S01.E12: Vaulting Ambition

[Lebanna]

2 hours ago, tpel said:

I kind of feel like I want to break up with this show now. I won't, of course, because . . . Star Trek. But really, making Lorca a bad guy could be fun. Making him a perv is not so fun. I was already convinced that he was MirrorLorca, and thus believed that we would not have the character beyond this season. Still, I told myself, there would be this whole first season of fascinating Jason Isaacs awesomeness to look back on. Now it is tainted. The sweet scenes, like right after they saved Sarek and Michael told Lorca it was an honor to serve under him, and he got that interesting expression on his face -- if he was just MirrorLorca, it would be neat to look back and see that as him being touched by her words, despite his nature and agenda. Now its just gross. Also, the way he seemed to care about Tyler when he saved him from the prison ship now rings hollow, as Lorca just called his confederate "soldier" (like he did Tyler, to encourage him) and then watched him die horribly rather than saying the name of the guard's sister. 

I totally get this sentiment and honestly I'm kind of disappointed about that too, because there have been moments where Lorca has just seemed awesome and I've tried to make excuses for how horrible he clearly is in so many ways. That's why I'm still holding out crazy hope that Prime Lorca will somehow show up.

But I'm honestly not surprised at all about this development, as this (if Georgiou is telling the truth) wouldn't even be the first time this decade that Isaacs has played a character unhealthily obsessed with a lookalike of his daughter. There has been all this stuff about why on earth he ended up doing Star Trek, apart from being a fan, and this kind of twisted storyline is totally what would make him agree to do it.

I bet he doesn't let his real life kids watch his shows, though.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Lebanna

[100Proof]

33 minutes ago, Miles said:

That was about her being shocked that the only mutineer in starfleet history, who gossip says started the war with the klingons, was now her bunkmate.

Yer probably right. I could've sworn it was 'sinister'. <shrug>  :)

[100Proof]

18 minutes ago, Lebanna said:

But I'm honestly not surprised at all about this development, as this (if Georgiou is telling the truth) wouldn't even be the first time this decade that Isaacs has played a character unhealthily obsessed with a lookalike of his daughter. There has been all this stuff about why on earth he ended up doing Star Trek, apart from being a fan, and this kind of twisted storyline is totally what would make him agree to do it.

 

Not getting this. Are you implying the actual real life person  has some kind of sordid real life issue or do you have trouble separating the actor from their role?

I remember him from the OA, which itself started out intriguing but went ridiculous towards the finish, lol

[Lebanna]

1 hour ago, 100Proof said:

Not getting this. Are you implying the actual real life person  has some kind of sordid real life issue or do you have trouble separating the actor from their role?

I remember him from the OA, which itself started out intriguing but went ridiculous towards the finish, lol

Oh, gods no. I'm not implying that in a million years. I'm British in origin, so I've heard of him since the '90s and Jason Isaacs the real person seems like a straight up great guy who speaks out to condemn corruption, cruelty and biogotry on every level and probably does great work for charity and is kind to small animals. No. How did you even get that impression?

But he seems to play a lot of baddies who are evil in ways that make people uncomfortable. Or messed up characters who make weird self destructive choices in life. That's the stuff that seems to interest and challenge him as an actor. Probably because it's so outside of who he is day to day. But, I mean, this weird child-parent relationship thing is something he's famous for. Have you seen his Captain Hook? He also plays Mr. Darling in 'Peter Pan', and the whole thing with Wendy is kind of twisted. Or did you watch 'Dig'? Because same thing.

When I say he probably doesn't want his kids watching, it's because I suppose, as he seems so nice and intelligent he wouldn't want to screw with their heads. Art is separate from real life.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Lebanna

[Unusual Suspect]

I'm still not sure how I feel about the Lorca reveal. I credit Discovery with playing fair, because it's not like they didn't lay out the clues. I also like the temerity of doing something this bananas. OTOH, I dunno, it sometimes feels like the show is going for the cheap shock. Like the Kelpians. Or all the creepy sex/family stuff between Burnham, Georgiu and Lorca.

[100Proof]

35 minutes ago, Lebanna said:

How did you even get that impression?

I see. Sorry. The way I interpreted....

>>wouldn't even be the first time this decade that Isaacs has played a character unhealthily obsessed with a lookalike of his daughter. There has been all this stuff about why on earth he ended up doing Star Trek, apart from being a fan, and this kind of twisted storyline is totally what would make him agree to do it.<<

this was that 'all this stuff about why' was gossip that had something to do with his personal behavior and that perhaps there was a crossover in the roles he chooses, lol.

Alright, all cleared up. Case closed

Edited January 22, 2018 by 100Proof

[Emily Thrace]

22 hours ago, Miles said:

I honestly don't know if I would have figured out the mirror Lorca thing on my own, without people speculating in these episode threads. But even knowing it beforehand, this was still a very nice, well executed twist.

