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Do we know why Pike and co are in the different uniforms?

I'll spilit the difference with you - I think for the 90s, it tells a good job with the impact of war but its actual representation of ground warfare was quite laughable in terms of how dated it was - it wasn't even the 1950s let alone the 1990s. the siege of AR558 is a mishmash of a homage to different types of war films.

I'd think older movies and shows, meaning the mid-20th Century, would generally have more accurate portrayals of war. Maybe not as well-researched but they'd be more life-smart than book-smart depictions because the writers writing that material would've been WWII generation.
 
I like Discovery so far. Not without flaws and room for improvement; but I hardly think Captain Light Blind can be considered a vanilla, 2 dimensional character. Hes gotten flat in places sure; but he seems to be more of a Sisko/Kirk combo than anything else.
 
I'd think older movies and shows, meaning the mid-20th Century, would generally have more accurate portrayals of war. Maybe not as well-researched but they'd be more life-smart than book-smart depictions because the writers writing that material would've been WWII generation.

Not to mention the actors, more than a few of whom actually did fight in the front lines in the war (Jimmy Stewart flew B-17s, Tyrone Power flew in the Marine Corps, Lee Marvin served in the Marines, Brian Dennehy (Elizabeth Dennehy's (Shelby) father, hit the beaches at Normandy as did James Doohan) The thing was, the older movies were constrained by the Motion Picture Code, so they couldn't really show the full horror of war.
 
One of the things that was annoying about DS9 was that so many of the scenes and incidents of the war story line were lifted from old war movies and had no sense of verisimilitude in the hands of the Trek writers.

The one stand-out shot in all of that mess, IMO, was the look on Quark's face when he shot the Jem H'adar in "The Siege of AR558."
 
[ @Jedman67 , if you haven't watched through "Vaulting Ambition" (DSC) yet, you might want to skip this post.]

How far in are you? :lol:

Honestly, I don't in retrospect find what was ultimately revealed of Lorca to rob his character of dimension, personally. If anything, the opposite on re-watch. I'll certainly concede that it was played a shade hammy in the final end, but really, compare to Kirk's sorry excuse for an equivalent, who, like our Garth, apparently couldn't manage to hold his shit together for a proverbial two seconds under the harsh light of scrutiny. Poor sap was lucky he had his Spock to prop him up, or else his Chekov would've gotten him for sure. Lorca had game. If you can't stand the glare, get out of the...dimension.

(And indeed, stepping out of the universe for a moment, could they really in good conscience have denied Isaacs but one brief chance to let go and ham it up as the pantomime Evil Twin™ while Yeoh got to have all the fun? Especially given that he'd been tasked up to that point with putting more than double the effort into convincingly performing such a fatally-flawed-yet-sympathetic role?)

-MMoM:D

[P.S. -- I won't even bother with any pretense that those puns weren't intended.]
 
[ @Jedman67 , if you haven't watched through "Vaulting Ambition" (DSC) yet, you might want to skip this post.]



Honestly, I don't in retrospect find what was ultimately revealed of Lorca to rob his character of dimension, personally. If anything, the opposite on re-watch. I'll certainly concede that it was played a shade hammy in the final end

No, it was absolutely simple-minded and cliche. Old comic book stuff. This story line alone wiped out any shaky claim the series might have made to any kind of intelligent or subtle storytelling. Honestly, by comparison "Mirror, Mirror" was more sophisticated in conception if not narrative technique.
 
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Not to mention the actors, more than a few of whom actually did fight in the front lines in the war (Jimmy Stewart flew B-17s, Tyrone Power flew in the Marine Corps, Lee Marvin served in the Marines, Brian Dennehy (Elizabeth Dennehy's (Shelby) father, hit the beaches at Normandy as did James Doohan) The thing was, the older movies were constrained by the Motion Picture Code, so they couldn't really show the full horror of war.

Maybe they wanted to escape from it too, to an extent. My grandfather never talked about the war.
 
No, it was absolutely simple-minded and cliche. Old comic book stuff. This story line alone wiped out any shaky claim the series might have made to any kind of intelligent or subtle storytelling. Honestly, by comparison "Mirror, Mirror" was more sophisticated in conception if not narrative technique.
I'd say the first two sentences could well describe, more or less, the entire MU concept and most (if not all) of its uses to date. But that's really part and parcel of the perennial fun of it all, isn't it?

I quite like how they here, by recasting it against the darkness of a wartime setting, took what had been a central conceit of "Mirror, Mirror" (TOS)—namely our Spock's suggestion that "it was far easier for you, as civilized men, to behave like barbarians than it was for them, as barbarians, to behave like civilized men"—and turned it entirely on its head.

And as for an alleged lack of subtlety, the buildup—in hindsight obviously every bit as carefully calculated as that leading up to the Voq reveal—was evidently subtle enough that many here seemed entirely convinced Lorca was all on the up and up, all the way up to when the rug was pulled out, despite all the warning signs. I always had my reservations, and yet even so found his charismatic moral ambiguity charming and compelling enough as to be very nearly won over myself! For once, the Mirror turned out to be the far better developed and more believable character, even if ultimately by default. In turn, his characterization proved of great benefit to Michael's at every step.

Agree to disagree, I guess.:shrug::beer:

-MMoM:D
 
Oh, this was another of those non-surprises that the show completely blew. People were talking about the MU long before the reveal.

I assumed that the very early fannish suspicions about the Mirror Universe were bullshit because the idea was just such completely idiotic fan service and so undercut Lorca that no professional writers would do that. Strictly fanfic stuff, right?

I overestimated the people making STD. I won't do that, again.
 
Oh, this was another of those non-surprises that the show completely blew. People were talking about the MU long before the reveal.

I assumed that the very early fannish suspicions about the Mirror Universe were bullshit because the idea was just such completely idiotic fan service and so undercut Lorca that no professional writers would do that. Strictly fanfic stuff, right?

I overestimated the people making STD. I won't do that, again.

I thought people started talking about the MU because 1) the photo of Jason Isaacs on the bridge with ISS Discovery dedication plaque, which if a fan hadn't analysed the photo to death would have gone unnoticed and 2) Johnathan Frakes let slip that the episode he was directing was set in the mirror universe.
 
I didn't think Lorca was from the Mirror Universe until they arrived there and he started acting a little too comfortable. Before that, I thought they'd just made him a really fucked up character. I would've preferred that, so I ignored the fan theories. BUT him being from the Mirror Universe wasn't a deal-breaker for me. If they'd continued with the character and left him in command, it would've been a case where the lead was simply someone who isn't who he says he is. Just like Don Draper in Mad Men. Given that Mad Men is my favorite show Period, I wouldn't have had a problem with Discovery following this type of model.

As it was, and with the way he was depicted after the reveal, I'm glad they killed him off quick. And, in retrospect, I just try to see signs of him being pretending to be someone he's not that I didn't pick up on before. Not the best thing ever but, like I said, it's not a deal-breaker and I moved on.

Speaking of the Mirror Universe, Emperor Georgiou is my favorite character in Discovery. Unlike with Lorca, I'd be sorry to see her go. Lorca fit in a little too well. Georgiou doesn't even bother with the pretense.
 
I had been hoping that his eye condition and sensitivity to light had been an injury and medical condition resulting from a mission aboard the Buran, possibly even the mission where the ship was lost. Little did I know they'd take an initially intriguing and "where are they taking this" plot point that held potential and turn it into arguably the dumbest and most nonsensical thing we've ever learned about the Mirror Universe...and this is a universe where officers wear gold lame sashes and even the ship's chefs probably assassinate one another.
 
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