Because they're eeeeevvvvvuuuullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!
Much like the rest of the show, it has the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the nads.
MU eye trouble. How?
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Because they're eeeeevvvvvuuuullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!
Much like the rest of the show, it has the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the nads.
Mirror humans are the only thing in the MU that is different, so I suspect the whole basis of the mirror universe is the Sun being slightly dimmer in this universe than in the prime one. Could be lots of reasons for this, but if you're going by "Many Worlds Theory" it could simply be that a million years ago some Iconian smuggler was running a blockade and needed to dump his cargo and had thirty seconds to choose either Sol or Alpha Centauri. In the Prime universe he chose Alpha Centauri, and in the Mirror Universe he chose Sol. And the trilithium dust clinging to one of his containers partially shut down fusion in the upper core just long enough to dim its total output by 20%.
Slightly darker Earth means more aggressive and more efficient photosynthesis evolves, which means herbivores are better fed and better nourished on average. Predators have to become stronger and more aggressive to compensate; add to that a lesser adaptation to day vision and SUPERB night vision, then Earth's predators are probably much better and more vicious killers than they are in the prime universe. Humans' fight-or-flight response becomes more intense to compensate, as does their natural suspicion of "otherness" in foreign species.
There's still no guarantee that this is the *same* Mirror Universe. I know the Defiant is there, but, it didn't look the same, so it's possible it isn't even a Defiant from the Prime Timeline - just one where something very similar happened to it and it ended up shifted, too.
The only characterization Mirror Kirk had was yelling.Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.
The Mirror Discovery characters are more nuanced then that.
The eye thing was simply so they could plant a clue that Lorca wasn't what he was supposed to be. They really didn't need it, since he had the physical scars and the quick temper that helped drive home that he wasn't a normal captain.
I was kind of hoping that Lorca was from yet another universe where the light sensitivity would be justified, but assuming the Mirror Universe is the same one we've seen in other productions, there's been no prior mention of light sensitivity and it now seems out of place.
Discovery suffered an upheaval during its production. It seems the story-telling suffered as a result. Hopefully, season two will improve.
I was kind of hoping that Lorca was from yet another universe where the light sensitivity would be justified, but assuming the Mirror Universe is the same one we've seen in other productions, there's been no prior mention of light sensitivity and it now seems out of place.
Discovery suffered an upheaval during its production. It seems the story-telling suffered as a result. Hopefully, season two will improve.
It "suffered" only in that Fuller was going for a "sliders" style romp through alternate universes triggered by Lorca's deception. The season finale most likely would have been escaping from the MU and arriving in a universe where the Klingons had not only won the war but had basically conquered Earth and the Federation entirely. They spend the rest of the series trying to get back home, jumping every two or three episodes to a new, terribly strange alternate universe before finally jumping back to their own universe.
The producers canned this idea (and it's kind of obvious at that) and opted instead for a more conventional series. Thing is, they haven't really figured out what that will involve since, at this point they,re basically starting from scratch.
Source? For any of this?
It's the same in the same way that Discovery is the same world as TOS - i.e., not at all.
Mirror humans showed zero signs of eye trouble on the fullbright ISS Enterprise in "Mirror, Mirror" or on Smiley's normally lit Defiant in DS9.
Regardless of all that though, I'm curious how the photosensitivity may have evolved.
I wonder how literally we're supposed to take Burnham's comment about the starlight being different, and if this sensitivity extends to other species in the Disco-MU.
Filters in the lighting. It was an MU ship.
I suppose the Third World War on MU Earth led to a much more severe nuclear winter than we saw in our universe and both the survivors of the war and their immediate descendants had to adjust to lower ambient light levels than the Terrans on this side. I don't know how such photosensitivity could develop in just a few short generations but for the sake of argument and "Trek science" let's just say that this is the case. As the Terran Empire learned to use modern technology to filter out the remaining nuclear fallout and particulate matter from Earth's stratosphere the light sensitivity went away, resulting in MU Kirk and his officers not being uncomfortable in the bright lighting aboard the Enterprise in "Mirror Mirror(TOS)" and the ambient light levels aboard the MU Enterprise looking just the same as those aboard ours.
One of my friends pointed out that MU-Vulcans would be good operatives to send to the Primeverse, since they presumably have the same biological protections against bright light that their Primeverse counterparts do.
Wasn't everyone complaining that Disco's MU storyline lacked nuance? I mean hell, by the end, Lorca was paraphrasing Donald Trump, and they weren't being subtle about it. At all.
Lorca was a nuanced character. Until his heel turn and final episode as a cartoon supervillain with the all depth of a WWE wrestler.
It's really weird how they managed that.
