Merging this with the Discovery thread
Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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I may be missing a reference, but from what I can tell, the Pocket Mirror Universe continuity makes no reference to the Empress Sato between "Ill Winds" in 2248 and The Sorrows of Empire in 2268. So it's possible that there could've been a period in the 2250s when the Sato line was briefly deposed. Depending on what we learn next week, it could still be possible to reconcile the continuities.
It's like how I reconcile the DC TOS comics depicting a Klingon emperor in the 2280s with TNG: "Rightful Heir"'s assertion that there'd been no emperor in 300 years -- I figure later Klingon history (which we know is often rewritten) just didn't count that guy as a legitimate emperor. Well, actually I figure he's the guy the books established as Chancellor during that time, and that he called himself Emperor but his claim was retroactively disregarded as invalid.
It's like how I reconcile the DC TOS comics depicting a Klingon emperor in the 2280s with TNG: "Rightful Heir"'s assertion that there'd been no emperor in 300 years -- I figure later Klingon history (which we know is often rewritten) just didn't count that guy as a legitimate emperor. Well, actually I figure he's the guy the books established as Chancellor during that time, and that he called himself Emperor but his claim was retroactively disregarded as invalid.
Exactly. Whereas the three Satos were public egomaniacs.
But I favor any sort of reconciliation.
Which Mirror Universe is the one that was spawned off when "Requiem for a Martian" went into production instead of into the shredder?
The Kelvin universe comics gave us a Mirror Kelvin Universe, so it's not without precedent!
Had to look it up. Looks like you're pretty much on the nose. There's no official date on the end of Sato I's reign and the beginning of Sato II's reign. We know Sato II was killed by Sato III in 2267, and she ruled until 2277 when she was Tanatalus fielded by Spock.
Well, the Kelvin comics' interpretation of how alternate universes work is pretty nonsensical and fortunately non-canonical. I wouldn't take it as a precedent for anything.
Gauntlet thrown. Damn.
I've not followed the show any but perhaps this can be reconciled as that the discovery crew simply entered a different permutation of the mirror universe where the whole Sato line didn't exist or didn't continue after Sato I?
After all it has been shown in the novels different permutations of the MU timeline exist in the multiverse.
It seems like the easiest retcon and preserves both the novel MU verse and whatever the show is doing?
After all it has been shown in the novels different permutations of the MU timeline exist in the multiverse.
It seems like the easiest retcon and preserves both the novel MU verse and whatever the show is doing?
There are MU permutations where the Terran empire still exists by Sisko or Picard's time and I don't see why their aren't other permutations that perhaps one of them is what Discovery is interacting with?
The problem is that it was very specifically established that the USS Defiant in this MU came from the same universe Discovery came from. So those kinda have to be mutually exclusive mirror universes, or we just go for the easy "Sato's reign was disturbed for a few years, she went into exile and later returned" excuse. I'd love to read another David Mack written MU book. Maybe the show generates enough awareness for the mirror universe and revives the book series. Or maybe not, but I like to dream
Just wondering, what was the comics interpretation?
But there’s also the fact that the Defiant emerged from Interspace once in the Litverse besides its fate in the MU. So its very likely that the trip threw the multiverse resulted in multiple copies of ‘our’ Defiant going on different journeys.
No, they don't, because timelines branch off from each other. The Prime and Mirror Universes had to be the same timeline once, because they both have an Earth and a human race and so on. The Prime timeline itself has split into numerous branches, such as the Kelvin Timeline, the "Parallels" timelines, and the various Myriad Universes realities. So there's no reason the Mirror Universe seen in "In a Mirror, Darkly" couldn't have branched off into multiple different Mirror Universes later on.
That could work too, providing next week's episode doesn't reveal more that precludes it. On the whole, I'd prefer it to be the same MU, because the fact that there are so many crossovers with that specific alternate timeline suggests that there's some kind of permanent link between them, perhaps as an aftereffect of the Defiant's original crossover. But then, that would still be true of alternate branches diverging after the events of IAMD.
That there's an infinity of alternates wherein every conceivable random thing is true, even if it makes no sense, like all the Enterprise crew being gender-swapped. That the Kelvin Timeline was always separate from Prime, rather than diverging in 2233 as the filmmakers intended. That the characters in the Prime and Kelvin universes actually look different, even though the '09 movie showed that Spock Prime recognized Kelvin Kirk and Scotty on sight, meaning they look the same in-story.
Doesn’t that somewhat sync with Parallels though? But then again, the character all looked the same (more or less).
The "Parallels" timelines weren't infinite or random. Their divergences from the main timeline were things that logically could have gone differently -- Worf and Deanna got married, Wesley stayed aboard, Picard was killed at Wolf 359, the Borg conquered the Federation, etc. They were possible alternative outcomes from the same starting point. There's a fundamental difference between saying "A multiplicitly of plausible outcomes can simultaneously arise from the same initial conditions" and saying "Any arbitrary nonsense I can toss out is real somewhere because infinity handwave handwave." The former is quantum physics; the latter is a layperson's misunderstanding of quantum physics.
