S01E09. In a Mirror, Darkly Transcript

Josh Woodward (singing) 00:00:00
Let’s pretend it’s the end, of this whole ugly story
We vanquished the foe and we triumphed in glory
There’s nothing but rainbows and blue skies ahead
Hallelujah, amen, it’s the end

We threw off the yoke, and we broke all the shackles
We tore down the walls, and we burned down the castle
The oppressors all scattered, and naked, they fled
Hallelujah, amen, it’s the end

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:00:36
Welcome to Before the Future Came, a Star Trek podcast. We’re looking at the utopian ideals of Star Trek as we voyage from one work to the next, following a breadcrumb trail of motifs. Last episode we discussed the amazing 2009 film Star Trek, which had an alternate Trek timeline. This month we’re talking about a double episode which also focuses on an alternate timeline, the mirror universe. We’re discussing “In a Mirror, Darkly”, parts one and two, which are episodes 18 and 19 of season four of Enterprise. Part one was written by Mike Sussman and directed by James Conway. And Part two was written by Mike Sussman and Manny Coto and directed by Marvin V. Rush. I’m Melissa, and I’d hardly call it a favor since you enjoyed yourself.

Lucy Arnold 00:01:32
I’m Lucy, and threats are illogical.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:01:37
I’m Gregory, and my character is weak and compassionate.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:01:44
Alright, Lucy, you picked this month’s double feature, so please give us a summary.

Lucy Arnold 00:01:50
Okay, well, I’m sorry for picking it.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:01:55
Why? I guess we’ll get there.

Lucy Arnold 00:01:59
Stardate 0141.7. Future Emperor’s log. First contact on Earth with the Vulcans. Everything is just as it was in First Contact, until Zefram Cochran shoots. Instead of making friends, the title sequence gives us a version of Earth’s history that is warful and violent. This is the story not of the Federation, but of the Empire. Captain Forrest and First Officer Archer take a look at Reed and Phlox’s project, the agony booth. It’s a torture device. They all love it.

Out in a corridor, Archer tries to persuade Forrest that they should pursue some technology the Tholians have discovered. He believes that this technology will give the Empire the upper hand against a rebellion. Forrest is not having it and tells Archer to fuck off or get agony boothed. Archer isn’t happy. We learn that Sato is Forrest’s consort, though she really just wants to go back to teaching Archer, Reed, and Mayweather quickly pull a mutiny. Reed is very mean. Archer insists that Reed not kill Forrest when they take over the bridge. T’Pol is immediately suspicious of Archer and probably also quite chilly. Archer is still an inspiring speech giver and they get ready to head into Tholian space. Archer commands T’Pol and Tucker to install a Suliban cloaking device. Then Archer racistly promotes T’Pol to the first officer. He seems to enjoy stroking equipment quite a lot. We learn that Mirror!Porthos is also mean.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:03:33
Porthos is Arch Captain Archer’s dog who is a beagle in the prime timeline, but is a rottweiler here.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:03:40
So cute.

Lucy Arnold 00:03:41
That rottweiler was growling. I guess, kinda cutely. Probably racistly.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:03:48
Yeah, that can happen.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:03:50
Yeah. Yeah, that dog’s definitely racist.

Lucy Arnold 00:03:51
Almost certainly. Sato and Archer have a history, it seems. Archer demands Sato’s allegiance in return for not killing Forrest. She tries to kill him seductively. Also unsuccessfully.

This show loved the decontamination chamber to the bitter end. That’s in parentheses, sorry, should have added that in there. They capture a Tholian, who Archer interrogates. The Tholian tells them where the Terran ship the Tholians have is kept.

Meanwhile, Tucker and T’Pol work in engineering. They also have a history. The cloaking device short circuits. We have (dun dun dun) a saboteur, but who? Archer next interrogates Forrest to find out who the saboteur is. Forrest takes the opportunity to note that he didn’t think Archer had any ambition. And this sets Archer off. Reed, however, thinks he has figured out how the sabotage happened. And he thinks that the saboteur is Tucker, who is then, you guessed it, interrogated. If you are tired of the word “interrogation”, I am very sorry. Archer thinks Tucker is working for some admiral.

Post-coitally, Archer and Sato discuss Archer’s insurance policy, some files he emailed to someone. But then he suddenly realizes that if Tucker were the saboteur, he would have done a better sabotage. It’s too late. We learn that T’Pol was the saboteur. And she and some other Vulcans bust Forrest out of the brig. They take the bridge. The helm doesn’t respond, though, and they continue heading into Tholian space because Archer is a planner. Archer gets agony boothed for 10 hours, however. It turns out that the email Archer sent to the admiral as insurance included info on the technology held by the Tholians. Forrest is ordered to investigate the Tholian ship and look for the Terran ship. Archer briefs the senior staff. Has everyone here tortured everyone else? I think, maybe.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:05:53
I think so. I’m going to talk about that later.

Lucy Arnold 00:05:55
Oh, good. We can do the Venn diagram. No, I guess it’ll be a different diagram.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:05:59
Yeah, some sort of relation chart.

Lucy Arnold 00:06:01
Yeah. Archer says that the Tholians were trying to attract a ship from a parallel universe, and they succeeded. They got a ship from a parallel universe and almost 100 years in the future. Archer wants to get the tech from the ship. T’Pol isn’t into it. Tucker and T’Pol are back at it in Engineering, but Tucker is angry that T’Pol set him up. It turns out that she super set him up by implanting suggestions during a mind meld and then modifying his memories. Moral of the story—and this will come up again in part two—do not attempt to get laid in the mirror universe.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:06:35
Bad idea.

Lucy Arnold 00:06:36
The cloaking device is back online. They arrive at the coordinates they tortured it out of the Tholian prisoner. It’s the Defiant!

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:06:44
This is the original series Defiant, not the Deep Space Nine Defiant.

Lucy Arnold 00:06:47
Oh, right. That was a good point to say. They plan an assault. Forrest orders that they destroy the ship. Archer doesn’t wanna.

Forrest sends T’Pol on the mission with orders to murder Archer. The imprisoned Tholian sends a signal before they are killed by Phlox, who by the way, is also very mean. Tholian ships start coming and the Enterprise is netted.

Meanwhile, Tucker gets the power up on the Defiant. The Tholians kick ass and Forrest orders the Enterprise to evacuate while he buys the crew time. The Enterprise is blowed up.

Part 2, Future Emperor’s log Continued. Archer, et al get the Defiant back online, but Tholian ships are now approaching. They get out of the dock and blow it up. Archer urgently wants to get the warp drive going because he is eager to get to the front lines of the rebellion battle. T’Pol argues that they should take the ship to Earth to be studied instead. Archer threatens T’Pol. She admits that Forrest ordered her to kill Archer. She says that Forrest is dead and that his orders are null. Archer is now her commanding officer. Apparently, unlike everyone else in the Empire, it is her policy to not kill her commanding officer.

Enough time passes for Archer to read up on Federation history and don an OG Star Trek uniform. Archer and Sato look up their alternate selves. Alternate Archer is mad that his mirror self is less racist. Tucker discovers more sabotage. An engineer with him gets sucked into something and they think he was eaten. Gradually, everyone switches uniforms to the cooler ones. If you were missing all of the interrogations from part one, great news. A prisoner gets interrogated and the Enterprise crew discover that Slar, who is a Gorn, is on board. That is right, Slar the Gorn. Archer chats with the Gorn. The Gorn wants to leave the ship. Archer doesn’t want to negotiate. He is now getting pep talks from an alternate version of himself, which I can say from experience is a pretty good sign.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:08:51
For whom?

