We know he’s from the mirror universe. We know he really hates non-Terrans (unless they are delicious perhaps). He cracks the invisibility cloak - and DOES NOT give it to Prime Starfleet before leaving. Why not? - he seemed to have plenty of time (and could warp away if need be) - he didn’t seem to need it to take out the Mirror Emperor - so why leave before it was in Starfleet’s hands? Certainly there was no easy way to know Discovery would return? - yes he needed the data from the 100+ jumps. Ok. He didn’t know there would be 100 jumps until 2 hours prior! So alternatively why not just have the ship jump for “calibration” or some other reason until he has his data? Ok I know - to confuse us. But from Lorca’s view - why not send the info?
A few reasons. He needed his crew to put all their focus in the MU on getting home while making a spore jump impossible and preventing them from examining how they got there. To that end, he did the following: 1. Pulled the Defiant files, so that he could get the crew to buy into his Burnham mission and not focus on Stamets' recovery 2. Pulled Culber off of Stamets, making his recovery and Discovery's return delayed He also had a SF admiral who's was recalling Lorca with the (unstated) intent to pull Lorca off of discovery. That means he had a deadline for arriving at the Starbase. If that deadline is longer than the amount of time it takes to transmit the data... no choice.
I think it's because Stamets said he'd do one more jump and then he would be quitting, so Lorca probably decided it was now or never. I Stamets had been amenable to a few more jumps everything might not have gone down the way it did.
Because he doesn't give a crap about Starfleet or the Prime Universe... He didn't do those jumps to crack the cloak, he did it to get data so he can get home.
Because he doesn’t give a shit about a conflict taking place in a Universe he’s not from and trying to take over the Federation himself just seemed like too much work.
Sure is awfully convenient (for the writers) that the number of jumps necessary to figure out the weakness of the Klingon cloak just happened to correspond to the number of jumps necessary to calibrate the drive to return to the MU and the number of jumps necessary to push Stamets to the point of quitting.
Having the cloak was a pretty useful thing to return with. I agree he didn't care about Starfleet. Once he had everything he wanted, it was time to go.
He had to talk Stamtes into one more jump. It was a choice, take starfleet this info or go home. He went home.
It would have made more sense if Philippa's ship had a cloak he needed to get through to get to her when he returned. But stuff is dropped a lot in Discovery. They had the power aliens looking to talk with the humans and Klingons and just went for a big battle instead. They had all the jumping, but the info has yet to be used in four episodes. Will a casual viewer even remember it?
He didn't return with the cloak, just info on how to beat the cloak. The tech (hamsters? graviton-based babble?) isn't known. Probably accelerated his plans given the recall note. However, it seems to be a coincidence that the 100+ jumps filled in his map since he didn't even initiate the idea to do 100+ jumps. And - since he came over by transporter like the TOS situation - he would have had literally no idea that the jump to that funky coordinate would return him to his universe. None. There's no basis to say "AHA! That's the one". So he might have jumped and found himself still in Prime. Why not turn the cloak-defeater over?
The problem with that position is that he was emotionally affected during the battle with the Gagarin, ordering the Discovery to take shots intended for Gagarin, hereby putting his mission at risk. This was also not anything he needed to do to keep his cover. Starfleet would rather loose the Gagarin, then the Discovery.
The cloaking algorthm wasn't ready to be transmitted. I just re-watched the scene where Lorca is talking to the Admiral after the destruction of the ship of the dead, he mentions that the Algorithm is being refined and will be ready to transmit in eleven hours. The Admiral then orders Lorca back to Starbase 46. Considering that He has also just been told that Admiral Cornwell will make a full recovery, Lorca knows the jig is up. He'll be relieved of command and any chance he has of getting home will be lost. It was a combination of both of these that prevented the cloaking algorithm from being sent to starfleet.
Not really, he would have won the war, if he was stuck in the prime reality. But he had way home, he took it.
Except it wasn't an either-or choice. The Discovery had just rescued Admiral Cornwell, and it took the time and trouble to send her on her way back to UFP space before it set out to make its next jump. It would have been simplicity itself, and an eminently reasonable precaution, to send a copy of the cloak-detecting algorithm along with her, just in case... something... y'know, happened to the Discovery. It would have taken literally zero additional effort; no skin off Lorca's nose at all, no threat to his plan. Indeed, it's amazing that Cornwell didn't insist on it.
Yeah it was. If he went to that starbase, he was losing the ship. Stamets was also never gonna jump again. They did not have the info when she was sent to the starbase, the computer was still processing. The ship had to go to the starbase to give them the info.
So you wait a few hours before sending her off on the shuttlecraft. Or you send a copy of the raw data along. (If the Discovery was expecting to get to the Starbase before Cornwell did, then sending her off made no sense at all. I don't recall the exact sequence of the end of "Into the Forest," in terms of when Lorca realized Stamets would do just One More Jump, but any way you slice it, there had to be a more prudent approach available.) But seriously, what we're talking about here is the writers bending over backwards to contrive a situation where it would seem as if there was no way Lorca could both go home and turn over the intel. The problem is, you can see them moving the pieces around really obviously to achieve that.
If this had happened there would have been fans who would have said "how convenient that an alternate universe to which Lorca was ACCIDENTLY transported, to have just the extraordinary tech needed to defeat Georgiou. I think the only reason he protected the Gagarin was to maintain his cover long enough to acquire the necessary telemetry from the 133 spore jumps to return to the MU. See below: