And Kira can lay waste to battalions of Cardassian, Klingon and Jem'Hadar soldiers with just the base of her palm. Bajorans are tough.
Klingons may be tough in the sense that they don't admit to being in pain much. But nobody in the Trek universe considers them particularly strong. Worf never does anything particularly impressive for one - Riker has to lend him a hand to open a stuck door or lift a fallen beam, say. Heck, when Kruge strangles worms with his bare hands, this is supposed to impress his fellow Klingons! And then he fights Kirk and loses. Everybody can punch out two Klingon males, though - it's single Klingons that may be a problem (multiple Klingons only ever appear on screen in order to be beaten down one by one)! And a feeble human can almost wrestle down one Vulcan, provided the Vulcan is in plak tow. Torres wasn't even disadvantaged by a thin atmosphere... Timo Saloniemi
I haven't read the DSC forum threads yet, but I'll be the first one to bring up here that the whole mycelial network navigation thing at the end of the episode is totally Andromeda. But in high-definition! I too really liked the firefight in the corridor. Interesting how neither side was fixated on vaporizing the other, but not EVERYONE on either side was shooting to poof, only to skewer. Mark
The exact mechanism of MU Lorca reaching the Unleaded Universe is left a bit vague. I mean, we find out it was the "Mirror, Mirror" thing, with transporters and ion storms. But 1) where was Lorca transporting to? (Possibly the nearby planet, possibly the Palace that was seconds away from gunning down his ship to avenge Burnham.) 2) when was Lorca doing this? He claims he's been gone for "one year, 212 days", which would be before the Klingon war and hence before the USS version of the Buran could be lost to Klingons (even if Starfleet didn't think the incident counted as major Klingon aggression, they wouldn't easily accept Lorca's claim that blowing up the crew to protect them from cruel Klingons was merciful - no recent reminders of Klingon cruelty!). Or is he saying "one year, I mean, 212 days more exactly"? That'd work timeline-wise in putting him aboard the Buran during the war and aboard the Discovery before Burnham arrives. But he could also have arrived somewhere else, located his Doppelgänger, and plotted for the better part of a year to organize a proper switcheroo. 3) why wouldn't Lorca use the same trick for returning home? Transporters might give him precision. (But the Discovery probably gave him flexibility and unpredictability.) Timo Saloniemi
Did he have the capacity to re-create the accident exactly? I find it hard to believe that simply beaming in the vicinity of an ion storm is sufficient to change universes. Perhaps there are invisible weak points within the multiverse that are susceptible to this kind of transfer? The Alliance seems to have cracked it by the 24th century (or was it the Terran resistance?), but did Lorca have the resources to work it out and find a way back? How did he hit upon the idea of using the mycelial network? It's all very convenient, which suggests his transfer may not have been an accident at all.
In the original TOS episode, the crossover occurred because there was an identical beamup with the same people at the same time in both universes (in an ion storm, of course). Perhaps Prime-Lorca was also beaming up from the planet at the same time?
Right, so I don't think we can judge Burnham's strength by any Trek standard - except possibly Data. She's got enough strength, speed and endurance to withstand an opponent who - in this case - is holding back and to target their vulnerable spots until such time as she gains an overwhelming advantage (grabs a phaser). She did the same versus Voq and T'kuvma. She's not a featherweight, as stated - her blows are clearly enough to stagger a foe - but she's not a heavyweight or her blows would take them down. Mobility is her watchword. As indeed is MU Georgiou's. And again, Georgiou WAS taken out by a heavier hitter in both fights, but not finished off here.
To answer one of the questions above, Lorca was beaming to his ship when the transporter accident happen, placing him in the prime universe. About the timeline of events, it might be possible that the Discovery, when it jumped into the mirror universe, might have jumped forward in time. The crew might not have known that as they had an unfamiliarity with this new universe, and the things by which they measure time were unknown to them.
At least they used the TOS method for traveling between PU and MU. It is not clear what the time deference was when DSC appeared in the MU.
