That theory is bunk because Kirk is already out of the academy by now
I will preface this by clarifying that I'm in no way remotely convinced at this point that Lorca is/was/will be Garth, or have any direct connection to him, though I've made at least one
half-joking reference to the theory here, and I've
definitely picked up some definite TOS-ish "mad starship captain" vibes from him that would seem appropriate, to be sure...
However, I would point out that we have no idea from "Whom Gods Destroy" (TOS) as to how long it was after Axanar (which should indeed already be in the past with respect to DSC) and his other famed exploits that Garth was "maimed" in an unspecified "accident," and subsequently taught the techniques of cellular metamorphosis by the Antosians to heal himself, nor how long it was after
that that he mastered shapeshifting and went mad, and tried to destroy them, and was relieved of command by his crew—which Garth
calls a "mutiny" but was most probably no such thing at all, in all likelihood being perfectly justified and legal, as Kirk implies by saying
his crew would do the same. Garth had only recently arrived as an inmate at Elba II when the episode began:
SPOCK: Governor, you indicated one additional inmate since our last visit, making a total of fifteen. Is that correct?
GARTH-AS-CORY: It is. The rehabilitation program isn't progressing too well, and I have my doubts about the effectiveness of this medicine, too.
KIRK: Why, Donald, are you becoming a pessimist?
GARTH-AS-CORY:
I'm afraid I have.
SPOCK: A total of fifteen incurably insane out of billions is not what I would call an excessive figure. Who is the new inmate?
GARTH-AS-CORY: Garth. Garth of Izar, the former starship fleet captain.
KIRK: When I was a cadet at the Academy, his exploits were required reading. He was one of my heroes. I'd like to see him, Donald.
[...]
GARTH: You will address me by my proper title, Kirk.
KIRK: I'm sorry. I should've said Captain Garth.
GARTH: I am Lord Garth, formerly of Izar, and I lead the future masters of the universe.
KIRK: I'm sorry, Lord Garth.
GARTH: You Earth people are a stiff necked lot, aren't you?
[...]
GARTH: My crew mutinied. The first use I will make of the Enterprise
is to hunt them down and punish them for that.
KIRK: The crew of the Enterprise
will also mutiny.
[...]
KIRK: How does he manage to change form at will?
CORY: The people of Antos taught him the techniques of cellular metamorphosis, to restore the destroyed parts of his body. By himself, he later learned to use the technique to recreate himself into any form he wished. The first time we knew about it was when a guard, seeing what he thought was me in Garth's cell, released him.
[...]
GARTH: Oh, you'll find that I am magnanimous—to my friends—and merciless to mine enemies. And I want you, both of you, to be my friends.
SPOCK: On what, precisely, is our friendship to be based?
GARTH: Well, upon the firmest of foundations, Mister Spock! Enlightened self-interest. You, Captain, are second only to me as the finest military commander in the galaxy.
KIRK: That's very flattering. I am primarily an explorer now, Captain Garth.
GARTH: And so have I been. I have charted more new worlds than any man in history.
SPOCK: And tried to destroy Antos IV. Why?
GARTH: Well, I could say because they were actively hostile to the Federation.
KIRK: Yes, you could say, but that would be untrue.
GARTH: Agreed. Actually, they were quite harmless, and they made me whole when I was maimed and dying. And in my gratitude, I offered them the galaxy. They rejected me, and I condemned them to death.
SPOCK: How could you, a starship fleet captain, believe that a Federation crew would blindly obey your order to destroy the entire Antos race, a people famous for their benevolence and peaceful pursuits?
GARTH: That was my only miscalculation. I had changed. I had risen above this decadent weakness—which still has you in its command, by the way, Captain. My crew had not. I couldn't sway them, but my new crew, the men in this room, will obey my orders without question. Gentlemen, you have eyes but you cannot see! Galaxies surround us, limitless vistas. And yet, the Federation would have us grub away like some ants, on some somewhat-larger-than-usual anthill! But I am not an insect! I am master of the universe, and I must claim my domain!