It's really weird how they managed that.
More "broken ground", I don't often recall when TOS was doing personal attacks against LBJ or Nixon. The show did comment on Vietnam, etc, etc, etc... TNG did its share of commentary as well, but how often did they go after current political figures as opposed to mere situations, either real or theoretical based off of real events? I don't mean something like "The Cage" where Johnson's face was shown, I mean a whole allegory.
The closest I can think of would be "Only Nixon could go to China", nodding to the audience that only someone opposite of a political party closer-aligned to the political party China had/has would be seen as less controversial. But allegory or namedropping, neither was attacking the actual person, thinly veiled or otherwise.
It was equally lame when the 2009 remake of "V" did equally unsubtle references to Obama, which they were also outright erroneous, but that's not the point. If allegory is about the situation then there's no need to reference an actual person, indirectly or otherwise. The TOS episode that used The Bay of Pigs as inspiration certainly didn't go after Kennedy, ditto regarding the Pueblo incident and namedropping Fleet Admiral Johnson (or whatever) in the message that would take three weeks to reach Starfleet...
It's weirder how the entertainment industry has devolved from issues to ragging on the person.
In physical and physiological terms, this light sensitivity makes good sense, or more exactly is inherently a particularly easy thing to be made to make sense.
Burham comments that light everywhere in the MU is "off" (or "sinister"). But it's not something she can put her finger on, because eyes aren't fingers. They are piss-poor at dealing with absolutes or measuring of relatives. A person accustomed to dark wouldn't find it dark, but any of us could be that person after about fifteen minutes of acclimatization. The MU of "Mirror, Mirror" may be bright or dark, but the point is that the heroes couldn't tell, because their eyes aren't built for being able to tell.
In terms of telling, "Mirror, Mirror" never features bright flashes of light that would reveal differences in sensitivity between our heroes and villains. "In a Mirror, Darkly" isn't particularly dark in absolute terms (meaning the NX-01 there could well be much darker than the regular one but we just won't be able to notice), but it only features villains, giving us no points of comparison. And everybody has good time to adapt before these issues arise in the DS9 romps.
Why is light everywhere in the MU different? Well, when our heroes first hit the realm, Saru comments that almost nothing is where it ought to be. He's referring to the "navigation array" to establish this - so quite possibly speaking of the primary navigation markers being off. So the question becomes, are those artificial buoys, or stars? The latter would explain a lot.
Timo Saloniemi
Burham comments that light everywhere in the MU is "off" (or "sinister"). But it's not something she can put her finger on, because eyes aren't fingers. They are piss-poor at dealing with absolutes or measuring of relatives. A person accustomed to dark wouldn't find it dark, but any of us could be that person after about fifteen minutes of acclimatization. The MU of "Mirror, Mirror" may be bright or dark, but the point is that the heroes couldn't tell, because their eyes aren't built for being able to tell.
In terms of telling, "Mirror, Mirror" never features bright flashes of light that would reveal differences in sensitivity between our heroes and villains. "In a Mirror, Darkly" isn't particularly dark in absolute terms (meaning the NX-01 there could well be much darker than the regular one but we just won't be able to notice), but it only features villains, giving us no points of comparison. And everybody has good time to adapt before these issues arise in the DS9 romps.
Why is light everywhere in the MU different? Well, when our heroes first hit the realm, Saru comments that almost nothing is where it ought to be. He's referring to the "navigation array" to establish this - so quite possibly speaking of the primary navigation markers being off. So the question becomes, are those artificial buoys, or stars? The latter would explain a lot.
Timo Saloniemi
Fuller and others described his original concept as being some sort of anthology series that would explore, as he put it, "Different eras and different possibilities" all through Star Trek lore. Alot of people interpreted this as meaning that the series would have a different cast and a different crew and setting every season, but the basic concept for Discovery and the characterization was already pretty well fleshed out by that point and it doesn't make sense that they would have spent all that time designing a new ship and creating original characters just to throw them away at the end of the season.
So it's obvious that Fuller meant that DISCOVERY was going to explore different eras and possibilities, bouncing around Lost in Space style.
That, plus the fact that the conclusion of the Klingon arc ends in a spectacular anticlimax with the entire war and all of its consequences being basically put on a bus, indicates that the writers preserved the form but not the substance of the original idea. To wit: THIS version of the Klingon War -- with Starfleet loosing -- is the kind of story that could only plausibly end with "It was just a dream/alternate universe" plot twist. Leaving it intact, however, would be like John Archer blowing up the Nascul factory and Daniels telling him "Guess what? Without their alien allies, the Nazis were finally defeated and driven from North America, and everything is back to normal in your timeline now. Isn't that great?"
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