Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x12 - "Vaulting Ambition"

[Timo]

But for what purpose or mission? His killing of Culber makes no sense unless he was programmed for that purpose, but why would he be? What strategic goal is served by killing Culber? I though L'Rell and Voq wanted to defeat Kol, well that pretty much happened without any trigger words needing to be given.

Kol's faction gained the lead in the Empire with the help of a single supertech, the cloak they stole from Voq's faction. But in "Choose Your Pain", we see L'Rell interrogate Lorca to find out what the superpower of his ship might be - and then vector the already transformed Tyleroq to Lorca's ship. It seems evident that L'Rell wanted a supertech of her own, for besting Kol, and it seems logical for her to try and insert an operative to wrestle that supertech from Starfleet.

Winning or losing the Fed war was immaterial to L'Rell and probably also to Kol: just having the war would suffice for the Klingon political needs, as usual. So Tyleroq could bide his time until it became possible to hand over the ship or its secrets to L'Rell. Several ways to achieve that:

1) What transpired. L'Rell ends up aboard Tyler's ship and awakens him, and the two make away with the loot. L'Rell had a good thing going in pretending to defect, and there would have been many opportunities for her to arrange for such an opportunity. But precious few to make sure she got delivered to Tyler's ship specifically. Did she calculate that defecting while deep within Klingon space would ensure the ghostlike supership would be the one to spring her out from her "captivity"?

2) Wait till Tyler has completed gathering the necessary intel, unawares, then somehow arrange for a meeting where Voq can be awakened and debriefed. This would probably also be within L'Rell's means, especially if she weren't held captive by Kol, but in charge of a prison ship or a surgical wonder facility or both.

3) Have Tyler be first carefully embedded, then visit him to awaken Voq (for those memory lacuna moments during which he would gather intel or prepare the Discovery for taking) and then leave (or get executed by Starfleet, whatever) so that the plan would gradually come to fruition, not immediately after the awakening.

Of course, nothing seems to have gone quite according to plan. But alternative #1 sounds like the most robust plan, as L'Rell the skilled spook would presumably have lots of hooks on the Discovery after letting Lorca and Tyleroq escape. She could decide at her leisure upon her preferred means of boarding that ship, being aware of many of its weaknesses (no reason to think she aborted Lorca's torture before she got all the goodies she wanted).

That the Tyleroq transformation precedes the capture and interrogation of Lorca need not mean much. L'Rell was just hunting for some sort of a techno-edge: Lorca might have been the umpteenth Starfleet officer she captured, over a course of several months (there's a bit of leeway there), and the first to yield something she could apply her Tyleroq ruse at.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hythlodeus]

I though L'Rell and Voq wanted to defeat Kol, well that pretty much happened without any trigger words needing to be given.

I thought he wanted revenge on Burnham, killing the aggressor of Binary Stars, the one that defeated T'Kuvma and with that action legitimize himsealf as the torchbearer. killing Culber was a side effect

 

[Timo]

Targeting Burnham would require L'Rell to have quite a bit of in-depth information on one of Starfleet's most secret war projects. Little need for her to "come to the realization" that the Discovery was special through Lorca's carefully planted hook words, then. Or even for her to kidnap Lorca!

But having Burnham as a bonus while stealing some supertech to compensate for the lost monopoly on cloaks would flow relatively naturally from the events. Although there's nothing wrong with L'Rell having in-depth information if she really comes from a House of Spooks.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That was never Star Trek's mission statement. It doesn't even qualify as the Enterprise's mission statement. It's just a nice monologue from the opening credits.

Just because it was in my Netflix qeue yesterday:
"Your Honour, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits. Waiting."
So, yeah, if the monolog isn't Starfleet's actual mission statement, it's definitely something fundamental to the organization's charter.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I agree, he must mostly be Tyler if he was Tyler's mind imposed on Voq's altered body, but why then the 'Manchurian candidate' like brain-washing portrayal? He was given key trigger words that would bring up his buried memories of who and what he is. But for what purpose or mission? His killing of Culber makes no sense unless he was programmed for that purpose, but why would he be? What strategic goal is served by killing Culber? I though L'Rell and Voq wanted to defeat Kol, well that pretty much happened without any trigger words needing to be given.

It seemed evident that NOTHING about this little scheme went according to plan and the entire plot -- quite literally -- blew up in L'Rell's face as soon as they put it in motion. Remember, Mudd was also supposed to be a part of this plan (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if L'Rell was the one who let him out of prison and sent him to Discovery with the time crystal).

