Since the Enterprise Mirror Universe episodes have created such a stir, I thought it would be a good time to discuss the intracacies of AU in Trek as a whole. Some nagging questions:

1. What was the divergence point that created the mirror universe? Or was the MU always bad to the bone?
2. Do alternate timelines "disappear" when fixed by our heroes, or do they still exist via the Many Worlds theory of quantum physics?
3. Why are MU women always defined by their provocative sexuality? Is it a way for the female crewmembers to grab onto power in a less-than-accommodating environment, or a way to stuff the actresses in eye-catching, midriff-bearing uniforms? (And on that note, who's hotter: MUhura, Intendant Kira, or HO-shi?)
4. Which series did AUs the best? Could anything possibly top the original "Mirror, Mirror"? Or "Yesterday's Enterprise"? Did DS9 overstay its welcome in the MU? Are six or seven AlternaWorfs (climax of "Parallels") more entertaining than one? Is Evil!Archer just as much of a buttmunch as Regular Archer?

Discuss.

Edited to delete signature.

I tend to think it was always bad to the bone, but the MU would be indistinguishable from our universe up until one moment where somebody made a decision differently. Like, perhaps Cochrane just let his fear of aliens get the better of him in the MU, and so shot the Vulcan, which had the effect of uniting Earth against aliens, and that was the true moment of divergence. So this culture of anti-alien aggression created the MU culture we all know and love.
An argument could be made that our American Puritanism roots give us this "sex equals evil, and women control sex" attitude that feeds the MU.
The latter, for sure.
HO-shi, then MUhura, then the Intendant. The Intendant is a great character, though. I love the way she lusts after Kira in "Crossover". That's the most literal form of narcissism I've ever seen.

Shatner defined the divergence point in his book Preserver as Cochrane tossing a coin on whether or not to tell the other Montanans about the Borg, since apparently Beverly screw up in giving him something to rewrite his memories. Thus, the humans either become explorers unaware of the terrible Borg or they decide to prepare early so that they'll be ready. The result of the latter would be a universe more in which they were more paranoid and set on conquering any potential foes: the Mirror Universe.

I think having the Reese-Stevens on the writing staff, who also co-wrote Preserver, was what prompted Enterprise to show the evil!First Contact in "In a Mirror, Darkly." They knew readers of the book would relate this scene to the novel. However, the opening credits and the entire rush of humans onto the Vulcan ship lead me to believe they were just naturally more aggressive.



I believe they still go on, but who knows. A lot of the reset buttons show the crews dying in the process, so either way (changing the past or just dying) frees them of living in their current time. (ex. Janeway ramming the Voyager in "Year of Hell" and then getting assimilated in her past in "Endgame") Sisko seemed to remember his jumps during "The Visitor," but that was because he was outside time.

The events in the alternate past Q created in "All Good Things..." didn't seem to effect Picard's present, nor I think did Kes's backward's aging really affect things (ex. she interrupts Janeway during her first briefing on Voyager; also, the crew didn't seem to remember either the dangers the Krenim possed or the frequency of the torpedoes, since Seven had to crawl into the Jefferies tube as Kes did.) However, I prefer to think that Kes's experience is what jump starts her evolution, which is why she disappears season four rather than live to have grandchildren.

In any event, based on the characters' stories themselves, we'd like to think that bad timelines ended and ceased to exist save someone's memories or in one case, Alternate Tasha Yar. Worf's other universes in "Parallels" seemed to come from "The Road Not Taken" rather than messing with the timeline.

And now that I've finished, I have no idea what I wrote. Hehe.

From Pages 11 and 12 of the "In a Mirror Darkly, Part I" thread on Enterprise:

First of all, I think the Many Worlds theory of quantum physics would call ANY alternate universe a divergence, but I don't want to get into the deep science here. So yes, I do think there was a divergence point that created this alternate version of human society. Was it during First Contact? Was it Edith Keeler? Was it the invasion of Troy or something in the evolution of the Neandertal? Not really that important.

I always thought the MU was a "mirror" to the normal Trek universe the way an evil twin brother is to a "good" twin: a dark reflection of an individual, but with enough of the original reflected to make the comparison extremely uncomfortable. And rather than the MU being less engaging if it was "just another diverged or alternate timeline universe," I think it's important that we feel in our gut that the MU could have easily been us.

When Kirk is talking with the Halkans at the start of "Mirror, Mirror," he sort of shrugs off their non-cooperation, because Star Fleet is evolved enough to leave another race alone if they don't want to talk or trade. But the Bixby script makes it clear that the power and resources of Star Fleet could have been used for far less benign purposes with just a slight change in attitude. Given what was happening in American society at the time (mainly, the Vietnam War), this is not a subject of light, parlor conversation. Our duty to trust our better instincts, to understand our dark impulses and to responsibly use the power we possess are issues that were important then, and still are today. That, to me, is the importance of the MU in Trek (and why I felt the first part of the Enterprise two-fer fell short).