Culber and Stamits were so good together, as always. Breaks my heart seeing them say goodbye forever. I know some people think Culber is coming back, but I don't think so.

My thoughts exactly. Yuck.

It's also pretty dumb. The only explaination for that would be if the sun wasn't as bright on mirror-erath but that would mean a whole host of other problems. That would mean it would have to be a dimmer type, with more of it's wavelength in the infrared spectrum. That would mean earth would have to be a lot closer to the star in order to be still in the habitable zone. Realistically the star would even have to be a red dwarf (I don't think an orange dwarf would account for the difference), which would mean earth would be tidally locked, so it would look completely different. Plus the solar system would be completely different, because of the much lower gravity from the star.

It's already suuuuuper far fetched that there would still be the same people in this universe with all these differences, but this makes it even worse.

I guess it explains all that dim lighting on their ships though... and why Lorca didn't get his eyes fixed. The doctors would have likely noticed that it was there from birth and not due to an accident.

Or something happened on Earth to the atmosphere that blocked out sunlight like nuclear winter. If it happened several hundred ago or even a thousand years ago we may have evolved to the lower light. That might even help explain why Terrans are so agressive if Earth has scarcity they've had to expand.

Edited January 23, 2018 by Emily Thrace

[tpel]

1 hour ago, Unusual Suspect said:

I'm still not sure how I feel about the Lorca reveal. I credit Discovery with playing fair, because it's not like they didn't lay out the clues. I also like the temerity of doing something this bananas. OTOH, I dunno, it sometimes feels like the show is going for the cheap shock. Like the Kelpians. Or all the creepy sex/family stuff between Burnham, Georgiu and Lorca.

They definitely laid out clues that he was MirrorLorca. But that was consistent with him being admirable in some ways. Now his positive traits seem to be fading away. Thinking about why I liked him:

1. While his methods could be pragmatic-to-evil, he was trying to win a war and, ultimately, save lives. Now we learn . . . not so much. If he was MirrorLorca on the side of the resistance, that would be interesting, or if he was trying to overthrow an especially destructive emperor, there could have been some big-picture good to his actions. But it appears he was just trying to overthrow Georgiou to seize power.

2. He made hard choices, but didn't make them lightly, continuing to punish himself for perceived losses, such as the Buran. Now we know that his eye problems were due to his MU origins, not "choosing his pain" to remember his Buran crew.

[Lebanna]

44 minutes ago, tpel said:

They definitely laid out clues that he was MirrorLorca. But that was consistent with him being admirable in some ways. Now his positive traits seem to be fading away. Thinking about why I liked him:

1. While his methods could be pragmatic-to-evil, he was trying to win a war and, ultimately, save lives. Now we learn . . . not so much. If he was MirrorLorca on the side of the resistance, that would be interesting, or if he was trying to overthrow an especially destructive emperor, there could have been some big-picture good to his actions. But it appears he was just trying to overthrow Georgiou to seize power.

2. He made hard choices, but didn't make them lightly, continuing to punish himself for perceived losses, such as the Buran. Now we know that his eye problems were due to his MU origins, not "choosing his pain" to remember his Buran crew.

Yes, we were definitely all trying to find redeeming features in Lorca. As I recall, he himself just said that he didn't want his eyes replaced so he was putting up with the light sensitivity, and we still don't know why he wants Georgiou dead. But the good stuff we thought about him? Yes maybe it was vaguely hinted, but it was us that wanted to believe it, and so we chose to believe it, it wasn't really the show telling us it was so. We will probably all find that we conned ourselves, just as Michael did, because we wanted as much as Michael for him to be in some way good. We're all right there with her, and we felt it, so it worked.

And there's a metaphor in this storyline somewhere about looking away from a clarity that causes us pain and preferring not to see things for what they truly are in the full light of day. It's not Lorca that's been lightblind.

Sometimes a bastard turns out to not be lovable after all. Sometimes they're just a full on bastard. Maybe, to almost quote Maya Angelou, Lorca showed us who he was, and we should have believed him the first time.

Actually, considering that this is Star Trek, that would be a pretty good message for the show to put out there. 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Lebanna

[MissLucas]

Well, it's possible that he wanted to kill the emperor not in an act of run-of-the-mill succession for Terrans but rather tyrannicide. That would make him an ally to the rebellion. I want to know what happened to him, especially how he got the scars the Admiral noticed. 

[starri]

This is such a minor issue, but I really hope Tilly keeps her MU hairstyle and wish she could also keep her Imperial Starfleet jumpsuit when they make it home.  Both are really flattering on Mary Wiseman.

[Lebanna]

18 minutes ago, starri said:

This is such a minor issue, but I really hope Tilly keeps her MU hairstyle and wish she could also keep her Imperial Starfleet jumpsuit when they make it home.  Both are really flattering on Mary Wiseman.