They've been pretty good about the TOS torpedo sound in recent years, including Discovery (they even had it in "Beyond"). What pleasantly surprised me was the comm panel Burnham hacked in the Jefferies tube made TOS- and ENT-era noises, and even had cheery orange TOS-colored buttons. The rest of the graphics on it reminded me of late-period Enterprise when they were going for a sort of '80s-'60s hybrid look, all straight lines and text labels. It's a nice change from the weird sound-effects grab-bag they've been using where TOS, TNG, and VOY sound effects are used all willy-nilly (why do the Klingons have the same warning tone as Voyager?).
I like the idea that the ship jumped forward by nine months when going from PU to MU already - meaning Stamets nailed it on the way back, but didn't realize he'd actually have to "undershoot". Listening to Lorca's posturing again, though, I'm convinced he really is saying that "one year" and "212 days" are the same thing, with a heavy pause in between. (Also listening to his posturing, I think he's just saying things people want to hear, things to give him the tactical edge. Especially when broadcasting shipwide, or talking to people other than the ones directly facing him. He might be a nice guy at heart, but he's no more at liberty to let his heart hang out than Burnham is - except he's hindered that way in two universes, not just one.) Burnham apparently knows more than just the moves and styles of Vulcan martial arts. Isn't she nerve-pinching the Emperor when delivering her to Lorca? (It would be an odd thing for the two to fake, gaining them nothing and giving away superpowers and whatnot.) As regards trans-universal transporting, "Mirror, Mirror" spoke of the coincidence of simultaneity, yes - but the MU is all about coincidence, in every sense of the word. What the TOS episode also mentioned was a weakness in the texture between the universes, a phenomenon predicted to quickly dissipate and not to return until a century later. Perhaps the DS9 crossovers are enabled by this very return of the phenomenon? It might be cyclic, too, with the ENT incident also dependent on it (and indeed the cycles being responsible for shoving the victims back or forth in time). Timo Saloniemi
I've noted that at one point in the throne room, evil Landry (who, in all honestly, is about as perfect a mirror of regular Landry as ever characterized by a speaking character in this franchise) pulls out her communicator and effectively reads a text message off of it, which she then reports to Lorca. I think this is the first time we've seen a communicator being used for more smartphone-like purposes, no? Even the Abrams movies and ENT leave their flip phones pretty much as voice-only devices? Mark
We do see in "Into Darkness", during the scene with Kirk and Pike at the bar, Pike receives a notification on his communicator which he proceeds to read from, about the "emergency session at Daystrom".
(...One wonders whether those are in English - or in Okudaese, that is, those seemingly meaningless strings of numbers that litter every console. That is, instead of "This is five-niner, ten-fourteen in progress" / "Ten-four, meet at eight, watch your six", Starfleet goes "2948346!" / "Okey-dokey, 2474711 to you too".) No, I don't think the communicators have done anything special in DSC before. They aren't remotes to ship functions, they don't tell the time, their role as transporter beacons is as undefined as in TOS. But just as in TOS, they might well do any of the above without this being a contradiction as such. Timo Saloniemi
We see english text on the communicator screen in "Forest" when Michael is using the Universal Translator to eavesdrop on the Klingons.
If you mean in the preview for the next episode, it's not seen. There's a graphic of what could be a ship (or ships?) behind Lt. Rhys as he announces someone's beaming on board, which looks very NOT Starfleet, but it could be anything really. In other episodes those same graphics are visible but ships matching them are not necessarily there, meaning it could be a generic graphic of some kind. Mark
Yes I should have stated in the preview. Maybe she is commanding A non Starfleet vessel for covert reasons?
Given the dire circumstances presented, it could literally be all that's left of Starfleet by that point - a ragtag, fugitive fleet, composed of damaged ships and whatever else they can scrounge up. We see both the starbase she and Lorca were at previously, and the briefing room set they were in, though the latter COULD easily be a similar room on Discovery. Mark
It's a bit curious how sparsely DSC is using its CGI creations overall. Eaves supposedly did a ton, and we still haven't seen most of them. And other things just flash by... Is there an artistic or a logistical reason for the absence, and does it cover Cornwell's many rides? Timo Saloniemi