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Georgiou and Georgiou: Two sides of the same coin?

Emperor Georgiou was a mass-murderer, committed (or ordered) genocide on a number of species and was pretty tyrannical as a ruler.
Kirk broke the rules when it suited him, but he was never a genocidal killer.
 
I have a bad feeling we're going to have the "genocidal killer" discussion every single time Georgiou comes up. Just so we're clear, I'm talking about specifically what she does in the Prime Universe now that she's been imported over and has to adjust to a different universe with a different set of mores.

Otherwise, since she's not going anywhere, we're going to end up getting into this long, extended debate over and over and over again for years on end. I don't want to do that. I think most people don't want to do that.

And, yes, she has made an adjustment, after being brought into a Universe that she didn't ask to be brought into AND never sought to be brought into. She's learning that what was acceptable in one universe is not acceptable in the other.
 
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Half the control over one set of impulses versus half the control over an opposite set of impulses. Says a lot about the values of society, given the way those impulses are broken up: submissive is considered "good" and pro-active is considered "bad". Which is the type of judgment a society that would expect you to conform would have. So Kirk has to be a little bit of the Bad Boy to get things done, "The Enemy Within" argues.

Georgiou has to be a little bit of a Bad Girl to get things done, and has to make sure it stays a little bit, as Burnham and Leland essentially tell her in "Will You Take My Hand?" and "Point of Light".

"Well-behaved women seldom make history." -- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 1976

Or, to flip it the other way so it applies equally to both genders: Kirk's reputation as a rule-breaker, whether justified or not. Yet, apparently, he's idolized in the 24th Century.

If you are going to be a Captain, a leader, you have to be able to dominate your subordinates when required. Even Picard would agree on that since he did that a lot. I am going to have to see how Georgiou plays out, and see if she is indeed a Twilight Zoneish shadow of the original who become's whatever is expected of her over time in the prime universe. Lorca conformed as well, reverting to what he was when back in evil federation Oz. Or it just could be the Empire's culture does this to everyone.

You need to be overridingly dominant in the Empire to your inferiors, but also submissive to your superiors. It could work both ways, either by nature (they aren't real people) or the Empire makes them this was (they are psychological chameleons). Georgiou is now expected to be a secret agent, she's a secret agent. Michael expects her to be 'nice', she responds to babies as if they are cute, etc. So she's not actually evil or good, just whatever she has to be at the moment to do what she needs to do.

As for Kirk being idolized a hundred years later, take a look at Japan. Rebels there are idolized because for the most part because few will dare to rebel. They are the ones that people remember. The people who did their jobs quietly and by the book don't get remembered in that kind of society.

As for our society, we do come from a Church dominated culture where you submitted to God. Nowadays its to the police. Good is doing what you are told, conforming to what society agrees is moral etc. Evil is anything that disrupts society and anyone who disagrees with who's running it.
 
Emperor Georgiou was a mass-murderer, committed (or ordered) genocide on a number of species and was pretty tyrannical as a ruler.
Kirk broke the rules when it suited him, but he was never a genocidal killer.

But Kirk lived in a society where being a genocidal mass murderer is kind of frowned upon, although several of his contemporaries ended up either doing it or trying to do it anyways and some of Kirks decisions could have lead to mass murder and genocide if his guess had been wrong. Georgiou lived in a society where the Emperor has to do these things whether she wants to or not. It was expected. We know what she did. We do not know whether or not she liked doing it, or whether that will be her go to going forwards, as now she is likely expected to be something entirely different.
 
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I have a bad feeling we're going to have the "genocidal killer" discussion every single time Georgiou comes up. Just so we're clear, I'm talking about specifically what she does in the Prime Universe now that she's been imported over and has to adjust to a different universe with a different set of mores.

Otherwise, since she's not going anywhere, we're going to end up getting into this long, extended debate over and over and over again for years on end. I don't want to do that. I think most people don't want to do that.

And, yes, she has made an adjustment, after being brought into a Universe that she didn't ask to be brought into AND never sought to be brought into. She's learning that what was acceptable in one universe is not acceptable in the other.

Some people are always going to call her a genocidal cannibal. That's just as far as their thought processes go. Nothing really can be done about people like that.
 
I have a bad feeling we're going to have the "genocidal killer" discussion every single time Georgiou comes up. Just so we're clear, I'm talking about specifically what she does in the Prime Universe now that she's been imported over and has to adjust to a different universe with a different set of mores.

Otherwise, since she's not going anywhere, we're going to end up getting into this long, extended debate over and over and over again for years on end. I don't want to do that. I think most people don't want to do that.
Sorry. All I've seen was from the end of last season, where the first bit of advice is to destroy the klingon homeworld, and unfortunately she can't destroy all of them, oh well.

And, yes, she has made an adjustment, after being brought into a Universe that she didn't ask to be brought into AND never sought to be brought into. She's learning that what was acceptable in one universe is not acceptable in the other.
She should sue for wrongful bir- something. :D

The Lorca we've always seen was MU Lorca, who pretended to be PU Lorca as long as it suited him.
 
Sorry. All I've seen was from the end of last season, where the first bit of advice is to destroy the klingon homeworld, and unfortunately she can't destroy all of them, oh well.

Which was just what the Star Fleet War Room wanted to hear, and to have someone to give the job over to who was willing to do it.
 
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Yes in an infinite universe anything is possible, but likewise infinitely unlikely.

And "unlikely" is also removed as a factor here if the whole thing is a selection process where the Regular character homes in on the hole left by the Mirror counterpart.

It would be almost infinitely unlikely for me or anybody else to type the string "Golden Gormagander", say. Except in the circumstances that apply here and now, that is. What we observe on the other side of the mirror is merely an Afghanistan banana stand carefully erected for a specific purpose, defying all odds as viewed from here, but having 1:1 odds when viewed from there (and vice versa). It's a weird reality we meet by design. (Just like any reality we're ever gonna meet, really - the one in which we live, and all the fictional ones. They aren't out there at random, but either for a purpose, or then by default.)

But Kirk lived in a society where being a genocidal mass murderer is kind of frowned upon, although several of his contemporaries ended up either doing it or trying to do it anyways and some of Kirks decisions could have lead to mass murder and genocide if his guess had been wrong.

Well, Kirk is a soldier. Mass murder is a number for which the constraint is N>1 and anything beyond that can be haggled over. Kirk kills a lot and gets medals for it; fortunately, he has access to stun guns, but he also has access to WMDs, including the one at his hip, and he wages war and peace with both.

Of interest here would be the specific motivation for doing the killing. And not on the level of "the killings were necessary for greater good", but on the detail level of "I had to kill to set an example that will result in stability and peace" vs. "I had to kill to stop him from killing". Here we can argue that Emperor Georgiou, in her position of Mother of the Fatherland but also as a person who keenly observes the reality around her, kills because she feels killing is a thing to be promoted (for greater good), while Kirk typically kills because he feels killing removes a specific threat at a specific time (for greater good) and doesn't wax philosophical over it.

Georgiou might actually be better positioned to consider NOT killing on occasion, as the specific motivations for her killing folks (personal threat, threat to the realm) have been left behind, while our regular Starfleet heroes still live in the world that taught them they have to kill.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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