The hair is so gorgeous, and it even looked great half tied back this episode (and so is the eye makeup, wow). I'm sorely tempted to get that haircut myself even though it would be a pig to maintain all day and look vaguely ridiculous in my job (I am not an evil starship captain, sadly).

But I firmly believe that Tilly is going to get her old hair back, just because she said she reckons her Mom would like her evil hair. I think freshly scrubbed  normal Tilly seems to be a fight back against what she considers to be the trivial preoccupations that spoiled her relationship with her mother.

Tilly knows she doesn't need all that stuff to be beautiful, and beautiful isn't all it's cracked up to be anyway. 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Lebanna

[staphdude]

Saru is never going to believe Burnham's information. There will have to be some major slip up for Lorca to lose his loyalty especially given the parallels with Burnham's actions in the pilot episodes. 

 

The he show was getting so good and now they are boxing themselves in. They're also pooping the bed with the development of Stamits' storyline

[UNOSEZ]

48 minutes ago, staphdude said:

Saru is never going to believe Burnham's information. There will have to be some major slip up for Lorca to lose his loyalty especially given the parallels with Burnham's actions in the pilot episodes. 

 

The he show was getting so good and now they are boxing themselves in. They're also pooping the bed with the development of Stamits' storyline

He believes her.. In the preview for next week he says the ship is no longer Lorca's.. It's theirs 

[starri]

I don't know if I was in a strange mood last night or what, but The Scene between Paul and Hugh didn't really hit me until I watched the episode again this evening.  This time I was blinking back tears.

There's a reason why Mirror Paul couldn't get out on his own.  The way back wasn't a path, or a place.

It was love.

[staphdude]

50 minutes ago, UNOSEZ said:

He believes her.. In the preview for next week he says the ship is no longer Lorca's.. It's theirs 

Wow, hadn't seen the preview. They destroy the characterization of Saruman they built up from the aftermath of the mutiny. Either that or they are pressed for time.

[tennisgurl]

The Kelpian eating scene was all kinds of gross. I almost started feeling sick myself. You Terrans might have A+ fashion sense, but you are NASTY. 

I cant say I am thrilled about the Lorca reveal. For one thing, everyone has been calling it since the beginning of the show, so its not exactly a huge surprise. I mean, I did let out a "holy crap!" real fast, but really, its obviously what they were heading for. I give them credit for creating a mystery that people can solve though. And, the other part of it, is that I liked Lorca, and thought he was an interesting character. He was a Captain who you didn't see much of in Star Trek, a guy who was brutally pragmatic, but for reasons he thought were justified. He was a mess, but he was also a great leader in the field, and brave in the face of danger. I guess some of that is still true now, but his whole character has changed now. It was interesting to look at how a guy from the Federation (who are all about the diplomacy and such) could be made so hard in war, and I wanted to see where things went with him, at least for awhile. But now, it looks like he will be played as a straight up villain now. And that sucks, and seems like a waste of a great actor who was giving a more nuanced performance. I guess they can still probably get some nuance there, but knowing how creepy his relationship was with Mirror Michael, it seems like he will be a full on bad guy from now on. 

As others have said here, maybe thats the point, and sometimes if it looks like a bad guy, and smells like a bad guy, its probably a bad guy (or its some kind of deconstruction of the Anti Hero Protagonist trend on TV), but, to me, its not as interesting of a story or character. I suppose we are heading for Mirror Lorca being killed, Prime Lorca being dead already, and Michael being left as the new Captain. And this whole season is a prologue to the "real" show, the way the pilot episodes were a prologue to the "real" show. 

Edited January 23, 2018 by tennisgurl

[aemom]

3 hours ago, starri said:

This is such a minor issue, but I really hope Tilly keeps her MU hairstyle and wish she could also keep her Imperial Starfleet jumpsuit when they make it home.  Both are really flattering on Mary Wiseman.

I don't think that she will. I used to work with someone that had super curly long hair like Tilly and one year at the Christmas party, she showed up with straight hair. "Wow!" I said, "How long did that take you?"

Her response: "Three hours AT THE HAIRDRESSER!"

I'm sure that Tilly is wearing a wig right now, but it wouldn't be practical to have a hairstyle that takes hours to blow out on a regular basis. 

Edited January 23, 2018 by AEMom
Typo

[Miles]

23 hours ago, Miles said:

I guess it explains all that dim lighting on their ships though... and why Lorca didn't get his eyes fixed. The doctors would have likely noticed that it was there from birth and not due to an accident.

Although now that I think about it, they couldn't even recognise a Klingon squished together into a human form. So Lorca was likely worried about nothing. Their actual reaction probably would have been: "Your blue eyes make me so sentimental. - eyes so blue - when you look at me like that everything else becomes meaningless to me - absolutely meaningless - your blue eyes are phenomenal - almost unbelieveable - what I feel isn't normal anymore."

