Mirror, Mirror...Tell Me Now

In Mirror, Mirror Chekov tries to assassinate Kirk, but one of his henchmen helps Kirk defeat the attempt. In the process the henchman disintegrates two mirror universe blue jumpsuit dudes with his phaser. Okay, here's the conundrum...what happens to those same 2 dudes in the normal universe? Do they just disappear?

 

It doesn't work like that. Otherwise Pike would be dead in the Prime Universe.

 

Good point, but wouldn't the 2 universes be out of balance when those 2 dudes are zapped?

 

^ No. People can die in one universe without affecting the other. There's no connection.

 

I guess I'm trying to equate Lazarus' parallel universes with the mirror and prime universes.

 

Where is it said there would be a balance? Mirror Kirk is supposed to wipe out the Halkans. Prime Kirk is making nice with them.

 

That's why I created the thread....there's also an identical thread in the mirror universe. But I hope someone destroys it.

 

It's how they move up in rank on the MirrorBBS

 

The answers to the OP's questions* indicate why MM would have made more sense as a one-off episode, in which the crossover between the two universes occurs when they both have maximum similarity and not only the futures but also the pasts are increasingly dissimilar the further away from the moment of crossover one gets. Instead, they had to keep coming back and showing counterparts not only in the 24th century but also in the 22nd.

* - The answers are respectively: nothing and no.

 

I don't care how similar or dissimilar the MU is to our "normal" universe -- as long as female Starfleet officers keep showing their belly buttons.

 

HaHaHa! Back in the eighties I used to think exactly the same thing my Lord! I'd wonder if that energy could kill the guards here too and those taken by the Tantalus field! But for the last twenty odd years and having seen and read a lot about parallel realities I'd say that both were the same at one time and somehow the Mirror one took another turn to become what it was so changing the lives and events from our prime universe and not affecting ours at all unless they learn how to cross over that is!
JB

 

The fact that anything can happen to any character in one universe, without its also happening in the other, does beg the question of how the two universes managed to be so similar and "opposite", not just during MM, but during DS9. It's something, there's some cause, but we are given no clue whatsoever what it might be.

 

Like Nerys Myk said above, nothing. People can die in one universe but not the other. Don't forget that according to the ship's log, one of Mirror Kirk's first missions involved destroying a planet. It's a safe bet that Prime Kirk didn't do anything like that in our universe. And we have confirmation that Mirror Pike is dead while Prime Pike was still alive. Heck, the DS9 MU episodes were filled with regulars dying over in the MU.

 

Also, the mirror Halkans don't seem to be opposite of the prime. It's like it's not so much a mirror as just "off" in some ways.

 

In my view, in fact that underscores, if not from a "literary perspective" indicates, why MM would have been better as a one-off. Making the Halkans the "fixed point" in the transposition means that the mirroring is in a sense about the Halkans. MM metaphorically asks the Federation to look at itself in the mirror and ask not only "What if the Federation were evil?" but also "What would it be like if there were no Prime Directive?" Those questions are given specific relevance to the case of the Halkans; that's the Mirror Universe's raison d'être.

 

^Yeah, the Federation/Empire contrast wouldn't be as sharp if Vic Perrin was frothing at the mouth in a screaming rage like Mirror Kirk!

 

Similar currents in time, something to do with the concept Spock described in COTEOF: "There is a theory. There could be some logic to the belief that time is fluid, like a river, with currents, eddies, backwash."

I also consider the whole thing to be a one-off. Despite the appearances of what is nominally the same universe in later Trek, I prefer to analyze this episode purely in the context of TOS as a standalone show, rather than using the later appearances to retroactively inform my views on "Mirror, Mirror." (Though I did enjoy some of those later episodes)

Kor

 

Only if this were Lost In Space... That exact premise was used in the third season episode "The Anti-Matter Man."

 

Yes. But as I noted in the other MU thread currently going, the head of the Halkans looks quite a bit more haggard in the MU. He's obviously had a harder life than his counterpart.

Prime Universe:

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x04hd/mirrormirrorhd0009.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x04hd/mirrormirrorhd0030.jpg

Mirror Universe:

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x04hd/mirrormirrorhd0367.jpg

It wouldn't surprise me if the Mirror Kirk & crew roughed up the Halkans during their beam down to the planet.

But I don't think that we were ever supposed to think that everything was opposite in the Mirror Universe. There's no real evidence to suggest that the Klingons and Romulans were good there, for instance.

Yeah, but I don't think that the Mirror Universe is supposed to be an alternate timeline. It's a parallel universe that, for whatever reason, skews more evil than the Prime Universe. People are always looking for a point of digression from the history of the regular Trek Universe, and I don't think there is one. I think it's always been that way.

 

It depends, really. Some 'mirror' universes are parallels, with no actual identical history beyond certain broad strokes, while others are divergent, alternate realities, where there is a fixed point beyond which their respective formerly identical histories diverge into the sometimes wildly different ones we have been shown. There are some who say such a fixed point in MM is Edith Keeler surviving being hit by the semi, or not being hit at all, and then moving on with her mission to bring peace to the world, which clearly backfires. Other would have that the point of divergence is the Eugenics supermen, or Augments, if you will, winning the Eugenics War.