KIRK: I agree there was a time when war was necessary, and you were our greatest warrior. I studied your victory at Axanar when I was a cadet. In fact, it's still required reading at the Academy.
GARTH: As well it should be.
KIRK: Very well. But my first visit to Axanar was as a new-fledged cadet on a peace mission.
GARTH: Peace mission! Politicians and weaklings!
KIRK: They were humanitarians and statesmen, and they had a dream. A dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars, a dream that made Mister Spock and me brothers.
GARTH: Mister Spock, do you consider Captain Kirk and yourself brothers?
SPOCK: Captain Kirk speaks somewhat figuratively, and with undue emotion. However, what he says is logical, and I do, in fact, agree with it.
GARTH: Blind! Truly blind! Captain Kirk is your commanding officer, and you are his subordinate, and that is all. Yet, Mister Spock, you are a worthy commander in your own right, and in my fleet, you will surely have a starship to command.
SPOCK: Please forgive me, but exactly where is your fleet?
GARTH: Out there, waiting for me. They will flock to my cause, and for good reason. Limitless power, limitless wealth, and solar systems ruled by the elite! We, gentlemen, are that elite, and we must take what is rightfully ours from the decadent weaklings that now hold it!
SPOCK: Captain Garth...
GARTH: Lord Garth!
SPOCK: As you wish. At any rate, you must be aware of the fact that you are attempting to recreate the disaster which resulted in your becoming an inmate in this place.
GARTH: I was betrayed and treated barbarically.
SPOCK: On the contrary, you were treated with justice, and with compassion, which you failed to show towards any of your intended victims. Logically, therefore, one must assume—
GARTH: Remove this animal!
[...]
KIRK: Captain Garth...
GARTH: Lord Garth!
KIRK: No, Sir. Captain Garth, starship fleet captain. That's an honorable title.
GARTH: And I was the greatest of them all, wasn't I?
KIRK: Yes, you were. Yes. But you're a sick man now, Sir.
GARTH: I have never been more healthy.
KIRK: No. No, think...think back to what you were before the accident that sent you to Antos IV. Try.
GARTH: I can't remember. It's almost as if I had died and was reborn.
KIRK: No, I...I can remember. You were the finest student at the Academy, the finest starship captain. You were the prototype, the model for the rest of us.
GARTH: Yes, I do remember that. It was a great responsibility, but one I was proud to bear.
KIRK: And you bore it well. And the disease that changed you, it's not your fault. And the terrible things you did since then...not truly responsible.
Aside from his ability to metamorphose, he also says he can't remember much about the person he was before Antos and almost feels himself to have "died" and been "reborn." Some details like the lines about "the destroyed parts of his body," charting "more new worlds than any man in history," and particularly "you have eyes but you cannot see" are intriguing. But others
seem to counter-indicate any direct connection to Lorca. For one thing, Garth indeed seems to have been
intended to be
from Izar originally—by his othering reference to "you Earth people"—though I suppose it would be possible that this could be a human colony or something. Kirk recognizes him by name, and his shapeshifting ability was unknown to the staff before he arrived, so it doesn't seem that he could have become famous under a different name and/or appearance and only later started calling himself Garth of Izar.
But...since Garth
could change form at will to masquerade as others, and this
wasn't known to anyone who lived to tell the tale until later, and we don't know what happened to him or where he was during potentially-long stretches of his past...it's just possible that something could be made to work there, somehow,
if a writer were determined to. Again, though, seems a stretch at this point. Garth
is rather conspicuous by his absence in the list of prominent starship captains consulted by Saru, but I suppose this could be due to CBS not wanting to throw any fuel on the
Axanar fire.