Lucy Arnold 00:08:52
That’s a good question.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:08:54
Yeah, he is hallucinating or imagining? our Archer, Prime Archer, basically berating him for being a failure.

Lucy Arnold 00:09:04
It’s pretty tough when that happens. They start tracking the tricksy Gorn. It hurts Reed. He either lives or dies, we are later informed. Archer finally defeats the Gorn by having T’Pol increase the gravity where the Gorn is standing.

T’Pol encourages Phlox to study the history of the parallel universe where she points out that humans, Denobulans, and Vulcans are all equals. The Defiant shows up at the battle and turns the tide, just as Archer had hoped. They destroy a fleeing Vulcan ship. Admiral Black comes aboard the Defiant. Archer asks for command of the ship. The Admiral says, “Nah.” Brain-Archer informs Archer that he will be a historical footnote, so he kills the Admiral.

Archer gives another rousing speech. This one is two people outside of his head this time. He wants to take on the empire fat cats. T’Pol and a Vulcan chat. The Vulcan thinks that Archer’s plan isn’t half bad, but T’Pol doesn’t want Archer to defeat the Rebellion. She, inspired by parallel universe history, wants to destroy the Defiant instead and give the Rebellion a chance. T’Pol gives her own inspiring speech to persuade the Vulcan to help her.

Meanwhile, Archer decides to remove all non-humans from the ship, except for Phlox, who Sato sexily persuades him to keep. T’Pol’s plan is underway—I mean, honestly, she does almost everything kinda sexily.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:10:30
She does.

Lucy Arnold 00:10:32
T’Pol’s plan is underway, but Archer sends her and the other Vulcans to the ISS Avenger. T’Pol tries to persuade Phlox to help her. Sato comes to arrest T’Pol. There is a gross fight. T’Pol is captured. Over on the Avenger, the Vulcans secure the bridge. T’Pol is… interrogated!

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:10:52
Tortured? Oh, right. We’re saying “interrogated” instead of “tortured”. Go ahead.

Lucy Arnold 00:10:56
She is literally interrogated in this scene.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:10:58
Oh, yeah. In that instance, yeah.

Lucy Arnold 00:11:00
I mean, in some of the previous ones, there’s interrogation and torture. And sometimes it’s just interrogation. I don’t know. Phlox tries to do a sabotage. He and I struggle with the technobabble. Tucker notices the power fluctuation and goes to deal with it himself. Archer orders that all non-humans on the Avenger be confined. Sato purrs that they should kill T’Pol. The Avenger starts firing on the Defiant successfully because the sabotage has worked, but Tucker fights Phlox and gets the power grid back up. Archer destroys the Avenger. He and Sato celebrate sexily. Archer tells Sato to destroy the historical data from the Federation so that nobody else can be inspired or catch a brain voice. Archer cackles about being Emperor, but is immediately murdered by Sato, who then declares herself the new Emperor.

Fin.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:11:55
Is she like a sexy person, normally in Enterprise?

Lucy Arnold 00:11:57
No.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:11:58
No. Yeah, Sato’s playing against type in the mirror universe.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:12:01
That’s what I thought.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:12:03
She’s the nerd of the, of the crew.

Lucy Arnold 00:12:05
She’s a dorky linguist.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:12:08
Okay.

Lucy Arnold 00:12:09
I read that… you know, Enterprise was canceled at the end of season four. I read that they were planning to continue this storyline in season five with something about her emperoring. But that didn’t happen. And it’s probably for the best.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:12:26
Probably.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:12:28
Well, thank you. We’ve each brought a topic for discussion. Mine is… I’ve written “the insidious nature of compassion”. So this episode treats information—we’re going to talk, I know, Lucy, you’re going to talk about censorship later—but this pair of episodes treats information about the prime universe as like, some sort of infectious disease. Like, they, they, when people hear about themselves in the other universe, they, like, their entire perspective shifts. And people talk about how, like, the fall of the Terran Empire is inevitable. And, you know, when people learn about this, then something, you know, people are going to change the way that they think.

And this, I think this is, this is interesting to me. It’s distinct from destiny, right? Like, destiny in Star Trek tends to be a thing that, like, the story thinks is, is going to like, “You have to turn out this way, because, because the plot said you that you should, so you must.”

This is something that the characters feel. Like, the characters feel that, like, there’s something about this… the concepts of the Federation that, like, seep into you and cannot be removed. And this reminds me of a couple different things, and one of them is kind of the… I’m not sure if I’m using the right term here, Lucy. I’m sure you can correct me that the Marxist idea of historical materialism. That, like, it’s the idea that, like, history is a class struggle and that, like, inherent contradictions in capitalism and tyranny will result in the fall of capitalism and the rise of a different economic system and political system. And like, this feels like Star Trek believes in that sort of concept that, like, the inherent contradictions and inherent, like, lack of synergy within the Terran Empire and within its oppression means that it will inevitably fall. Like, not in the sense of like, we know it falls because we’ve already seen Deep Space Nine, but like that there is a flaw at the heart of the Empire. Empire. And that’s really interesting.

It reminds me also of an amazing scene in Deep Space Nine where—we might have talked about it before on this series. It’s one of my favorites. Garak and Quark are talking about the Federation and about root beer at Quark’s Bar. And they compare the politics and ideology of the Federation to root beer in that it’s sweet, it’s cloying, it’s hard to stand, but if you drink enough of it, you start to like it. And I think it’s… Yeah, it’s super interesting that like, the Federation’s values infect the crew of the Enterprise in different ways.

Sato, like, becomes more ambitious, right? Sato is like, “Oh, I went down in history as someone notable who invented cool stuff. That means I can become Emperor.” Archer is like, “Oh, I’m a captain. I’m a celebrated captain in the other universe. How could I have been so unambitious, such a failure?” Like, it makes him feel bad about himself and like, almost jealous of his other self in the sense of, like, I’m going to be as successful as him, but I’m going to do it my way.

And I think we see by like his visions of Prime Archer that like, he doesn’t know who the fuck Archer is. He doesn’t know his personality. Like, he, he assumes things about what Archer would say to him that probably aren’t what Archer would actually say. And then T’Pol and some of the other non-humans on board, like, it’s like they’re given their first concept of hope. Like, it’s, it’s, it’s as if, you know, the capitalist realism, right? The idea that there is no better world than this is shattered by the idea that no, there literally is another world than this and you could make your world like that one. And that’s kind of cool? I don’t know.

I think that Star Trek at its most cynical is like, it’s really hard to set up the Federation, and the Federation itself is unstable and could fall at a drop of the hat. And I sometimes, I like that. I like the way that like Discovery Season 3 plays with like, “Oh, no, the Federation takes work and logistics and luck and infrastructure to maintain.” Whereas this is like, “No, the Federation is an idea that once it gets into your head, won’t leave.” And it, we know historically it ends the Terran empire eventually. Like T’Pol’s information might not get out to the rebels, we don’t know for sure. But like, Spock, definitely, when Kirk crosses over to his universe, mirrow-Spock ends up taking over essentially the Terran Empire and it ends up getting conquered by the Klingons and Cardassians. And then likewise, their awful empire ends up getting fought and probably overthrown by the rebels that we see in Deep Space Nine. And I don’t know, that’s a cool idea of like, yeah, Star Trek, the values of Star Trek get in your head and make the world better.

