Mirror Universe - Alternate Timeline or No?

[JonnyQuest037]

Does it bug anyone else when some fans (or even writers) treat the Mirror Universe as being the same thing as an alternate timeline?

I've usually interpreted it as a parallel universe, not one that was the same as the Prime Timeline up until a certain point where it branched off from the events we know. I much prefer to believe it had a similar history throughout all time, just with a darker tint than what we saw on TOS, DS9 and ENT.

If any of you are comic book fans, I'd describe the Mirror Universe as something akin to Earth-3 in the classic DC Universe, where history played out as an inverted version of what we knew. The examples given in the classic Justice League of America #21 were American Christopher Columbus discovering Europe, England winning its independence from the United States, and actor Abraham Lincoln assassinating President John Wilkes Booth. I'd imagine that the broad strokes of the MU's history would look something like that.

What do you folks think?

 

[Enterprise1701]

I'm confused by your post. As I understand things, in Star Trek, a science fiction franchise, all parallel universes are parallel timelines with specific divergence points from the prime universe/reality/timeline. And why not? Maybe the mirror universe diverged from the prime universe a year after the Big Bang happened, and thus the mirror universe doesn't have to share any part of contemporary species' history with that of the prime.

Star Trek isn't like DC Comics, whose parallel universes don't necessarily have a common history with the main one. But comics from DC Comics aren't strictly science fiction.

By the way for anybody who is unfamiliar with the concept of branching timelines in Star Trek, watch the season 7 TNG episode "Parallels".

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I'm confused by your post. As I understand things, in Star Trek, a science fiction franchise, all parallel universes are parallel timelines with specific divergence points from the prime universe/reality/timeline.

My point is that the line between parallel timelines and parallel universes has gotten very blurred in Trek, and IMO, there should be more distinction between them.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I don't think there is a difference. "Anything that can happen, does happen, in alternate quantum realities" - that just about covers everything from angry future Romulans appearing out of nowhere to evil empires rising in place of benevolent Federations.

Enterprise's original plan for what became "In a Mirror, Darkly" would have featured an aged, time-displaced Mirror!Kirk creating the MU. An old comic story by DC had the MU diverge when humans lost the Romulan War.

 

[Orphalesion]

Oh there might be a difference between Parallel Timelines and "other Universes".
Parallel Timelines are what branches off of the "Prime" timeline.
Other Universes might be born independent from our own, isn't there a theory that multiple universes exist that are independent from one another? If these should be called "Parallel Universes" I don't know.

I'd still classify the Mirror Universe as a Parallel Timeline. It is too similar to the Prime Timeline to be a completely independent universe.
I also doubt that "Mirror Universe" should be taken that literally to the point that an American Christoph Columbus discovered Europe or anything.
The only real difference we saw was that the Terran Empire is warlike and dominating instead of peaceful and diplomatic (with all the repercussion this entails). Otherwise...the same people were born (even Spock) and mostly served on the same ships together.

 

[Lance]

I came to the realisation long ago that the mirror universe, with it's brutal empire and a savage humanity slashing and burning it's way across the galaxy, is probably *our* future timeline.

Star Trek Prime's normal-rosy-glass-half-full-everything's-gonna-turn-out-alright future is actually the wacky parallel universe to our own. Not the other way around.

 

[RandyS]

I'm confused by your post. As I understand things, in Star Trek, a science fiction franchise, all parallel universes are parallel timelines with specific divergence points from the prime universe/reality/timeline.

My point is that the line between parallel timelines and parallel universes has gotten very blurred in Trek, and there should be more distinction between them, IMO.

Agreed. They way I see it, "parrallel universes" and "alternate timelines", are simply two different ways of saying the same thing. Worf traveled to seven of them in that one episode, the MU is another, and the JJVerse is yet another.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If a parallel universe and alternate timeline are the same thing, then why do people from alternate universes have different RNA signatures as shown in "Parallels"?

 

[RandyS]

If a parallel universe and alternate timeline are the same thing, then why do people from alternate universes have different RNA signatures as shown in "Parallels"?

That's just one way of telling the difference.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ But it's still a difference. A physical, verifiable difference, that shouldn't occur in a simple alternate timeline - in which case life forms FROM said alternate timelines should be identical.

 

[Enterprise1701]

If a parallel universe and alternate timeline are the same thing, then why do people from alternate universes have different RNA signatures as shown in "Parallels"?

It wasn't a difference in RNA. It was that alternate Data detected a quantum flux in Worf's RNA, which is apparently how Worfs from across the multiverse swapped places only with other Worfs. Alternate Data then used that information to determine that all of Worf's matter was from a different timeline. And why not? There must be something in the fabric of reality to distinguish between different quantum realities.

 

[Vandervecken]

If they are divergent timelines--and I favor the parallel-as-in-never-events-intersecting (although touching)-universes-that-were-spawned-separately notion--is there any reason to assume the divergence is one in human history? Why can't the point of divergence have been one in an alien civilization? Actually, I'd favor the divergence not being sentient-centric at all; it could be something as tiny as a decaying particle in one universe and the lack of that particle in the other, at some critical, early stage of Big Bang expansion.