 

5 hours ago, Emily Thrace said:

Or something happened on Earth to the atmosphere that blocked out sunlight like nuclear winter. If it happened several hundred ago or even a thousand years ago we may have evolved to the lower light. That might even help explain why Terrans are so agressive if Earth has scarcity they've had to expand.

Evolutionary preassures doesn't work on humans anymore. We have been unchanged for tenthousands of years, since we shape the environment, instead of the environment shaping us. If the nuclear winter happened after humans had the technology to survive it, it wouldn't have changed them. Otherwise they would have died out, because that would have been catastrophic for the planets entire eco system. If they had by some miraculous means survived, a lot more would have changed than just the eyes. Although that is also true for a red star.

[KimberStormer]

I feel like this show loves to do stuff that has tons of potential to be cool, and then just throws it away.  The three other prisoners from Michael's prison shuttle in the very beginning are a synecdoche for the whole show in that way.  Anyway you guys have said what I would say -- ew Daddy Lorca, etc.  I literally can't believe that after complete DNA recombination and bone-hacking surgery to make Voq into Tyler, the best thing for L'Rell to do is just delete the Voq part of his brain for an easy painless resolution to this whole stupid storyline (which, if that's what it is, would have come out of nowhere in order to go literally nowhere) so I'm gonna wait and see on that...on the other hand I have no other idea what would happen and the show has always surprised me with dumbness, so.  In general, it still bugs me to no end how self-serious the show has been, and has been hyped to be, the STAR TREK FOR GROWNUPS or whatever, when it is so over-the-top silly campy, just in the modern "HAHA PEDOPHILE GROOMING AND CANNIBALISM WOOOO EDGY" way along with Mrs. Ming the Merciless VS Ms Captain Proton.  While still having plenty of As You Know Bob and other bad exposition dialogue ("I've prepared this technobabble to numb your nerve endings as you requested"; "Yes, OUR EYES, the ONLY DIFFERENCE between our two universes!" etc)

I'm pretty psyched for Mirror Landry, though.

 

On ‎1‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 8:34 PM, Miles said:

It's already suuuuuper far fetched that there would still be the same people in this universe with all these differences, but this makes it even worse.

While I don't disagree with the eyes thing being silly, I will just put on my Super Nerd glasses and note that, if there are indeed infinite universes then there must, necessarily, be one where everyone is the same and in roughly the same place at the same time as ours, just evil, and that seems to be the one that the Mirror Universe is.  It's like Borges's Library of Babel, where not only is there one perfect copy of Shakespeare somewhere in there, there are also countless copies of Shakespeare with one typo, with a couple typos, etc.  There are just many, many, many, many, many, many more books of complete and utter gibberish.  Is it an incredible coincidence that this is the universe that the Star Trek main universe has links to, sure I guess? but you know, it's one of the very few interesting ones out of the infinitude, so who cares.

[statsgirl]

On 1/22/2018 at 1:02 AM, thuganomics85 said:

Whelp, I suspect Michael's going to have a lot of uncomfortable and awkward moments around Saru now that she accidentally ate one of his species.  I knew something was going with Emperor Georgiou asking to pick one, but I wasn't expecting that!

After I got over my disgust, I started thinking that it was a brilliant way to highlight how hypocritical we humans are.  We coil in disgust at the idea of eating dogs but think nothing of eating pigs which are at least equally intelligent if not more.

It was also a good way of showing how horrible the Mirror Terrans are, as if we needed another example, that they knew how intelligent the Kelpians are and still treat them like that.

16 hours ago, clyo22 said:

This reveal didn't make Lorca irredeemable to me. His relationship with MirrorMichael was unconventional but unless he lived with them, was Georgiou's partner or clearly officially Micheal's surrogate father, I don't think Lorca can be compared to a certain American film director. And I don't want to believe anything out the mouth of the woman who kills her generals without a second thought and eats Kelpian people. I loathe MirrorGeorgiou just for that and she is irredeemable to me. I don't care about her love for MirrorMichael. I won't enjoy watching her team up with our Michael against Lorca. I desperately hope Lorca has a not so stupid/evil reason to have done what he did to the Discovery crew and to our Michael.

I don't trust Empress Georgiou for a second.  She's evil and even if she has an affection for Michael, she would hesitate for a second to manipulate her.  Lorca grooming Michael and going from her father figure to a lover is MirrorGeorgiou's version and I can well believe that she said it to turn Michael against him rather than it being the truth. Yes, there were shippy vibes from Lorca to Michael as soon as she got on the ship but I'll wait to see what the real situation was..

According to the preview clip on AfterTrek

Spoiler

Lorca is with the rebellion.  So he's not all bad.

 

13 hours ago, MissLucas said:

I think L'Rell did kill what was left of Voq though her motivation for doing that instead of extinguishing Tyler remains unclear. Maybe it was the only option? What's worse about this plot is what I fear will be served as explanation why L'Rell's plan (whatever it was) back-fired: true love. Had Tyler/Voq not fallen for Burnham everything would be fine - so that's the second time Burnham massively screws up a Klingon scheme.

