The Captain's comments about the Tyler/Voq storyline are spot on. What is the point from the view of the Klingons? Sacrifice "everything" (according to L'Rell) for... nothing?
The answer for the Klingons seems to be, no purpose at all. The only useful thing from a plot point of view I can think of is that Burnham who has never been in love now is and... with a trans-species Klingon consumed by an identity crisis.
Maybe this leads to the storyline where Burnham learns something about the Klingons and achieves peace with them in the main universe. But we already know how that all turns out because TOS establishes that an uneasy peace exists. And then there's the augment storyline to follow...
The show remains entertaining. There is some very good acting going on.
I'd like to know what the mirror discovery is doing in the main universe.
In Mirror Mirror when Kirk and his crew beamed over to the mirror universe they could disguise themselves by acting barbaric, but at the same time Spock figured out the mirror captain and others were evil because they couldn't act civilized.
It'd be funny if they came back to the normal universe in the last 10 minutes of the season to find out that mirror discovery had exterminated these funny looking weirdo klingons and ended the war through brutal violence.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
I worry the writers have played the 'mirror universe' card too early in the series. We've barely had time to get to know the regular versions of these characters, let alone be amused by their 'evil' alternate reality versions.
The part that bugged me most is... wondering what the heck Discovery is up to? Are they just hanging around, shadowing the Shenzhou? They are in communications range and even transporter range (as they beamed Tyler back), and it's obviously been at least a few days, you'd think they would have received some new orders.
And if Disco is just hanging around the Shenzhou, why couldn't Burnam just say "I'm going to go have a tete-a-tete with Captain Tilly", beam over, hand her the disc and beam back?
Or do they have that ridiculous transporter tech from STID?
Also, can we just agree that Voq, son of None is the dumbest name in the Star Trek Universe.
Besides it being incredibly awkward grammatically (Son of Nobody), why doesn't he just say that he has no House as Worf did for a while?
And if Disco is just hanging around the Shenzhou, why couldn't Burnam just say "I'm going to go have a tete-a-tete with Captain Tilly", beam over, hand her the disc and beam back?
Or do they have that ridiculous transporter tech from STID?
Also, can we just agree that Voq, son of None is the dumbest name in the Star Trek Universe.
Besides it being incredibly awkward grammatically (Son of Nobody), why doesn't he just say that he has no House as Worf did for a while?
Well damn, that didn't even occur to me because my mind froze with the Voq, stupid international man of mystery thing.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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A lot did happen in this episode as it focused around Michael's encounter with th Emperor and Stamets through the looking glass being in the spore network with his mirror universe counterpart.
I'm not sure if I was super happy with this episode, I think the problem for me is that they're trying to force to much into each episode and because of that there's no organic ability to take a breath and absorb what's happening.
To me its like a demolition derby of writing. So I'll break it down into the multiple story lines
first Ash/Vok - Well it turns out that they basically overlaid Tyler and Voq together, and its gone into overload, and both are fighting for dominance and its killing them both. So Saru basically asks L'Rell to save him, and at first she refuses until Saru beams crazed dying Tyler into her cell and she agree's to fix things.
So she puts on the glow fingers of destiny and gives Voq a warrior's death and leaves Tyler's psyche alive.
So to me, Voq is dead in both universes, and thank god, the writing for the whole Klingon story line and Voq has been a drag on the show.
Second Storyline was the Stamets line where he's caught in the network with evil Stamets, and we find out that the network is corrupted, and good universe Stamets hangs out with his dead boyfriend who warns him that Mirror Stamets has made the network sick, and its probably needed for the trip home.
There is a logic to me as we see in future Trek's there is no spore jump drive, so either its too fragile and dangerous to use, or the spores that connect to the network die off and the network is no longer accessible.
At the end of the episode we see a Stamets waking up in the med lab on the Imperial Flag ship and a Stamets waking up on the Discovery, but which one wakes up where.
To me, this is part of the problem of jamming storylines on top of each other. I get that there has to be questions about how to get home, but it just seems like they killed off Voq and then they had to bounce into something else. There was just too much tonight.
So the last and most important storyline.
We finally have the face to face between Michael and Georgiou as she delivers Lorca to her after a nice moment on the shuttle. Lorca of course is banished to an agonizer booth and Michael is asked to select a member of the Kelpien. Of course the message is that there's always a cost to every decision when your visiting someone else's universe, as later her and the Emperor broke bread over a nice piping hot fear Ganglia. Yes the Empire is not only racist and evil, but they're also extreme carnivores.
