads "For now we see through a glass, darkly") is quoted by Captain Picard in Star Trek Nemesis.
- These episodes are both a prequel to TOS: "Mirror, Mirror" and a sequel to TOS: "The Tholian Web".
- The notion of making the "In a Mirror, Darkly" story a two-parter was originally conceived of as a way to afford the construction of more Constitution-class sets, for the Defiant, than had ever been shown in any official Star Trek production since the original series.
- Although VOY: "Living Witness" was the first of any Star Trek series in which none of the regular characters appear, this was the first mirror universe episode in which only the regular characters' mirror counterparts are seen. This differs from the mirror universe episodes of TOS and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in which the "Federation Universe" characters travel to the parallel universe (and vice versa). The two-part "In a Mirror, Darkly" story of ENT takes place entirely in the mirror universe, with no crossover of any regular characters (although the Constitution-class Defiant does itself cross over and the mirror Archer has a hallucination of his prime self).
- This episode contains two main elements from TOS: "The Tholian Web": the starship Defiant (whose fate is made known in this episode) and the Tholians. In fact, this episode is the first to depict a Tholian "in the flesh" since the 1968 episode, wherein only the head of a Tholian is shown. The species is revealed in this episode to be six-legged and crystalline in nature.
- A mirror-universe story for Star Trek: Enterprise was originally conceived as one of a couple of ways of bringing William Shatner into the series' fourth season. As he and Paramount were unable to reach an agreement, the plans to have Shatner included in the series were discarded, the initial mirror-universe storyline ultimately being undeveloped.
- At one point during production, Scott Bakula wondered if it was possible to modify the Terran Empire salute, due to both the cramped conditions aboard Enterprise and the danger that an actor performing the salute – which requires the saluting individual to jut their hand out – could easily collide with an actor nearby. Mike Sussman was asked, by Merri Howard, to visit the set and act as consultant on the salute, to ensure that all actors and extras were performing it correctly. One suggestion was that the actors could minimize the salute to involve only a thump on the chest that, in the final version, precedes the extension of the arm. However, the same action had been used in the parody sci-fi film Galaxy Quest and, when Sussman pointed this out, it was generally agreed that the episode should not mimic the film too closely; consequently, the suggestion was dismissed. The final version of the salute used in this episode differs from the one used in TOS: "Mirror, Mirror" as the hand is open in the latter example whereas the salute in this episode involves a closed fist.
- Phlox's speech comparing Shakespeare in the two universes was influenced by a passage in the non-canon novel Dark Mirror, which Mike Sussman read before writing the script.
[Please note that there is a lot more in the MA entries; some of that is from there being two entries for the separate parts, but there is just a lot of info on the writing and production of this two parter]
"Live long and prosper."
(Zefram Cochrane shoots the Vulcan captain, killing him)
"Board their ship! Take everything you can!"
- The Vulcan captain and the grizzled man, on first contact between Humans and Vulcans in the mirror universe
"Something about... your 'maternal ancestor'."
- Sato, translating a Tholian insult hurled at "Captain" Archer
"You don't want to end up like me, do you? I've absorbed enough delta rays to guarantee my grandchildren glow in the dark."
- Tucker, to T'Pol, on the dangers of delta radiation
"It may take centuries, but one day Humanity will pay for its arrogance."
- T'Pol, referring to the eventual events of "Crossover"
"They're never going to give you this ship. You know that. They'll tear it apart, try to learn its secrets. If you're lucky, you'll end up commanding a moon shuttle. Don't you see what the Admiral's planning? He's going to present this ship to the Emperor himself. He'll take all the credit, and you'll end up a historical footnote."
- Jonathan Archer's subconscious, about Admiral Black's plans for the USS Defiant
"This is the starship Defiant. If you don't surrender immediately, we'll begin targeting your cities. Please respond."
"Where's Archer?! And who the hell are you?!!"
"You are speaking with Empress Sato. Prepare to receive instructions."
- Hoshi Sato and Admiral Gardner
Poster's Log:
This isn't just a good Mirror Universe episode, and a good two-parter episode in general, but a grand episode that has at least two genuinely intriguing ideas in it. The MU episodes in the franchise all tend to revolve around the idea of the distorted mirror, reflecting back on the prime universe crew in different ways, both in how they're different and in how they're not so different, and what the prime universe crew does in reaction to that. The last bit isn't a factor in this episode, since the prime universe crew isn't in it... although one of them does influence the mirror universe crew and the course of their history, albeit indirectly; more on that in a bit.