I think it's more pragmatic than that.  She was in love with L'Rell (per the actress) and she wanted to end the torture Voq/Tyler was feeling, but if she had killed the Tyler part and left Voq, he would have spent the rest of his life in prison as she probably will. She wanted to spare him that.

[Lilly77]

I just didn't believe Georgiou when she said that about Lorca and Burnham.  I assumed she was manipulating her and trying to win more of Burnham's trust for herself.  I will be really disappointed if it is true - the ick factor is pretty high, but also it would have to signal the end of Jason Isaacs on the show and I really like him.  I hope he stays in some shape or form.

Fascinating episode, it kept my interest all the way through.

I hate that Culber still appears to be irrevocably dead.  How have they avoided the bury your gays trope they were so anxious to say they hadn't fallen into?  They hardly had time to establish the relationship to the viewers at all, and then its gone to generate angst.  Though I guess, who else could Tyler kill that would have any real impact on the audience?  We actually only know a few of the characters on the Discovery at all, and the rest are so undeveloped in the background that their deaths would not be as shocking.

Not sure what is going on with Tyler now.  I really liked his character in the beginning, and hoped rather than believed that the Voq stuff wasn't true.  Now it is - I'm a little bored with it?  I think because at its most basic it was preposterous to begin with: why would someone so fiercely invested in Klingon purity allow himself to be surgically and irrevocably transformed into someone in human form, and how would he ever expect any other Klingon to believe in him or follow him at any point in the future?  That seemed to be the goal initially, when he wanted to take over from T'Kuvma.  The whole Klingon thing, especially when they have long conversations in Klingon, have been tedious in most places.

[Andrew Wiggin]

2 hours ago, statsgirl said:

After I got over my disgust, I started thinking that it was a brilliant way to highlight how hypocritical we humans are.  We coil in disgust at the idea of eating dogs but think nothing of eating pigs which are at least equally intelligent if not more.

 

That has nothing to do with the Intelligence of the Animals and all with the one are our Pets the others not.

Its all about the Culture in that you live.

There are quit a few Places there Dogs are eaten ^^  Look Dog meat up in Wikipedia.

In STD it has nothing to do with Inteligence but with the Superior Complec they got,

Only Humans count all other Races are woth nothing .

Edited January 23, 2018 by Andrew Wiggin

[Lilly77]

The more I think about it - Lorca's grooming might have been to make her into a rebel and reject the way her society is organised, rather than the sexual stuff.  Maybe he wants Michael, the emperor's 'daughter' to take over from the emperor?

[ottoDbusdriver]

I'm still curious how MirrorLorca made it to the PrimeUniverse in the first place -- because the Buran wasn't experimenting with spore technology, it was in battle when it was destroyed with all hands EXCEPT MirrorLorca.

[aemom]

6 minutes ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

I'm still curious how MirrorLorca made it to the PrimeUniverse in the first place -- because the Buran wasn't experimenting with spore technology, it was in battle when it was destroyed with all hands EXCEPT MirrorLorca.

My guess is that all hands on the Buran died including PrimeLorca, and the battle that happened caused some kind of rupture between the Universes that caused them to be exposed to each other and MirrorLorca saw an opportunity.  

[UNOSEZ]

2 hours ago, Lilly77 said:

The more I think about it - Lorca's grooming might have been to make her into a rebel and reject the way her society is organised, rather than the sexual stuff.  Maybe he wants Michael, the emperor's 'daughter' to take over from the emperor?

If that's true that's makes sense.. Except since the arrival he's been more affectionate to her even on disco he seemed preoccupied with keeping her safe as if she was a treasure.. And if its true he was a father figure and then slept with her.. That's gross plain and simple.. He could be helping the non terran rebellion and fir that I'd be happy but I couldn't really have him and Michael being around each other anymore 

[Lebanna]

2 hours ago, AEMom said:

My guess is that all hands on the Buran died including PrimeLorca, and the battle that happened caused some kind of rupture between the Universes that caused them to be exposed to each other and MirrorLorca saw an opportunity.  

Or he somehow arrived or switched with his counterpart (or killed his counterpart) and everyone on the Buran realized immediately that Mirror Lorca was an evil twin (like they did on the Enterprise about evil Kirk and co.) so he blew them all up before they could tell tales on him to Starfleet.

Edited January 23, 2018 by Lebanna

[paigow]

The Bio-Burnham parents cannot get a break in ANY universe...Their destiny is to produce Michael, then die soon after...

[Pippin]

I seem to recall that the talk about the new series was that it was going to be an anthology series; similar perhaps to True Detective.  I wonder if that might be feasible here.  That is to say, next season would still take place on a Federation starship called Discovery but set in a different time and with new characters.  If that's the case, then this season could effectively end with no Lorca, etc.  That is to say, each season would be a self-contained entity.  This way, all of these plot points that seem to be irredeemable (evil Lorca, etc.) wouldn't matter as none of this would carry on to season 2.  Does this make sense?  That's not to say we might not see some of these characters again, just in different points in time.