Lucy Arnold 00:18:35
It’s kind of meta in that way, right? Like, if stories matter, then it matters that we tell these stories about the future that see the future as, like, valuing equality and justice and that kind of thing.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:18:53
And it also makes me think about when we talked about the first two episodes of Star Trek Discovery where T’Kuvma treated sort of the Federation as a colonialist threat.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:19:05
Yeah.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:19:06
And they had that, their mantra was “we come in peace”, right? That idea was the threat that loomed over Klingon culture as something to avoid. That kind of seems like of a piece of this idea of, like, these ideas are, I don’t know, mimetic or something, right? Maybe that’s not the right term.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:19:27
Yeah, I think, I think memetic is right. Like this idea that is transmitted like a virus and maybe changes along the way but infects people who it’s shared with. Yeah.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:19:44
Yeah. Star Trek likes that idea of that sort of spreading of ideas like a virus. Like the musical episode, right? Like, Subspace Rhapsody had exactly that of those four Klingons. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Lucy Arnold 00:20:03
I think, like, your point about compassion, too, is also about trust, because I do think there is just this sort of—there’s no trust whatsoever in the Empire, right? Like, nobody trusts anybody and you can’t, you really can’t have a functional organization or community, right? Like, if nobody trusts anybody. And so it is sort of a flaw at the heart of the institution there.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:20:34
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:20:36
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:20:37
They can’t work together because they’re constantly at each other’s throats.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:20:42
Yeah. And it’s interesting to me how, you know, when Klingons are sort of introduced in the sort of original series and Next Gen, there’s sort of this like, “Oh, you kill your commander to rise in rank,” right? Like there’s this like, watch out to get stabbed in the back. That feels somehow so different than Terran Empire where anyone—at least Klingons, have family, clans and family alliances or something that… Somehow that society seems a little more functional than the Terran Empire, where, you know, you truly could get shivved at any moment.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:21:18
Yeah. I think that, like, Klingons do believe—think of it as a meritocratic process, right? They, they’re like, if I can beat you in a fight, then I am a better warrior and deserve to be in charge. Whereas the Terran Empire believes if I beat you in a fight, you’re dead and everybody else will be afraid of me.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:21:42
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:21:43
Which, yeah, is a less, uh, less functional value system.

Lucy Arnold 00:21:54
So I’m also going to talk about some of those critiques of the, of the Terran Empire. But I guess I want to preface, before I say what I have to say, that I actually liked these episodes in a lot of ways. I think it was bold for them to tell a story about the mirror universe without having a frame story for it. Like, we didn’t have someone who’s a point of reference from our universe to kind of steer or narrate the story. So I appreciate the boldness of that choice and the way it was just kind of dedicated to telling this sort of isolated story.

Although, I mean, I think there are some flaws, like, in even the storytelling. I just, I guess I just wanted to start by saying despite some of the things I’m going to say, I actually did like watching this in many ways. It’s also maybe like, I liked it because I hadn’t watched it before. I gave up on Enterprise before this and had never seen it. So it’s interesting to watch.

But the thing that I wanted to talk about for my main topic is girl bosses and intersectionality. And I wanted to open by saying that in my opinion, the show Enterprise is incredibly misogynist. It’s the show itself—

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:23:21
Absolutely.

Lucy Arnold 00:23:22
—not just this pair of episodes, but the show, like, I think it is rooted in a deep misogyny that it is difficult for it to extricate itself from, and it almost cannot see a way to do it. And just the first moment you see, like, the femme characters’ uniform in the Terran Empire, and it’s like, what are you doing?

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:23:48
Yeah, the women all have, like, midriff-baring outfits that are very low cut in the front, so you can kind of see their pelvic structure and high cut. Like the, like the tummy cut is high enough that you can kind of see the bottom of their rib cage. Like, it’s an extreme cut. And the men don’t have any sort of sexy outfit at all from what I can remember.

Lucy Arnold 00:24:09
I mean, the men are mostly just mean. I mean, yeah, so it just, it did, wasn’t surprising to me at all because like this is a show that lived in the decontamination chamber in season one so that everyone could—and that’s true: it was equal opportunity disrobing in first season at least. I mean, I don’t think Tucker wore a shirt for most of season one.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:24:38
For folks who haven’t seen Enterprise, the decontamination chamber was whenever they got—well, often when they got back from a planet, they had to go into a glass walled box and slather lotion on each other naked so that they could not catch diseases?

Lucy Arnold 00:24:55
I just find it, I found it really icky in this episode, the whole consort stuff. Like, I don’t know, I just didn’t like it. Just didn’t like it.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:25:04
I mean the wiki, the wiki calls her the “captain’s woman”.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:25:10
That’s, I think that’s what the Mirror, Mirror episode calls—

Lucy Arnold 00:25:14
Oh yeah, yeah, I think that’s right too.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:25:16
—that social position.

Lucy Arnold 00:25:17
Still don’t, I mean I didn’t care for it. And I was thinking about this the whole time because one of the reasons I stopped watching Enterprise was because I just couldn’t deal with the misogyny. Like, it was just too hard to watch and I couldn’t. And that’s why I quit watching.

And so watching this something, I’m like, okay, I guess we’re really doing this thing. And then you know, we get to the end and Sato kills Archer and proclaims herself the Emperor. And you know, of course, you know, at first I’m like, “Yes, girl boss!” I’m not, I’m not going to lie to you. But you know, girl bosses are bosses, and here comes the new girl boss, same as the old boss, right? Like, so even I think for us in a non-mirror universe or even Star Trek universe, when girl bosses accrue power in the world as it is, they are not challenging the status quo. And I guess if any of you are girl bosses, I’m talking to you right now. Examine what that means to be a girl boss. Because if you are just being a boss, then you’re being a boss and yeah. Sato chooses to fight T’Pol instead of joining her because she is basically the 55% of white women who are supporting Trump against their own self interest, right? Like that’s essentially like, who Sato is in this story. And I will also say I was pleasantly surprised by the twist of her killing Archer and proclaiming herself Emperor at the end. Like I was pleasantly surprised, but the only reason it worked for me is it reminds me very much of Starship Troopers. Have y’all seen that movie, Starship Troopers?

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:27:09
Yeah.

Lucy Arnold 00:27:10
There’s a part—

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:27:10
Wow. When I was a childhood.

Lucy Arnold 00:27:11
Yeah, it’s been a while. But the thing I most vividly remember about Starship Troopers… Okay, there’s two things I vividly remember, but.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:27:20
Okay, wait, wait. Three things. Three things I vividly remember.

Lucy Arnold 00:27:23
Okay, there are three things I— But at any rate, the third thing that I vividly remember was I’m watching this movie, and I think the protagonist fucking dies in that battle pretty early on. You know, it’s the main guy, and you think he’s dead. And the movie’s like, he’s dead. And I’m like, well, I guess he’s dead. Because that movie was so bad. I was like, I guess they will just fucking kill him. And then he came back, and it’s obvious, right? Like, oh, of course they’re not gonna kill him. But I bought it because the movie did such a bad job. Like, I thought, well, they’re incompetent. And that’s how I feel about this episode. The twist only worked because I was like, yeah, these guys are really incompetent. Like, they couldn’t imagine how to do this. And so they did. And so I’m like, oh, pleasant twist. But actually, when you really think it through, it’s because you did a bad job that it worked, you know?

