Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x11 - "The Wolf Inside"

[Bgt]

This is the last episode of this season I will write anything about..since well I do not enjoy this show, and I can't see the point of coming here whining about it anymore.
I will watch rest of season and will definitely bother to watch the first few episodes of season 2, just in case a miracle happens.

Well ok, one last rant
I have tried so much to like it, I almost envy the ones here who give it more than a 5.
I find this show so average and uninteresting and boring and badly written..
The writing is like if they throw various ingredients in a computer algorithm that print outs a random script. Yeah random might be the key word here.
Endless cliches, plot holes , melodrama, "telegraphing" and gimmicks (Sarek's goatee, LOL) and worst of all they take themselves SO seriously...so seriously...
I ve seen 11 episodes of Discovery and I just can't stand any of characters (except the female admiral and a bit the Klingon lady).
I hope season 1 will end with all of them somehow out of the show.
So, see you in season two, keep having fun with it. Drat, I just cant..

 

[Sebine_91]

I too was musing on the fact that surely, if the Defiant has been there for a hundred years, then technology is more advanced than the prime universe. However, this could be explained away by the technology only being available to the Emperor; by possessing vastly superior technology to everyone else it means that a revolt is far less likely to succeed than if everyone was on a level playing field. In the MU people are killing each other all the time to climb up the ranks so the dynasty would need protection to ensure its longevity.

It also would explain why, if Lorca is indeed from the MU, he needed Burnham so badly. It's suicide to attack her ship directly as it's so much more advanced so needs to see her in person and thus needs Prime Burnham to draw her out and kill her.

 

[Longinus]

To all those people trying to make sense of the Mirror Universe: it is an exercise in futility. It doesn't make any sense, it never has.

 

[Hythlodeus]

The VW Beetle was designed by Hitler FFS!

I'm pretty sure that was Ferdinand Porsche or one of his sons or, you know, a designer who worked for them

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

The writing is like if they throw various ingredients in a computer algorithm that print outs a random script. Yeah random might be the key word here.

That sounds like the "Idea Balls" used by the manatee-writers of Family Guy (from South Park).

Regarding the "randomness" of The Wolf Inside, I personally did not think it was random, and in fact was entertaining and interesting...But you mileage may vary.

 

[fireproof78]

To all those people trying to make sense of the Mirror Universe: it is an exercise in futility. It doesn't make any sense, it never has.

It's made sense to me...

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

It's made sense to me...

I think he means the converegences and synchronicities that seem to continuously occur between people and events the two universes even though they have divergent histories.

- Why does MU Burnahm still end up on the Shezhou even though she had a very different history and upbringing than our Burnham?
- Why are MU Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura meeting the the Halkans at the same moment our heroes are (and seemingly for very similar reasons), even though the histories of the two universes are so vastly different?
- Why does MU Sisko, Kira, O'Brien, etc all still end on on Terok Nor?

THAT all makes no logical sense, but most of us Trek fans are personally fine with it (considering it's a work of fiction).

 

[Longinus]

It's made sense to me...

It does make sense to you that an universe with completely divergent history has all the same technology and all the same people, often even it the same places? How on Earth does that make sense to you?

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I do not enjoy the Mirror Universe universe stories. I get hung up on how it doesn't work.

I am committed to Discovery for the rest of the season. I want to see this work to the end. I am hoping that for the next season there will be more work on characterization.

 

[MacLeod]

It's been a long time since I watched "The Tholian Web" but do we know what the Defiiant was doing? As if we don't could it have responded to a distress call so despite Starfleets best efforts to keep it away from that region it ends up having to go there anyway.

 

[Mudd]

To all those people trying to make sense of the Mirror Universe: it is an exercise in futility. It doesn't make any sense, it never has.

This is absolutely true. It really just was a kind of high concept exercise on Bixby's part, and just enough thought went in to it to make the events of one story which was limited in scope - one ship, a few hours, in a single episode - hang together and make dramatic sense.

And for fifty years that clever little story has been elaborated on, sometimes by writers who gave what they were doing a fair amount of thought but of necessity had to mate it with the kind of nonsense that had been its genesis.

It's not unlike what happened to "Balance Of Terror," where a similarly contrived set of details that were intended only to support a one-hour drama became the foundation for a faux history and culture.

Given the storytelling freedom in terms of scope that comes with a novel, Diane Duane made a valiant attempt to explain the many nonsensical parallel events in the two universes within a framework of invented interdimensional physics - causality worked between universes as well as linearly within each, holding people and events in rough parallel despite the fact that every divergence should push the two realities further apart.

The television shows, however, have been pretty much satisfied with the dramatic fun of ringing changes on the regular characters, injecting a little sex into the shows and slapping beards on every Vulcan walking by. Kewl!

 

[137th Gebirg]

This is absolutely true.

 

[Onid]

Lorca is becoming (if he already isn't) my favorite Trek character ever. He's like a perfect, fascinating, manipulative version of Mirror universe great captains. And Jason Isaacs is amazing in the role. Just that smirk at the end says a lot.

 

[fireproof78]

It does make sense to you that an universe with completely divergent history has all the same technology and all the same people, often even it the same places? How on Earth does that make sense to you?

That's its a story of a fictional concept of parallel universes reflecting choices. I get that it doesn't follow logically, but it makes sense on an emotional level to me.

That's a horrible explanation but it works for me. Probably because, at it's core, its a very mythic and science fiction trope of "evil twin." It's fun, interesting and thought provoking to consider what dynamics would work for it all to come together.

It's a weird mind game of mine to see how it could possibly fit together. And I've read enough comics and books to get the idea of parallel dimensions and predestined paths to appreciate it as a fictional trope.