Of course we find out that things are different in the Mirror Universe, it turns out that Georgiou was Michael's adoptive mother and Lorca was the Emperor's right hand man. But Lorca groomed Michael like a normal universe Woody Allen and turned her against her mother.
Now I want to add on that I still hate Michelle Yeoh in this show. But somehow today it kind of worked as her wooden acting actually added to this psycho killer brutal Emperor with no mercy or empathy for anyone.
So she decides to execute her daughter publicly, but just before she does Michael comes clean about where she's from and she just wants to go home.
Now, I will state that I really loved the discussion from the viewpoint of the Empire the concept of the United Federation of Planets is evil and a democracy only invites discord and rebellion. It was a neat justification.
Anyways Michael leverages George's (I'm calling her George because its easier). love for her real daughter and decides to negotiate for their freedom in exchange for the schematics for the Spore Drive (Which is about the dumbest idea ever). They start talking about Lorca and Michael accidentally drops a coffee cup that has "Lorca from the Mirror Universe brand coffee cup" while looking at a picture on the wall of a mirror. That's when she realizes that Lorca is evil and mirror and he used her to get onto the flagship presumably to murder the Emperor.
The last scene show Lorca limping down a hallway but his limp slowly disappears, no actually we see Lorca killing his torturer and then he speaks with a British accent which makes him totally evil.
This storyline was pretty good, we see that the figit spinner is a deadly evil weapon in the mirror universe as the Emperor kills her staff with one. We also learn alot about the Emperor, that Lorca is evil and used Michael to get at the Emperor and that Michael is willing to give the Empire a means to cross over to other universes.
Overall it was a decent episode that had some pacing errors.
We finally saw the thank god end of Voq, and probably the Klingon storyline for a while until L'rell joins the crew as the plucky new security officer with a heart of gold.
We had the other big reveal that Lorca is mirror Lorca, which I predicted during the last episode when they jumped across universes.
We saw that the Spore Network is sick and possibly dying.
Lots of reveals, this show is far better then it was at the start, but there are still grindy moments, that tend to drive me a little nuts.
Also we learned that Saru probably would go well with White Wine some broth and some nice fava beans.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 01-21-2018 at 10:38 PM.
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A lot did happen in this episode as it focused around Michael's encounter with th Emperor and Stamets through the looking glass being in the spore network with his mirror universe counterpart.
I'm not sure if I was super happy with this episode, I think the problem for me is that they're trying to force to much into each episode and because of that there's no organic ability to take a breath and absorb what's happening.
To me its like a demolition derby of writing. So I'll break it down into the multiple story lines
first Ash/Vok - Well it turns out that they basically overlaid Tyler and Voq together, and its gone into overload, and both are fighting for dominance and its killing them both. So Saru basically asks L'Rell to save him, and at first she refuses until Saru beams crazed dying Tyler into her cell and she agree's to fix things.
So she puts on the glow fingers of destiny and gives Voq a warrior's death and leaves Tyler's psyche alive.
So to me, Voq is dead in both universes, and thank god, the writing for the whole Klingon story line and Voq has been a drag on the show.
Second Storyline was the Stamets line where he's caught in the network with evil Stamets, and we find out that the network is corrupted, and good universe Stamets hangs out with his dead boyfriend who warns him that Mirror Stamets has made the network sick, and its probably needed for the trip home.
There is a logic to me as we see in future Trek's there is no spore jump drive, so either its too fragile and dangerous to use, or the spores that connect to the network die off and the network is no longer accessible.
At the end of the episode we see a Stamets waking up in the med lab on the Imperial Flag ship and a Stamets waking up on the Discovery, but which one wakes up where.
To me, this is part of the problem of jamming storylines on top of each other. I get that there has to be questions about how to get home, but it just seems like they killed off Voq and then they had to bounce into something else. There was just too much tonight.
So the last and most important storyline.
We finally have the face to face between Michael and Georgiou as she delivers Lorca to her after a nice moment on the shuttle. Lorca of course is banished to an agonizer booth and Michael is asked to select a member of the Kelpien. Of course the message is that there's always a cost to every decision when your visiting someone else's universe, as later her and the Emperor broke bread over a nice piping hot fear Ganglia. Yes the Empire is not only racist and evil, but they're also extreme carnivores.
Of course we find out that things are different in the Mirror Universe, it turns out that Georgiou was Michael's adoptive mother and Lorca was the Emperor's right hand man. But Lorca groomed Michael like a normal universe Woody Allen and turned her against her mother.
