Good episode not quite up to last weeks episode but it still kicked ass.
Like someone else said why is the Orion chick allowed to serve on a SF vessel? What in the MU she doesn't make all males horny morons and women useless?
Also while I know that all ST ships have a officer to enlisted ratio of about 7 to 1 did the evil Enterprise really need 4 Commanders? No wonder they are losing the war they don't let an officer on a ship until they have served for at least 10 years.
Empress Ho-shi kicks ass though. The Emporer is dead long live the Emporer I guess.

Dude! Now there's a great fanfic just waiting to be written... starship crashes on an unknown planet in an uncharted system, dude gets sucked into a warp engine, a Cardassian tries to rig a com device built from leftover components from the bridge, and a Klingon woman whines about a brother who is Kahless's (insert Klingon curse here) Gift to the Empire. (EDIT: Oh, and don't forget about this mysterious character: http://www.enterprise-home.de/crew/chang.htm)

(Someone else with better writing skills than Bermaga, please take it from here.)



Well, the past three episodes had the same moral to the story: Being a ho will get you everywhere.

Eh, who am I kidding? I'd be Hoshi's bitch any day.

Empress Sato kicks ass! That was such a satisfying ending. I actually squealed in glee.

Orion women: I will wank that they had their pheremone glands removed before being allowed to serve.

T'Pol's weapons: T'Pol had her weapons removed when she was on Defiant. She also still had her blue minidress, then. Once she got back to Soval's ship, she got a new jumpsuit uniform and new weapons.

SB's acting has never disturbed me more than it did in this episode. What was up with him when Archer and Hoshi were looking at their doubles' records in his quarters? I was so bothered I couldn't even really pay attention to what he was saying.

And what was up with T'Pol getting all creepy in Soval's face? Was she doing evil crack?

The Gorn subplot also bored me, but it got Reed injured which led to Phlox's lovely indifferent line to T'Pol which was already mentioned.

Again, go Hoshi! Not only is she empress, but her concubine is her bodyguard. Good move.

Ah, but how long will he be content merely to serve and service her? Watch out for the quiet one.

Much as Empress Sato turns me on, in so many different ways, I do sort of wish that it would be poor overlooked Mayweather who got to be Emperor. I think that would have been a much better in-joke. I also sort of wish Hoshi had worn a TOS uniform, but I think I'm happier with the bare midriff of the Enterprise uniform on her. She's got nice abs.

Speaking of uniforms, what was the deal with Archer's ego's uniform? It was a non-mirror universe uniform! Does that mean that the service record of Non-Mirror Archer bothered Mirror Archer so much that he hallucinated Non-Mirror Archer? But why would he think Non-Mirror Archer would want Mirror Archer to become Emperor? If it was just his own ego, why wasn't it wearing a Mirror Uniform? Am I nitpicking the bottom of the barrel here?
Hoo-boy. This is progress? I preferred the Gorn that looked really fake but was definitely really there to the Gorn that looked really real but was definitely not there.
Gregory Itzen, who I saw at the one convention I went to. He's done tons of genre shows, including several Trek episodes.

Who died and made Hoshi empress? Oh, that's right, Quantum did. Complete ownage. I loved it. Especially since it was shaping up to be a very bad ending with Archer owning everyone. Gorn, owned by Archer. Admiral Black, owned by Archer. T'Pol, Soval, Phlox, and the aliens, owned by Archer. But the twist more than made up for it.

The Gorn was a bit disappointing, because he still looked fake. But the updated effects, sets, and costumes on the Defiant were awesome. Everything looked very TOS, but felt very modern at the same time, as if it really were 100x more powerful than the NX ships.

Soval with a goatee was awesome. I'm just sad that Mirror Shran didn't show up.

Gone almost unmentioned.. another homage to classic Trek... Red-Shirted Reed almost dies!!! I know one of them (Trip, MCTravis or Reed) would bite the dust when I saw the red shirts... also the very hammy 'I failed you captain' and Archer not giving a damn... asshole. Archer was overacting wayyy more than usual.

It was good, though as soon as I saw Empress Sato give the champagne to Archer, I knew he was a goner....

The ghost of 'good Archer' bugging his evil twin was bothersome and unnecessary... really.

Good, fun episode, but went a bit too long. I blame the stupid, pointless Gorn. These two episodes could've been told into one.

The hallucination thing was a little out of nowhere, but it seemed as soon as MU Archer learned that in the real history, everyone thought of Archer as a great big... deal, MU Archer had a figuratively literal chip on his shoulder of being inferior to his counterpart. Particularly since his counterpart commanded Enterprise from the beginning.

Wasn't that him on the bridge of that other Starfleet ship? Or was that just some other random Andorian?



Phlox saying "He's dead, Jonathan" would have been a nice touch.