Still, it's interesting how "Whom Gods Destroy" has ties that go back to "Dagger Of The Mind" (TOS), which is also involved with another character theory floating around about Cornwell being Lethe, by way of the neural neutralizer, a device that in some ways eerily prefigures the Klingon mind-sifter from "Errand Of Mercy" (TOS), theorized to be potentially involved with the Tyler/Voq transformation. Another element of "Dagger" is the reform of Federation penal colonies having taken place over the preceding twenty years, meaning DSC is taking place right in the middle of that period, though the one Burnham was on her way to didn't sound to have been so reformed yet. And the particular colony there was called Tantalus, a name that would later be re-used in context of the device from "Mirror Mirror" (TOS) suggested as pertaining to the Mirror Lorca theory. It's thin, but to those even slightly disposed to any degree of conspiratorial thinking, there's
just enough of a smoke-wisp there to suggest the slight
possibility of a fire. These coincidences, though that may well be all they are,
do send a tiny tickle through my threat ganglia.
I have to say those sensors they planted on the Klingon ship were too big. I would have expected something small and not easily detectable, but I guess it didn't matter at the end.
Hah, yes indeed! They seemed
very conspicuous, and not
only because of their size. Bright flashing lights and sounds! I was thinking: "yeah, no way
those will be noticed!"
We know Kol is a member of the House of Kor, but we don't know exactly how Kol and Kor are related. They could be brothers, cousins, uncle/nephew, etc. It's anybody's guess at this point.
We don't know the exact relationship between Kor and Kol, other than I've assumed that Kol was the head of his house (the House of Kor, inexplicably), and was probably the eldest brother. Since DS9 established that Kor's father was Rynar (unless, I guess, we can attest to a Worf-Martok-type adoption scenario late in life), this makes them at a minimum brothers or maybe cousins or something, with Kor being named after an earlier Kor of House Kor from long ago.
Yes, we see from TUC and ENT that Klingon given names tend to recur generationally.
At some point, fans need to drop the whole "Lorca is a villain / mirror universe guy / Section 31 agent / evil a-hole" rhetoric. The last few episodes (really since Cornwell showed up) he's been fighting back to who he really is.
Guy's just fighting personal demons. And he's not a virtuous bore like some of the other Captains have been...so this seems to throw everyone for a loop.
Best character the franchise has seen in a long long time.
Nah...people are too hung up on the "Jason Isaacs is a villain" thing. Sometimes it's just simple stuff. Stamets volunteered to do one more jump, and in his weakened / non-ideal state...the jump put them somewhere nobody wanted them to be.
Lorca isn't trying to push his agenda this time. He just wanted to get back to the Starbase.
I agree. I really don't see how Lorca was pushing Stamets to do the jump. If the starbase was more than 3 hours away, I could see it, but that seems like a very reasonable amount of time with a very low risk of danger. I think Stamets just realized that doing one more "simple" jump after doing so many wasn't going to do any more harm to him, and wanted the Discovery to not be in any danger whatsoever, even with the relative low risk of same.
Yeah. If this was his "masterful manipulation" then the writers are idiots. Lorca presumably doesn't read minds, and he had no way of knowing Stamets was going to suggest "one last jump." If they wanted to get across that this was all Lorca's nefarious plan they should have had the idea originate with Lorca to begin with.
I'm loving the character, too. There's definitely
something up with him, though, whatever it may be. He's more than what he seems on his face—no pun intended—or should that be his
back? The revelation here that he's been collecting data from the spore jumps with an eye—again, no pun intended—toward accessing alternate universes is a bit of red flag. And I definitely got the impression he pulled a bit of "reverse psychology" on Stamets. His overall motives certainly aren't clear as yet, though
Explain the ending of TUC, then.
I get it. I see it, too. But if Klingon blood is canonically red, you cannot explain the ending of TUC. What we see places two canon pieces of evidence against one another. You can prefer one over the other, sure, and we all know there are times in TOS when, shall we say, they were a little loose with canon (mostly uniform errors) but if Klingon blood was always red and never anything else, Col. Worf's comment makes no sense at all.