Re the Mirror Universe: Branching universe theory postulates that for every possible action, each and every consequence will occur and each time this happens, a new universe is created, thus there is an infinity of universes.  Next Gen explored that in the Worf episode (I can't remember the name right now -- was it Parallels?) where Worf is bouncing from one alternative to another.  So the concept of a mirror universe with similar people does have a science background.  (And it is an idea that people have played with endlessly in all types of fiction.)

And again, you can postulate that from the very beginning of this particular universe, something happened (possibly right after the Big Bang) that caused light to be different.  After all, scientists think that if our own universe had zigged rather than zagged our laws of physics would have been entirely different.  Then of course there's the bubble universe theory ...   I'll stop now; all of this makes my brain hurt.

I admit that the series fascinates me; I was prepared not to like it (I wouldn't have paid to watch it but here in Canada it's on the Space channel, which is generally a part of basic cable and so easily accessible  And considering that it's shot here in Canada (Toronto) that only seems appropriate!)  So I give them kudos for making this bitter Enterprise fan (too soon cancelled! and yes, I can carry a grudge like a Klingon) not only to keep watching but to be interested.  My  only gripe is that I don't really have a character that I really like, unlike TOS, NG, DS9 and Ent.  (Spock, Picard, Sisko and Trip).  (Couldn't stand Voyager but each to their own).

In short, I'm grudgingly hooked.

[Emily Thrace]

On 1/22/2018 at 10:44 PM, Miles said:

Evolutionary preassures doesn't work on humans anymore. We have been unchanged for tenthousands of years, since we shape the environment, instead of the environment shaping us. If the nuclear winter happened after humans had the technology to survive it, it wouldn't have changed them. Otherwise they would have died out, because that would have been catastrophic for the planets entire eco system. If they had by some miraculous means survived, a lot more would have changed than just the eyes. Although that is also true for a red star.

That why I suggested something like nuclear winter an environmental disaster like a super volcano eruption or an Armageddon style meteorite could kick up enough dust to block out or reduce on Earth for a long time and cause a major die off. If enough humans died off to create a genetic bottleneck humanities vision could change. I would assume the light sensitivity means they have better night vision. Something that would make competing for food on a devastated planet easier.  Also its not true that humans have stopped evolving completely. Otherwise there would be no  genetic differences between ethnic groups. For instance Americans from the south who are descended from people from the British Isles have a much higher type 2 diabetes risk than the current inhabitants of the British Isles. The most common theory is that its due to differences in diet. Or African Americans have a higher risk of high blood pressure because the slaves ships most of their ancestors arrived on didn't give  them enough water so the people who had the best chance of surviving the journey were the one who could take in salt and survive on seawater. Something I just realized now is the the Terran Earth is always a depicted as a darker blue and green then the Earth  usually is but if there is more cloud cover on their Earth it would be darker in colour from space.

21 hours ago, Lilly77 said:

I just didn't believe Georgiou when she said that about Lorca and Burnham.  I assumed she was manipulating her and trying to win more of Burnham's trust for herself.  I will be really disappointed if it is true - the ick factor is pretty high, but also it would have to signal the end of Jason Isaacs on the show and I really like him.  I hope he stays in some shape or form.

I do think we should consider the source on that one. It might be her way of rationalizing Micheal's betrayal. Lorca always seemed more paternal to Michael than anything else to me. . Hell I wouldn't be surprised if in the Mirror Universe Georgiou killed Michael's parents and Lorca simply told her the truth. Although I suppose its also possible that the Terran's don't have pedophilia taboo

There does seem to be a decent streak in Mirror Lorca. I do think his friendship with Ash was genuine and he's not a true sociopath. I think it would be wild and somewhat fitting if the crew just decided Lorca was a good captain and never told the Admiralty about his true identity.

Speaking of Ash so far his story seems a little anti climatic at this point. He really wasn't a very effective sleeper agent. It would have been a much more interesting story if he had actually succeeded at sabotaging the ship or tried to assassinate Lorca. Although if the actual point of the story is to introduce L'Rell and make her part of the team (she can't become Starfleet because it was such a big deal the Worf was the first Klingon in Starfleet but she could be an unofficial crew member ala Seven of Nine) and Voq's story was really about her I can accept that.

Also with Dwain Murphy ( Killjoys) and Billy MacLellan (The Expanse, Wynnona Earp and Dark Matter) Disco is only an Orphan Black and a couple of Stargates away from a blackout in Canadian scifi  actor bingo.

Edited January 24, 2018 by Emily Thrace
spelling counts

[MrWhyt]

17 hours ago, Pippin said:

I seem to recall that the talk about the new series was that it was going to be an anthology series; similar perhaps to True Detective. 

