Star Trek Arcs IV: Mirror Universe

The first truly ambitious arc of the franchise became one across eras. One of the most famous episodes of the original series is “Mirror, Mirror,” the Mirror Universe episode, in which Kirk accidentally ends up in an alternate reality where the Federation never existed, with the Terran Empire in its stead. By the end of the episode, he’s convinced the goatee-sporting Evil Spock to fight for change.

Now, Deep Space Nine revisiting the Mirror Universe some thirty years later probably would have felt like a much bigger deal if, say, Evil Spock had been in it, or if Deep Space Nine itself hadn’t later developed its own rich legacy revolving around the Dominion War. The first instance occurred near the end of its second season, in an episode called “Crossover.” The big shock is that Evil Spock did succeed! But that, at least as far as humans were concerned, it turned out to be a terrible idea!

When the Terran Empire turned its back on its old ways, it created a void filled by the Alliance, led by the Klingons and Cardassians, and overnight humans ended up in much the role the Bajorans had just before the series began, when they were subjugated by the Cardassians during the Occupation.

By the end of the episode, they begin their journey back to freedom.

The following season, that journey continues! In “Through the Looking Glass,” Sisko travels to the Mirror Universe to replace his dead doppelgänger, and in the process “reunites” with his dead wife’s lookalike. It’s the most personal Mirror Universe story...until another season later, in which his son Jake, in “Shattered Mirror,” experiences yet another painful family tragedy.

In the sixth season, the Mirror Universe Bareil (his counterpart died in the third season) visits the prime universe, which for fans always leaves “Resurrection” to be the least enjoyable entry in the Deep Space Nine sequels, as it mostly revolves around a personal story for Kira that does little to advance the arc.

In the seventh and final season, the arc, as it has certainly become by this point, concludes in “The Emperor’s New Cloak,” in which I’m pretty sure no Ferengi manage to die in the Mirror Universe for the first time! Probably!

That’s the end of the arc, but not the end of the Mirror Universe! A second arc begins in Discovery fifteen years or so later, although viewers don’t know it at first. Captain Lorca is eventually revealed to have come from the Mirror Universe, and his efforts to return introduce Mirror Georgiou, whose arc concludes in “Terra Firma, Parts 1 & 2.”

There’s more! Enterprise shows us the origin of the Mirror Universe, suggesting that if the events of First Contact hadn’t played out like that, and Cochrane had been left to his own devices, wary humanity would have reacted very differently to their Vulcan guests. And then “In A Mirror, Darkly, Parts 1 & 2” put on a fun little romp that also revisits “The Tholian Web.”

The Mirror Universe remains a unique experience in franchise lore, a pocket adventure with unique surprises that comments on the hopeful nature of Star Trek in the most unlikely way.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Too Long A Sacrifice” review

rating: **

the story: A rash of violence aboard the station leads Odo on a troubling investigation.

review: This is an IDW comic book, the first time the company has produced a Deep Space Nine spotlight in a decade. It attempts to closely match the flavor of the TV series in art and storytelling. It doesn’t entirely succeed but it’s worth the effort.

Part of the problem is that it’s set in the sixth season. The Dominion War is raging, Jadzia Dax is alive, and yet the premise feels like it would much more easily fit in a prior period. A reference is even made to Garak bombing his own shop (“Improbable Cause,” third season), but it’s one of many details suggesting the writers (IDW veterans Scott & David Tipton) were far more diligent picking up the feel rather than the flavor of the source material.

Without giving too much away, this is first/second season material. 

All the familiar characters are here, with Odo as the nominal lead, but no real effort is made to make any of them feel authentic. They’re all just going through the motions. Odo, for instance, is once again in the position of Starfleet assigning one of its own to facilitate matters, but unlike in the show he barely bats an eye at it. Considering, as fans would know, the last time this happened the guy turned out to be a Maquis double agent (the highly underrated Eddington), this is a tough one to swallow.

But nostalgia is nostalgia, and it is great to see new material that at least superficially matches the old. One has the sense, though, that the goal is perhaps to entice the uninitiated, which is to say, this would be a great way to introduce someone to the show.

criteria analysis:

>franchise - General fans should be able to use it as a springboard.

>series - Longtime fans will be able to appreciate it.

>character - Characterization is thin.

>essential - It is not.

Star Trek Arcs III: The Trilogy

The third arc of the franchise is the first to be a deliberately continuous one, although it’s also somewhat invisible, the second through fourth films.

This is possible at all because two of them stand out as individual experiences, and they’re the bookends. Wrath of Khan is still talked about today as a singular achievement in Star Trek, the film by which all Star Trek films are judged. But in terms of box office, the most popular of the three, and of them all until the Kelvin trilogy, is The Voyage Home.