Anyway, anyone watching can pick out the differences, and that's a big part of the fun, so I won't go over those in great detail, although I'd like to note that throwing a belly window into the standard utilitarian Starfleet coverall makes it a lot less useful; then again, so does the Sam Browne belt and other frippery of the male version, so there's that. Archer's got a different haircut, which reminds me of nothing so much as that of D-FENS in the recently-posted-on-the-purple Falling Down; that haircut was the subject of discussion in an earlier post on the blue about that movie between two MeFites whom you may recognize. (I also like mirror-Mayweather's look a bit better, TBH.) It's also interesting to see whose rank is less (Archer a commander and Forrest a captain--good to see Vaughn Armstrong one last time) and also that, with their having conquered the other Alpha Quadrant species, the Terran Empire Starfleet is significantly more diverse than their 22nd century prime universe counterpart, although we understand that humans retain the top civilian and military positions for themselves. (I'm pretty sure that the unnamed Orion bridge crewmember in the second part may be the first Orion member of Starfleet in canon, although we'd eventually get Gaila in the first Kelvin timeline movie.)
All enjoyable, but all pretty much standard stuff for MU episodes... until they throw in the Constitution-class Defiant from TOS' "The Tholian Web", and suddenly that moves the two-parter into different territory entirely. Of course, they indulge in a lot of TOS nostalgia on top of the MU fun; there's no real reason for the crew to put on the 23rd-century prime universe Starfleet uniforms--I'm pretty sure that their spacesuits have some sort of base layer--except why the hell not. But it also brings up the possibility of the ISS NX-01 crew being able to conquer the Terran Empire with one ship; it's a bit reminiscent of the premise of The Final Countdown, not the song but a movie that imagines the possibilities in a Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft character being brought back in time to just before the Pearl Harbor attack. (There's also a previous comment that I made--it was about DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations", but it's not in the FF thread on that episode--that, when Arne Darvin used the Orb of Time to travel back in time to kill Kirk, he also brought back the 24th-century Defiant, complete with a 24th-century Romulan cloak, which could have been really bad for the Klingons if the Federation hadn't had a Temporal Prime Directive or had an excuse to break it.)
And this brings up one of the two ideas that I mentioned previously: that one of the things that's (thankfully) holding the Mirror Universe back is that they don't do technological innovation very well, and have to steal all their best tech from other people. It gets cited a couple of times in this two-parter--with the Defiant and with the looting of the Vulcan ship in the reworked scene from Star Trek: First Contact--and in other MU episodes: in TOS' "Mirror, Mirror" there's the Tantalus field, and in the DS9 episodes they get the 24th-century Defiant and a modern Klingon cloak from the Prime Universe, and the Intendant even makes a play for one of the Orbs. Thus, by the 23rd century, the Terran Empire is still using Constitution-class ships not really any different from the one that they found a century earlier, and in the 24th century the Klingon-Cardassian alliance is stymied by a single fast escort vessel. The message here may be that a relatively free and open society is necessary for general technological advancement; in our world, Nazi Germany had a technological edge from research done before the Nazis took power, but the Allies soon caught up and arguably passed them (with the atomic bomb) while the Nazis wasted their time on would-be Wunderwaffe.
The other idea goes back to the thing that I mentioned earlier about the prime universe crew influencing their MU counterparts... which happens indirectly, with Archer and Sato reading about their long-dead PU counterparts in the Defiant's memory banks. This leads to the somewhat unsettling scenes of Mirror Archer seeming to hallucinate having Prime Archer talk to him; I'm guessing that this isn't meant to be literal, but rather an illustration of M-Archer remembering what he'd read about P-Archer and comparing his own career to the illustrious accomplishments of his counterpart. (That this isn't clear from the actual scenes is maybe the weakest point of this two-parter.) It's a clever bit in that it's sort of an echo of the time traveler Daniels showing up occasionally and nudging Archer in the right direction by talking about how he's supposed to be one of history's great men. Here, M-Archer only has the fact of what his prime doppelganger did, but it's enough to both stroke his ego and goad him into making his big play, even as he scorns what P-Archer did under the aegis of the Federation. But the really sly thing about this plot thread is that it also involves Hoshi, who likewise gets to reflect on her prime's accomplishments... "At least she was remembered for something." And thus, eventually, we get Empress Sato, Hoshi Kyoto-Born, Mother of Linguacode and Breaker of Dudes.
Poster's Log, Supplemental: Left unanswered here is where the Mirror Universe diverged from the prime one. As previously noted, the part where Mirror-Phlox compares the literature of the two universes is from the novel Dark Mirror, from the important beta canon author Diane Duane, although I remember Duane saying that even Shakespeare was different. That implies a divergence point centuries in the past. One of the "Shatnerverse" novels (created by Shatner, although ghost-written by various authors, in which Kirk is resurrected post-Generations) which involves the MU--and, if I'm not mistaken, was co-written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, whose influence on S4 ENT is vast--puts the divergence point as actually past the (unaltered) First Contact with the Vulcans; after Zefram Cochrane shakes the Vulcan's hand, and throws a little party for them in Bozeman, he's mulling over the day's events and wondering if he should keep making friends with the Vulcans or just steal their ship, given that the universe now seems like a much more dangerous place thanks to the Borg's intervention. So, he flips a coin... and that's where the divergence is. Obviously no longer possible in canon, but I like it better nonetheless.