I blame Kirk's shirt.
I guess I can see that. "Greatest explorer of the 22nd century", and Mirror Archer wants to do as well or better. Still, it was strange seeing Non-Mirror Archer trying to spur Mirror Archer's ambition. Surely Mirror Archer didn't think that's what Non-Mirror Archer was like. Or maybe he did, because the end of "Mirror, Mirror" told us how it's easier for civilized folks to understand the uncivilized than it is for it to work the other way around.

I think the hallucinatory Archer explains a lot about SB's acting choices in these eps. His intonations and actions make perfect sense when you realize - Evil Leaper's a paranoid schizophrenic! He hallucinates people whispering to him about how he's being mistreated and held down by his superiors (was the Ho-shi that talked about the conspiracy of admirals holding Evil Leaper back real, or was that an earlier hallucination? Maybe that's why he didn;t kiss her convincingly?). Paradoxically, his very tendency toward megalomania would be holding him back; who wants to follow an obvious nutjob into battle, after all? Especially against your superior officers?

If I'm right, that means Bakula nailed his part tonight - Evil Leaper was almost textbook paranoid, even more so than the situation called for (a sane man, in that world, would have killed T'pevil the moment she was no longer useful, would have killed Evil Outranker Forrest at the beginning of his mutiny, would have pumped toxic gases into the area the Gorn was in, etc)...

Yeah. Didn't Coto mention wanting to make Shran a member of the crew in the never-to-be S5? Here was a fine opportunity. They had an Andorian there on the Avenger, but I wish they'd made him Shran and given him a few lines. To compensate, they could've trimmed a minute or two off the Gorn hunt.

As for the Gorn himself -- interesting new design, but I think they should've gone with the original slow-moving yet deadly-strong version. Why not put a man in a fine rubber suit and just replace his head and skin texture with CGI? Give him realistic lizard eyes and gnashing jaws. Keep the base look of the original and add just that small tweak to bring it to life, like they did with some of those display screens on the bridge, and the Defiant viewports.

Seems way too complicated trying to give an entirely new Gorn design the refinement and lifelike quality it needs, top-to-bottom, in the short time they had. You can sculpt the thing, but figuring out how it moves, making it convincingly match up with Archer in the fight scene, etc... To make a new creature look and move just right really pushes up against the deadline. It can be done, but time is always an issue.

Cool read on it.

I usually lurk, but as much as I liked this episode (although it wasn't as good as part I, IMO -- but perhaps that was the novelty), I have a nitpick.

If MU Hoshi and crew have the Defiant, why is it that when Kirk goes to the Mirror Universe in TOS is the technology not more advanced than the regular universe? It seems to me that this crew were eeevil, but not stoopid.

I kept expecting them to destroy the Defiant somehow.

Here's some details from the biographies of Archer and Hoshi:

Hoshi's record doesn't really state who she married. It does say that she retired a Lt. Commander. Most of Hoshi's record seems to be taken from the Startrek.com listing for Hoshi Sato.

Archer's is interesting though. It mentions the two planets named after him: one is Archer IV (first mentioned in Sterday's Enteprise)... Acher IV is noted to be the "first M-Class world charted by the explorer." That tells us that the planet from Strange New World in S1 is most likely Archer IV.

The other is called Archer's Planet -in the Gamma Triangula sector - I'm not sure where that came from.

The historian who called him the greatest explorer of the 22nd century is John Gill (TOS's Patterns of Force).

He's listed as retiring an Admiral, Chief of Staff, Starfleet Command.

His postings are:
NX-01 2150-2160
Ambassador to Andoria 2169-2175
Federation Councilman 2175-2183
President, UFP 2184-2192

They've listed several medals he received and that General Thy'tok Shran made him an honorary member of the Andorian Guard in 2164.

Here's a great shot of Archer's bio: Bio

I thought several times during the week, "Oh, they're going to fuck it up. Part II is going to be so bad, it'll make us forget how good Part I was." But they didn't! Part II was every bit as good as Part I. And Evil Soval - SoEvil? - had the goatee! Yea!

So much continuity porn, my head is still spinning gleefully. My beloved phaser and photon torpedo sounds! The red alert klaxon! The proper names! The swoosh of the turbolift doors! Talking computers, and with Majel Barrett's voice to boot! Almost too much for this TOS fan to handle, but it was sooooo very good! Of course, then they had to go and ruin it all in the previews, with the non-canonical Vulcan/human child before Spock, even though there wasn't one. Until now.

The satellite buggered out just after Evil Leaper started showing symptoms of the poisoning, but since it rarely buggers out in the same place on both showings, I'll have that little fillip to look forward to come Sunday.

All hail Empress She-Ho and Mayhunk! Though I don't think Mayhunk will remain concubine/bodyguard long.



Right there with you, Gilmel, although there have been one or two other points in the series that actually disturbed me more (his giddiness at possibly dying when he fought Shran leaps instantly to mind). That acting choice made no sense. Bakula's made some weird-ass acting choices in this series, but that came close to winning the dubious honors.