The original plan, most likely, was for Lorca to confide in Ash Tyler what he knew about the spore drive, which would give L'Rell some intelligence about it, and then have Ash and Lorca "escape." L'Rell would then use Ash as a back door to gain access to the ship (possibly with Mudd's help) steal the spore drive and use it to undermine Kol.

The plan went funky when Lorca figured out Mudd's eavesdropping, Ash's cover personality proved just a little bit too resourceful, and Mudd turned out to be a less-than-reliable operative (Mudd unreliable? Imagine that!). That left her kind of in a lurch, and the backup plan was to try and "defect" to the Federation, by using the Admiral as a token of friendship. THAT plan fell apart when Kol caught her trying to escape and had his men beat the shit out of her.

Then Discovery went and destroyed the ship of the dead all on its own, so the plan got torn to shreds and fired out of a cannon. There's no plan now, just the inverted clusterfuck of surgical scars and false memories that is Voq Tyler.

 

[Photoman15]

Regarding Roman empire in MU, I thought it was established that MU history diverged when mirror Zefram Cochrane shot the Vulcan first contact dude.

No. Cochrane (and that Earth) had that mindset due to being changed, quite possibly by Edith Keeler not dying. If anything were the divergent factor, I'd say that would be.

Both the Discovery and "Mirror, Mirror" switches involved both universes crossing over, so I would say there is a good chance PU Lorca is, or at least was, in the Mirror U.

The only MU switch we've seen was on TOS when Kirk and landing party were switched to the MU. Artificial means were used in DS9 to go back and forth and in Discovery (Spore Drive). Their counterparts did not necessarily replace them.

 

[Tuvix5675]

What's weird is that L'Rell didn't even try to use Tyler to take over the Discovery, kill Lorca/Burnham, or or try to escape with Tyler. This is a typical Star Trek story-prisoner escape, ship take-over. L'Rell seems content in her cage playing a Hannibal Lector wannabee.

 

[Photoman15]

The entire episode is set on an well lit Mirror Enterprise full of MU others though...

But there may have been filters for certain wave lengths that hurt their eyes on their ships.

 

[Tomalak]

The only MU switch we've seen was on TOS when Kirk and landing party were switched to the MU. Artificial means were used in DS9 to go back and forth and in Discovery (Spore Drive). Their counterparts did not necessarily replace them.

Didn't they say that ISS Discovery had swapped with USS Discovery in episode 10?

DS9 featured a wormhole accident and a subsequent deliberate transdimensional transporter modification to recreate the conditions of the Mirror Mirror incident.

We don't yet know how Lorca got into our universe, but the destruction of both Burans seems suspicious now.

 

[eschaton]

If you think that then you were not paying attention to that scene or what was said. Every other woman I’ve spoken to either in person or online got the same vibe off that scene. The word used was “groomed” as that word has a very specific meaning these days, esp in light of #MeToo & #TimesUp movements. That word was used for a reason. MU Lorca helped raise MU Burnham from a child and ended up intitating a sexual relationship with his pseudo-daughter. That’s creepy AF, morally wrong and sexual abuse.

I don't recall anything about her meeting Lorca as a child in Georgiou's speech to Burnham. Only that she initially looked at him as a "father figure." They could have met when she was 16, or even not until she was an adult.

Regardless, Micheal Burnham is supposed to be around 30-31 during this season of Discovery. Mirror Burnham was at the MU version of the Battle of the Binary Stars, and only vanished thereafter. I have a hard time imagining that the relationship between Mirror Burnham and Lorca had been going on for 12+years, so she should have been well into adulthood before anything sexual happened.

 

[Tomalak]

"Grooming" obviously has connotations of child abuse, but I took it more to mean Lorca "groomed" Burnham to betray Georgiou. I felt a sexual element was implied.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

What's weird is that L'Rell didn't even try to use Tyler to take over the Discovery, kill Lorca/Burnham, or or try to escape with Tyler. This is a typical Star Trek story-prisoner escape, ship take-over. L'Rell seems content in her cage playing a Hannibal Lector wannabee.

First of all, the whole "A prisoner, who has inexplicably perfect knowledge of our security protocols and procedures, has escaped from the brig and is now in control of the ship" is a BULLSHIT plot line that I hope Star Trek retires forever. It was stupid in "The way to Eden" and it was stupid in "Space Seed." Space warps and transporters and artificial gravity I can almost believe, but a $40 billion dollar spacecraft not having a password lock on its fucking workstations? That's a hard sell for me. The pulled it off well with "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" because Mudd had to infiltrate the ship like 100 times to be able to do what he did; in other iterations of Star Trek we see people pull it off on the very first try, which is just idiotic.