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:28:11
Like, a bad job making Sato seem like a character who could ever have any sort of agency?

Lucy Arnold 00:28:19
Or even, I’d say women… like Sato and, like, any kind of, like, power structure that would imagine her as an emperor, right? Like…

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:28:31
It was wild to me that Sato and T’Pol get a fight, and the only things they say to each other is about how they’re fucking men or sleeping their way to power.

Lucy Arnold 00:28:43
Made me so fucking mad.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:28:45
Sato’s not even racist.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:28:48
Yeah, she just jealous, right?

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:28:50
Yeah, she’s just jealous.

Lucy Arnold 00:28:51
I thought it was so gross. It’s exactly the kind of thing I hate. Like, I despise that sort of thing in any media. And I was super mad about it. It’s good it was toward the end, because I may not have continued. I was super pissed at that fight. And, you know, I do want to emphasize that I do not think the conclusion of this pair of episodes is a feminist conclusion. I think it’s a conclusion that maintains the status quo. And I do agree with Gregory’s argument about how in some ways there’s less cynicism here. But ultimately, I think there is a sort of sad cynicism in this pair of episodes. It’s, to me, a very obliquer mirror universe than what we see in other versions. There are no Ferengi freedom fighters here. Although you have T’Pol, who is at least on the edge of being a Vulcan freedom fighter. And you don’t have people who are even, like, Georgiou, right? Who is like, has a sort of loyal charisma. You just see meanness from these people. And I guess I hungered for more moments of humanity even in their meanness. And I didn’t think that that voice in Archer’s head was sufficient to create that.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:30:12
No.

Lucy Arnold 00:30:13
Like, it didn’t make me feel… He just felt mean and Reed felt mean and Mayweather felt mean and even Phlox, who I adore: mean.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:30:22
Just—

Lucy Arnold 00:30:22
Everyone is just mean.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:30:23
Phlox was vivisecting people for, vivisecting animals for fun.

Lucy Arnold 00:30:27
Yeah. Everyone’s just so fucking mean. Like, and the dog. Just a growling mean dog. Like, the whole thing, it just kind of felt like, what’s the mirror universe? Everyone is mean. I don’t know.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:30:39
Yeah, I think that, like, the infusion… I, I see the infusion of the Federation ideals as hopeful, but there’s also the cynicism of the episode to be like: except that the Terran Empire has lasted this long, completely being mean and misogynist and hateful and all this stuff.

Lucy Arnold 00:30:58
And classist and racist.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:31:00
Yeah. I think this is worse, the worst the Terran Empire ever is? Which maybe makes some sort of awful sense because it’s the earliest that we see it.

Lucy Arnold 00:31:10
It is. But I just feel, I feel that is a sort of cynical take, too, for them to think if this is indeed what happened in the writers’ room, that they thought, “Oh, it’s the earliest version of the Terran Empire. Let’s just make them the mean ones.” I think that is, like, you’re sort of missing something there about people, right? Like, I think.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:31:33
Well, it, it either means that they became more enlightened, which is a path Star Trek likes to imagine. The future means they become more enlightened. If they had done the opposite, it would mean that they had gotten worse, right? You start with shooting a Vulcan, and that’s the high point. And it seems in line with what Star Trek wants to be that you start low and end up better off. I’m making big air quotes because the mirror universe is just a nightmare, right? Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:32:07
Man, imagine if this episode had been like, there were people on the crew who are trying to be good, and Sato is the one who’s always, like, encouraging cruelty and, like, her installment as Emperor becomes, like, the beginning of a dark age for the Terran Empire. That would be awesome.

Lucy Arnold 00:32:28
That would have been so much better. Yeah. I think Nana Visitor, like, she so, like, sank into her role in the Mirror Universe, you know, that despot that…

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:32:40
Attendant Kira.

Lucy Arnold 00:32:42
Yes. And, like, that was good. I mean, obviously the character was bad, but her performance was good and the story they were telling was interesting. And I think this one felt just much shallower. And you can see now why I had to preface this by saying I actually did like it. Like, I did. Like, I didn’t hate it.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:33:03
Yeah.

Lucy Arnold 00:33:04
But I am, I guess when I think about the meaning of it, I am disappointed by the shallowness of the characters.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:33:16
So, Lucy, you had said you were not surprised when you saw the midriff uniforms. One of my first notes is, “omg, the Vulcan lady’s belly is out.” And then my two notes down is, “What is this belly shirt phenomenon, interrobang.” So I was surprised.

Lucy Arnold 00:33:32
I have seen Enterprise.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:33:36
I have not seen enough.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:33:37
I think we do see these uniforms in the original Mirror, Mirror episode. I think that they’re a slightly sexier version of… Well, a slightly more revealing. I… Questionable whether it’s actually sexier.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:33:52
Right. Yeah. At first I was like, oh, is the Vulcan lady doing like a, you know, like a one off uniform, right? Like, a Troi. You know, and then I was like, there are two! So, yes, that was… I, at least got one person shocked.

Lucy Arnold 00:34:13
I had found a picture, which I will share, of Nichelle Nichols in a similar belly revealing outfit that somehow manages to be much less egregious than the ones…

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:34:32
I mean, I would expect it of original series, right? Like, they were willing to have women wearing whatever.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:34:42
Yeah, they, they really liked miniskirts and a bunch of other things. But yeah, Enterprise. I will say this episode does continue to uphold my theory that T’Pol is, unbeknownst to the show, the main character of Enterprise. She is always the one in any plot who is right and nobody will listen to her and she has to put up with all of these, this nonsense. Okay.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:35:15
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:35:16
So I’m looking at a picture of Uhura. She’s got a golden… She’s got basically a sports bra top, kind of, a little looser than that crop top. An armband on her upper arm. Her, she’s out from rib cage to a little higher than T’Pol was. But you can see like all of her abs and then like a golden scarf, sash around her waist.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:35:45
I will say all six of her abs. This woman’s cut.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:35:51
This outfit looks great. This outfit looks better than T’Pol’s outfit.

Lucy Arnold 00:35:54
It does. That’s what I was trying to say. I sent a second one, too, because you can see person in blue with a similar uniform—

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:36:03
Yeah.

Lucy Arnold 00:36:05
—in it. And you can also, though, just to note, the outfit that Kirk is wearing is also arms out, so you can see those guns and—

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:36:19
Deep V neck cut.

Lucy Arnold 00:36:21
V neck cut. Yeah. So I do feel this is a little bit more equal opportunity.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:36:27
Wild.

Lucy Arnold 00:36:29
Wild.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:36:29
Evil as sexy. Speaking of bodies, I want to talk about Star Trek and dehumanization and what it, what Star Trek does when it wants to dehumanize people. And of course, as we discussed in the mirror universe, here we have anyone that’s not human is subjugated. And they use the word “slaves”, which I’m not objecting to from like a, “Oh, we should say ‘enslaved’ now.” I was just like, Star Trek uses the word “slave” a lot. It describes a lot of things as slavery, which is fascinating. It feels weird. I was like, oh, right, we’re in the early aughts. We’re just going to call people slaves.