Now I want to add on that I still hate Michelle Yeoh in this show. But somehow today it kind of worked as her wooden acting actually added to this psycho killer brutal Emperor with no mercy or empathy for anyone.
So she decides to execute her daughter publicly, but just before she does Michael comes clean about where she's from and she just wants to go home.
Now, I will state that I really loved the discussion from the viewpoint of the Empire the concept of the United Federation of Planets is evil and a democracy only invites discord and rebellion. It was a neat justification.
Anyways Michael leverages George's (I'm calling her George because its easier). love for her real daughter and decides to negotiate for their freedom in exchange for the schematics for the Spore Drive (Which is about the dumbest idea ever). They start talking about Lorca and Michael accidentally drops a coffee cup that has "Lorca from the Mirror Universe brand coffee cup" while looking at a picture on the wall of a mirror. That's when she realizes that Lorca is evil and mirror and he used her to get onto the flagship presumably to murder the Emperor.
The last scene show Lorca limping down a hallway but his limp slowly disappears, no actually we see Lorca killing his torturer and then he speaks with a British accent which makes him totally evil.
This storyline was pretty good, we see that the figit spinner is a deadly evil weapon in the mirror universe as the Emperor kills her staff with one. We also learn alot about the Emperor, that Lorca is evil and used Michael to get at the Emperor and that Michael is willing to give the Empire a means to cross over to other universes.
Overall it was a decent episode that had some pacing errors.
We finally saw the thank god end of Voq, and probably the Klingon storyline for a while until L'rell joins the crew as the plucky new security officer with a heart of gold.
We had the other big reveal that Lorca is mirror Lorca, which I predicted during the last episode when they jumped across universes.
We saw that the Spore Network is sick and possibly dying.
Lots of reveals, this show is far better then it was at the start, but there are still grindy moments, that tend to drive me a little nuts.
Also we learned that Saru probably would go well with White Wine some broth and some nice fava beans.
Great recap and analysis.
It should be said that you're the greatest resource of Trek mythology and knowledge on this site. I know I always appreciate reading your in depth reviews as they connect a lot of dots and help establish a firm grasp of what is always going on from scene to scene.
Thank you, Cap'.
__________________ "It's a great day for hockey."
-'Badger' Bob Johnson (1931-1991)
"I see as much misery out of them moving to justify theirselves as them that set out to do harm." -Dr. Amos "Doc" Cochran
So I've often been accused of looking too deeply into shows like Star Trek, and Star Wars, and some times it must come across that all I do is watch and read science fiction and get captured by the Lore.
Really not true, but when you have favorites you tend to read a lot and try to gain some understanding about it.
But the one thing that has really been fascinating to me is this concept of a universe where humanity has been stripped of the things that make us humans and ultimately survivable as a species.
When I think of humanity I think of the image of the killer angel with a sword in one hand and a hand reached out in compassion. There's a real steal in the soul of every human that is willing to not only make leaps of imagination, but go back to our baser nature as beings willing to do brutal things to survive or gain power.
But the mirror universe is different because humanity is of one mind, that brutality, the willingness to destroy and conquer and force submission are the keys to the survival of the species.
So, you have to think, historically what would have to happen for our species to devolve to our barbaric baser instincts? What would cause humankind to become like the Terrans in the mirror universe.
What if one event changed everything. What if Khrushchev didn't back down during the Cuban Missile Crisis. What would happen if that Captain on the Soviet Sub had decided to fire his nuclear tipped torpedo, that was never fired in real life due to a temperature created failure in the subs radio set?
Lets say that the missiles were fired on October 27th, 1962, and the world as we knew it ended.
In the aftermath of a nuclear exchange world wide, with the environmental disasters that followed its likely that humanity would have been reduced to several million of the hardiest souls around, the ruthless, the deep end of the genetic pool, those that had to fight every day to survive. Governments would collapse as would civil order for a time.
But humanity seems to always have an instinct to form communities, and they would. They would seek the leadership of the strongest, those that would do anything to ensure their community. They would eventually war with other community over supplies, electricity and gas and even skilled people.
Meanwhile in these communities they would want the strongest and most capable to rule, so its likely that democracy might not gain the foothold that we used to have, people are too busy trying to survive to worry about politics. However you can bet that if a leader failed or showed weakness or in some way threatened the existence of the community that he or she would be forcibly removed and replaced.
Over time these communities would expand and there would be a determination to rebuild in the most pragmatic and ruthless manner possible. Laziness, incompetence, crimes against the people would not be tolerated.
