I'd be interested in knowing whether Dayton Ward was informed of the whole mirror doppelgänger thing when he was commissioned to write that book...
Spoilers What do you think of Lorca's Arc?
- Thread starter Saul
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^ IIRC, yes, he was.
As for Lorca Prime's fate: Just because MU Lorca reached the prime universe via an ion storm doesn't mean Lorca Prime was switched with him. The only reason that happened in "Mirror, Mirror" is because both versions of the Enterprise crew just happened to be beaming up at exactly the same time. Depending on what Lorca Prime was doing at the time, he may have remained on USS Buran (assuming that's where he was), or he may have been somewhere else entirely.
Who knows, MU Lorca's crossover could have happened after the USS Buran's destruction, and he could simply be telling the truth - meaning, Lorca Prime really DID destroy the vessel to prevent its crew's capture, and MU Lorca just heard about it and co-opted the story as his own.
As for Lorca Prime's fate: Just because MU Lorca reached the prime universe via an ion storm doesn't mean Lorca Prime was switched with him. The only reason that happened in "Mirror, Mirror" is because both versions of the Enterprise crew just happened to be beaming up at exactly the same time. Depending on what Lorca Prime was doing at the time, he may have remained on USS Buran (assuming that's where he was), or he may have been somewhere else entirely.
Who knows, MU Lorca's crossover could have happened after the USS Buran's destruction, and he could simply be telling the truth - meaning, Lorca Prime really DID destroy the vessel to prevent its crew's capture, and MU Lorca just heard about it and co-opted the story as his own.
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Apologies if someone has already pointed this out. Were it not for MU Lorca, Burnham and Tyler would not be on the Discovery. Admiral Cornwell mentioned that having both of them aboard and putting them in positions of responsibility was crazy. I'm interested to see if the acknowledgment of that will play out.
I also think that Lorca's explanation of how he got to the PU is meaningful for future stories. He was transporting somewhere and, obviously, so was Prime Lorca. Did MU Lorca end up on the USS Buran or on the PU version of wherever he was transporting to? The same can be asked of PU Lorca. If both Lorcas ended up being transported to places which were not the Buran counterparts, that means that PU Lorca is probably alive somewhere in the MU.
And, undoubtedly, MU Lorca destroyed the USS Buran because the crew would be able to expose him and not for the reason he stated in Chose Your Pain.
I also think that Lorca's explanation of how he got to the PU is meaningful for future stories. He was transporting somewhere and, obviously, so was Prime Lorca. Did MU Lorca end up on the USS Buran or on the PU version of wherever he was transporting to? The same can be asked of PU Lorca. If both Lorcas ended up being transported to places which were not the Buran counterparts, that means that PU Lorca is probably alive somewhere in the MU.
And, undoubtedly, MU Lorca destroyed the USS Buran because the crew would be able to expose him and not for the reason he stated in Chose Your Pain.
This reminds me that Lorca lied to Stamets about the medal. "I told them to give it to you."
That they are in the MU because of Lorca definitely qualifies as another reason.
Well, it might if Burnham were aware of it. She had no way of knowing that, however — indeed, the crew of the Discovery didn't even figure it out until after she told them of his MU origins. Frankly, I'm astonished that she even assumed her surmises about Lorca's origins were correct until she'd at least had a chance to confront him about it in person. The deductive leap she made at the end of episode 12 was, IMHO, a pretty speculative one.
That said, even if she had known that Lorca brought them there deliberately, I still don't see that as a justification for throwing her loyalties to Emperor Georgiou. The Emperor, after all, had already established herself as being not just authoritarian but brutally violent and untrustworthy. Lorca, regardless of where he came from, was someone Burnham had known and worked with for months, someone who'd given her a second chance and literally saved her life.
I wouldn't call Burnham's actions with the Emperor 'loyalties.' And remember, Lorca saved Burnham for one reason alone: to bring her to the MU -- and everything that entailed. And after that, he had no use for the rest of the USS Discovery crew and wouldn't care if they all died there. She knew that.
And lied to her. And, as we know, Vulcans don't lie.
She knew absolutely nothing of the kind. For all she knew, he was part of the rebellion she tried so hard to save, his disinterest in saving them earlier an agreed-upon military priority, the success of his mission to assassinate the Emperor outweighing the survival of any one base.
Really? That she would surmise that a Terran might be part of the rebellion is way less plausible than the conclusion that Lorca used Disco and couldn't care less what happened to the ship after her usefulness -- getting him back to the MU -- had ended.
There were no Terrans that were part of the rebellion that Burnham knew of.
She finds this out when talking to Saru and listening to Stamets, before she throws in with Georgiou.
No, I think the PU Buran really blew up due to a Klingon attack.
I mean, Mirror Lorca would have no compunction about killing them all if he needed to. But he had no way of knowing Starfleet would give him another ship after his last one was destroyed. Better to try and fool everyone into thinking he's Prime Lorca - at least initially.
Maybe his cover was blown, and he was forced to destroy the ship. But I think he'd only do that as a last resort. Honestly, the timing would be difficult, because he'd have to do it without letting the crew know and send out a broadcast to Starfleet. It's much easier to just assume the Klingons destroyed it.
Indeed.
If the latter is so, how would it be that he was separate from the Buran? Assuming that you're right, I'm thinking that he somehow painted the Buran as a target for the Klingons.
Burnham worked out the whole thing speaking out loud right in front of the Emperor. She announced the conclusion of her thought process regarding Lorca's true identity to the Emperor when she stated, "he's not from my (our) world, he's from yours". The Emperor's ensuing silence was confirmation that Burnham had reached the correct conclusion. Had Phillipa not agreed and thought Lorca was actually not from her world she would have said so.
By continously lying to Burnham, Lorca had destroyed any credibility, so why would Burnham trust him to tel the truth? Phillipa had shown herself to be brutal, dictatorial, etc, but she had not yet lied to Burnham yet, so in a "enemy of my enemy is my friend" (however the saying goes) moment, Burnham throws in with Phillipa.
That Lorca may have been the reason for Discovery being thrown into the MU was not too far a leap in logic. He'd shown himself to be untrustworthy as previously mentioned and the MU was his home. But honestly, in the position Burnham was in, the knowledge that Lorca was responsible for Discovery being in the MU was kind of irrelevant.
The easiest idea is that both Prime Lorca and Mirror Lorca were getting beamed off their respective Burans when under attack (why they would choose to do this, I don't know). They both then saw the mirror versions of the other ship destroyed, and were stranded without a ship.
But if MU Lorca ended up on Prime Buran, and his cover wasn't blown, I could easily see him abandoning his ship if and only if it was a lost cause. He's not a Starfleet captain after all, and doesn't care about his ship or the Federation. He'd then just have to come up with a lie afterward to explain his seeming cowardice to Starfleet.
If Burnham thinks assuming your counterpart's identity in an alternate universe is a good reason to think someone must be a complete scoundrel who can't possibly be on the side of the angels, she should probably look down and check out whose armored chest-plate she's wearing.
And Spock would point out (with dubious veracity) that the person who coined that saying was killed by just such a "friend."
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of over-apply the Prime Directive, especially to peer societies that should be able to handle contact with the Federation, but a civil war between two bloodthirsty despots who are likely to have equally murderous reigns seems like exactly the kind of situation the "no interfering in internal disputes of other nations" clause was invented for.
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