And so it was interesting to me to see the, the point at which I was like, oh, let me write this shit down is when there’s a Tholian brought in to be “interrogated”. And I think Archer maybe says, you know, “Who is he?” or something. And Phlox says, “No, it’s really an it because it has the sexual characteristics of both male and female,” and like them as a singular pronoun, blah, blah, blah. Not a, not as much a thing in the oughts. It makes sense that you would use it in this case. However, it is also extremely dehumanizing and very specifically doing so, right? It’s not just genders or sex.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:37:57
With quick aside here, the Tholian design: awesome. It’s, you know, CG of the era, so it’s not amazing, but it’s like, it’s this weird, like, crystalline shell creature. It’s, it’s got four legs, I think, but has a vertical body plan. It’s sort of like a, a creeper from Minecraft if it was made out of, like, weird crystal.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:38:17
Yeah. It was so cool. I was like, have we seen one of these before? Fucking awesome. The, the world is such that people have to be verbally reminded that they are enslaved.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:38:34
Yeah.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:38:35
T’Pol is told is reminded by Archer that she is enslaved. Imagine what a weird… What a weird world. I do feel like you should either kind of know it or not. But of course, you know, you get your… I’ll leave that there.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:38:53
You have to deliver exposition somehow.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:38:57
Right. But this sort of reminder, you know, is for the viewer but is also happening, you know, in world. People go, “Oh, things are bad for us!” You’re like, “Yeah, you oughta know.” People who are in the status are not really allowed to have ambitions, right? Like there’s… T’Pol does not have a five year career plan going on, right? Like, none of them do. Phlox, who is just over here just vivisecting people because it’s fun and designing torture chambers or whatever. And then these people also have like these cultural elements that have to be hidden. Like the Vulcan greeting, hand greeting, is like a secret symbol. When T’Pol goes into the quarters of… I don’t remember his name. The sort of older gentleman.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:39:51
It’s the Vulcan ambassador to Earth in the Prime Universe. It’s the dude who’s constantly like, “No, you can’t have any of our technology!”

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:39:59
Right. She makes the, the hand sign. He’s like, “Hey, you shouldn’t even do that behind closed doors.” And there’s, you know, there’s a distinction there between people opting out of participating in the majority. Like the Ferengi in our standard Star Trek universe. They’re like, we’re just not here for your weird Federation bullshit. We’ll just do our stuff right over here. And then being gatekept, where you have to be, you have to keep your shit secret.

But Star Trek also, you know, it has these clear sort of markers of these people are subjugated. But it really struggles with properly showing the distrust that would have to be there. So like, yeah, if you… The, the Tucker/T’Pol situation is really key there, right? They’re both accused of sabotage. Tucker’s tortured. But they’re both, they’re still needed. They are needed to do their jobs, right? And so ultimately you gotta, you gotta put Tucker back on duty. You have to, like, T’Pol has a commander’s rank. You can’t, you cannot… If you need a populace to do a thing and they need to be right next to you to do it, you have to have them right next to you, right? Like, there’s no. And human society in the real world solved this in a variety of horrendous ways of stratification. Star Trek can’t commit. It just can’t commit.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:41:43
It took me half an episode to really understand what was going on with the Rebellion because… So the Rebellion is a bunch of Vulcans and other non-human species trying to overthrow the Terran Empire. And it is inconceivable that a society as cruel as the Terran Empire would let a Vulcan serve in a commander role on a spaceship when Vulcans are rebelling against the Empire. Like, just. Yeah, maybe your ground forces you let be Vulcans. Maybe, maybe even you give a Vulcan control over the phasers, right? But like you don’t. They don’t have a command position.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:42:27
Right. You don’t give them codes, you don’t give them.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:42:31
Yeah.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:42:32
And again, I do think that’s complicated, right? Like there were enslaved people who worked in the houses of slave owners, right? Like there has to be a gradient there in terms of, you know, if you don’t want to be doing the dusting yourself, right? But Star Trek, I think, struggles to cohesively present a picture of what this society looks like.

And even like this happens elsewhere and other ways, ways where like so season three of Next Gen when Pulaski, Dr. Pulaski comes on board and she pulls some old McCoy shit, she calls Data “Data” (note: pronounced /ˈdætə/). I’m pretty sure uses it pronouns for Data. Poor Data, right? Has this whole legal, you know, whether he has legal rights or not. Like, that sort of… The ways in which Star Trek wants to demonstrate that someone is dehumanized and that they’re in a status just doesn’t make sense.

Like, what did Pulaski expect to happen by denying Data personhood? What, what system was she being part of in that way? McCoy in original series constantly referring to Spock by his body parts. “You pointy eared bastard”, “you green blooded bastard”, you—. You know, like all of this sort of lingo. We have Una in Strange New Worlds—that’s the first officer—who’s put on trial because she’s an Augment, where suddenly she becomes not-human, right? Suddenly she is no longer human.

The… at this point with Enterprise. And I feel like this is maybe, maybe worse in these episodes for the various reasons we’ve talked about in terms of its kind of shaky writing a little bit with regards to like how does, if this, how does this fleet get ships moving in the same direction, right? They’re so dysfunctional at this point. It’s idea of what dehumanization looks like doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It’s all superficial. It’s all labels and telling you that you are subjugated because they tortured Tucker just fine. They, you know, had no problem that they threw everybody in those, you know, in that torture device. So I just thought it was weird.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:45:03
I don’t. I think it’s only humans that get put in that agony chamber. The Tholian gets tortured.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:45:09
The Gorn gets the gravity thing. Oh, that’s just to defeat them.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:45:14
But the agony booth.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:45:15
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:45:16
Only is only used on humans despite them. Oh, no, no. First it’s the Tellurian is.

Lucy Arnold 00:45:22
Oh, that’s right, the Tellurian.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:45:24
That’s right.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:45:25
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:45:26
But like, T’Pol is not put in the agony booth.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:45:28
Right. Yeah, there’s not a system there. Like, I guess the chaos of the Terran Empire is manifest through its sort of inconsistent dehumanization. And like I said, also, I think Star Trek is not… can’t commit to the cruelty it would take to show real dehumanization. And that’s, you know, I think where Star Trek gets a little floaty, a little too utopian. Is that it… when it wants to show contrast, it really struggles to do so. Hits the mark sometimes, but it won’t, it rarely goes dark enough to truly show what systemic evil looks like. So, yeah, whoo. I did struggle with these episodes, but I did like them. And I’ll get a little more into that in Ten Forward. But I did, this was an interesting picture. I also really like that they didn’t do the frame story because I was like, “Are we gonna see the regular… No, no, we’re not. Okay. We’re just. We’re here for this.” And I liked it. Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:46:40
I was wondering whether maybe Archer would turn out to be prime Archer because he was acting so weird at times.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:46:46
Oh, yeah.

Lucy Arnold 00:46:50 just a weirdo.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:46:49
Just a weirdo that’s not doing great. All right, so with the main topics covered, let’s go through a quick lightning round of other interesting things we spotted.

Lucy Arnold 00:47:03
Well, I feel like we’ve already alluded a good bit to the things that I spotted that I wanted to talk about. And some of that is just because I am currently living through the year 2024 in the United States. And so I cannot help but notice that this episode is a little prescient in some ways, the ways in which fascism and censorship are represented here.

As Gregory already pointed out, it’s this sort of hopeful version of the universe that leads T’Pol to revolutionary thought. Which is, it is some of the root of Marxist thinking. You know, Paulo Freire, who is the father of critical pedagogy, like, he did his literacy work on Brazilian haciendas where he taught peasants who didn’t know how to read how to read using the language of class and solidarity. And it is through—I mean, a lot of us believe that it is through literacy and through story and through language that critical consciousness first and then revolutionary thought becomes possible. And it’s interesting that that is true in this world.

