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Just finished. Took my time with it so that I could enjoy a coda to the season finale.
In Desperate Hours, the turtleneck uniform is described as new, so I’m unsure which uniform April would’ve worn. By logic, it would be the Disco style, but my head is used to various depictions of April in turtleneck.
The big thing that struck me is that Prime Lorca, by the end of it all, seems like he isn't far off from what Mirror Lorca portrayed him as. He was a man willing to let his rage fuel him, who had a get it done kind of attitude, and who had seeds of doubt that he could conform to Federation ideals. Though that tag at the end and the words he's trying to live by make me think that maybe he had softened a bit over the ten years following Tarsus IV.
The big thing that struck me is that Prime Lorca, by the end of it all, seems like he isn't far off from what Mirror Lorca portrayed him as. He was a man willing to let his rage fuel him, who had a get it done kind of attitude, and who had seeds of doubt that he could conform to Federation ideals. Though that tag at the end and the words he's trying to live by make me think that maybe he had softened a bit over the ten years following Tarsus IV.
It's a bit hard to glean too much given this novel shows Prime Lorca at a low point in his life when he is consumed by grief and rage. What the book did show of Lorca before the Tarsus IV incident showed him to be a relatively easy-going and chill individual as opposed to the power-hungry maniac Mirror Lorca turned out to be.
It's a bit hard to glean too much given this novel shows Prime Lorca at a low point in his life when he is consumed by grief and rage. What the book did show of Lorca before the Tarsus IV incident showed him to be a relatively easy-going and chill individual as opposed to the power-hungry maniac Mirror Lorca turned out to be.
Based on what we saw of him, I think Prime Lorca probably would have been pretty motivated in the fight against the Klingons, if he had seen the Buran destroyed. Mirror Lorca didn't turn on full maniac mode until he got out of the agonizer booth on the Charon.
The only person we saw who knew Prime Lorca and Mirror Lorca was Cornwall, and it was a handful of very specific things that made her suspicious, which were all places where his MU-ness was slipping (his stubbornness about his eyes, his weird fixation on Burnham, and the fact that he instinctively expected to be murdered in his sleep), so it seems that Lorca was doing a pretty spot-on impersonation of his counterpart most of the time, probably moreso when he started to mellow a bit after breaking out of Klingon jail.
Still, though, it's interesting that Lorca seems to be the only Terran leader with the bare minimum of competence necessary to both notice he's in a topsy-turvy alternate universe where everything is different, and to also put the slightest effort into blending in.
I wish latter-day Trek weren't so enamored of using "Terran" as a shorthand for "Mirror Universe Empire denizen." After all, "Terran" has been a demonym for Earthlings in science fiction for a very long time, and TOS and TNG used it to refer to Earth people from our universe on many occasions. And never used it for the Mirror Universe, since it was DS9 that first used "Terran" as a label for humans used by the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance -- their enslavers' epithet for them rather than their name for themselves. So ENT and DSC retconning it into the Empire's name for itself is kind of a continuity glitch.
I wish latter-day Trek weren't so enamored of using "Terran" as a shorthand for "Mirror Universe Empire denizen." After all, "Terran" has been a demonym for Earthlings in science fiction for a very long time, and TOS and TNG used it to refer to Earth people from our universe on many occasions. And never used it for the Mirror Universe, since it was DS9 that first used "Terran" as a label for humans used by the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance -- their enslavers' epithet for them rather than their name for themselves. So ENT and DSC retconning it into the Empire's name for itself is kind of a continuity glitch.
The MU characters tend to be from the Terran Empire.
There are people from North and South America, but we generally refer, at least in English to Americans and not United Statesians. I take it that way.
When did we start calling it the "Terran Empire?" I know that specific pair of words wasn't used on-screen before IAMD thanks to the transcripts, but I see the MA article for it was created almost a year before that, so it must've existed behind-the-scenes or in fandom for a while.
DSC using it as a catch-all term equivalent to "mirror Humans" has its issues (odd that it didn't seem to catch on earlier. Maybe because the characters themselves were using it as a distinguishing term this time), but it's convenient to have a shorthand for them, just like when we got the word "Augments" to talk about people like Khan.
Not until recently, as I already said. In "Mirror, Mirror" and "Crossover," it was just "the Empire." The only time the two words were used in the same sentence in "Crossover" was "Our Terrans were barbarians then, but their empire was strong." (Note "Our Terrans" as implicitly oppposed to "your Terrans.") Later DS9 Mirror episodes used "Terrans" to mean "humans" but never actually used the word "Empire," since of course that institution had ceased to exist generations before. So the phrase "Terran Empire" was never spoken onscreen until 2005.
When did we start calling it the "Terran Empire?" I know that specific pair of words wasn't used on-screen before IAMD thanks to the transcripts, but I see the MA article for it was created almost a year before that, so it must've existed behind-the-scenes or in fandom for a while.
The earliest use of "Terran Empire" I can find is in the Shatnerverse novel Spectre in 1998, followed by Dark Passions in 2001. Before then, it was always just "the Empire," except in Diane Duane's Dark Mirror, which called it the Earth Empire or the Empire of Earth. So in non-canon usage, it actually predates IaMD by seven years.