Poster's Log, supplemental to the supplemental: TNG has no Mirror Universe excursions, at least in canon. VOY technically doesn't, although the aforementioned "Living Witness" had a very mirror-ish version of the Voyager crew. DSC, oh the other hand, arguably involves the MU in almost the entire show up until now, either taking place in the MU or having a couple of mirror people in the prime universe.
Memory Alpha remembers when belly shirts were all the rage:
- The title of these episodes comes from a passage in the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:12 from the American Standard Version): "For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known." The same verse (in the King James Bible, the relevant text reads "For now we see through a glass, darkly") is quoted by Captain Picard in Star Trek Nemesis.
- These episodes are both a prequel to TOS: "Mirror, Mirror" and a sequel to TOS: "The Tholian Web".
- The notion of making the "In a Mirror, Darkly" story a two-parter was originally conceived of as a way to afford the construction of more Constitution-class sets, for the Defiant, than had ever been shown in any official Star Trek production since the original series.
- Although VOY: "Living Witness" was the first of any Star Trek series in which none of the regular characters appear, this was the first mirror universe episode in which only the regular characters' mirror counterparts are seen. This differs from the mirror universe episodes of TOS and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in which the "Federation Universe" characters travel to the parallel universe (and vice versa). The two-part "In a Mirror, Darkly" story of ENT takes place entirely in the mirror universe, with no crossover of any regular characters (although the Constitution-class Defiant does itself cross over and the mirror Archer has a hallucination of his prime self).
- This episode contains two main elements from TOS: "The Tholian Web": the starship Defiant (whose fate is made known in this episode) and the Tholians. In fact, this episode is the first to depict a Tholian "in the flesh" since the 1968 episode, wherein only the head of a Tholian is shown. The species is revealed in this episode to be six-legged and crystalline in nature.
- A mirror-universe story for Star Trek: Enterprise was originally conceived as one of a couple of ways of bringing William Shatner into the series' fourth season. As he and Paramount were unable to reach an agreement, the plans to have Shatner included in the series were discarded, the initial mirror-universe storyline ultimately being undeveloped.
- At one point during production, Scott Bakula wondered if it was possible to modify the Terran Empire salute, due to both the cramped conditions aboard Enterprise and the danger that an actor performing the salute – which requires the saluting individual to jut their hand out – could easily collide with an actor nearby. Mike Sussman was asked, by Merri Howard, to visit the set and act as consultant on the salute, to ensure that all actors and extras were performing it correctly. One suggestion was that the actors could minimize the salute to involve only a thump on the chest that, in the final version, precedes the extension of the arm. However, the same action had been used in the parody sci-fi film Galaxy Quest and, when Sussman pointed this out, it was generally agreed that the episode should not mimic the film too closely; consequently, the suggestion was dismissed. The final version of the salute used in this episode differs from the one used in TOS: "Mirror, Mirror" as the hand is open in the latter example whereas the salute in this episode involves a closed fist.
- Phlox's speech comparing Shakespeare in the two universes was influenced by a passage in the non-canon novel Dark Mirror, which Mike Sussman read before writing the script.
[Please note that there is a lot more in the MA entries; some of that is from there being two entries for the separate parts, but there is just a lot of info on the writing and production of this two parter]
"Live long and prosper."
(Zefram Cochrane shoots the Vulcan captain, killing him)
"Board their ship! Take everything you can!"
- The Vulcan captain and the grizzled man, on first contact between Humans and Vulcans in the mirror universe
"Something about... your 'maternal ancestor'."
- Sato, translating a Tholian insult hurled at "Captain" Archer
"You don't want to end up like me, do you? I've absorbed enough delta rays to guarantee my grandchildren glow in the dark."
- Tucker, to T'Pol, on the dangers of delta radiation
"It may take centuries, but one day Humanity will pay for its arrogance."
- T'Pol, referring to the eventual events of "Crossover"
"They're never going to give you this ship. You know that. They'll tear it apart, try to learn its secrets. If you're lucky, you'll end up commanding a moon shuttle. Don't you see what the Admiral's planning? He's going to present this ship to the Emperor himself. He'll take all the credit, and you'll end up a historical footnote."