And I did think it was interesting that Archer orders the histories, the Federation histories, to be destroyed at the end, you know, And I think it’s partly because the same reason why, know, people are trying to ban books today, you know? They think if your kid doesn’t read a book about a gay kid, they’re not going to be gay or, I don’t know, something. Like, I think that’s part of it, you know, for him is like about, about that and sort of being inspiring to people.

But I also think it’s a more personal reason too, and that this version of Archer is kind of like King Claudius in Hamlet and that he totally recognizes what it would be possible for him to do, but he’s unwilling to give up the power that he has gained by being evil, right? Like he has gained this power and he doesn’t want to give it up. And so destroying those histories is also like destroying that part of himself that has now that consciousness that he gained.

And for the record, I do think there is like the kernel of a really strong story with Archer there. I don’t think it was as explored maybe as it was possible for it to be, but I think there is something interesting that happens with him. And at any rate, I was really struck by the parallels between what was happening in the Terran Empire and today, because we’re also continuing with fascism and censorship. And to be perfectly honest, I think our fascists are also, like, you kind of look at them and like, how do y’all function? How are y’all doing this? Because it’s seems kind of like chaos over there. They’re kind of similar to the Terran Empire in a lot of ways, if you really think about it. They just clearly don’t trust each other. They’re full of just wild nonsense. I don’t know.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:50:32
I have some very good podcast episodes on the Federalist Society that I recommend you listen to. It will give you a sense of how things are working over there.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:50:41
Is that Behind the Bastards?

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:50:43
No, it’s the 5-4 podcast. So it’s a Supreme Court-focused podcast about terrible decisions SCOTUS makes. And they did a four part series on the Federalist Society. And it is amazing how that cohesive machine sits behind what looks like a lot of chaos to us in some ways. But I do think you’re also right that like the culture, you know, what are we calling it? Culture war. Like, that stuff feels very helter skelter.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:51:15
Lucy, did you mention how the line about propaganda and how even within the Terran Empire they’re not learning the truth about how their war is going?

Lucy Arnold 00:51:26
I didn’t mention it, but you go ahead.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:51:28
Yeah. There’s some point at which maybe Sato was talking to Forrest, and Sato’s like, “Well, that battle went so well. That good. We’re gonna win the war before long.” Forrest is like, “Don’t tell anyone this. That battle went badly. We lost a bunch of ships.” And like, like, this is a world in which even the enthusiastic fascists are denied the information that would make them more effective at war because it would reflect badly on the state.

Lucy Arnold 00:51:58
Yeah.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:51:59
Sato as the keeper of intel was interesting, the way she moved—in part from bed to bed, right? But, like, that pillow talk was a lot of her collecting those tidbits of knowledge and moving them around and passing them around. I thought that was interesting.

Lucy Arnold 00:52:19
I thought so, too. It actually reminds me, like, when we were talking about her before and Gregory had said the thing about how she gets ambitious when she hears about our Hoshi Sato, because I didn’t read her that way. I actually thought that, I thought maybe she was scheming from the beginning. I thought maybe that line where she says, “I just want to go back and be a teacher,” was her being sort of dishonest, you know, to be, she wants to be, like, seen as less than or not ambitious, right? Because then she’s not threatening if she’s not ambitious.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:53:03
Yeah, I think they’re both valid readings, for sure.

Lucy Arnold 00:53:08
I mean, only just because this show didn’t give us more to cling to. I mean, I, you know, I think we have to create something out of what we were given from the start.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:53:16
She definitely desires to be adjacent to power and to become comfortable and have the benefits of those positions. But, yeah, I think it’s not made clear whether she’s always been looking for a chance to rise even further above her station or whether that came from learning that such things are possible.

Lucy Arnold 00:53:40
Yeah. Because she’s still saying the same stuff, even at the end when she says, “Is there anything I need to know about being the Emperor’s consort?” Like, and at that point, she’s certainly lying, right? She does not plan to be the Emperor’s consort.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:53:57
Well, we’ve talked about interrogation a whole lot, and I think that this episode does not think that torture or pain or fear are effective ways to affect people’s behavior. Like, out of all the people, like, all sorts of people are tortured on this, on this, in this pair of episodes. We get the Tellurian, we get Trip, we get Archer, we get all sorts of people. And out of all of them, the only case in which they get anything useful out of torture is the Tholian. Tholian?

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:54:47
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:54:48
They basically threaten to kill the Tholian, and it responds by telling them where the ship is and then immediately trying to do a distress signal. And it’s not even clear whether, like, it’s possible that the Tholian, like, was, like, fine, I’ll tell them where the ship is. So that way I’ll be able to warn, I’ll be able to warn people in advance.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:55:11
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:55:12
And, yeah, they don’t. They never. They’re very rarely torturing the right person, right? They torture Trip, who doesn’t know who the saboteur is.

Lucy Arnold 00:55:20
Well, he kind of does. Maybe if they could have dislodged his false memories, they could have.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:55:24
Yeah, yeah. If they, you know, had someone mind meld with him.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:55:28
Huh. Weird.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:55:30
But, like. And I mean this… Stories like torture as a plot device because it’s a convenient way to, like, expose someone’s character and let information pass from someone who doesn’t want to give it to someone who wants it.

But in the real world, torture isn’t a particularly effective method of getting information. Like, there… People have studied it as much as they could, and generally, torturing is a great way to get people to talk. It’s not a great way to get people to tell the truth because people will just say whatever they can to get out of, to stop the pain.

And I think that these episodes, whether or not they’re intentional about it, I think that they uphold that truth that, like, this agony booth is really just to be sadistic. And, and probably part of the reason why the Terran Empire is so dysfunctional is because everyone’s getting tortured all the time. And so everyone’s got complex PTSD. Every single moment, like, every moment of their waking lives, they’re constantly being reminded of trauma or worried about getting hurt. And likewise, people are threatening each other all over these episodes, and it never works. No one ever hears, “I’m going to kill you,” and is like, “Oh, well, I better stop what I’m doing then.”

Like, these episodes absolutely think that when you tell someone, “I’ll kill you if you don’t do this,” that person will resist more. They won’t give in. You know, we get everyone’s, you know, Archer throws Forrest up against the wall and is like, “You’re lucky I let you live.” And then Forrest mutinies and—remutinies and takes the ship back. You know, T’Pol is like, “I was told to k—”

Lucy Arnold 00:57:31
Maybe “unmutinies”?

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:57:32
Yeah. Unmutinies? Demutinies?

Yeah. T’Pol gets threatened various ways and it never sways her. Like, this is, this episode is like, “Yeah. Fear is a bad leadership tactic. Threatening people doesn’t work. Hurting people doesn’t cause them to do what you want or to give you useful information. All of this torture is useless.” And it’s that the only ways in which people’s behavior is manipulated is by offering them things or arguing with them philosophically, right? T’Pol is able to convince the daddy Vulcan by just kind of making an ideological appeal. And then Phlox, they’re able to get on board by being like, “You’ll be able to do some research and have a bunch of concubines.”

Lucy Arnold 00:58:24
I believe she utters the word “females”.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:58:28
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:58:28
Yes. Yeah, yeah, it’s rough.

Lucy Arnold 00:58:31
I have in my notes, I was gonna look up that Vulcan’s name and then like two notes over, he gets killed on the Avenger. And I was like, eh.

Gregory Avery-Weir 00:58:42
Yeah, he’s a, he’s a. Just a recurring character. I don’t, I don’t remember. It’s something starting with S, I think. Like, Suvok.