The premise of "Children of Time" is that alternate timelines simply cease to exist once they've been changed. If the crew had thought that the colonists would simply live on in a different timeline, they wouldn't have been willing to sacrifice their lives for them.

cjl, all those quotations in your above post are mine (and the last one came first), so I'm going to respond and say that still no one has given me any reason to believe that there was, in fact, a point of divergence. I'm not a scientist and also not going to get into a deep discussion of quantum physics because I think, first and foremost, science fiction is fiction. It's about what's possible given our theoretical science, not what must be based on those theories. Is it possible there was a point of divergence based on the fiction of the series? Yes. Must that be the case? No.

So, I challenge the assumption of the first question:
I say there was no divergence point, and the MU has always been not necessarily bad, but opposite. A mirror.

Also, even if we take the evil twin comparison (a fiction in itself) to the universe, that would mean that they diverged at the point of the Big Bang. But even that is too much science and not enough fiction for me. It's still not fun and engaging. It's just another parallel universe. Like the many we've seen before on Trek and in countless other series (Sliders, anyone? Or the really dark "The Wish" from third season Buffy). Trying to find the point of divergence spoils it all for me. Same old, same old, again and again and again.

And also, it's not as believable as a construct if there's a divergence because why would the same people in an alternate timeline simply with a divergent history be so opposite from their "real" selves? Having one different point in history creating a Terran Empire doesn't mean everything else would be inherently different as things clearly seem to be in the Mirrorverse (see again Buffy's "The Wish," where there is a divergent point, but the people are still the same). The inherent difference to me demands a different premise, a complete opposite, not simply a divergent point. Science doesn't explain this.

I don't. Then it becomes just more preachy Star Trek moralizing. Another thing that's been done to death, both in Trek and out, and is an even bigger turn off to me.

This doesn't wash for me because it's a book and not onscreen, so not canon.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try for fun to hash out when a divergent point happened if we want to say there was one, but I'd just like us not to assume that there had to be a divergence. It doesn't make any sense to me. Either from an internal logic standpoint or from a thematic/conceptual/artistic one.

Since we're talking timelines so much, this thread and the time travel one seem pretty similar.

I disagree completely here. If we're not going to show that the MU versions could be us, or that viewing the MU opens a window so we can see a less-than-appealing part of ourselves, then what's the point? I don't want the writers to hammer us over the head with topical relevance, but it's got to have some relevance to who we are or the whole thing is a waste of time. Just slapping an AU on screen and saying "these people are eeeevil" isn't going to cut it.

Bearing in mind that "mirror" has only been used in the original titled show and by the fans, it's always been the alternate universe or parallel universe onscreen, I'm in the camp that says there was no point of divergence except in the beginning creation of the universe. In the AU, characters are simply their polar opposites morally. A tough life of military oppression and violence wouldn't necessarily make Kirk, Archer, et all, evil via nurture. It had to be in their nature in the first place, so, no divergence, they're just that way in that universe.

There have been characters that were basically the same in both universes, at least from a moral standpoint. O'Brien and Smiley were both good guys, but they were in different situations, so they turned out a little differently. Likewise, if "our" Garak hadn't been exiled from the Obsidian Order, he would have turned into someone just as evil as his Mirror counterpart. He was no boy scout to begin with.

The Wishverse in BtVS is an alternate timeline, not a dark mirror, almost exactly as in "Yesterday's Enterprise." VampWillow and VampXander are only evil mirrors because they lost their souls. Both episodes show what happens when something crucial is removed from a point in time (Buffy or the Enterprise-C).



You're write, it's 100% not canon. I only mentioned it because the book's co-writers are also co-writing the season, so they must've had this in mind when throwing ideas around the writers' table. It'll never be canon, but it's a suggestion. Much like how an actor makes up a backstory for his character to gives basis for how he thinks the character acts... his ideas aren't canon but they have an influence.




I still favor a divergence point. After all, fans already scratch their heads over how so many DS9 characters were still born and came together after the MU changed in "Mirror, Mirror." If we're to think that everyone's always been opposite (with for example, Mirror!Gandhi throwing Saint Mirror!Stalin in an agony booth), that's a lot of stretching to believe that Mirror!history still made it's way parallel to ours, right down to who had children with whom, until the events of "Mirror, Mirror."

Interestingly enough, the real (secondary) divergence point for the two universes is "Mirror, Mirror," since everything from ships to alliances is completely different a hundred years later.

That was my point. As I said in my following paragraph,* the divergence does not make those characters different. I'm not counting vampire Willow and Xander because they're not Willow and Xander. I'm counting Buffy, Giles, Oz, Angel, the Master, etc.

Oh yes, I agree. I just meant a book doesn't wash as proof to me that there was a point of divergence.


*

Someone made a good point in the episode thread for In a Mirror, Darkly, Part I, that maybe the reason the universes split was that Cochrane would have shot the Vulcan, except the Ent-E crew's intervention made him less paranoid about aliens. Since the Ent-E never went back in time in the MU, he blew away the Vulcan and set off a chain of events that led to the Terran Empire.

Now that I think about it, this doesn't wash. The credits from IaMD show an astronaut planting an imperial flag on the moon, meaning the divergence, if there was one, had to have taken place before 1969. Do the credits images count as canon?