All I'm saying is that it is an issue that is unresolved. That is all. For whatever reason--and, hell, TUC had at least two shades of Klingon blood!--we have a difference in blood that isn't explained by what you see! Unless Col. Worf was talking about texture--which would be odd, but what the hell? Why not?--he was referring to the colour he saw seeping out of Col. West's mask.
I'm not usually one to make such a suggestion, but I would point out that the Scooby-Doo endng was actually cut entirely from the theatrical release of the movie. Is it even, dare I say it, canon?
We met Voq's daddy in the pilot.
Very klingon, and very disappointed.
We did? I thought he was the Son of None.
It’s looking more and more like the Ash is Voq theories are true. But it’s obvious Ash has no idea—he was genuinely traumatized, and from his POV what happened between him and L’Rell was clearly rape. I think they should have used the actual word rape if they were going to show flashbacks of him getting raped. Semantics, perhaps, but I do wonder if it's because it's Star Trek or because the victim is male that they didn't actually come out and use the word.
Seems natural—well, maybe not that, but unfortunately realistic in today's context, if not in the future—that a man like Tyler might have some difficulty identifying and labeling his
own victimhood by that particular term. Being the victim of rape/sexual assault is indeed
extremely traumatizing, and many victims remain in denial about it for a long time. To me it seemed he simply couldn't bring himself to say it plainly. There's obviously still much more resolution to that plotline to come, so it's quite possible that the term indeed
will be used.
The stuff with Tyler added some interesting new wrinkles to the Tyler is Voq theory. My thinking right now is that he is actually a sleeper and has no idea he is Voq, and that the torture and sex flashbacks were actually Voq being turned into Tyler, and the sex was entirely consensual romantic sex between them.
The last statement doesn't follow from those that precede it. At least, by no means necessarily.
Very true. The eventual “Tyler is Voq” reveal has the potential to undermine the whole graveness of the PTSD storyline. I really hope this story has at least some kind of surprise left in the second part of season one.
For me, it's only
now in
this episode that the PTSD angle, and indeed the whole character of Tyler as presented, are actually beginning to work effectively! I don't find it to undermine anything, but rather to bring it all to bear.
I don't know what's going on either, but Lorca being Voq makes a hell of a lot more sense than Tyler. For one thing, killing Kol has been Voq's primary motive this entire time, and taking command of Discovery was his best chance of actually doing this. I also don't think that Tyler could have had false memories pushed on him in the month-or-so that L'Rell was working him over.
I think Voq's primary motive was nothing so mundane, but rather was the same as T'Kuvma's: to unite the Klingon people through Kahless' teachings. Kol was a prominent obstacle to that, sure—and you'll note that he now
is dead—but he surely wasn't the only one. There's surely
much more to whatever "plan" he and L'Rell initially cooked up to be yet revealed...and keep in mind that whatever it was, it may
not in fact go as planned, now. Tyler may well end up having no desire to return to being Voq—even
after realizing he once was in some fashion, which he doesn't as yet—and it may very well not be possible, given statements we've had from L'Rell about "sacrificing eveything" and being "gone forever." I'm still thinking Voq and Tyler may have been "sifted" together
a la Tuvix, and there will be no going back. That's got to do a real number on one, psychologically. Maybe he'll
stay a protagonist instead of reverting to an antagonist. (And actually, it seems to me that Voq never
was particularly heavily characterized as one to begin with, at least not compared to others like Kol.)
As for false memories, I know this must be getting a little repetitive, but I'll go ahead and post it again. From the very-first-ever Klingon story, "Errand of Mercy" (TOS), which has already received a couple of other subtle callbacks in DSC...
KLINGON: He is what he claims to be, Commander, a Vulcanian merchant named Spock. His main concern seems to be how he will carry out his business under our occupation.
KOR: Nothing else?
KLINGON: The usual, a certain amount of apprehension regarding us. The mind is remarkably disciplined.
KOR: You are sure?
KLINGON: I used Force Four, which is sufficient to break down any pretense.
