The Mirror Universe storyline and small-universe syndrome

[lawman]

Some reflections on DSC's sojourn in the Mirror Universe...

In TOS's original "Mirror, Mirror," what we saw was one starship crew (among many) from the familiar Trek universe encountering a comparable starship crew (still just one among many) in the Mirror Universe. The characters had counterparts, but they were all similarly situated. To the extent that anything about the MU was ever plausible, this was.

In DSC's journey to the MU, however, things weren't like that at all. Instead the writers upped the coincidences (and the stakes) by a level or ten.

Imagine that you're Michael Burnham. You've served under exactly two captains in your Starfleet career. Now you find yourself in the MU, and lo and behold! Your previous captain just happens to be Emperor of the entire Terran Empire, while your current one is her main rival for that position, leader of an internal insurrection. What's more, you yourself are so pivotally important that the main thing these two power-hungry rivals are willing to fight to the death over is your loyalty and affection. And even more, among your shipmates, your lover is (in his Klingon form) one of the inner circle leading the rebellion against the Empire, and your closest friend, despite being just a cadet back in reality, is now a ship's captain with a fearsome reputation. And at the end of the day, you and your ship not only have to get home, you have to save the entire multiverse in the process.

Put it all in perspective like that, and the whole MU experience sounds less like an alternate universe and a lot more like a psychotic break, accompanied by delusions of grandeur.

If we give the writers the benefit of the doubt, we can assume they didn't intentionally make Burnham and everyone and everything associated with her important out of all credible proportion. On the other hand, they didn't think to stop themselves from doing that, either.

 

[cultcross]

The Mirror Universe has never made any sense if you put even the slightest thought into it. You can't just change the history of Earth into a violent fascist dictatorship and expect, centuries later, the same people to be born at the same time, with the same genes. Then all those people end up on the same ship, or in vicinity of each other. It's ludicrous in Mirror Mirror, it's ludicrous on DS9 (where the ship sailed in terms of people you already know being in important positions, Regent Worf), it's ludicrous on ENT. DSC is no more so. DSC even kind of, sort of, tried to explain it in that Mirror!Lorca deliberately recruited Burnham, Georgiou's protege in both universes, onto his Prime!Discovery, exactly because of her connection to the Empress. So it at least wasn't a complete coincidence. Without that intervention, Prime!Burnham is in some prison somewhere, not in the MU at all, and so the small universe connections to her don't apply.

The only way that the whole concept makes any sense is if you swallow the destiny pill. It is easier just to suspend disbelief and take it as a fun 'what if' story.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I don't watch Star Trek for realistic depictions of scientific concepts. If it's fine in TOS, DS9, and ENT, then it's fine in DISCO.

 

[lawman]

I'm not criticizing the MU as a concept. It's a hard pill to swallow in logical terms, no question. I'm just saying that DSC handled it very differently than TOS, and made it an even harder pill.

(And it's not as if the everything-orbits-around-Burnham approach to storytelling began or ended in the MU. It just seems to me that it reached its apotheosis there.)

 

[Longinus]

The Mirror Universe has never made any sense if you put even the slightest thought into it. You can't just change the history of Earth into a violent fascist dictatorship and expect, centuries later, the same people to be born at the same time, with the same genes. Then all those people end up on the same ship, or in vicinity of each other. It's ludicrous in Mirror Mirror, it's ludicrous on DS9 (where the ship sailed in terms of people you already know being in important positions, Regent Worf), it's ludicrous on ENT. DSC is no more so. DSC even kind of, sort of, tried to explain it in that Mirror!Lorca deliberately recruited Burnham, Georgiou's protege in both universes, onto his Prime!Discovery, exactly because of her connection to the Empress. So it at least wasn't a complete coincidence. Without that intervention, Prime!Burnham is in some prison somewhere, not in the MU at all, and so the small universe connections to her don't apply.

Agreed. I just don't understand that if they want to recycle shit from past Trek series, why it has to be the worst ideas like the mirror universe and Section 31. Warp salamanders next!

 

[Jadeb]

Agreed. I just don't understand that if they want to recycle shit from past Trek series, why it has to be the worst ideas like the mirror universe and Section 31. Warp salamanders next!

In fairness, they're recycling good ideas too. The list, after a single season, is already quite long.

 

[Longinus]

In fairness, they're recycling good ideas too.

Not that I recall...

 

[Jadeb]

Not that I recall...

Don't make me reel them off!

I remember being surprised they were going so fannish as to have Harry Mudd show up in the first season. If I only knew!

 

[Kane_Steel]

I wouldn't have minded the Mirror universe down the line several seasons from now. Problem is it came too soon.

It's too soon for alternate versions of the STD characters when we barely know the Prime versions of them.

The entire arc came off as awkward as a result.

 

[Lord Garth]

I think people are too used to the idea that Star Trek series run multiple seasons. Always assume every season is going to be the last unless we're specifically told from Up Above in advance that we'll have more.

The concept of "we should wait until the __th Season!" is a mentality that's thankfully been done away with in this series. Never hold back. Get everything out now, as if there's no tomorrow, because there might not be a tomorrow.

 

[Jadeb]

LG, do you think the fannishness of the first season helped or hurt the prospect of there being more beyond season 2? Or had no effect?

I just can't imagine non-fans caring about the Klingon storyline. I am a fan and found it painful.

Personally, I would have them find their own way before piling on the Trek lore.

 

[Lord Garth]

LG, do you think the fannishness of the first season helped or hurt the prospect of there being more beyond season 2? Or had no effect?

I just can't imagine non-fans caring about the Klingon storyline. I am a fan and found it painful.

If they're watching it for the first time, it's totally new. "Fannishness" is the baggage that people who've seen it before are bringing to the Table. Someone who's totally new doesn't know the difference.