- Jonathan Archer's subconscious, about Admiral Black's plans for the USS Defiant
"This is the starship Defiant. If you don't surrender immediately, we'll begin targeting your cities. Please respond."
"Where's Archer?! And who the hell are you?!!"
"You are speaking with Empress Sato. Prepare to receive instructions."
- Hoshi Sato and Admiral Gardner
Poster's Log:
This isn't just a good Mirror Universe episode, and a good two-parter episode in general, but a grand episode that has at least two genuinely intriguing ideas in it. The MU episodes in the franchise all tend to revolve around the idea of the distorted mirror, reflecting back on the prime universe crew in different ways, both in how they're different and in how they're not so different, and what the prime universe crew does in reaction to that. The last bit isn't a factor in this episode, since the prime universe crew isn't in it... although one of them does influence the mirror universe crew and the course of their history, albeit indirectly; more on that in a bit.
Anyway, anyone watching can pick out the differences, and that's a big part of the fun, so I won't go over those in great detail, although I'd like to note that throwing a belly window into the standard utilitarian Starfleet coverall makes it a lot less useful; then again, so does the Sam Browne belt and other frippery of the male version, so there's that. Archer's got a different haircut, which reminds me of nothing so much as that of D-FENS in the recently-posted-on-the-purple Falling Down; that haircut was the subject of discussion in an earlier post on the blue about that movie between two MeFites whom you may recognize. (I also like mirror-Mayweather's look a bit better, TBH.) It's also interesting to see whose rank is less (Archer a commander and Forrest a captain--good to see Vaughn Armstrong one last time) and also that, with their having conquered the other Alpha Quadrant species, the Terran Empire Starfleet is significantly more diverse than their 22nd century prime universe counterpart, although we understand that humans retain the top civilian and military positions for themselves. (I'm pretty sure that the unnamed Orion bridge crewmember in the second part may be the first Orion member of Starfleet in canon, although we'd eventually get Gaila in the first Kelvin timeline movie.)
All enjoyable, but all pretty much standard stuff for MU episodes... until they throw in the Constitution-class Defiant from TOS' "The Tholian Web", and suddenly that moves the two-parter into different territory entirely. Of course, they indulge in a lot of TOS nostalgia on top of the MU fun; there's no real reason for the crew to put on the 23rd-century prime universe Starfleet uniforms--I'm pretty sure that their spacesuits have some sort of base layer--except why the hell not. But it also brings up the possibility of the ISS NX-01 crew being able to conquer the Terran Empire with one ship; it's a bit reminiscent of the premise of The Final Countdown, not the song but a movie that imagines the possibilities in a Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft character being brought back in time to just before the Pearl Harbor attack. (There's also a previous comment that I made--it was about DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations", but it's not in the FF thread on that episode--that, when Arne Darvin used the Orb of Time to travel back in time to kill Kirk, he also brought back the 24th-century Defiant, complete with a 24th-century Romulan cloak, which could have been really bad for the Klingons if the Federation hadn't had a Temporal Prime Directive or had an excuse to break it.)
And this brings up one of the two ideas that I mentioned previously: that one of the things that's (thankfully) holding the Mirror Universe back is that they don't do technological innovation very well, and have to steal all their best tech from other people. It gets cited a couple of times in this two-parter--with the Defiant and with the looting of the Vulcan ship in the reworked scene from Star Trek: First Contact--and in other MU episodes: in TOS' "Mirror, Mirror" there's the Tantalus field, and in the DS9 episodes they get the 24th-century Defiant and a modern Klingon cloak from the Prime Universe, and the Intendant even makes a play for one of the Orbs. Thus, by the 23rd century, the Terran Empire is still using Constitution-class ships not really any different from the one that they found a century earlier, and in the 24th century the Klingon-Cardassian alliance is stymied by a single fast escort vessel. The message here may be that a relatively free and open society is necessary for general technological advancement; in our world, Nazi Germany had a technological edge from research done before the Nazis took power, but the Allies soon caught up and arguably passed them (with the atomic bomb) while the Nazis wasted their time on would-be Wunderwaffe.
The other idea goes back to the thing that I mentioned earlier about the prime universe crew influencing their MU counterparts... which happens indirectly, with Archer and Sato reading about their long-dead PU counterparts in the Defiant's memory banks. This leads to the somewhat unsettling scenes of Mirror Archer seeming to hallucinate having Prime Archer talk to him; I'm guessing that this isn't meant to be literal, but rather an illustration of M-Archer remembering what he'd read about P-Archer and comparing his own career to the illustrious accomplishments of his counterpart. (That this isn't clear from the actual scenes is maybe the weakest point of this two-parter.) It's a clever bit in that it's sort of an echo of the time traveler Daniels showing up occasionally and nudging Archer in the right direction by talking about how he's supposed to be one of history's great men. Here, M-Archer only has the fact of what his prime doppelganger did, but it's enough to both stroke his ego and goad him into making his big play, even as he scorns what P-Archer did under the aegis of the Federation. But the really sly thing about this plot thread is that it also involves Hoshi, who likewise gets to reflect on her prime's accomplishments... "At least she was remembered for something." And thus, eventually, we get Empress Sato, Hoshi Kyoto-Born, Mother of Linguacode and Breaker of Dudes.
