Ahhh, the mirror universe. How much we love thee. Has there been a Star Trek series that has resisted visiting the alternative universe in which the Terran Empire holds sway?
Certainly Star Trek Discovery has settled into the mirror universe in a big way. The latest episode, "Vaulting Ambition" (aired this past weekend), is the third (out of only 12) shows to be set entirely in the mirror universe and, in it, we find out that the events in the first nine episodes were manipulated to bring us to this point.
Yes, folks, you have lived and died through 12 episodes of Discovery only to find out that the mysterious Captain Lorax is a mirror universe master manipulator who has somehow been orchestrating events just so that he can return to the alternate universe and complete his campaign to murder the Emperor and bring down the empire.
Some historical notes for Star Trek newbies for whom Discovery is your first experience of Roddenberry's masterwork:
- Remember, the Star Trek Canonical Timeline (STCT) goes as follows:
- Enterprise
- Discovery
- The Original Series (TOS)
- The Animated Series
- The TOS films
- The Next Generation (TNG)
- The TNG films (except the beginning of Generations, which takes place between the TOS films and TNG)
- Deep Space Nine
- Voyager
- The recent reboot films create an alternate timeline that begins as of the date of James Tiberius Kirk's birth (which falls between the events of Enterprise and those of Discovery) -- the events in these films do not impact the STCT;
- The mirror universe first appeared in an Original Series episode entitled "Mirror Mirror", in which a transporter accident manages to trap Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura in a parallel universe where the Federation doesn't exist and a militaristic Empire, led by terrans, permits the worst aspects of human nature to run wild. It's a great episode, a worthy creative source for the many "mirror" episodes to come, but it is also marked by the fact that the Imperial Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura (trapped in the universe of the Federation) are so barbaric that they are spotted immediately and put in the brig. Note, in the STCT, these events take place after the Discovery events;
- The Discovery story arc is picking up on the story arc from Enterprise in which the USS Defiant (from Kirk's time) has somehow been transported back in time to the mirror universe in the time of Captain Archer (Enterprise);
- Interestingly, the Enterprise story arc involving the Defiant links back to the TOS episode, "The Tholian Web", in which Kirk gets trapped aboard the derelict Defiant which appears to be fading in and out of existence (or moving between two universes) -- the Enterprise arc posits that the Defiant is actually moving back and forth between the Federation universe in Kirk's time and the mirror universe in Archer's time and ends up stuck in the latter.
The latest episode of Discovery accomplishes a lot of things, some of them good, some of them not so good:
- It undermines the impact of the previous 11 episodes by making it clear that the mysterious Captain Lorax has been manipulating EVERYTHING in order to use the spore drive to get himself back to the mirror universe;
- It explains what happened to the Defiant's crew (they went mad) after they ended up in the mirror universe;
- It provides a plausible explanation for why Discovery's awesome spore drive is not still in use in Kirk's time -- the spore network itself is destroyed due to the nasty behaviours of Stamets' mirror universe counterpart;
- It creates the unexpected (and impressive) effect of making us cheer for the Empire against a man who wishes to overthrow it -- is the mysterious Captain Lorax evil (he has manipulated the Discovery crew for his own aims, causing many deaths and trapping them in an alternate universe) or is he good (he does all this to bring down the Emperor and, it would seem, destroy the Empire itself so that something better can take its place)?;
- It introduces a form of cannibalism to the Star Trek universe, with Burnham being forced to eat Kelpian, which of course is the race of being from which Saru comes -- yes, every iteration of the Empire must make it just a little more evil...
- It re-introduces Phillipa Georgiou, Burnham's onetime captain and mirror universe adoptive mother and emperor;
- It brings back Dr. Culber for a brief moment, serving to remind us of the lovely purity of his relationship with Stamets and that the creative team at Discovery is quickly killing off all of the diversity that was so much celebrated in the early going of this new show. Yep, so far we've lost a gay doctor from an African-American background, a South Asian security officer and a captain from an East Asian background. The straight white people, on the other hand, are all hanging in.
I will likely write a blog post outlining my concerns with regard to the emerging racism, sexism and homophobia of Discovery but, for now, I'll leave things at that.
Meanwhile, what is it about the mirror universe that has caught the imagination of so many Star Trek creative teams? Is it the violence? the sensuality? the opportunity for the writers/directors to escape the perceived "goody goodiness" of a Star Trek reality where people get along, where all of the -isms we decry find no place? the chance to show a future world where the human race dominates through greed, aggression and the indulgence of its most base instincts?
I have written extensively about how I feel that certain creative minds have been working very hard to undermine Roddenberry's positive, optimistic future and introduce, instead, a future where sexism, racism, homophobia and all of the other nasty -isms that are so prevalent today continue to hold sway. It would seem to me that these creative folks see the mirror universe as the perfect place to indulge themselves in these ways without limit -- that's fine as far as it goes.
It's when those -isms make their way back into Roddenberry's universe that my concerns really begin to mount.
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