Mirror Universe comics from IDW

[EJA]

*SPOILERS AHEAD*




Okay, I've read that IDW are working on at least two comic miniseries set in the bad ol' Mirror Universe. The first series will be about the Mirror-Kirk's rise to power and will look at the other ISS Enterprise crewmembers who crossed over. The second series is said to involve TNG characters. I'm just wondering, will these comics represent a different continuity from the one in the Mirror Universe novels and anthologies?

 

[captcalhoun]

according to some info posted here before, no, they will tie in.

 

[ryan123450]

That's the way I understood it as well. Hopefully all these Pocket tie-ins will mean that any post-Nemesis comics they do will tie in to the fiction as well. I remember a few months back that someone said they probably wouldn't.

 

[EJA]

I don't know. I've read some comments on this forum saying that the IDW comics have contradicted some elements of the novels.

 

[8of5]

IDW are not beholden to follow Pocket's lead. So far they've not really contradicted anything, not have they gone to any great effort to follow anything. The best example of going to efforts which have fit in with Pocket so far is the Andorian Alien Spotlight which incorporated the four sexes idea. So far though IDW's projects haven’t really gone anywhere which could contradict anything of Pocket's

With the New Frontier series and this Mirror Universe series coming up, if anything, IDW are doing more and more that does fit in with Pocket's projects. But if they wanted to go and do something completely contradictory - thier own version of post Nemesis TNG or DS9 relaunch, etc - then they could do, it would be up to them to decide whether it was in their best interests to start something completely new, or work with what Pocket has already done. Just the same as Pocket can (and have) make novels which are contradictory to the main "novelverse" continuity.

 

[JD]

I have to say, I'm pretty excited by the possability of seeing more of the MU counterparts to the TNG characters (other than Picard, Worf, Pulaski, Wes and Vash, who we've already seen).

 

[ryan123450]

There's a mirror Riker on the cover of Shards and Shadows.

 

[JD]

I can't believe I never noticed that.

 

[fleetcaptain]

Makes you wonder who will pop up in the comics too.

 

[EJA]

I've heard that apart from the story of Mirror-Kirk's rise to command, the comics will tell the stories of the other members of the landing party who crossed over, i.e. the MU versions of McCoy, Scott, and Uhura. It'll be interesting to read their backstories, which weren't really dealt with in the novellas.

 

[Therin of Andor]

EJA said:
I don't know. I've read some comments on this forum saying that the IDW comics have contradicted some elements of the novels.

They must be rather minor.

There are recent Pocket novels that contradict recent Pocket novels. There will always be contradictions, simply because the franchise is so big. If Marco Palmieri, Andrew Steven Harris and Paula Block had better-developed photographic memories maybe they'd catch more errors than they do, but the point is, we only notice the things they missed, or allowed to slip through, not the thousands of glitches they did catch - because they caught them!

 

[Christopher]

Well, having recently read Blood Will Tell, I'm not sure it's quite compatible with the novels. It says that the Quch'Ha (smooth-headed Klingons) rose to dominate the High Council by the 23rd century, but I think one of the Vanguard books says they're a second-class population used as cannon fodder, and the excerpts I've read from Forged in Fire sound consistent with that.

Don't get me wrong, Blood Will Tell is an excellent story and I'd love it if it were compatible with the novels, but I'm having trouble seeing a way to reconcile it.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Christopher said:
I'm having trouble seeing a way to reconcile it.

I'm happy to think that somewhere between "The Final Reflection", "My Brother's Keeper", "Debt of Honor", "In the Name of Honor", ENT's forehead episodes, "Blood Will Tell" and Pocket's recent novels, the real truth lies... totally buried by rumor and revisionist history.

 

[EJA]

Therin of Andor said:

Christopher said:
I'm having trouble seeing a way to reconcile it.

I'm happy to think that somewhere between "The Final Reflection", "My Brother's Keeper", "Debt of Honor", "In the Name of Honor", ENT's forehead episodes, "Blood Will Tell" and Pocket's recent novels, the real truth lies... totally buried by rumor and revisionist history.