Poster's Log, Supplemental: Left unanswered here is where the Mirror Universe diverged from the prime one. As previously noted, the part where Mirror-Phlox compares the literature of the two universes is from the novel Dark Mirror, from the important beta canon author Diane Duane, although I remember Duane saying that even Shakespeare was different. That implies a divergence point centuries in the past. One of the "Shatnerverse" novels (created by Shatner, although ghost-written by various authors, in which Kirk is resurrected post-Generations) which involves the MU--and, if I'm not mistaken, was co-written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, whose influence on S4 ENT is vast--puts the divergence point as actually past the (unaltered) First Contact with the Vulcans; after Zefram Cochrane shakes the Vulcan's hand, and throws a little party for them in Bozeman, he's mulling over the day's events and wondering if he should keep making friends with the Vulcans or just steal their ship, given that the universe now seems like a much more dangerous place thanks to the Borg's intervention. So, he flips a coin... and that's where the divergence is. Obviously no longer possible in canon, but I like it better nonetheless.
Poster's Log, supplemental to the supplemental: TNG has no Mirror Universe excursions, at least in canon. VOY technically doesn't, although the aforementioned "Living Witness" had a very mirror-ish version of the Voyager crew. DSC, oh the other hand, arguably involves the MU in almost the entire show up until now, either taking place in the MU or having a couple of mirror people in the prime universe.
MA notes:
• The Defiant helm console and captain's chair had been previously built for a museum attraction.
I…I may very well have sat in that very chair! Heh.
This crew seems to be a lot more capable than Prime-Enterprise's, which is vaguely worrisome.
The thing about the Mirror Universe is it's often, if not always, kinda shallow. There's not a lot of "there" there, as the later, weaker DS9 MU outings demonstrate. It may be instructive to note that I've brought in Mirror stuff into one or two of my Trek RPG campaigns and, while I as gamemaster loved setting it up and was tickled to death by it, the players were not nearly as into it as I was or as I expected them to be. You know that line a gamemaster has to walk between filling players with dread versus, for lack of a better word, hopelessness? The MU seems to push everything a little bit too far toward hopelessness, at least when you're "in" it.
So rewatching this one, I found myself torn in two directions. One, sharing the General's feeling of it being "pure fun," but the other, being analytical and (especially post-DISCO) ruminating on the value and purpose of whole Mirror Universe concept. I don't mean pulling on threads w/r/t this 2-parter specifically, but trying to tease out what Trek has had, and might in the future have, the MU actually mean.
Here's one example. Anybody watching the Amazon show Counterpart? It's basically about a post-Cold War "mirror Earth" and so far I'm pretty into it (~4 eps in IIRC). So far, its strongest emotional resonance seems to (um) mirror that of the third DS9 MU one, "Shattered Mirror", wherein intense and fraught personal family relationships cause the line between prime-self and subprime-self to blur, thereby tormenting the characters involved and raising all those interesting "what if" questions that, when you get right down to it, "In a Mirror Darkly" doesn't truly delve into. I mean, again, it's fun and all to go on this ride (and this 2-parter had a big and positive impact on Star Trek Online IIRC), but the fundamental problem is that we don't care about mirror-Archer (who is so obviously different from prime-Archer) enough to be invested in his own internal what-iffing.
But anyway! ENT got its "Tribble-ations"/"Flashback" analogue, and pulled it off quite nicely; this 2-parter moves, and benefits quite a bit from being completely unpredictable. Of course, being this untethered, it at times is chaotic, flowing awkwardly and potentially leaving the viewer downright dizzied; case in point, I think Part I would have seemed more cohesive if it focused more on T'Pol's rebel sympathies, to better set up Part II. Of course, even with two whole episodes, they clearly had too much other stuff going on.
they don't do technological innovation very well, and have to steal all their best tech from other people.
That's a very apt observation, supported by basically everything we see about the MU. The only counterexample I can think of is Regent Worf's friggin' Star Wars-scale flagship, but OTOH, it's not portrayed as particularly capable, so.
the somewhat unsettling scenes of Mirror Archer seeming to hallucinate having Prime Archer talk to him; I'm guessing that this isn't meant to be literal, but rather an illustration of M-Archer remembering what he'd read about P-Archer and comparing his own career to the illustrious accomplishments of his counterpart. (That this isn't clear from the actual scenes is maybe the weakest point of this two-parter.)