KOR: Very well, Lieutenant. Would you like to try our little truth finder?
KIRK: I don't understand.
KOR: It's a mind-sifter, or mind-ripper, depending on how much force is used. We can record every thought, every bit of knowledge in a man's mind. Of course, when that much force is used, the mind is emptied. Permanently, I'm afraid. What's left is more vegetable than human.
KIRK: And you're proud of it.
KOR: It is a tool, a weapon. Somewhat drastic, but very efficient.
KIRK: Are you sure you're all right?
SPOCK: Perfectly, Baroner. But it was an interesting experience.
[...]
KIRK: That mind-sifter can't be all the terror they think it is.
SPOCK: It should not be underestimated, Captain. It reaches directly into the mind. We Vulcans have certain mental...certain disciplines which enable me to maintain a shield. Without those disciplines, there would be no protection.
[...]
KOR: You'll have a drink with me, Captain?
KIRK: No, thank you.
KOR: I assure you, it isn't drugged. With our mind scanner, we have no need for such crude methods.
KIRK: What do you want from me?
KOR: Oh, a very great deal. But first, I want to talk. Just talk.
KIRK: Do you think I'm going to sit here and "just talk" with the enemy?
KOR: You'll talk, either here, now, voluntarily, or [...]
I can get what I want through our mind-scanner, but there would be very little of your mind left, Captain. I have no desire to see you become a vegetable. This friend of yours, the Vulcan. He seems to have the ability to block our scanner. I think perhaps I will find out why. I will have him dissected. Your friend killed, you a mental vegetable...
And since I touched on the subject earlier when musing on the Garth and Lethe theories, this is from "Dagger of the Mind" (TOS)...
ADAMS: Ah, Lethe, come in. Lethe, this is Captain Kirk and Doctor Helen Noel. Lethe came to us for rehabilitation, and stayed on as a therapist. And a very good one too, I might add.
LETHE: I love my work.
ADAMS: Go right ahead, Captain.
KIRK: Before you came here
LETHE: I was another person, malignant, hateful.
KIRK: May I ask what crime you committed?
LETHE: Does it matter? That person no longer exists.
ADAMS: Um...part of our cure, if you will, Captain, is to bury the past. Why should a person go on living with unbearable memories if there's no necess...oh, I feel quite sure that you'd concur with me in that, Doctor. Helen.
NOEL: The shifting of memory patterns is basic to psychotherapy.
ADAMS: Yes. And now to the toast, hmm? You'll forgive us, Lethe. There you are, Captain. To all mankind. May we never find space so vast, planets so cold, heart and mind so empty that, that we cannot fill them with love and warmth.
[...]
SPOCK: What is our name? Who are we?
VAN GELDER: We are Simon Van Gelder.
SPOCK: Doctor Adams...the neural neutralizer. What did he do to us?
VAN GELDER: He can reshape any mind he chooses. He used it to erase our memories, put his own thoughts there. He was surprised it took so much power. We fought him, remember? But we grew so tired, our minds so blank, so open, that any thought he placed there became our thoughts. Our minds so empty, like a sponge, needing thoughts, begging. Empty. Loneliness. So lonely to be sitting there empty, wanting any word from him. Love.
SPOCK: Yes.
VAN GELDER: Hate.
SPOCK: Yes.
VAN GELDER: Live.
SPOCK: Yes!
VAN GELDER: Die.
SPOCK: Yes!
VAN GELDER: Such agony to be empty.
SPOCK: Empty.
VAN GELDER: Lonely.
SPOCK: Lonely.
VAN GELDER: So empty.
SPOCK: Empty.
VAN GELDER: So empty.
If she grew up on Vulcan, which has thinner air and (I believe) slightly higher gravity than Earth, it's possible she's stronger than the average human.
Plus, as many others have said,
most protagonists we've seen come up against Klingons in hand-to-hand combat tend to make out rather well!
-
MMoM