Apparently that was the plan when Bryan Fuller was going to be the showrunner, but it seems to have left when he did.

[tpel]

12 hours ago, Emily Thrace said:

I do think we should consider the source on that one. It might be her way of rationalizing Micheal's betrayal. Lorca always seemed more paternal to Michael than anything else to me.

That was always the sense I got from him, too. I guess we'll never know for sure, unless MU Burnham shows up -- neither the Emperor nor Lorca is exactly a dependable source of information.

Looking back on the episode, the following scene strikes me as odd: Lorca is in the agony booth, the guard (?) tries to make Lorca confess to wronging his sister and say her name. Of course, part of the function of the scene is to make us wonder whether he is MU or PU Lorca. But, setting that aside, it is just weird. What exactly was Lorca being accused of? Breaking the girl's heart? This is the MIRROR universe! Love is way down on the list of why people have sex. Dumping one girl (or guy) for the next is normal behavior. Unless the sister was twelve or Lorca killed her afterward, both of which would warrant mentioning, it is hard to see why the guy would put himself at serious risk to seek vengeance. It is also hard to see why Lorca wouldn't say the girl's name, thus saving his confederate from a horrible death. One possible explanation for the latter is that Lorca has a never-negotiate attitude and doesn't trust the guard not to kill his friend anyway. Another explanation is that the sister, Ava, is one of Lorca's rebels, and the guard (not really her brother) was trying to confirm her identity.

[paigow]

3 hours ago, tpel said:

It is also hard to see why Lorca wouldn't say the girl's name, thus saving his confederate from a horrible death. One possible explanation for the latter is that Lorca has a never-negotiate attitude and doesn't trust the guard not to kill his friend anyway. Another explanation is that the sister, Ava, is one of Lorca's rebels, and the guard (not really her brother) was trying to confirm her identity.

Something constant across universes is stupid security practices... Lorca has a VIP booth with 1 guard??!! 

[dwmarch]

I thought the whole Kelpian issue was handled brilliantly here. Burnham gets to choose her Kelpien and she's probably thinking "those massages from Saru were pretty good, it's nice having someone at my beck and call for stuff like that." So she has no idea that when she's at dinner with Emperor Georgiou she's eating a fresh bowl of Kelpien and what really twists the knife is that she's actually enjoying it! So when Georgiou hands over some ganglia Burnham's disgust is at herself because she's eating another sentient being and not finding it disagreeable.

Speaking of ganglia, apparently the whole species needs to get them recalibrated for threats. Saru's ganglia go into red alert mode around Burnham but the other Kelpiens (including his mirror self) have no reaction to this death-bringer from another universe and they know she's a badass murder-captain. I don't think Saru's ganglia twitched on behalf of Voq/Tyler either even when the guy was thrashing around trying to murder anyone he could get his hands on.

I agree Tilly looks so much better with long, straight hair.

I thought the Emperor's ship looked almost Romulan, like a warbird with the quantam singularity floating between the hulls (which is where you'd want it to be in case something bad happened and you needed to ditch it in a hurry). I wonder if that was meant as a hint at the Mirror Universe's history, suggesting that Earth won the Romulan war and went from there.

[100Proof]

My thought was that he/it tastes like squid

[paigow]

1 hour ago, 100Proof said:

My thought was that he/it tastes like squid

or chicken....

[legaleagle53]

On 1/25/2018 at 12:06 PM, paigow said:

or chicken....

I wondered whether someone was going to say that!

[Pippin]

On 1/24/2018 at 1:10 PM, MrWhyt said:

On 1/23/2018 at 7:17 PM, Pippin said:

I seem to recall that the talk about the new series was that it was going to be an anthology series; similar perhaps to True Detective. 

Apparently that was the plan when Bryan Fuller was going to be the showrunner, but it seems to have left when he did.

Pity.  I think that would have been interesting.

Am rewatching this ep. right now, and I realized that even in the credits, they were giving clues about Lorca -- there's a graphic with a giant eye during the opening credits.  Never noticed it before, (except to wonder why) but now it's an "of course" forehead slap for me.

Re evolutionary changes: Human beings have not stopped evolving.  However, we don't see obvious changes because unlike other animals (like fruit flies or viruses) our reproduction cycle is a fairly long one, and generational changes are not evident.  I've been told that one of the next evolutionary changes that will probably take place in humans is the loss of wisdom teeth; dietary changes (plus technology) have made their use unnecessary (they were intended to emerge as a tertiary set as we would lose our adult teeth as we age).  People are being born now who never develop wisdom teeth.  However, it will probably be some 10,000 years before this change is population-wide.

So I still tend to think that the reason for MU human's light sensitivity is because light really is different in that universe.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Pippin
Grammar counts.

[LilJen]

Plot Holes You Could Drive a Truck Through:

It took months and multiple surgeries to convert Tyler into Voq/remake Voq as Tyler. But it takes about 20 seconds of L'Rell waving her electrically charged fingers over Tyler's skull to 'take out' the Voq personality from the Tyler body?