If my brother shows me a comic book movie or a comic book series, he'll mention all the things that were in the comics, or weren't, or what they did differently, or who they need to introduce, and I have no idea what he's talking about. I only know what I see and I either like it or I don't. I don't care about what happened in #425 from 1993 of some series. If it works in what I'm watching, I couldn't care less about how "fannish" other people -- who can't get passed it -- find it to be.

I'm a non-comic book fan (except for Batman), so I know what I'm talking about here. I'm also a non-Star Wars fan. Show me something from there, I won't be able to tell the difference between what's fannish and what's not. An actual fan would have to point it out to me and I still wouldn't care as long as I liked it.

What makes you care? The presentation. And that all depends on individual taste and what interests you. If it fundamentally doesn't interest you, then it doesn't matter if it's fannish or not.

The Klingon War is the frame-work of the first season but not every single episode was about it. The same as the Dominion War. And I'd take the Klingon War over the Xindi War. I couldn't even take the Xindi seriously when I binged ENT.

I don't remember anyone caring at all about Klingons appearing in other series. Suddenly in DSC it's an issue. This has nothing to do with the Klingons in and of themselves. What this really has to do with is not liking the series -- which is fine -- and using everything in the series to justify the dislike. Dislike doesn't need to be justified at all.

EDIT: And the movie that turned me into a fan was TVH when my parents showed it to me on VHS at the beginning of 1991. I saw that before I saw TWOK or TSFS. Did I throw up my hands in disgust because I had no idea what the Klingon Ambassador was talking about? No. All it did was make me just want to see the other movies, which I did. I didn't walk away because I thought, "Oh no! I don't know what they're talking about! I can't watch this!" I knew this was a reference to something I hadn't seen and I wanted to see it.

If Discovery does its job right, it'll make people want to seek out other Star Trek, of which there is a lot more of now than when I became a fan.

Personally, I would have them find their own way before piling on the Trek lore.

The question becomes what's "their own way"?

 

[lawman]

In fairness, they're recycling good ideas too. The list, after a single season, is already quite long.

No kidding. The number of story beats that DSC has "pre-borrowed" from TOS in just 15 episodes is really kind of amazing.

Prevailing against enemies with cloaking devices? The Enterprise did that. But wait!... Discovery did it first!

Making an adversary of Harry Mudd? Discovery was first!

First contact with the Mirror Universe? Discovery got there first!

Resolving parent/child tension with Sarek? Happened on Discovery first!

And so on...

I think people are too used to the idea that Star Trek series run multiple seasons. ... that's thankfully been done away with in this series. Never hold back. Get everything out now, as if there's no tomorrow, because there might not be a tomorrow.

Well, it certainly does seem to have influenced their sense of pacing, at least.

 

[Jadeb]

I don't mind the Klingons showing up -- I expected that. What I didn't expect was that the storyline would be about infighting among characters who hadn't even been established, delivered by actors reciting words they didn't understand under suffocating makeup. The "Klingon purity" idea went nowhere, and it felt like a continuation of a plot from TNG. There was no reason to care about any of it, from my perspective. If that were my introduction to Trek, I wouldn't have stuck with it, I don't think. That, to me, is the sort of fannishness that's detrimental to the show in the long run.

I think it's fine to bring in cool ideas that newcomers haven't seen before, even if they're a bit well-worn, but I don't think Discovery managed to blend the old with the new serialised approach very well. What works in a 50-minute episode or two lost its luster when spread too thin.

 

[Kane_Steel]

I think people are too used to the idea that Star Trek series run multiple seasons. Always assume every season is going to be the last unless we're specifically told from Up Above in advance that we'll have more.

The concept of "we should wait until the __th Season!" is a mentality that's thankfully been done away with in this series. Never hold back. Get everything out now, as if there's no tomorrow, because there might not be a tomorrow.

And when you rush concepts, world-building and character development without giving it proper time to build organically... you tend to get mediocre results.

 

[ITDUDE]

And when you rush concepts, world-building and character development without giving it proper time to build organically... you tend to get mediocre results.

I think that's a pretty accurate comparison, actually!

 

[Jadeb]

The question becomes what's "their own way"?

I'd say it's their job to find that answer. In an ideal world, they'd have found it before asking people to pay for the show.

 

[Lord Garth]

I'd say it's their job to find that answer. In an ideal world, they'd have found it before asking people to pay for the show.

I'm pretty sure Their Way is to tell the journey of Micheal Burnham and the USS Discovery through long-form serialized arcs, drawing from and expanding on what's in the Star Trek Universe and using that pre-existing canvas to tell its stories in different ways, with a tone that wants to emulate other peak TV series.

But I'm under the impression that a lot of people would prefer DSC do something else and then would call that something else "finding its way". Whereas I'd only call it "retooling the show" or "entering a new chapter", neither of which is the same thing.

On another note, though: at least we all seem to agree that Batman vs. Superman sucks.

 

[Mudd]

The Mirror Universe on STD was the fanwankiest fanwank that a fan ever wanked.

 

[gblews]

I think people are too used to the idea that Star Trek series run multiple seasons. Always assume every season is going to be the last unless we're specifically told from Up Above in advance that we'll have more.

The concept of "we should wait until the __th Season!" is a mentality that's thankfully been done away with in this series. Never hold back. Get everything out now, as if there's no tomorrow, because there might not be a tomorrow.

Ent is the perfect example. Took them 2 seasons to pull it together. They were in the middle of shooting one of the series' most popular episodes in the 4th season (IaMD), when they got the news they were cancelled. I'll bet the production staff lamented waiting that long to get to the Mirror stories.

Yep, the way things are these days, no point in leaving anything in the chamber by season's end.