Lucy Arnold 00:58:51
That sounds right.

Melissa Avery-Weir 00:58:52
Not Sarek. I was thinking about incentives. There are those two moments where I felt bad for Archer a little bit. Where I think he’s talking to Hoshi and she says, “You’ll get a ship of your own.” And he says, “I already have a ship of my own.” And then later he’s talking to whatever the admiral person is or other captain that rolls up and, you know, that guy is like, “Hey, well, you know, we’ll put you in for commendation or whatever. And, you know, this will fast track you to getting your own command.” And again, Archer’s like, “Hold up. I already—you could just, you know, promote me. Do a field promotion. This is a ship that I have. I have it in my hand.” This poor son of a bitch. What drives him… Like, it’s not even that he’s afraid of pain. Like, like you said, like, he’s not afraid of the pain of the loss. He just. he’s… There’s this carrot on this stick and it’s the ship that he thinks he has that. Well, he does not. That’s fucking sad.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:00:11
Yeah. At one point, he has a vision of Prime Archer and that, the imaginary Archer says, defeat this Gorn and you’ll finally earn the respect you deserve. Yeah, this pathetic character who thinks he deserves respect but kind of doesn’t do anything to earn it.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:00:31
Yeah, yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:00:32
Tragic.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:00:34
Yeah. All right. In addition to the deep stuff, we’re also big Star Trek fans. So let’s head to Ten Forward and talk about the stuff we geeked out about. I will start with the Rebellion. Okay, I’m going to confess an embarrassing thing, which is that I think in part because of the wide variety of helter skelter ways in which I have watched Star Trek over the millennia, I didn’t fully realize that all the plots were connected. Like, I didn’t fully realize that this Rebellion was the same as some rowdy people in Discovery. And I didn’t remember the details of original series mirror universe episodes, right? Like, yeah, I didn’t see it as like a continuous plot happening because Star Trek doesn’t have a ton of, you know, especially in those years of long continuous plots.

So what I want to do is I want to go and line up all the episodes of all the Star Treks that touch the mirror universe and watch them either in chronological, in-universe or out of universe sequence. Because I have so many questions. Like, how are these non-humans getting, making, and deploying ships? The Terrans should be all over that shit, right? Like, they shouldn’t be able to make a ship that can fight. Why does it take so long for the empire to fall? Like we’ve talked about, these people truly could not get this one ship that they are on from point A to point B without two… without a mutiny and an unmutiny.

Lucy Arnold 01:02:20
One, I think you would love to watch them like that. And two, you will not be satisfied by the answers to your questions that you get. So just as a heads up, those questions are not addressed.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:02:35
There’s some deep dives. I mean, my headcanon is that in this episode the Rebellion has ships because they stole them from, like, they were on Starfleet ships and they took them over.

Lucy Arnold 01:02:46
They literally have a Vulcan ship. It’s called, it’s a Vulcan ship.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:02:50
Oh, really?

Lucy Arnold 01:02:50
Yeah, it’s. They, they destroy it.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:02:52
Weird. I don’t know.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:02:53
Yeah, yeah. So I’m like, who, like, ships get built in space dock, right? Like, they don’t get built in a cave on a world. So how did they get so far as to have a, a ship that is sealed and can hold air and it not have been destroyed? And maybe the answer is because the Terran Empire is all stabbing themselves in the back and, you know, the dysfunctionality. Anyway, I just have so many questions that I am very curious about. So that’s my geekery is being like, oh shit, there’s a lot more here than I thought there was other than people in cute uniforms being mean to each other.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:03:33
So yeah, there’s a fun subtle bit of continuity in between Enterprise and Discovery. Mild spoilers for Discovery Season 1. It’s fine, you don’t need to skip. I’m not giving too much away. The Mirror Emperor in Discovery, she, her, at least her actor is Chinese and Malaysian and Sato is Japanese. So there’s not like an implication that like she’s a descendant of Sato, but part one of her titles is Iaponius or something like that, which could be translated to be like, I think it means something like “Japanese”, which the, there’s an implication that like Sato added a title to the Emperor’s list of titles to honor her homeland.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:04:31
Oh, that’s interesting.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:04:33
And, and we see in Discovery especially, that like emperors tend to kind of Roman-style adopt their successors instead of like birthing their successors.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:04:46
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:04:47
And so, you know, it’s, it’s, it is fun to think of like, okay, so in the hundred or something years between Emperor Sato and the Emperor in Discovery, how did you know what, what happened? What, how did succession pass?

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:05:03
Uh-huh. It’s good shit.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:05:07
Well, I want to talk about one of my favorite things about Star Trek, which is evocative episode titles. I think I’ve, we’ve talked before about this in passing. One of my favorite episode titles ever, titles of anything in the universe is “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry.” An amazing episode title. This one is very cool, “In a Mirror, Darkly”. And it is a biblical reference. So it is from the, from the same verse as the line, like, “When I was a child, I acted as a child, but when I became an adult I put away childish things.”

And it’s the sort of interpretation of that passage dovetails really nicely with the compassion idea because it’s 1 Corinthians 13 and it’s a part that is saying that love is the most powerful and important force in your spiritual experience. And notably it compares prophecy to love. So it says that prophecies end, right? You can resolve a prophecy. You will die and your knowledge will go away. You will get to the point that was prophesied and it will be done. But love lasts forever and love is always useful. And the “In a Mirror, Darkly” bit is that like the temporal world, the material, our worldly concerns prevent us from seeing the truth clearly. And when we bring about heaven —or one might say “utopia”—then we would be able to put aside childish things and see the world as a true leader is through the lens of love.

And, like, that’s a really cool, like, allusion to be making from a title that, like, immediately is very evocative, right? “In a Mirror, Darkly”, it’s doing the wordplay that’s always done around mirror episodes. Where the word mirror or something like it is brought in. The original episode is “Mirror, Mirror”: mirror, mirror on the wall. And this one is, like, on the surface level, just being like, hey, it’s a dark mirror.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:07:39
Right.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:07:41
But the illusion is a deeper thing of, like, love is supreme. Love is power. And the reason why everyone has a shitty time in this episode is that they don’t love. And they’re not acting out of love.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:08:01
Yeah. Especially given how they portray the use of sex as… Like, I think in that opening scene with Sato and Forrest… It’s possible to believe that they are, I’ll say, actually an item. Actually a romantically invested item. That there’s love there. And maybe there is, but it gets super complicated on whether she’s only using him. And so on and so forth. And her whole journey, as we’ve discussed. But, yeah, that’s a good—I hadn’t realized that was biblical.

Lucy Arnold 01:08:41
It connects to Paulo Freire, who I’ve already mentioned to my favorite Freire quote—one of my favorite Freire quotes is, “Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause. The cause of liberation.” Which also ties in nicely with this episode. If you haven’t read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, go read it right now. Drop everything.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:09:16
Another bit of a reference that is a lot less deep is, I like the conversation where I think it’s. T’Pol and Phlox are discussing the differences in art between the two worlds. And it’s cute that they’re, like, turns out Shakespeare? Just as mean in the real universes or in the prime universe as it is in the mirror universe. And I like whenever Star Trek references Shakespeare, it’s always cute.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:09:42
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:09:43
This was, this was no different.

