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Through the Looking Glass?

Whizkid, now that we've given rightful credit to Lewis Carroll, perhaps you could add a bit more substance to your opening post and discuss some of the parallels you see between "Through the Looking Glass" and "In a Mirror Darkly," to get the discussion rolling.
 
I think this is just a case of seeing ‘mirror’ and ‘looking glass’, resulting in a Dickensian brain fart.

I can’t see any similarity at all between the two to be honest. The title ‘A Mirror Darkly’ is a homage to Philip K. Dick’s ‘A Scanner Darkly’ which itself is a reference to Corinthians 13 (the biblical phrase ‘through a glass, darkly’).

The only similarity between Alice and the Trek episode in question is both feature a sidestep through strange means into another narrative world with differing rules.

@Whizkid have you read Alice Through The Looking Glass?
 
I think this is just a case of seeing ‘mirror’ and ‘looking glass’, resulting in a Dickensian brain fart.

I can’t see any similarity at all between the two to be honest. The title ‘A Mirror Darkly’ is a homage to Philip K. Dick’s ‘A Scanner Darkly’ which itself is a reference to Corinthians 13 (the biblical phrase ‘through a glass, darkly’).

The only similarity between Alice and the Trek episode in question is both feature a sidestep through strange means into another narrative world with differing rules.

@Whizkid have you read Alice Through The Looking Glass?

Isn't that enough? Isn't that the point? Hasn't that phrase been used regarding alternate universes before? (Fringe, at least!)?
 
Isn't that enough? Isn't that the point?

They have separate points.

The point of Mirror Mirror originally (and the Mirror Universe ongoing) is that it is 'our' Star Trek but twisted. We literally meet 'dark' versions of our heroes, but other details such as ships, names of ships, children being born to who or when etc. remain the same. It operates as 'What If... Starfleet was Totalitarian?' and runs with it, but nothing twists too far. That's the point of a 'What if...?'. How could a slight twist change a given narrative?

The point of either Alice novel couldn't be more different. The world in Through The Looking Glass is reversed, but not in the sense of good or evil. It's reversed in the sense that everything is reversed. Up is Down, Down is Up etc. It's a world in which even the laws of logic are broken as well. It subtly mirrors Alice in Wonderland, but it's a totally different set up to the Mirror Universe. Full of poetry and allegory and nonsense rhymes. It could described as absurdist whimsy I suppose.

They aren't even remotely similar in theme or execution.
 
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