I guess it's a natural enough extrapolation, given that DS9 established that Mirror humans were called Terrans -- although that's because it's long been standard in sci-fi for aliens to call Earth people "Terrans," regardless of anything specific to the MU. That's what annoys me about it -- taking something so generic and treating it as if it were MU-specific.
DSC using it as a catch-all term equivalent to "mirror Humans" has its issues (odd that it didn't seem to catch on earlier. Maybe because the characters themselves were using it as a distinguishing term this time), but it's convenient to have a shorthand for them, just like when we got the word "Augments" to talk about people like Khan.
But that shorthand actually works. "Terran" doesn't, because previous Trek has frequently used the word "Terran" to mean humans from our Earth (like when the Vulcan kids in "Yesteryear" taunted Spock as a "Terran," or when "The Best of Both Worlds" referred to Sector 001 as "the Terran system"). So using "Terran" as a distinguishing label for MU humans as opposed to Prime humans is confusing -- or rather, confused. I'd rather they went with "Imperials."
I almost slapped myself when Tilly referred to the MU as the "Terran universe" onscreen, which now makes it the only canonical name for the mirror universe.
I almost slapped myself when Tilly referred to the MU as the "Terran universe" onscreen, which now makes it the only canonical name for the mirror universe.
Burnham did refer to the "Mirror Discovery" in "Despite Yourself," making her the first character ever to use the word "Mirror" to describe the alternate universe in a canonical production.
And given we didn't see it, the most reasonable assumption is that Riley's story is pretty much the same as Leighton's; whole family gets picked, the kid runs off or is sent back, but he's there long enough to see Kodos.
Honestly, the whole "eyewitness" angle doesn't quite make sense even in the episode, since they explicitly have a photo (even if only one) and an audio recording of him (though the episode predates the time when we learned conclusively that eyewitnesses were the least reliable form of evidence, rather than the most). The novel helps with adding all the modern touches about Kodos wiping his digital trail and switching out his DNA sample, and the eyewitness thing is easy to paper over as Leonor not thinking clearly, and the fact that "Karidian" was never discovered can just be chalked up to the fact that it's a big galaxy, big enough that, statistically speaking, nine people who've actually seen you isn't that different from four thousand who are the only ones with sufficient motivation to remember your voice and image in such detail as to identify you on sight.
I think the idea is that being a eye witness gives more credence in the court of law of his crimes. Hence the reason his mad daughter was killing them off.
I found this book disappointing. The story IDEA was a good one, returning to an incident from the Original Series in a satisfying way. This means the reader knows essentially how the story will end, and if finding out how it gets there isn’t satisfying, you should not read prequels at all. The plot gave me enough twists to keep me happy.
The problem was with the execution. The writing is just plain clumsy. The biggest problem is that the book is excruciatingly repetitious, a fault that the editor bears blame for as well as the author. Had I been his editor the book would be at least 10% shorter. To give one example fresh in my mind, in the last summary conversation between Lorca and Georgiou, they discuss THREE TIMES Lorca’s feelings about the outcome,
that he tried to bring the villain to justice, would have wanted to capture him alive, but he isn’t sorry the bastard is dead.
It’s said THREE TIMES. Then he tells her TWICE what an extraordinary person his dead girlfriend was and she tells him TWICE to take strength from her memory. There are many examples of this kind of conversation. Sometimes, as if that weren’t enough, the book then proceeds to restate what the characters have just told you in dialogue. It drove me crazy.
The book also tends to tell the reader about a character’s virtues or faults rather than showing them. This was especially egregious with the character of young Jim Kirk, who the book repeatedly tells us is oh so exceptional, which was completely unnecessary, since his actions show his courage. The little girl, who is introduced to show Georgiou being sympathetic, was an annoying twit the book kept telling me was so wonderfully insightful as it piled on the mawkish pathos. Blech. It would have been way better to have axed her entirely and
have the author who is retelling the story turn out to be one of the minor Starfleet characters.
Finally, I thought the portrayal of the two main characters was just … OK. Lorca is presented as a stiff, military guy who bottles his emotions, which is probably about right but disappointingly flat. The author leavens him a bit with flashes of kindness towards colleagues and bits of snarky humor, which is EXACTLY right, but there isn’t nearly enough of it. And he should be more subtly cunning than he was shown to be. Georgiou comes off as generically heroic. The author of the first Discovery novel did a MUCH better job of showing the playful side of her personality which Michelle Yeoh brought out so brilliantly and giving insight into how she sees the world. Both of these characters are supposed to have a charisma that should have been evident in the way others react to them, but wasn’t.
But the final scene is worth the price of admission,
telling us as it does that Prime Lorca is captive somewhere that sounds very Terran, in a different time that is clearly meant, though not stated, to be the “now” of televised Discovery.
This section was expertly, subtly written to reveal itself slowly, not giving itself away entirely until the very last line, and demanding a repeat reading.
This is the 2nd Star Trek novel I've ever read. Heck, before Desperate Hours I never knew they made Star Trek novels. Anyways, I look forward to the next one.
CBS should have delayed these releases to between seasons, like a new one every other month or something, to tide audiences over.
What I'm not a fan of is the print quality - it doesn't look particularly well printed. I've seen random self-published novels in shops with better quality printing. Why did they cheap out? The writers deserve better.