Lucy Arnold 01:09:45
I suppose there’s some argument for Forrest, because he does order everyone to evacuate the Enterprise. And he basically says he’s buying them time to get away, you know, before the Enterprise is destroyed. So if anybody does anything courageous, it’s him, right?

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:10:04
Yeah.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:10:05
Yeah. I was surprised Archer didn’t just shoot all those life capsules out of space, right? They saw them and were like, well, scoop them up. But there was a moment where clearly he could have blown them to smithereens. Not an act of love, just an act of later getting advantage or hoping he could.

Lucy Arnold 01:10:27
Well, my thing I geeked out about was the intro theme because instead of doing a normal Star Trek introduction, which on Discovery is like scenes from flight, you know, you see the Wright brothers’ plane and then, you know, airplanes and sort of rocket ships and the transition to spaceships, because Enterprise—

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:10:53
This is on Enterprise, not Discovery.

Lucy Arnold 01:10:57
I’m sorry?

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:11:01
Yeah, you said Discovery. Enterprise is what you’re talking about, right?

Lucy Arnold 01:11:00
Oh, yeah, I’m sorry. So it’s because Enterprise is the earliest Star Trek and it shows that kind of progression from humans, like, taking to space. And so in the beginning of this episode, instead of that kind of beautiful hopeful imagery, you have images of like, violence and war and humans being destructive because it’s the story of the Terran Empire and not what leads us, you know, to be in the Federation.

And I just like that because it’s commitment. It’s commitment to the thing that you’re doing. And somebody was like, well, we can’t just play our normal really, like, cute theme because this is like the Terran Empire. And since Lissa made a confession, I will also make a confession that is perhaps my most controversial Star Trek opinion, which is: I love the Enterprise theme. I love it. I know everybody hates it. Like, everybody I know hates it. I think it’s gorgeous and I love it. And it always, it kind of brings a tear to my eye, you know? In fact, after I watched this, these two episodes, I went and pulled up another episode of Enterprise after it just to make sure they were still doing the theme because I was like, well, maybe they’ve changed the Enterprise theme. I didn’t watch season four. But if I liked anything about Enterprise, it’s that theme song.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:12:33
I think it’s the only Star Trek theme with lyrics. It’s. The song is “Faith of the Heart”, which was originally written for the movie Patch Adams.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:12:42
Oh, god, that tracks.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:12:46
I hoped that they would do another vocal song for the mirror episode. I was hoping for, like, I don’t know, some weird military anthem or something.

Lucy Arnold 01:12:59
Or like something from GWAR.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:13:03
Yeah, yeah, GWAR would be great. But instead it’s just like, it’s like a militant march, sort of, I don’t know, very sci-fi military.

Lucy Arnold 01:13:15
Maybe they want to bring up painful things because a lot of Star Trek fans really hate that theme song. Like, it is much maligned.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:13:26
I almost reflexively hit skip just because it was, you know, the intro. I know the intro. And then I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I don’t think think that image is what I think that image should be. It’s good.

Lucy Arnold 01:13:39
Anyway, you know what, if you wanted to argue with me about my opinion on the Star Trek theme, you should leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and say how wrong I am in your review. “Five stars. But Lucy’s super wrong.”

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:13:56
Yeah, we’ll dismiss any opinion that isn’t a five star review.

Lucy Arnold 01:13:59
Yeah, I’m not interested in that.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:14:03
I didn’t look into it: did y’all know if the shots of the Enterprise destroying shit in the opening are from the show or if they rendered them new? I bet that those are shots of the Enterprise, the prime Enterprise destroying shit.

Lucy Arnold 01:14:21
I would guess that you are right, but I didn’t look it up.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:14:25
That’s interesting. I, I feel well-trained, perhaps incorrectly, that a show changing anything around the main content, like changing the credit sequence or changing the intro sequence is like more effort than just making the show. Like it has to be a special occasion, you know, because like even, let’s take anime, right? It only happens once a season usually. Or, you know, you don’t get a lot of anime that changes its intro sequence every episode or something. And so when a show like this switches intro, I’m like, “Oh, this is a, there’s like a budget. This is like a real deal.” You know, aside from the fact that it’s already a two parter, there’s something about that that makes it feel like they had to send in different tapes or something. I don’t know.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:15:17
I think the big factor in that is just that it’s more, it’s usually more expensive to make an opening sequence because you’ve got, usually got notable backing music that you can’t just pull out of the library. You’ve got to make sure that you do all the credits properly according to the union regulations. You usually spend more money on the special effects. All of that stuff where like, if you’re gonna spend the money for that, you might as well make one that you can use for every episode and not have to spend more to make a new one.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:15:48
Yeah.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:15:49
So with that covered at the end of each episode, we pick the next thing we’re watching based on the connection from this episode. And this is a bit of a weird one, so please speak up if you, if, if you’ve got concerns. But this time we looked at an episode that explored the mirror universe. So next time I propose we check out what I can only assume is the best known work that visits the mirror universe: 2000’s Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, developed by Raven Software.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:16:24
Yes!

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:16:25
This is the Star Trek Voyager first person shooter using the Quake 3 engine.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:16:28
It was the first 3D game of that sort that I played well.

Lucy Arnold 01:16:35
I have never heard of it.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:16:40
Well, I’m proposing that we play the first four levels. That’s through the end of the scavenger base sequence where the mirror universe stuff appears. It’s looking like it’s going to be two or three hours of play, so it should be manageable. It’s a pretty short game and we’re playing about half of it. But if that, if it turns out to be a problem, we can either go for a let’s play video or we can… I’ve got a backup if, if this doesn’t work and you’ll never hear this at the end.

So I’m still looking for my physical copy of the game. I might not still have my retail copy, but you can get it for $10 at gog.com. It’s… the game is almost 25 years old, so it only sort of works on modern machines. So I’ll put a link in the show notes with instructions for anyone who wants to basically be able to play it at modern resolutions. You need to do a few things to make it not weirdly stretched on a modern HD monitor.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:17:44
Holy shit. It’s our first, our first step out into the “multi” of the media. All right, so next time we’ll be discussing Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force on Before the Future Came or an alternative which will get subbed in here. You can find links and show notes at beforethefuture.space. Please rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts or wherever you found the show. You can… um… hmm.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:18:19
Oh yeah. Hey, we didn’t revise this bit.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:18:22
Yeah. So, listeners: Cohost is shutting down. It is no longer accessible for like, posting questions and stuff which would be our normal recommendation. We do have a Mastodon account. Please see the show notes for a link to it because I don’t have it on hand at this very moment but we are on Trekkies.social as one might expect, so you can find us there and various other sites. We’re on TikTok, Instagram, places like that. So you can also post comments on our website or you can email us at onscreen@beforethefuture.space.

Gregory Avery-Weir 01:19:09
I’m Gregory Avery Weir and you can find me at ludusnovus.net.

Lucy Arnold 01:19:15
I’m Lucy Arnold and sometimes blog@intertextualities.com.

Melissa Avery-Weir 01:19:22
I’m Melissa Avery Weir and I live irrsinn.net and on Macedon as melissa@irrsin.life. Our music is “Let’s Pretend” by Josh Woodward, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Thank you all for listening.

Josh Woodward (singing) 01:88:17
I’m sure we’ll all live happily ever after
Surrounded by butterflies, children and laughter
It’s a fairytale story, so let’s just pretend
Hallelujah, amen, it’s the end
Happily ever after, the end

Lucy Arnold 01:20:06
Post-coitally. That’s a hard thing to say. I’ll try that again. Post-coitally.