I dunno, I'm OK with that ambiguity—I looked at it as a reflection of this character's damaged psyche—but one way it's weak is that they didn't delve into it more. But again, time constraints. A 3-parter for this material probably would've gotten tedious.
Left unanswered here is where the Mirror Universe diverged from the prime one.
I'm sure it was when Moonwatcher touched the Monolith and learned how to spread peace, love, and understanding to the ape tribe on the other side of the pond. Wait, but that would mean…(*turns to camera in horror; dissolve to me shaving off my facial hair while weeping*)
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 5:03 AM on May 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
• The Defiant helm console and captain's chair had been previously built for a museum attraction.
I…I may very well have sat in that very chair! Heh.
This crew seems to be a lot more capable than Prime-Enterprise's, which is vaguely worrisome.
The thing about the Mirror Universe is it's often, if not always, kinda shallow. There's not a lot of "there" there, as the later, weaker DS9 MU outings demonstrate. It may be instructive to note that I've brought in Mirror stuff into one or two of my Trek RPG campaigns and, while I as gamemaster loved setting it up and was tickled to death by it, the players were not nearly as into it as I was or as I expected them to be. You know that line a gamemaster has to walk between filling players with dread versus, for lack of a better word, hopelessness? The MU seems to push everything a little bit too far toward hopelessness, at least when you're "in" it.
So rewatching this one, I found myself torn in two directions. One, sharing the General's feeling of it being "pure fun," but the other, being analytical and (especially post-DISCO) ruminating on the value and purpose of whole Mirror Universe concept. I don't mean pulling on threads w/r/t this 2-parter specifically, but trying to tease out what Trek has had, and might in the future have, the MU actually mean.
Here's one example. Anybody watching the Amazon show Counterpart? It's basically about a post-Cold War "mirror Earth" and so far I'm pretty into it (~4 eps in IIRC). So far, its strongest emotional resonance seems to (um) mirror that of the third DS9 MU one, "Shattered Mirror", wherein intense and fraught personal family relationships cause the line between prime-self and subprime-self to blur, thereby tormenting the characters involved and raising all those interesting "what if" questions that, when you get right down to it, "In a Mirror Darkly" doesn't truly delve into. I mean, again, it's fun and all to go on this ride (and this 2-parter had a big and positive impact on Star Trek Online IIRC), but the fundamental problem is that we don't care about mirror-Archer (who is so obviously different from prime-Archer) enough to be invested in his own internal what-iffing.
But anyway! ENT got its "Tribble-ations"/"Flashback" analogue, and pulled it off quite nicely; this 2-parter moves, and benefits quite a bit from being completely unpredictable. Of course, being this untethered, it at times is chaotic, flowing awkwardly and potentially leaving the viewer downright dizzied; case in point, I think Part I would have seemed more cohesive if it focused more on T'Pol's rebel sympathies, to better set up Part II. Of course, even with two whole episodes, they clearly had too much other stuff going on.
they don't do technological innovation very well, and have to steal all their best tech from other people.
That's a very apt observation, supported by basically everything we see about the MU. The only counterexample I can think of is Regent Worf's friggin' Star Wars-scale flagship, but OTOH, it's not portrayed as particularly capable, so.
the somewhat unsettling scenes of Mirror Archer seeming to hallucinate having Prime Archer talk to him; I'm guessing that this isn't meant to be literal, but rather an illustration of M-Archer remembering what he'd read about P-Archer and comparing his own career to the illustrious accomplishments of his counterpart. (That this isn't clear from the actual scenes is maybe the weakest point of this two-parter.)
I dunno, I'm OK with that ambiguity—I looked at it as a reflection of this character's damaged psyche—but one way it's weak is that they didn't delve into it more. But again, time constraints. A 3-parter for this material probably would've gotten tedious.
Left unanswered here is where the Mirror Universe diverged from the prime one.
I'm sure it was when Moonwatcher touched the Monolith and learned how to spread peace, love, and understanding to the ape tribe on the other side of the pond. Wait, but that would mean…(*turns to camera in horror; dissolve to me shaving off my facial hair while weeping*)
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 5:03 AM on May 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
I’ve always thought that, rather than having forked from the prime universe at any given point, the MU has always been running in parallel with the Evil dial turned to 11.
posted by nonasuch at 6:03 AM on May 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by nonasuch at 6:03 AM on May 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
Counterpart looks pretty interesting; seems like it only got two seasons, but that makes it tempting in a way.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:46 AM on May 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:46 AM on May 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
Has any other Trek starship been on such a long-running real-time romp as the lost Defiant? Created for TOS in the 1960s, recurs here on ENT in the 2000s, and then turns up again on DISCO in the 2010s. That's a hell of a trip for a ship not named Enterprise.
posted by Servo5678 at 9:49 AM on May 11, 2020
posted by Servo5678 at 9:49 AM on May 11, 2020
Has any other Trek starship been on such a long-running real-time romp as the lost Defiant?