At some point communications would be established around the world, and these ruthless leaders would decide that they didn't need to fight wars, that the species had to survive. They would band together, but there would be rivalry for power, and you would see succession through violence. If a leader was weak, he'd be thrown down and replaced.
Eventually leadership would be won by one person that was the strongest and most ruthless, who's vision was harmony through strength and violence, and the message that the survival of mankind was of paramount importance.
So they'd look at spreading humanity to the stars so one war, mistake, act of weakness wouldn't be able to destroy the entire species.
So with that single minded determination and refusal to fail on the pain of punishment, man would colonize the Stars. If there were other species that were weaker, they would be destroyed and not negotiated with or traded with, man would take what he wanted to ensure survival. If they ran into a species that was stronger, they would try to ally with them and learn all that they could about their technology and culture, and the minute that the alliance was no longer beneficial or their allies showed weakness, humans would destroy them, because man can only trust man when it comes to survival.
At the same time, the ruthlessness of destroying your rivals and forcing the weak to submit or die would be encouraged as there would be no greater way to evolve mankind then to ensure that only the strongest and smartest and deepest members of the gene pool would survive.
It wouldn't take much to see humans reverting to their inner Ghengis Khan when it came to the desperation of survival.
So while we see the Empire as evil and corrupt, they would see a human federation based on co-operation and friendship as a fatal flaw in the nature of humanity in which humans could no longer place the survival of their species in their own hands and evolve their technology and humankind rapidly enough.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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I don't think we've seen the last of Mirror Voq. There's an old piece of wisdom around any tv show or movie that unless you see a dead body, don't assume the character is dead ... and even if you do see the body, there's still a good chance they're not dead.
I think we'll see the Discovery end up in an uneasy alliance with the remnants of Voq's rebellion (at least Voq and Sarek, likely).
Originally, I was unsure how long I expected them to stay in the Mirror Universe, but after this week's episode, I expect them to be there for a while.
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I don't think we've seen the last of Mirror Voq. There's an old piece of wisdom around any tv show or movie that unless you see a dead body, don't assume the character is dead ... and even if you do see the body, there's still a good chance they're not dead.
I think we'll see the Discovery end up in an uneasy alliance with the remnants of Voq's rebellion (at least Voq and Sarek, likely).
Originally, I was unsure how long I expected them to stay in the Mirror Universe, but after this week's episode, I expect them to be there for a while.
I think he's gone, he was just a badly written character and he really hadn't served a purpose for a while. I think L'Rell will probably play a key role in peace talks between the Klingons and Human's.
Or maybe they'll all sit down at the table Human's and Klingons and start negotiating when the door shatters and the old Klingons storm in, and we find out that the Old Klingons had gone for a holiday in Aspen and their slaves had taken over and were pretending to be Klingons.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Wow the reviews of this episode are all over the map, from outright white faced nerd rage to, I so love this show, and it reminds me of kittens.
So I have some more thoughts on the plotting and writing of this episode
Spoiler!
Burnham is pretty much a disaster of illogical when it comes to her planning. She's in a mirror universe run by a evil callous merciless version of her former mentor, and she is going to give her the plans to a spore drive that can not only allow ships to immediately travel from point A to B, but allow them to skip between universes. In addition, she instructs the Discovery to meet the Super Duper mobile killing machine known as the Imperial Palace.
The logic of the discussion with the Empress was actually hilariously bad to me.
Empress von killing machine "Was the Georgeou in your universe an honorable woman?"
Michael - "Yes"
EVKM - "well, I should be too, because we're exactly the same as our mirror counterparts, so trust me, brink your ship here and give me the ultimate weapons of plans"
Me - "Um huh, the Georgeou in this universe is a megalomaniac, psychopath, with no empathy or mercy, oh and who likes to eat aliens that can hold a conversations, while the Georgeou in the other universe was a nice incompetent mentor."
So from now to the end of the season, we're going to call this the ever worsening plan of Michael Burnham.
I think its pretty clear that this is Lorca's final year in the show, at least as the Captain of the Discovery.
Well unless they open a broom closet on the Discovery and find Prime Universe Lorca tied up with a ball gag in his mouth.
Some people liked this show because the primary character isn't the captain of the ship, but i think its likely that Michael ends up as the Captain of the Discovery as Saru won''t be given the job because um he has fear ganglia which while tasty make him probably too cowardly to be a Captain.
There are just a lot of wasted people in this show. That's what makes this show different for better or for worse.
We have all of these crew members on the show, but the focus is on a small few. We still have the scared helmsman who's only real contribution to the show is to look angry and have her mirror self beam people into space.