Second of all, L'Rell DID try to escape when she spoke the password to Voq in the first place, and then he woke up in the middle of trying to get a phaser to spring her. Which is, let's face it, only the 5th time something about this plan has gone off the rails. L'Rell must be the most frustrated Klingon in the universe right now.

 

[Ometiklan]

The only MU switch we've seen was on TOS when Kirk and landing party were switched to the MU. Artificial means were used in DS9 to go back and forth and in Discovery (Spore Drive). Their counterparts did not necessarily replace them.

True, that we didn't "see" the ISS Discovery, but it was reported to be exactly where the USS Discovery arrived, so it is reasonable that the ISS Disco is in the Prime U.

 

[Timo]

What's weird is that L'Rell didn't even try to use Tyler to take over the Discovery, kill Lorca/Burnham, or or try to escape with Tyler. This is a typical Star Trek story-prisoner escape, ship take-over. L'Rell seems content in her cage playing a Hannibal Lector wannabee.

I gather L'Rell was heavily counting on the Chief of Security releasing her and helping take over the ship, so she didn't worry overtly. She was ignorant of the fact of the ship being in the MU, and astounded that Tyler hadn't turned into Voq yet. But with the Chief on her side, the plan of the day ought to have had some chance of success.

But there may have been filters for certain wave lengths that hurt their eyes on their ships.

The human eye is extremely adaptive. The MU Enterprise may have been dark as a pit, with that "evil light" elsewhere, but we in the audience could never tell because even if we were walking alongside our heroes, our eyes would adapt to the local light levels and fail to tell anything objective about the brightness.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tuskin38]

The writer has explained Georgiou’s names and titles

http://trekcore.com/blog/2018/01/writer-jordon-nardino-on-georgious-many-names/

 

[jaime]

If you think that then you were not paying attention to that scene or what was said. Every other woman I’ve spoken to either in person or online got the same vibe off that scene. The word used was “groomed” as that word has a very specific meaning these days, esp in light of #MeToo & #TimesUp movements. That word was used for a reason. MU Lorca helped raise MU Burnham from a child and ended up intitating a sexual relationship with his pseudo-daughter. That’s creepy AF, morally wrong and sexual abuse.

Yup. But, it’s Mirror Georgiou saying it. If Lorca basically turns out to be a ‘goody’ does it then turn into a May to December romance, where possibly he or she or both resisted the attraction because of this taboo aspect?
The problem is, from the information given we don’t know. We don’t even know for certain they had a relationship of that nature at all...it was dot joining by Burnham, and only then did Georgiou throw in the ‘groomed’ line, possibly to trigger a response.
The only person who knows in narrative what really happened is Lorca. His only possibly reference to it is about Eva, the sister of his tormentor, who he does remember, and states he liked her but someone better came along. It’s still ambiguous.
That’s why it’s too early to go full growl on it. An unreliable narrator has just told you something about her enemy. (Well, told Burnham, but she’s literally the audience viewpoint character) The same narrator we see delight in making Burnham visibly suffer discomfort with intimate behaviour.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

No. Cochrane (and that Earth) had that mindset due to being changed, quite possibly by Edith Keeler not dying. If anything were the divergent factor, I'd say that would be.

"In a Mirror, Darkly" heavily implies that it was much earlier than that:

I wanted to compare our major works with their counterparts in the other universe. I skimmed a few of the more celebrated narratives. The stories were similar in some respects, but their characters were weak and compassionate. With the exception of Shakespeare, of course. From what I could tell, his plays were equally grim in both universes.

 

[Tuskin38]

Lorca was eating Kelpian in a previous episode, back when they were still in the PU.

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[Tuskin38]

He also thinks that Insurrection is the best of the Star Trek movies, so...Jesus.

I wish he was writing more articles about ship models and fewer reviews.

Insurrection is a good Trek story, but a bad movie.

The story wouldn’t have felt out of place as an actual episode of TNG, but it didn’t work as a movie.

 

[eschaton]

Lorca was eating Kelpian in a previous episode, back when they were still in the PU.

That's ridiculous. How would he murder a Kelpian and harvest their ganglia in the PU without getting caught? And why would he do it just for a snack?