Probably not, since there were relatively few starships in TOS, due to it being a fairly expensive effect at the time. (Transporters were invented because doing shuttle landings every week would have been too expensive.) This may be obscured by the updated FX on TOS, where they occasionally slip in a CGI ship model to substitute for the original version.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:17 AM on May 11, 2020
Probably not, since there were relatively few starships in TOS, due to it being a fairly expensive effect at the time. (Transporters were invented because doing shuttle landings every week would have been too expensive.) This may be obscured by the updated FX on TOS, where they occasionally slip in a CGI ship model to substitute for the original version.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:17 AM on May 11, 2020
I’ve always thought that, rather than having forked from the prime universe at any given point, the MU has always been running in parallel with the Evil dial turned to 11.
I strongly agree - there seems to be an actual hard linkage between the Prime universe and the MU, to the point where I want to use the word "synchronicity" (in it's original Police usage before it became a business buzzspeak term). I mean, there really does seem to be some kind of feedback loop that keeps at least the people the same on both side. The reflection seems to correct itself, for one thing. Kill off the dark universe copy of a person, but their grandchildren are still there in a hundred years in both universes, when at least one set shouldn't exist. I suppose talking about causation might be missing the point, absent some kind of super-Q experiment (or super-Q kludge that they put in place for some other reason entirely, and we're just the ants who can't figure out why there's water dripping from that box that sticks out of the side of that big building on a hot summer's day).
posted by Mogur at 11:52 AM on May 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
I strongly agree - there seems to be an actual hard linkage between the Prime universe and the MU, to the point where I want to use the word "synchronicity" (in it's original Police usage before it became a business buzzspeak term). I mean, there really does seem to be some kind of feedback loop that keeps at least the people the same on both side. The reflection seems to correct itself, for one thing. Kill off the dark universe copy of a person, but their grandchildren are still there in a hundred years in both universes, when at least one set shouldn't exist. I suppose talking about causation might be missing the point, absent some kind of super-Q experiment (or super-Q kludge that they put in place for some other reason entirely, and we're just the ants who can't figure out why there's water dripping from that box that sticks out of the side of that big building on a hot summer's day).
posted by Mogur at 11:52 AM on May 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
The way I square this circle is: So, theoretically, since the beginning of the universe even, there have been an infinite number of timelines. Therefore it is possible, nay, necessary that there be one that is exactly the same as ours, except evil. So, it's not like this one had to branch off the prime universe at any point—it could have branched off at the very moment the universe came into being. Maybe before.
posted by General Malaise at 3:42 PM on May 12, 2020
posted by General Malaise at 3:42 PM on May 12, 2020
This one was full of delights. It looked like everyone had a fun time acting (and I especially hope Linda Park given what what written). It was nice to see these versions of Hoshi, Reed, Mayweather, and Phlox. The actors got to shine a lot more. All of them at their hammiest were almost up to the resting hammy level of Bakula, and Bakula went into hilarious high ham mode. TBH his tormented tragic Mirror Archer was more interesting than normal Archer. "I, Claudius" in space when?
Really disappointed no Mirror Shran though.
I loved seeing a lot of TOS-style sets. I love the simple set designs with dramatic lighting, all meant to highlight characters. It's just better! Even when they showed Reed in front of a large display explaining where they lost the Gorn, I don't remember something like that from TOS but it still looked better. And sorry, I need to say again for the millionth time how the AbramsTrek bridge is such garbage.
I do wish they would have set up Mirror Archer's imaginary taunting by Federation Archer. It was a little abrupt.
posted by fleacircus at 11:50 PM on May 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
Really disappointed no Mirror Shran though.
I loved seeing a lot of TOS-style sets. I love the simple set designs with dramatic lighting, all meant to highlight characters. It's just better! Even when they showed Reed in front of a large display explaining where they lost the Gorn, I don't remember something like that from TOS but it still looked better. And sorry, I need to say again for the millionth time how the AbramsTrek bridge is such garbage.
I do wish they would have set up Mirror Archer's imaginary taunting by Federation Archer. It was a little abrupt.
posted by fleacircus at 11:50 PM on May 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
I feel I should comment on some coincidental timing: today is the 15th anniversary of ENT ending ("These Are the Voyages..." is today's Wikipedia featured article). We were sssso close with these posts!