 

[Tuskin38]

In which case the terran empire were dummies.

A hundred years later by the time of Mirror Mirror and their tech was still only comparable to a 23rd century Prime Universe Defiant.

Reverse engineering may have taken longer.

Also we don't know how advanced their tech was, it could have been a decade are two more advanced, but the designs were still the same.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I've always held a theory that the MU is less of an alternate universe and more of a reactive one, where there circumstances and situations mold themselves around the people who enter the place, creating these bizarre alternate situations for the people involved. Granted the theory doesn't quite hold water, but it helps me to make sense of the thing.

 

[gblews]

I give the episode an 8. Enjoyed it very much, just not as much as last week's.

The relationship between Tyler and Burnham has evolved very quickly from an awkward exercise to something really interesting and deep. That, I believe, is due in large part to some well developed chemistry supplied by Latif and SMG. They have bonded over their mutual situations, Burnham being a convicted mutineer and losing her career and freedom, and Tyler's PTSD following his imprisonment and torture by Klingons.

I loved their confrontation after returning from the rebel strong hold. When Tyler began telling Michael what had actually happened to him, the look of utter dismay, disbelief, and shock, was so effectively pulled off by SMG. Latif, for his part, is actually making his Voq side come across as contemptuous as it is chilling. His presentation of Voq's manner of speaking and voice is practically scary.

Pairing Burnham and Tyler on the MU Shenzhou was an excellent way of furthering the relationship arc as well as the Tyler/Voq arc. Well done by both actors.

The other relationship, though it was barely touched upon, was one we'd seen plenty of in the show's first few episodes; Burnham and Georgiou. As we have seen in MU episodes before, particularly in Ent, the relationships in the MU tend to mirror the ones in the RU, but are twisted in some way. No doubt we are going to see more of this in the next episode and maybe beyond, but just the little we saw Sunday indicated that Georgiou and Burnham, just like in the RU, have a "special" bond, except the MU version seems to be based on a history of deceit, mistrust, and likely, ambition. Anxious to see these two go at it.

Still don't think we've received confirmation that Lorca has actually been his MU counterpart all along. The faint smirk we were shown could have been a concession to the irony of the very humble RU Georgiou's MU counterpart demanding an act of worship from all in her presence. But, again, the fact that the camera cut to Lorca to show us his reaction to Georgiou's demand, meant that it was supposed to tell us something significant.

 

[The Memetic Susurrus]

And I think he does a good job of it. His accent is actually quite like mine (Virginian, southeast part of the state). And believe it or not, our accents change depending on who's in the room. If I'm in a formal meeting, my accent is very less so (could almost pass as a northern Virginian!!!). If I'm out with the boys drinking, very tired, or just having fun, it's quite noticeable.

But on a "real world" notice - most all of the command activities I have interfaced with (Navy), they all were from the midwest and had no southern accent at all. I work with the military every day and people all over the world and very few of them have a defined "southern drawl". Interesting that they would make that decision.

That's funny because I'm retired AF and, in addition to being from Tennessee, I found lots of Southerners! And they had accents all over the board. I'd always thought northern Virginians sounded like...well, Panhandle Marylanders, to me (if they were native; lots of folks who live in northern Virginia are not even Southerners, much less Virginians--that place is more an exclave of DC and I spent a goodly part of my career stationed in the region).

But there might also be a service component as to why you never met too many "drawlers." I've worked with Army in all but four years of my career and, let me tell you, there were lots of folks from the Deep South, with wondrous, molasses-thick drawls. The AF had less Southerners but still a lot of them, though the geographic composition appeared to differ. There were, at least where I've been, a lot of Midsouth, Upper South, or Floridians in the AF; a bit less Deep South folk. We also got a buttload of Westerners, too; particularly Californians. My experience with the Navy was brief so I cannot tell you much there. So, at least from my vantage point, it depends on the service.

I think they chose that accent because there are a lot of Southern military families. The U.S. armed forces, writ large, disproportionately pull from the South and, to a lesser extent, the Midwest. New England is hardly represented, save for enclaves in the officer corps'. My family, for example, has had many generations serve or are now serving. It's a long tradition dating back to the late 19th century. And I'm not the only family who can count on multi-generational links to the military. It appears to happen a lot in the South but, also, in the Midwest and West. An interesting phenomenon, that. So, perhaps, that's what Isaacs was trying to key on, presumably with the thought that Lorca is Southerner (though that has never been established, insofar as I know).

 

[Destructor]

I've always held a theory that the MU is less of an alternate universe and more of a reactive one, where there circumstances and situations mold themselves around the people who enter the place, creating these bizarre alternate situations for the people involved. Granted the theory doesn't quite hold water, but it helps me to make sense of the thing.

I have often thought this also, ever since the first DS9 mirror ep, actually- there is clearly some relationship between the MU and the PU and I think saying it's merely an alternate timeline from some previous branching point in history does not explain this relationship adequately. Rick and Morty has something called the 'central finite curve', meaning the timelines get less and less like each other each timeline you go along (meaning that even if there are infinite timelines, there are a finite amount that you'd recognize as having a relation to yours). The explanation to the relationship between the MU and the PU may be found in this theory.

 

[Destructor]

When did the mirror universe diverge from the prime universe?

How about now?
And now?
And... now?

Every moment is a struggle to be your best self. Every moment is a choice between learning from the shit that is thrown at you and succumbing to it. The question isn't so much are we already in the mirror universe, but whether or not we can prevent the mirror universe from every coming into being, by imagining our brighter future, then working towards it.