But it's for just that reason that I favor the parallel explanation. Where does the energy come from for the creation of all these universes spawned because of a small historical (in all senses of the word, including astrophysical) difference? I could believe that there was, at some point, a gigantic amount of energy that spawned many but a finite number of multiple universes, probably at about the same "time"; but I have a very hard time believing that the energy is just somehow available in some endless cosmic well for the endless creation of universes at random junctures.

And that's another thing: why would some branchings create new universes and not other branchings? Why not every single little outcome/resultant materialized, in which i would include the absolutely uncountable number of particle interactions that could have gone some entirely different ways (plural)? No, I just don't think this makes sense when you ask where all the stuff for these universes comes from.

 

[dswynne1]

My take is that the "Mirror Universe" is what would have happened had Picard and crew had not chased the Borg into the past (FC).

Anyway, to me, a "parallel universe" would be the Antimatter Universe as depicted in "The Alternative Factor" (TOS), where the laws of physics are different.

 

[Enterprise1701]

My take is that the "Mirror Universe" is what would have happened had Picard and crew had not chased the Borg into the past (FC).

Canon has already established the divergence to be earlier than 2063. In the "In a Mirror, Darkly" two-parter, the opening credits show the Terran Empire insignia superimposed over a World War II-style scene, mirror Archer says the Empire has existed for centuries (presumably at least 200 full years before 2155), and mirror Phlox declares after reading the Defiant's database that all prime universe authors except Shakespeare were weak.

 

[Mudd]

It's an alternate universe.

 

[F. King Daniel]

My take is that the "Mirror Universe" is what would have happened had Picard and crew had not chased the Borg into the past (FC).

Canon has already established the divergence to be earlier than 2063. In the "In a Mirror, Darkly" two-parter, the opening credits show the Terran Empire insignia superimposed over a World War II-style scene, mirror Archer says the Empire has existed for centuries (presumably at least 200 full years before 2155), and mirror Phlox declares after reading the Defiant's database that all prime universe authors except Shakespeare were weak.

Read 1984. How many of the differences were legitimate, and how many were Empire-sanctioned revisions? The MU split could have begun at First Contact, and anything saying otherwise could be propaganda.

 

[at Quark's]

Read 1984. How many of the differences were legitimate, and how many were Empire-sanctioned revisions? The MU split could have begun at First Contact, and anything saying otherwise could be propaganda.

True. But if we accept that, how sure can we be of the truth of many statements given by prime-universe Federation or Starfleet members ?

I mean, the prime universe Federation is supposed to be benign, but I certainly wouldn't put propaganda and less eye-catching history revisions past them. Even today western societies espouse very similar values like open access to information, free speech, and such, and there still is a significant amount of these things going on in our own societies ...

Since I really don't like that possibility, I choose to accept their statements, and those of the mirror universe, as true. In fact, I think it is a completely different universe, not a deviation from "our" timeline at some point.

 

[Vandervecken]

There could be a "divergence" aspect to these universes' development, so that they were created with a random/chaotic menu of differences, with each of these differences resulting in--sometimes--similar but never intersecting universes. Events are copies of each other in different universes, and also variations, as in "Parallels." Parallels bothers me, though, because it is explicit in the episode that these parallel-universe creations are still occurring, since what we see are all variations of Worf's life. I considered that, maybe, a much earlier event on a cosmic timeline gave rise to these differences and not any difference in Worf's life, only giving the illusion of later universe creations when in fact all the differences had been marked out since each universe's beginning. Somehow the level of minutiae of the changes dictated by such super-early events bothers me, but I suppose it's possible.

I do think any idea that somehow the Mirror universe and other universes like it are some other class of universe than Worf's quantum universes in Parallels would be unsustainable. I mean, different kinds of parallel universes? Seems too crowded to me. I have a hard time thinking of a scientific objection to that last thought, though. Thee could be different classes of "parallel" universes. The idea feels wrong to me, though.

 

[RandyS]

It's an alternate universe.

Exactly so.

 

[The Wormhole]

My take is that the "Mirror Universe" is what would have happened had Picard and crew had not chased the Borg into the past (FC).

Canon has already established the divergence to be earlier than 2063. In the "In a Mirror, Darkly" two-parter, the opening credits show the Terran Empire insignia superimposed over a World War II-style scene, mirror Archer says the Empire has existed for centuries (presumably at least 200 full years before 2155), and mirror Phlox declares after reading the Defiant's database that all prime universe authors except Shakespeare were weak.

Plus, the animated graphic in the credits of the Terran Empire logo (globe with a dagger going through it) shows the globe spinning in the opposite direction that Earth does. Taken literally, this would mean that in the MU, Earth spins the opposite direction, and the sun actually rises in the west and sets in the east. A pretty distinct difference between the two universes which would make it very clear they were always different.