Somehow the one direct sequel and most obvious act of the trilogy, The Search for Spock, ends up lost in the shuffle. It also happens to be my favorite.

To even think of it as a continuous story, you have to think of Spock’s arc. In Khan, of course, he dies at the end, sacrificing himself so Kirk can achieve his victory. In Search, obviously, the whole story is about getting him back, as the Genesis Planet created in Khan serves as the impetus, backdrop, as stage of that project. Kirk sacrifices his career and his ship in order to get it done, and even his own son, David Marcus, who also originates from Khan. 

The neatest trick of Search, for me, is Kirk and Sarek, Spock’s father, recreating, via mind meld, Spock’s death. For some it might feel needlessly repetitive, especially if they watch the trilogy in one sitting. For me, it feels as moving and effective a moment, selling the impact, for Kirk, in ways that sharing the moment, originally, with Spock couldn’t, driving home how much it affected him. It’s also the moment Sarek becomes more than just Spock’s father, a standout character in his own right, an overlooked legacy of the films, and the trilogy itself.

Kirk, Spock, and the Klingon ship acquired during Search, sail through Home, with of course a sidetrack to rescuing some whales. By the end of the trilogy, they have to face what they have so often avoided, which is an official Starfleet reprimand for flouting the rules. The Klingons are furious over what Kirk did in Search, which itself creates another arc, which becomes the march to peace between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, which evolves from The Undiscovered Country to The Next Generation, which I’ll cover for the TV material later.

But this film trilogy bears greater attention. Clearly there was an effort, at least by Search, to find a Star Trek version of Star Wars (a concept many fans would claim the Kelvin films belabor), but no one watching, whether as a fan or the more casual, is likely to confuse the two. If it’s possible at all, it’s very much just that, a Star Trek version, that results. But that’s a worthy distinction. Star Wars didn’t tell its story across three initial films. With Star Trek there are three distinct acts with three distinct goals. With Star Wars it’s three variations of the battle between the Rebellion and the Empire. Certainly no room for “colorful metaphors”!

In a lot of ways, the existence of the franchise itself relies on the trilogy. The huge success of Home leads to a new TV series, while Khan gives fans a rallying point beyond the original series. The idea of an arc itself was to become a hallmark of Star Trek, steeped so heavily in episodic storytelling in its origins. Before fans realize the genre tide is turning in that direction, the films have already gotten there. In the 90s and 00s, fans think Star Trek is playing catch-up, but the franchise in fact got there already, in the ‘80s, when most genre material is still struggling to recognize how big Star Wars really is, how much and how drastically it changed the landscape.

Suddenly the “imitation” of Search doesn’t look so poor in comparison. There isn’t another franchise even making an effort that decade. Everything else is one movie at a time, and none of them even get another installment. It’s easy to take the Star Trek films for granted. But it shouldn’t.

Star Trek Arcs II: Khan

The second Star Trek arc is probably the most famous arc of the whole franchise: Khan Noonien Singh. 

Khan comes from our own lifetime, a genetic superman who rose to power in the 1990s as part of the Eugenics Wars, which other than this biographical detail have never been explored except in books. (Slightly more examined but still sketchy: WWIII.) Anyway, Khan loses power, is exiled into space in a sleeper ship called the Botany Bay, there to linger for hundreds of years until stumbled upon by Kirk and company near the end of the first season of the original series in “Space Seed” (which, for those keeping score, is of course before Chekov joins the cast).

And Khan immediately attempts his old shenanigans again, and once more finds himself in exile for his efforts, this time on a planet called Ceti Alpha V.

And then, in the second film of the franchise, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he returns once more. Fans still claim this particular adventure is the high water mark of at least the films, and were none too pleased when Star Trek Into Darkness revisited it. Like the other Kelvin films it essentially exists in its own timeline, so it doesn’t technically connect with the rest of the arc, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to the story.

Enterprise provides that. Remember how Data’s creator was named Noonian Soong? Well, we meet his ancestor, Arik, whose work begins with other “augments” from Khan’s heyday, similarly revived for additional mayhem, in the trilogy of episodes “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “The Augments,” before he decides to switch to robotics (the evolution of which itself carries into the first season of Picard).

That’s still not the end of the story!

The augments, during the course of their misbegotten adventures, crossed paths with the Klingons, and in “Affliction” and “Divergence” we learn the canonical explanation for the lack of ridges in the original series: they attempted an experiment to create augments of their own, and mostly the results were cosmetic (mostly so they didn’t accidentally annihilate themselves!).

A side note: Deep Space Nine revisits the idea of genetic engineering in “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?,” in which we learn that Bashir, naturally enough, is controversially entangled in it, thanks to his parents, and that the Federation still finds it otherwise as much a taboo as the Genesis Planet Khan helped create.