ENT Season 4 still has that title.
The Mirror Universe storyline and small-universe syndrome
- Thread starter lawman
- Start date
Holy crap people, it's the mirror universe! It's probably one of the most comic book concepts Trek ever did and was never meant to be taken so seriously. It's an inherently goofy concept.
If it's an "inherently goofy concept," don't you think it seems kinda strange for a show like DSC that's trying to be taken seriously as "prestige TV" to devote the back half of its season to it... never mind to amp up the levels of outrageous implausibility even compared to the original?
(Note: I don't necessarily agree that it's inherently goofy. In fact, I think episode 10, "Despite Yourself," actually did a pretty solid job of playing it straight. Things just slid downhill rapidly after that; in the end it wasn't used well.)
(Note: I don't necessarily agree that it's inherently goofy. In fact, I think episode 10, "Despite Yourself," actually did a pretty solid job of playing it straight. Things just slid downhill rapidly after that; in the end it wasn't used well.)
I'm not sure what you mean. Prestige TV can't have fun while still being earnest?
And TOS' "Mirror Mirror" was even more implausible, but that's not a slight against it in any way. Mirror episodes are fun because they're a big "what if our heroes were villains". Even DS9, the darkest of the past Trek series, poked fun at the concept of the Mirror universe, but all in good spirits.
That's all of prestige TV. Game of Thrones is a D&D campaign, Breaking Bad is a stoner comedy, Westworld is a show about robot cowboys. Just add a bunch of rape and blood to any goofy thing and suddenly it's "prestige".
Subjective. Also, changing the point.
While I think Discovery had a very, very large problem with 'small universe syndrome' I can't fault the MU plot, because that's always been what the MU was about right from day one. It's always largely been an excuse to allow the cast to show a different side of their craft without worrying about prime universe continuity.
Nah! It's time for the Pah-Wraiths.
Nah! It's time for the Pah-Wraiths.
I actually like that aspect of the MU. I don't think DSC took any particular advantage of it beyond the first of its four episodes there, but that's another matter.
From "day one," though, the MU wasn't used as a way to put the TOS characters (or their counterparts) at the center of the damn universe. The situations on each side of the divide in "Mirror, Mirror" were, shall we say, proportionate. In DSC, the MU version of reality cranked everything up to 11.
No that's what half the other episodes and every single movie are for.
You're right that TOS didn't do this - this started in DS9. However, TOS started out the MU with the inexplicable (within show) happenstance that everyone who was on the USS Enterprise had a counterpart on the ISS Enterprise, despite centuries, if not millennia, of divergent history. In a way the way DIS (and DS9) did it was a bit more believable, because even though the millions-to-one odd of having the same sperm hit the same egg to get the characters still took place, at least they didn't all somehow end up in exactly analogous situations despite a very, very changed universe around them.
Yeah, the outrageous unlikelihood of MU counterparts even existing is pretty much a given. If the MU is going to be used at all, though, we kinda have to swallow that as an axiomatic component of it.
Having swallowed that, though, it's an even bigger (and more implausible) pill to be fed a story that drives home, again and again, that Burnham and those connected with her are THE most important people in the Empire.
(Granted, that trend kinda goes back to ENT, insofar as it had Hoshi leapfrog her way to Empress. But that story at least kinda rationalized it by way of the tech advantage conferred by the Defiant.)
Having swallowed that, though, it's an even bigger (and more implausible) pill to be fed a story that drives home, again and again, that Burnham and those connected with her are THE most important people in the Empire.
(Granted, that trend kinda goes back to ENT, insofar as it had Hoshi leapfrog her way to Empress. But that story at least kinda rationalized it by way of the tech advantage conferred by the Defiant.)
Almost everyone who creates anything wants to do it well. The problem is not usually that they don't but that they can't.
The trend goes back to DS9:
- Spock rose to become leader of the Terran Empire some time in the 23rd century.
- Worf was the leader of the entire Cardassian-Klingon alliance
- Sisko was the leader of the Terran rebellion
- Kira was the head of Terok Nor, and possibly Bajor as well.
FTFY (as it applies to STD writers)
Guess it kinda does. I've largely blocked the DS9 MU episodes from my memory; they were among my least favorite episodes of the show.
(Along with any episodes focused on Quark. Or on Jake. Or involving the Prophets, or Bajoran religion in general. Or... actually, considering how much I liked the show overall, it's interesting how many specific aspects of it I found tedious.)
Not really, as Lorca engineered that. It's explained in the plot. Unlike, say, Regent Worf, or Empress Hoshi.
What makes "Mirror Mirror" most silly is not just that they have every counterpart on the MU Enterprise but that in order for the characters to switch with their counterparts they needed to be in the exact same situation at the same exact time.
I actually really liked a lot of the Quark episodes. The Ascent, Bar Association, House of Quark, Body Parts, Little Green Men, and The Magnificent Ferengi were all classics. Once Ishka got involved though...ugh.
Jake was fine when he was paired with Nog, or with his father. He wasn't a strong enough character to stand on his own, which is why The Muse was so bad.
The Prophets were fine in the early part of the series, when they were used mostly as a rumination on faith. Once they brought the Pah Wraiths into the equation that aspect of the show jumped the shark.
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