The problem with the "An infinite number of universes means that every possible thing will happen somewhere" idea is that even if it's true, it's academic, because it can never be directly observed. If there's an infinite number of universes in which every possible state of the universe occurs, then the overwhelming majority of those universes will be so different from ours that not even stars, planets, and matter as we know it would exist, let alone Earth, humans, Vulcans, or the Federation. The subset of those infinite universes that include an Enterprise and a Kirk, a Spock, etc. in any form will be infinitely outnumbered by those that don't include anything recognizable at all. Which means that in an infinite multiverse, the odds of crossing over with one of those alternate Enterprises would be effectively zero (since any finite number divided by infinity gives zero), so in practical terms it would be as if no such alternates existed at all. The only way you can logically have crossovers between different Enterprises or have people meet their doppelgangers is if there's a finite number of universes that diverge from a common origin. And that means they have to be logical outgrowths from that origin, which excludes arbitrary possibilities like a wholesale gender swap or everyone being a plant creature or whatever.
The problem with the "An infinite number of universes means that every possible thing will happen somewhere" idea is that even if it's true, it's academic, because it can never be directly observed. If there's an infinite number of universes in which every possible state of the universe occurs, then the overwhelming majority of those universes will be so different from ours that not even stars, planets, and matter as we know it would exist, let alone Earth, humans, Vulcans, or the Federation. The subset of those infinite universes that include an Enterprise and a Kirk, a Spock, etc. in any form will be infinitely outnumbered by those that don't include anything recognizable at all. Which means that in an infinite multiverse, the odds of crossing over with one of those alternate Enterprises would be effectively zero (since any finite number divided by infinity gives zero), so in practical terms it would be as if no such alternates existed at all. The only way you can logically have crossovers between different Enterprises or have people meet their doppelgangers is if there's a finite number of universes that diverge from a common origin. And that means they have to be logical outgrowths from that origin, which excludes arbitrary possibilities like a wholesale gender swap or everyone being a plant creature or whatever.
I still think a different permutation retcon works best and that the issue regarding the defiant was that it went into different permutations-many worlds theory and all that.
And from just about the first time I ever heard of the "Requiem for a Martian" hoax (involving a supposed 80th episode of TOS, that was so unredeemably bad* that after a single airing, all record of its existence was suppressed), I'd imagined that the Mirror Universe was the one in which there really was such an episode, bad enough to utterly and irrevocably discredit the whole Star Trek franchise (and demoralize everybody with even remotely progressive political leanings), and that it led to a series of political, social, and economic changes that led to the Terran Empire.
It's as plausible an explanation as any other one I've seen so far.
(If you get the general impression that I have nothing but the utmost contempt for that hoax, you're right. At least the hoaxes about Star Trek having its origins in a forgotten series of dime novels, and/or a forgotten theatrical movie serial, were actually funny.)
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*Supposedly, most of the TOS cast called in sick to avoid having anything to do with the script (an idea that sounds suspiciously like the real circumstances of Don Adams' absence from the Get Smart episode, "Ice Station Siegfried"). In some versions of the hoax, the script was attributed to Fred Freiberger's caddie, as a practical joke, and only produced because Freiberger was too stupid to realize how bad it was.
It's as plausible an explanation as any other one I've seen so far.
(If you get the general impression that I have nothing but the utmost contempt for that hoax, you're right. At least the hoaxes about Star Trek having its origins in a forgotten series of dime novels, and/or a forgotten theatrical movie serial, were actually funny.)
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*Supposedly, most of the TOS cast called in sick to avoid having anything to do with the script (an idea that sounds suspiciously like the real circumstances of Don Adams' absence from the Get Smart episode, "Ice Station Siegfried"). In some versions of the hoax, the script was attributed to Fred Freiberger's caddie, as a practical joke, and only produced because Freiberger was too stupid to realize how bad it was.
I actually had that one all ready to go when I saw the different Terran Empire logo, especially because of the (very silly) mirrored Earth on it. Is Mirror-Earth actually being retconned to be backwards from our Earth? Is that why everyone is evil? But then they went and very specifically cited some continuity, and that went out the window (well, in as much as it can go out the window).
Still, I'll plotz if the mysterious whomever is actually who it was established to be in the novels, instead of someone that would actually be shocking in the context of Discovery alone.
And there's also the same issue in reverse, that an infinite amount of universes will have plenty of effectively identical variations. How long could Worf been surfing alternate realities without noticing if all the differences were "Someone on Earth had two sugars in their coffee instead of one" or "Geordi is wearing the uniform that was second from the right in his closet that morning instead of third"?