Trek Thursdays: Trekking Towards Sixty #8 — “Mirror, Mirror” And “Crossover”

On September 8th, 1966, an intrepid crew of explorers boldly went where no one had ever gone before on television. At that moment, Star Trek was born. A series that launched a franchise that has kept a firm grip on audiences for decades.

As the sixtieth anniversary approaches, we here at Comicon are ready to celebrate one of the greatest science fiction franchises. While Star Trek has graced the silver screen, most of its life has been on our television screens. So, that’s where our focus shall remain.

Every week through September 8th, we’ll be spotlighting two Star Trek episodes, from any and every iteration, that we feel are some of the greatest. At this point there are over 950 episodes of Trek, so it goes without saying some favorites won’t make the cut for this list of 60.

Transporters. They’re a marvelous device that cuts down on having to physically travel long distances. Just program a destination, hop on a pad, then be dematerialized into an energy pattern and reassembled into a living form at your destination.

Seems pretty simple, albeit metaphysically terrifying at the same time.

What happens though when that device has some sort of malfunction? Well, in some cases it could horrifically kill a person (hello Star Trek: The Motion Picture nightmare). In other cases it could throw them into the wrong destination. On very rare occasions it might take them right out of their universe itself.

Those rare occurrences are the focus today, as we delve into episodes that spotlight the dark timeline known as the Mirror Universe. A place full of characters, ships, and places we know and love but in a reflectively evil sort of way. Evil empires replace benevolent Federations, beards become a sinister symbol, and horniness runs even more rampant.

-RED ALERT: SPOILERS FOLLOW-

“Mirror, Mirror”
Star Trek: The Original Series – Season 2, Episode 10 (10/06/1967)

Synopsis: When the transporter malfunctions, Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Lieutenant Scott (James Doohan), and Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) find themselves in a parallel universe. One where the Federation is replaced with the evil Terran Empire, Kirk is a despot, and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is a cunning henchman. Nothing is the same as pain and suffering reign supreme as the currency, and the crew must battle to return home in one piece.

If we’re going to dive into the Mirror Universe, it’s only right to look at where it all began.

While TOS is a series I’ve watched very little of, this is one of the episodes that I have seen quite a few times. It’s a classic and for good reason. Not only is it jarring to see the crew of the Enterprise in such a state, but the actors all ate up the chance to mix things up for this episode.

Turning things on their head is always a good narrative device to strengthen the core premise of your usual stories. That being that the Federation and their utopian idealism is preferable to what would happen had humans not moved beyond baser instincts. Additionally, this sort of story gives an opportunity to keep the audience on their toes since nothing is as they remember or it seems.

This is a dark space where characters have no morals, act on their instincts, and have no care for personal space or autonomy. Watching our version of the crew struggle to enact change and get back home without arousing suspicion becomes quite a intriguing prospect. Similarly, we get to see the altered version of the transported four on the regular universe Enterprise doing the complete opposite.

They are power hungry, amoral, and they do nothing to try and hide that. In their universe Spock is the turning pin of a sort — The one that is most able to be reached with some modicum of reason. Much of what happened to the Empire as a organization, one that mirror Spock said would logically fall in two centuries, hasn’t been seen on screen. A number of Simon & Schuster novels (from the concluded decades long timeline) and comic books have attempted to fill in the gaps.

As impactful as this episode was, it’s wild to think that only really three subsequent shows, out of a total of twelve, has really touched the concept again. Technically Star Trek: Lower Decks did, but it was a simulation, so not the same thing.

When next we saw the Mirror Universe, oh how different things had become.

“Crossover”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 2, Episode 23 

Synopsis: An accident during travel through the Wormhole sends Kira (Nana Visitor) and Bashir (Alexander Siddig) into an alternate universe, very different from their own. Here, humans are slaves as the Terran Empire has fallen, and the alliance of Klingons, Cardassians, and Bajorans rule supreme. Familiar faces in different spaces may present the only key to returning home and escape from this dark reality.

How things can change as time passes by.

As the synopsis states, the Terran Empire fell just as mirror Spock predicted, potentially faster with how he tried to change the Empire as ruler, and something just as bad took its place. Klingons and Cardassians, with Bajorans by their side, are the dominant force in the quadrant, enslaving humans and tightening their iron fists upon the whole of the galaxy.

Visitor especially gets to shine in this episode, playing both the regular Kira but also the deliciously evil mirror Kira known as the Intendant. As this mirror version, she gobbles up the scenery and slinks around powerfully in the full body suit of this Kira. Also showing a level of ego and self-love that would answer the age-old question about what it’s called if you hook up with another version of yourself.

Just like the TOS episode, this one gives us a look at altered versions of series characters. From the cruel overseer Odo (Rene Auberjonois) to the still sharp but now slave Miles O’Brien (Colm Meany) to the heroic slave saving Quark (Armin Shimerman) and the rebel fighter Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks). I love that Garak (Andrew Robinson) gets to step out of the usual role, into a sniveling second in command henchman to the Intendant.

Through the two episodes we’ve seen how different things are between the two universes. We get another logical difference here. Unlike the regular universe where events like this tend to become classified or lost in logs, the crossover left a huge impact on the Mirror Universe. It’s well known about Kirk’s crew arriving in the universe and being the catalyst to Spock’s rise in power, as well as inadvertently the cause of the Terran Empire’s weakening and eventual collapse.

Things are darker in this version of the universal crossover with deaths and betrayals. The Intendant is very much a fun aspect, even with her cruelty and evil. There is a reason that this series above all others played with the mirror universe, and the Intendent specifically, so much. It was a compelling canvas to play upon and after this episode, the series very much capitalized on that open canvas.

Come back next week as we dive into two more of Star Trek’s greatest episodes.