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 8:50 AM on May 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 8:50 AM on May 13, 2020 [1 favorite]
So, theoretically, since the beginning of the universe even, there have been an infinite number of timelines. Therefore it is possible, nay, necessary that there be one that is exactly the same as ours, except evil. So, it's not like this one had to branch off the prime universe at any point—it could have branched off at the very moment the universe came into being. Maybe before.
General sci-fi consensus has been that, the farther back the decision tree changes, the less a new universe will be like the one you left. This has even been seen in Trek before - the universes Worf jumps across in "Parallels" get weirder and weirder.
(And, conversely, the closer to 'now' the change is made, the more like 'now' the new universe will be - see Niven's "All the Myriad Ways" for discussion)
today is the 15th anniversary of ENT ending ("These Are the Voyages..." is today's Wikipedia featured article). We were sssso close with these posts!
My aim with the TAS rewatch is to finish it on the TOS/TAS shared birthday, September 8th.
But it also brings up the possibility of the ISS NX-01 crew being able to conquer the Terran Empire with one ship; it's a bit reminiscent of the premise of The Final Countdown, not the song but a movie that imagines the possibilities in a Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft character being brought back in time to just before the Pearl Harbor attack.
The Final Countdown is not (yet) on Fanfare and it is one of my all-time favorite movies. I might have to start a thread for it.
posted by hanov3r at 9:23 AM on May 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
General sci-fi consensus has been that, the farther back the decision tree changes, the less a new universe will be like the one you left. This has even been seen in Trek before - the universes Worf jumps across in "Parallels" get weirder and weirder.
(And, conversely, the closer to 'now' the change is made, the more like 'now' the new universe will be - see Niven's "All the Myriad Ways" for discussion)
today is the 15th anniversary of ENT ending ("These Are the Voyages..." is today's Wikipedia featured article). We were sssso close with these posts!
My aim with the TAS rewatch is to finish it on the TOS/TAS shared birthday, September 8th.
But it also brings up the possibility of the ISS NX-01 crew being able to conquer the Terran Empire with one ship; it's a bit reminiscent of the premise of The Final Countdown, not the song but a movie that imagines the possibilities in a Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft character being brought back in time to just before the Pearl Harbor attack.
The Final Countdown is not (yet) on Fanfare and it is one of my all-time favorite movies. I might have to start a thread for it.
posted by hanov3r at 9:23 AM on May 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
instructive to note that I've brought in Mirror stuff into one or two of my Trek RPG campaigns and, while I as gamemaster loved setting it up and was tickled to death by it, the players were not nearly as into it as I was or as I expected them to be.
Your players were not my players: I first ran a Star trek RPG back in the FASA days. FASA's mechanics had skills scored as a percentile, with 99 being the highest possible level, a roll of 00 always being a fail. Although the game was set in the standard Star Trek setting (the movies era, as we were still a couple of years away from TNG), I seem to recall at least three bridge crew had boosted their skill in Leadership to 99, just in case they had to take command. Just. In. Case. I may as well have been running a mirror universe game with the conniving they did, although at that point the only mirror universe story had been a single episode some fifteen years earlier. It cast a long shadow.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:31 AM on May 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
Your players were not my players: I first ran a Star trek RPG back in the FASA days. FASA's mechanics had skills scored as a percentile, with 99 being the highest possible level, a roll of 00 always being a fail. Although the game was set in the standard Star Trek setting (the movies era, as we were still a couple of years away from TNG), I seem to recall at least three bridge crew had boosted their skill in Leadership to 99, just in case they had to take command. Just. In. Case. I may as well have been running a mirror universe game with the conniving they did, although at that point the only mirror universe story had been a single episode some fifteen years earlier. It cast a long shadow.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:31 AM on May 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
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There really isn't any point in being too critical - it's just pure fun and if you pull any threads at all it just falls apart, but that's okay. (Exception: The belly shirt uniforms and, well, everything Hoshi right until the end was remarkably gross.)
It was a nice bridge (sorry) to see how the TOS era could have been after this series, making the set of the Defiant look somehow high-tech (the better production value certainly helped).
Curious how Earth, sorry Terra, got an emperor. And, well, how on earth, sorry, Terra, Hoshi thought she could name herself so. (Okay, okay, I won't pull this apart.)
It's pretty obvious that everybody had fun playing against type, and that made it just that much more fun to watch. Everybody wearing TOS-era uniforms was a nice touch and added to the pure camp.
And it was nice to have a theme song that didn't make me want to launch myself out the window.
Halloween Jack, this was a particularly good post. Sorry I haven't engaged any of your points yet—I'll need some more time to think on them.
posted by General Malaise at 3:52 PM on May 10, 2020 [5 favorites]