'Star Trek: Discovery' breathes new life into an old universe
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery, Season 1, episode 10, "Despite Yourself."
I've always skipped past "mirror universe" episodes of Star Trek. To me, they always seemed so cheesy: Oh look, evil Spock has a goatee!
But on Sunday night, Star Trek: Discovery finally did the concept right.
In case you forgot, the midseason finale of the show ended with the Discovery jumping to a strange new place with its spore drive. Star Trek fans immediately knew where they had landed: the mirror universe, first introduced in the Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror."
Since then, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise also explored the alternate dimension. It's mostly an excuse for characters to indulge in campy performances and expose their sick abs. It's like our universe, but everything looks slightly different -- and everyone who's supposed to be good is EVIL.
It can be fun. But ultimately, when the story arc ended, mirror universe episodes felt inconsequential, like a dream that doesn't matter once you wake up.
Discovery raises the stakes. There's nothing campy and fun about this dimension (except for Sylvia Tilly, played by Mary Wiseman, pretending to be a badass space captain).
It's a dark place, and you get the feeling Discovery crew members are going to be haunted by their experiences for a long time. Like in other Star Trek shows, the mirror universe is inhabited by the Terran Empire, the xenophobic, authoritarian counterpart to the Federation.
There are plenty of other nods to Star Trek episodes past, including the dreaded "agony booths" and salutes of "Long live the empire!" Capt. Lorca (Jason Isaacs) discovers the existence of the USS Defiant, which was phasing in and out of their universe in the Original Series episode "The Tholian Web," and was commandeered by evil Jonathan Archer in Enterprise.
The Discovery's leadership comes up with a plan once they figure out what's happened. The crew will try to fool the Terran Empire with a costume and ship makeover, while Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) takes Lorca -- who in the mirror universe is a traitor who led a coup attempt against the emperor -- onto an enemy ship in hopes of learning classified information about the Defiant.
Before, they had to deal with warlords who wanted to Make the Klingon Empire Great Again. Now they're faced with an oppressive regime run by humans -- something that doesn't seem impossible, if only people had followed their worst instincts and made a few bad decisions when they first discovered warp drive. (In Enterprise, it all starts with a fearful, hateful Zefram Cochrane shooting the Vulcan who makes first contact, instead of shaking his hand.)
At the end of the episode, it's clear the mirror universe might change them. Burnham seems a little too comfortable in the captain's chair of the USS Shenzhou, whose crew has totally embraced her. Lorca is being tortured -- and as we've seen with Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif), that has consequences. Oh, and speaking of Tyler, he might actually be a secret Klingon, just as some fans had predicted.
This is the fascinating crucible the mirror universe should have always been. Let's hope the rest of Season 1 dives even deeper into the dark.
Topics Star Trek
Keith Wagstaff is an assistant editor at Mashable and a terrible Settlers of Catan player. He has written for TIME, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, NBC News, The Village Voice, VICE, GQ and New York Magazine, among many other reputable and not-so-reputable publications. After nearly a decade in New York City, he now lives in his native Los Angeles.
