More ammo for Lorca (shamelessly stolen from here: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/sho...niforms-next-year.299363/page-6#post-12916830) BBL!
Captain Pike was and remains a proper Starfleet captain; Captain Lorca was an Imperialist pretending to be a patriot and making pretty heavy going of it - put another way, I'd trust Captain Pike with my life AND the future of my civilisation. I most certainly would not care to entrust either to Captain Lorca ... well, to the Captain Lorca we actually meet; I reserve judgement on the actual non-Mirror Universe Gabriel Lorca.
Pike and Lorca were great but the Lorca character was wasted on the MU stuff, he should have just been PU S31 instead who had been to the MU and returned to tell about it. There is still the potential for a PU Lorca though, the jump to the future screws that up though. I am really not sold on the time jump at all, I dont really see the value in rehashing Andromeda.
Maybe because of his origin, S1 Lorca is more capable in military tactic (in ship vs ship battle) than Pike.
But Lorca ended up being the more interesting character. Pike mainly came across as generic Starfleet captain #47.
Pike though Lorca had potential. Would like to see his Prime counterpart as I think that would be a more fair comparison.
I think Lorca was a bigger missed opportunity than Georgiou. I truly wanted him to be like Marcus or Edison from Abrams Trek, a Starfleet officer who suffered from fear and trauma and loss and became a prick to try and survive.
From a shallow point of view, Pike. Because he looks SO GOOD. He FLOORED me when he smiled at Tilly on the bridge when he made her think she had "broken" the captain. OMG. From a not-so-shallow point of view tho... I prefer Lorca. NOT the mustache-twirling villain they turned him into at the end, of course, no - I liked him as a captain because he was so refreshingly different than all the other captains we had seen before while Pike was just "same old, same old' again.
He definitely had the look, and some nice moments. Overall, the writing let him down much like it did the rest of the cast.
They had me completely when they gave him that golden Power Rangers suit in that first episode. MY GOD. I swear if I hadn't already made my choice with Jean-Luc, I'd have fallen for Pike. I was quite willing to forgive them all their plot holes and whatnot as long as Pike was there. (I know, I know, I'm shallow.)
So in other words a Starfleet officer who doesn't act like a Starfleet officer? That seems a trifle counter-intuitive ... and more to the point I'm completely sick of 'Heroes' of the "Well it's a big, mean, bad Galaxy so let's make it that little bit WORSE just to get by" stripe; quite frankly we have enough Villain Protagonists in Real Life without having to endure them in our Fiction (and they seem especially inappropriate to STAR TREK, which - bless it - has done its best to emphasise the Best in Humanity, rather than the Worst).
Star Trek has often had such villains, officers who are doing what they think is right. Lorca would be the opportunity to explore the psychology of it rather than just being a villain. Star Trek can emphasize the best of humanity but I don't think you emphasize the best by ignoring humanity's weaknesses.
There's Ron Tracey, John Gill, a whole slew of Admirals from TNG who don't act like Starfleet officers. I think, personally, there is an interesting story in what makes one lose their religion. Losing faith in something you've committed your life to doesn't make one a villain. The big thing is that the Gabriel Lorca from the Prime Timeline probably isn't a great guy. I can't believe that Mirror Lorca collected all the stuff from his Discovery mancave in the few short months he was there.
Maxwell fell off the sanity wagon due to his family being killed, and Sisko was unfortunately tasked with trying to save the Alpha Quadrant. So I tend to give them a pass.
That's a perfectly fair point and I agree with it, but that doesn't mean I want to spend more than one Season with Captain Queeg at the helm; there's a reason these characters tend to be Villains, after all (and after all, don't we have quite enough fiction exploring Human Weakness or worse than mere weakness already?). Not inherently no, but when what you've committed yourself to is the Rights & Dignity of Sapient Beings (not to mention the establishment & perpetuation of same) it's hard to imagine someone losing Faith in that without taking a nosedive into a very black hole indeed. On the one hand Lorca is not only ingenious, but also a fairly senior Starfleet officer during a time of War (working on an experimental ship); it's quite easy to imagine him either requisitioning these implements under the cloak of wartime necessity ("These kill Klingons!" or "We need to know how to stop these things, so we need to get familiar with them") and/or just straight up stealing them, presumably covering up the thefts by blaming them on the Enemy or pretending these items were blown to pieces as collateral damage. On the other hand I DO rather like the idea that even Prime-Timeline Captain Lorca has an odd fascination with weaponry of the most lethal sort; it might be interesting to depict him as the sort of Captain who collects this sort of hardware, but prefers to keep it safely decommissioned rather than put it to work. I definitely think that 'There but for the Grace of God go I' is a much better register for Mirror Universe characters than 'I'm so EVIL I don't even wash my hands!' (with Mirror Universe characters acting as a dark twist on the characters we know and love, rather than a complete moral inversion cranked up to cartoonish levels of super-villainy). Still, I'm not keen on villain protagonists as a rule and even less keen when they're STAR TREK protagonists; quite frankly we make enough allowances to misbehaviour and misdeeds in Real Life without cheering for nasty characters in fiction.