The thing I wonder about this, though, is how Cochrane knew to arm everyone. Did they see the ship coming toward them for half an hour before it landed? Because everyone was armed and knew exactly what to do, I assume they had some hint about the Vulcans' arrival, but who knows?

Gilmel, sorry, I read that paragraph but didn't fully catch its meaning the first time. My bad.

Should we find something more to talk about besides the Mirror Universe? This discussion is already going on in the episode thread and in the DS9 Mirror Universe thread, so we should probably move on to more general alternate universe topics. Just saying...

The problem with the Cochrane explanation is that it only explains Earth. Why does the Vulcan/Terran first contact turn Phlox into the torture-happy nutcase we see in "In A Mirror, Darkly"?

Because when people who would otherwise be rational, compassionate citizens are born into a psychotic society (like Nazi Germany or the Terran Empire), their good qualities are often supressed, and their darker aspects are brought to the surface. You say to yourself, if I were born in the mirror universe, I would be still be a good person. But do you really know for sure?

Jennifer Sisko, Jadzia and Tuvok were also basically the same, with a few slight modifications due to circumstances. And in the original "Mirror, Mirror" the Halkans were EXACTLY the same in both universes. So the Mirror Universe as a directly corresponding "moral inversion" of our universe doesn't quite hold up.

That said, I'm at something of a loss to explain Evil!Phlox. Like the Halkans, I thought the Denobulans would rather die as a race than submit to the Terran Empire. And one of their race actively participating in the Terran Empire's cruelties? Impossible. Gilmel's "moral inversion" theory may have some juice after all (unless somebody has a better explanation).

It's never stated onscreen, but I assumed that Vulcans, Tellarites, and Denobulans were all conquered by the Terran Empire, not that they joined willingly. The more talented members of each species might be able to rise further than the rest, which would explain Phlox, T'Pol, and that guy who was getting tortured.

BanjoSteve:My favorite part of "The Emperor's New Cloak" was watching Rom try to puzzle this out. How everything was supposed to be opposite, but O'Brien and Garak didn't seem very opposite. Nice meta-commentary, along with the "just go along with it" message.

cjl:I tend to agree. That's why I really liked Sliders (in the early seasons, anyway), because it was very much about that. It does sort of stretch credibility to imagine that two of our crews were serving on the same ships in the MU, and a third crew had MU lives that kept intersecting at the same space station. But I think either way, you're going to have a hard time justifying it. Maybe it's just fate or destiny that many of the same people are destined to be born and take a similar career path(although not all of them, since Jake Sisko and Molly O'Brien were never born in the MU)

BanjoSteve:The image counts as canon, but your interpretation of it does not. Maybe you're right that it's the 1969 moon landing. But that spacesuit looks like the ones from Enterprise, so maybe it's a 2150 suppression of a moon-based rebellion. My point is, all that's canon is that someone in a space suit planted a flag on the moon, at some time prior to 2154.

My stretch on Evil!Phlox is that he was raised under a conquered Denobula or one already preparing to deal with the Terran Empire, so he grew to be more like Garak in the Obsidian Order in the sense of becoming skilled in torturing. The doctor part of his job came, too, since ironically, who would know how to torture better than a doctor? He can take and he can give.

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Jake and Molly would have been born in the MU if Kirk hadn't originally crossed over and influence Spock to change things. By the time Mirror-DS9 rolled around, the parallisms had diverged just enough that (by my guess) the first generation of non-duplicates were happening - if humans had still been in power, Jennifer and Ben would have been on the same side (and therefore probably closer), etc.

Kirk's original interferance caused the MU to slowly push further and further away from resembling "our" universe that in another couple of decades past DS9, there probably would be very, very few duplicates anymore. (At least, for humans and Vulcans.)

I don't buy into the "point of divergence" theory-- that it always was a dark mirror. If for no other reason than how the Ferengi are shown in DS9. They aren't interested in profit. So that's something that would precede human involvement.

Well, to be fair, Brunt wasn't interested in profit. Quark and Nog seemed to be.

I don't know if this has been brought up in another thread, but I think much of this- especially short of a point of divergence- argues for a deity, or some sort of design to the universe.

ETA: Actually, Brunt was all for profit too. He just was nice about it. (If anything, "our" Brunt wasn't profit-oriented, at least for himself.)

Someone in some thread (very specific of me, isn't it?) brought up the idea that the Prophets could manipulate the various universes. I'm sure Q could as well.

The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to believe the nondivergent mirror theory, and that the opening of In A Mirror, Darkly was just the mirror version of a historic scene.

I had the same thought yesterday while pondering how people could be fated to exist in both universes, but my post was already getting long without bringing gods into it.

But yes, I agree. God, or fate, or destiny, or something has caused all these people to exist in both universe. Either that or it's a really gigantic coincedence.

Of course, since Star Trek is a created universe, it's Creator, and therefore its god, is properly addressed as "Writer".

Now I feel like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...

Me too, nelamm, but as I am now re-reading "the Hitchiker's Guide" I am inclined to believe that this is all the result of pan-dimensional Aliens seeking the ultimate question. ;-)