Okay.

[MissLucas]

5 hours ago, LilJen said:

Plot Holes You Could Drive a Truck Through:

It took months and multiple surgeries to convert Tyler into Voq/remake Voq as Tyler. But it takes about 20 seconds of L'Rell waving her electrically charged fingers over Tyler's skull to 'take out' the Voq personality from the Tyler body?

Okay.

It only took a couple of weeks to convert Voq IIRC.  When Not-Tyler showed up for the first time on the show he claimed to have been on the prison ship for  7 months and that L'Rell had been around for something over 90 days but the events of that episode took place only roughly a month after L'Rell had made that mysterious pitch to Voq. The timeline like everything else around that particular plot is wonky to say the least. I wish they had not tried to be so damn 'original' here and just gone a more traditional route of mind-meld/sleeper agent stuff. 

[Chaos Theory]

On 1/22/2018 at 2:26 AM, tinnefoil said:

I miss the time when it was okay for shows to have downtime and filler and character building episodes rather than having to have  shocking reveal every episode. 

Plus, I hate it when it seems like the importance of a female character within her universe is based on all the people who are in love with her. Why did Lorca pluck her from obscurity? Because she is the most amazing and most capable badass? Naw, romance. 

I just feel like I would have rather watched the show of unrealistically capable Michael who is being blocked from command due to the mistakes she made slowly working her way up again rather than Michael who can even make mindwiped Klingons fall in love with her and whose ex-boyfriends stalk her across universes. 

I didn’t see it that way at all.  Look at all the people he trusted...and those he didn’t.   He never quite trusted his (non human) first officer but surrounded himself with people who in the Mirror universe were on his side.   It was never about “romance” with Michael but grooming her to be what she had been before.  Someone he could manipulate into doing what he needed her to do and be.  And it almost worked.

Almost.

 

FYI my one mild disappointment is we didn’t get more of Captain Killy.   

Edited February 12, 2018 by Chaos Theory

[John Potts]

Finally, a distance in space that seems reasonable! At least somebody on the writing staff realises that anything less than a million kilometres is practically spitting distance in stellar terms (the moon is around 400,000km from Earth, for reference).

As soon as they met, I wondered if Stamets could trust Mirror!Stamets. Ten minutes later, we see that - you can't trust anyone in the Mirror Universe!

The Empress looks FIERCE!

When doing brain surgery - shouldn't you keep the head clamped still? I mean, I'm no expert on the (made up) science of personality implantation, but I'd have thought that if you're trying to stimulate a personality to achieve dominance in somebody's brain, you'd want to use laser beam precision.

OK, I was spoiled on the Lorca reveal - but how the hell did he know that "our" Lorca had an affair with Adm Cornwell? And wouldn't she be able to tell it wasn't "her" Lorca? I assume Mirror Sex is rather more BDSM-heavy than our Prime Universe, for example.

On ‎22‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 3:06 AM, ottoDbusdriver said:

I wonder who she killed to get the Emperor's throne, and who was the prior Emperor.

I'm trying to work out how many Emperors there are likely to be between She-Ho (Mirror Hoshi) and now. Probably a lot - I don't see many reigns lasting long. There's also the possibility that she is a descendant of Hoshi - which does not rule out ascending to the throne by assassination, of course.

On ‎23‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 8:09 AM, Lilly77 said:

I hate that Culber still appears to be irrevocably dead.  How have they avoided the bury your gays trope they were so anxious to say they hadn't fallen into?

Well, our Culber is dead, but Mirror!Culber may potentially be alive.

[Tachi Rocinante]

Continuing to watch on broadcast, and I actually liked this one.  Good to see Michele Yeoh again. 

I knew something was off with Lorca, but I just figured they were going to go the PTSD route.

Was that supposed to be a star that was powering the Emperor's ship??  Weird design regardless.

[Bruinsfan]

On 1/23/2018 at 2:36 AM, Andrew Wiggin said:

That has nothing to do with the Intelligence of the Animals and all with the one are our Pets the others not.

Its all about the Culture in that you live.

Yeah, I'm horrified by the thought of people eating guinea pigs because I had one as a pet, and he was barely smarter than the lettuce we fed him. Though I do think the threshold one shouldn't cross in that regard comes before sapience/self awareness.

[mythoughtis]

On 1/22/2018 at 4:14 AM, MissLucas said:

he Voq/Tyler thing is still a hard sell for me. That's still physically Voq (well some sort of Frankenstein version of Voq), or hardware Voq and the Tyler persona is just new software after L'Rell deleted the old OS. Apparently I'm a bit more hung up on the concept of 'soul' than I thought.

Yes. The body is still Voq.  The mind should have been left as Voq - and the entire package sent to the brig with T’rell as spies.  Ash’s body is most likely dead.  His consciousness should have been allowed to die too.