The other issue to this show is that its too much plot, addicted to twists and no character.
Its tough to care about these characters, because they all come across as a bit wooden, except for Saru who could probably be served on a slab of wood with some soy sauce.
The problem with an over reliance on twists and surprises is that it starts out great with a lot of
"Holy Shyte", "I never saw that coming", "I can't believe that Vader is Luke's father"
but eventually due to burn out it goes to
"hmm", "that twist wasn't that good" and "Reaganomics"
Discovery has had multiple twists so far this season, and thist season is only 15 episodes long.
We had the Voq/tyler twist which was pretty poor, everyone could see it coming, and it actually destroyed the character and made him look like the biggest dummy every
We had the Lorca twist which a lot of people saw coming because of how Lorca commanded, threw his girlfriend basically out the airlock, and then had a Lorca custom jump that lead him to the mirror universe. But whether this twist is successful is dependent on what happens in the next couple of episodes.
Then we have the Georgieou is the Emperor twist, which is just a lets do the Tilly Twist but make it huuuuggggeeeee. But I think that when this ship skipped to the mirror universe that everyone saw this coming.
I would expect that Burnham is going to betray Lorca, save the Emperor and leave the mirror universe and become the Captain of the Discovery, after some admiral says, "Yeah you did kill your captain, but she's alive in another universe and she doesn't want to lay charges so your free to go"
I would hope that the way this show was written this year was a gamble to gain an audience with a short attention span, and that the show settles down a bit for next year, and doesn't need to rely on twists in every second episode
Additional about the time line
Spoiler!
One think that they're doing surprisingly well is integrating this Star Trek into the Prime Timeline which is shocking with the way that the show started off.
With the rebels pretty much eliminated, or about to be eliminated it allows for the empire to rise to the place it was in TOS, but with less goatees
With the spore's sick, and likely to die, it allows the elimination of spore technology as a bad technology.
With the more radical religious sect and leader of the Klingons being dead and no longer a threat, it makes sense that the war between human's and Klingons will end.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
I'm still undecided on Discovery. There has been lots of good but also lots of cringe.
I agree a big problem is that things seemed rushed. The Mirror Universe, Stamets, and Tyler/Voq all have potential to be interesting stories if given proper time to develop however are instead all crammed into the same episode. I especially like the Mirror Universe and feel this could fill a couple season of cool stories but it looks like it will instead just be a few episodes.
Also, I'm getting a bit of a GoT in space vibe sometimes with all the killings, twists, and rushed story telling. I agree with CC that maybe the writer/producers are gambling to try an attract a new audience. I like twists if done well but we do not need multiple ones every episode.
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CBS originally ordered 13 episodes. Once those were well underway, they ordered another 2 for a total of 15 in the first season.
There are two schools of thought about this which are hotly debated on the Star Trek nerd forums across the interwebs:
-The conclusion of the mirror universe happens in the 13th episode but CBS wanted to normalize the season by having an adventure or two in the prime universe to end this season and set up the next with another cliffhanger; or
-The mirror universe was too fast-paced as is and was extended to a 15th episode.
I think they'll wrap the mirror universe arc in the next episode and we'll see something to set up the next season, including gold, red and blue uniforms, by the 15th episode.
The title of the next episode is "What's Past is Prologue". If we take that at face value, the real story is just getting started. I think we're in the Mirror Universe for the foreseeable future.
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Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
I might eat my words later, but I highly doubt Michael would hand over the Discovery to the Emperor without some plan in place to ensure that it is either rendered useless to them or flings them off into some other parallel universe. Heck, flinging them into the regular universe wouldn't be that bad an outcome, given the Emperor and her crew could be dealt with easier there.
Also, I might have missed something there but did Voq actually die there? I don't believe that L'Rell has just pushed his consciousness back a bit more, since obviously it wasn't the plan for him to take over Tyler just yet.
I might eat my words later, but I highly doubt Michael would hand over the Discovery to the Emperor without some plan in place to ensure that it is either rendered useless to them or flings them off into some other parallel universe. Heck, flinging them into the regular universe wouldn't be that bad an outcome, given the Emperor and her crew could be dealt with easier there.
Also, I might have missed something there but did Voq actually die there? I don't believe that L'Rell has just pushed his consciousness back a bit more, since obviously it wasn't the plan for him to take over Tyler just yet.
She did the whole Klingon dudes dead and heading to the underworld scream.
She gave him the Warriors Death that he supposedly deserved.
There was nothing left for Voq to do, and I think even the writers were happy to see him go.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
