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.
...vs...
At first I thought that "no reason for Georgiou to lie" was a good point, but thinking further: because she believed at that point that Burnham and Lorca were their Prime Universe versions, that is the perfect time to lie, there is no one to refute her claims. The best way to get what she wants from Burnham is by disparaging the character of MU Burnham and MU Lorca and casting herself as the aggrieved party. I don't actually think she was lying, but I think it is very plausible that she could be.
I find the second interpretation here far more plausible. That is to say, Lorca was a mentor/father figure for MUBurnham at some point after her childhood; he "groomed" her to support him and his causes rather than Emperor Georgiou and hers; they may or may not have had a sexual relationship but if so it was as adults; and what the Emperor really resents is that he "stole" Burnham's loyalties away from her.
Obviously in the current political moment the word "groomed" does (sometimes) have the connotations CK describes, and possibly the Emperor was deliberately trying to insinuate that meaning in order to drive a wedge between PUBurnham and Lorca... but there is no reason to assume that it means Lorca was literally a sexual predator toward MUBurnham. Indeed, I'd question whether the concept of "sexual predator" even has any
meaning in the MU, given what we've seen of its relationship practices to date... it simply describes the norm for how everyone behaves.
Regardless, even if we
do read the worst into the situation per the "vibe" CK got from the scene... I will still stand by my statement that in the big picture, even someone as "creepy" as that would still be a far better person to have at the reins of the government than the kind of absolute psychopath we've seen the Emperor to be. In moral terms there's simply no comparison.
What fed citizen? He's not Tyler.
...vs...
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? ...
Ah, a good old-fashioned debate over mind-body duality! This ep really does bring up lots of conversational fodder.
FWIW, the show so far has gone out of its way to obfuscate just how much (and what parts) of "Tyler" are from the original Tyler, and what parts are from Voq, both physically and mentally. What we have
seems to be some sort of surgical composite using body parts from both, with Voq's original brain, but with Tyler's consciousness inserted into it (perhaps by way of the Klingon mind-sifter we heard about way back in "Errand of Mercy"). Then again, I could be wrong. At any rate, he's some sort of hybrid.
How this was even possible, much less in a way that would fool Starfleet medical scans, much less in a way that actually seemed like a viable plan to L'rell and Voq? Heaven only knows. (And the show made things even more confusing with the timeline, telling us that L'rell and Voq spent the first six months of the war just sitting in space... meaning that the planning, surgery, mind-switch, and subsequent healing must all have taken place in a
very short timeframe!...)
Bottom line, though, and regardless of what we may think of these issues IRL, in the Trek universe it's fairly clear that a consciousness
can be transferred from one physical body to another... either natural or artificial... and still remain intact. Therefore, it seems to me to make a lot more sense to attach the concept of "identity" to the intangible consciousness than to the physical substrate. IOW, if Voq's consciousness is really gone, and what's left
thinks of himself as Tyler... it's Tyler.
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. ... There's no plan now, just the inverted clusterfuck of surgical scars and false memories that is Voq Tyler.
Good analysis! You have, I suspect, put more detailed thought into it than the writers necessarily did.
[Lorca] could always have synthesized the [Kelpian] dish - the scene just reveals his perverse preferences.i
I think that video misinterpreted a scene and is spreading unnecessary confusion. The tentacled dish that MUSaru served Burnham in her quarters, and that we'd seen Lorca eat on an earlier occasion, was
not Kelpian. It looked disgusting, but we don't know what it was. The dish that MUGeorgiou (gaak, I hate spelling that name) served Burnham on the
Charon was Kelpian, but it looked different, and we've never seen Lorca eating it.
I agree that TOS is the wellspring and it could be considered the "Best" Star Trek simply because it created/defined what Star Trek is or through actual quality evaluation. But there is certainly an argument to be made that later Treks could take that title ... You may personally believe TOS is "empirically, intellectually" the best, but that doesn't actually make it so.
My kids have had to deal with star trek their whole life because of me, but they didn't really interested until Enterprise hit netflix. That's their show. ... Consider your credibility strained.
My daughter's first exposure to ST was ENT and since then she's watched every series. It was truly one of my favorite if not my favorite of the series. I think if you asked her she'd say Voyager was her favorite. People come to ST from many different paths and I think
@lawman is relying on a bit of hyperbole when he insists his "credulity" is strained. Apparently he believes there is some sort of litmus test to be a bona fide ST fan.
Heh! Just to clarify, folks... I fully understand that I was posting personal opinion! ;-) I used the words "empirically, intellectually" to describe my awareness that other people have come to Trek fandom through different routes,
not to describe my personal impression that appreciating TOS is a
sine qua non for appreciating Trek as a whole. XCV, props to your kids however they came to it, and I'm sure having a parent who was a fan was a double-edged sword for them! LongSyntax, I know there's no litmus test. Heck, a former girlfriend of mine was a huge fan of VOY, a show I literally gave up as unwatchable. She came to it as a kid, it was her introduction to Trek, and she sincerely loved it. I can acknowledge the personal validity of that even while I can't remotely relate to it. Perhaps there's something special about the first show you watch, or the one that gets its hooks into you in your formative years... that's how I discovered TOS, myself.
Still, I confess I remain baffled by the people who enjoy later shows yet genuinely
dislike TOS... like the poster who prompted this discussion, for instance. If nothing else, it's the template on which everything that followed was based, after all. The whole concept of what a starship and its crew and Starfleet and the Federation are and do and look like... that's where it all came from. If you like that stuff, how can you dislike TOS?
The question about Lorca that remains for me is: was he always more compassionate than the average MU resident and that helped him blend in here, or did he start out as a classic Terran, only to have some Prime ideals rub off on him?
I'm inclined toward Door Number One there. From everything we've seen of Lorca, if he tried to lead a coup against the Emperor, I'm assuming it was out of a genuine desire to improve things, not just to seize power for himself. He seems like someone with a sincere concern for the people around him and a solid, ethical concept of the
ends he's pursuing... just a fairly flexible sense of the
means he can use to reach them.
To expand on that as bit, as I've mentioned in other posts, I much prefer the notion that the MU is a place where most people are just "good Germans," going along to get along in a society ruled by fear. They may be "
a little bit more evil" than PU residents on average, but it's a matter of adaptation to circumstances, not of destiny or genetics, and most of them aren't out-and-out psychopaths.
Thanks. Interesting. The fact that he even had to clarify suggests that the scene was presented in a needlessly confusing way.