Oh, the neverending nightmare that is 23rd century Klingon history...

 

[8of5]

Christopher said:
Well, having recently read Blood Will Tell, I'm not sure it's quite compatible with the novels. It says that the Quch'Ha (smooth-headed Klingons) rose to dominate the High Council by the 23rd century, but I think one of the Vanguard books says they're a second-class population used as cannon fodder, and the excerpts I've read from Forged in Fire sound consistent with that.

Don't get me wrong, Blood Will Tell is an excellent story and I'd love it if it were compatible with the novels, but I'm having trouble seeing a way to reconcile it.

Well, that part, referring to the Quch'Ha controlling the high council, was in the past tense, so maybe they had a short rise to power before the foreheads rose up and quashed them. Literally the next panel after that bit this is said "It was our kind who led the Empire's glorious expansion into deep space and conquered countless worlds", which could be taken as a Quch'Ha's interpretation of their honourable service as, cannon fodder, per the novels’ continuity.

 

[Christopher]

^^But BWT shows there are still something like four Quch'Ha on the High Council as late as 2293, in the "present day" frame of the miniseries. They're no longer in the majority on the Council by then, but they're still very much present.

What we need to do is consider the specific references in the novels and see what they say and when they take place. I'm pretty sure the "cannon fodder" reference is from one of the Vanguard books, which is before the timeframe of the BWT flashbacks; so maybe there was a temporary reversal in the Quch'Ha's status that was then re-reversed.

Still, although I'd like it if the references were reconcilable, it's clear enough that the creators of BWT were acting from a different set of assumptions about the Quch'Ha than the novel authors have been. They weren't trying to follow the books' lead, at least not on that project. (Not that they need to, of course.)

 

[8of5]

Well I don't think it hard to believe that the balance of foreheads and Quch'Ha could have changed between the era of Vanguard and the movie era council seen in the framing story of BWT.

Whatever the references in Vanguard (I've not read them yet so haven’t had the chance to spot them myself yet) there's always the possibility they're a generalisation or exaggeration. Four Quch'Ha serving in a council of what? ten to twenty people? still puts them in the minority. If you look at politics in many present day Earth countries you could accurately describe most ethnic minorities as being underrepresented by persons of their own race in the government, but there will likely still be someone from those groups in the government, just not as many as there maybe should be.

 

[trampledamage]

All this talk of foreheads rising up and coming to power is leaving me with a very Terry Gilliam image of Klingon politics...

 

[Therin of Andor]

Christopher said:
I'm pretty sure the "cannon fodder" reference is from one of the Vanguard books

And the Remans were the Romulans' "cannon fodder" - was that only in NEM publicity materials?

Seems to me that, depending on the situation, the "cannon fodder" would not refer to themselves as "cannon fodder". In other situations, they would.

Similarly, it tends to change whether women were permitted on the Klingon Council. It sounds in TNG like an absolute that it isn't ever done, and yet Azetbur took her father's place on the Council in ST VI (but made after the TNG reference).

 

[foravalon]

I find absolutely no trouble reconciling Blood Will Tell with the Vanguard books.

It's clear that, canonically, Quch'Ha were the only Klingons that were even seen during the TOS era. Among their ranks were of course the Captains Kang, Koloth, and even Kor, who was "of the blood" and whose family was descended from the Imperial Court itself, was a member of the officer elite, and who would also go on to achieve the status of Dahar Master. That's Canon.

Now the the framing sequence of BWT took place in 2293, decades after the era of TOS and Vanguard. Just looking at the ever-changing political climate of the United States one can witness how often things can vacillate over a significant span of time, and that's in an apparently stable system. Our seats of power don't usually change according to the outcomes of duels to the death.

If one uses any imagination at all, in the glimpses we've seen, very little difficulty presents itself in seeing how the power status of classes could vary over time within the Empire.