So sad there will be no more evil credits, though.


Edited because I forgot about Majel Barrett. Bad TOS fan!

It begs for a Part 3. Can Hoshi really pull off her Empress ambitions? Will Earth surrender? Can Hoshi consolidate a power base and hold on to it? Will the crew continue to back her if she orders the destruction of cities? And, considering the crew is basically a skeleton crew -- Say a large Fleet comes in shooting and they manage to damage the ship -- are there enough people aboard Defiant to handle repairs?

I missed something -- Did T'Pol manage to transmit those engineering specs? Even having the specs, I think it would take quite some years to advance technology to the point where they could recreate a Constitution Class Starship. Just like we couldn't dash off an NX 01 tomorrow, even if we had full schematics. It would take decades, no doubt.

If the Defiant were destroyed, there'd still be scan records to give Starfleet design tips for the future. And if the Vulcans have the technical specs, too -- Maybe that's how they manage to remain players in the Empire 100 years later? I wonder if the Vulcans and Earthlings might have been in a technology race based on the information they were handed. Or maybe they leveraged a fair Partnership and went on to Dominate the rest of the quadrant. And of course, by Kirk's time they had the Connies and the parallels remained...

The Connies may even have been slightly more advanced than RU Kirk's -- Remember how the Transporter effect had a completely different look to it? I know that's not a lot to go by, of course. But it's an interesting detail. Likewise, the handheld agonizers.

Hee, he liked his tyrants.

Why is the mirror universe more canonical than the real universe? I do not get that at all!

Aatrek wrote:
Not likely, definitely. Reading the rest of the bio screenshot:
"Although the planet was uninhabitable throughout the 22nd century due to toxic(?) pollen in the atmosphere, an antidote to the pollen was discovered early in the 2200s. Today, the population of Archer IV numbers more than seven hundred million."

But... Federation President?! Well, I guess that's plausible. Still, this guy? Eep.

Mostly meh, with the end totally making up for The EgoWhisperer and the sorta-off Gorn and Evil Leaper's acting.

More after watching it again this weekend!

LONG LIVE EMPRESS SATO!

Oh dear God, why? Seriously, this show sucked ass for the most part and then it was cancelled and I breathed a sigh of relief...but just before they take it off the air they give us this? This amazing, wonderful, brilliant story? It's almost like they are taunting us. Like they were making a sucky show on purpose, and now that the joke is over they can show us what they can do. Damn...that's just cruel.

I cringed at her emotions there, too, especially since Soval was very "It is agreeable to see you."

I think they were trying to go back to how Vulcans acted before finding SURAK'S FUCKING KATRA. Doesn't explain how emotional she was, other than she really didn't like being a second-class species.

What a great episode. I do miss Red Alerts and the computer. It was great to here them again. Sigh. I'm so happy, even if the Gorn was a bit different from the costumed one of yore.

Long Live Empress Sato!!!

I loved Evil Soval and the fact that Evil Mayweather got to kick someone in the head. And everyone looked really hot in their TOS uniforms.

But the part that made me yell at the tv screen the most was when Evil Archer was fighting the Gorn and that other guy with his huge-ass gun just kept hitting the alien with his gun rather than shooting it. That guy seriously deserved to die just for being stupid. I mean, he was close enough to the Gorn to hit it, so he was clearly close enough to shoot it without accidentally shooting Archer (not that that would have been a tragedy). Even Archer had the good sense to shoot the Gorn as soon as he picked up a huge-ass gun. Grr.

No, he has Al.

Okay, here are two gigantic, HDTV captures of the two service records. They're quite easy to read.

I thought that was better than part one. I loved! the Defiant. I liked how they made 60s production design look like futuristic and more powerful than Avenger. Watching everyone walking around in TOS gear on a TOS ship, I could totally get behind a series set in TOS time period.

Bakula looked great in the green wraparound tunic. Of course, Evil Leaper talking to his goody counterpart in his head made me long for Baltar and Six's existential debates. The Gorn plot did bore, but I like that so much was packed into this episode.

May-Oddjob looked like a Bond villian's henchman with the Evil roundhouse of the Admiral's guard. And I miss disintegrations on Trek, haven't really seen one since DS9. That was a great scene, had to rewind it.

I too kinda wished Travis would've been emperor, but Empress HO-shi was just as awesome. What a cool way to end an episode.

Writers, it's too late but this is how you should've written your dialogue and character development. Enterprise, the Trek prequel should've been fun, fluffy shout-outs to Kirk and them.

I think it's less that the Enterprise mirror universe is more canonical than the real Enterprise universe than that there were so many nods to Trek lore in these past two eps. From the mirror universe itself to the Terran Empire to the salutes, Tau Ceti and Tholians with webs, all the way to the Defiant. Especially the Defiant. Every detail of the Constitution-class ships that we remember from TOS was loving recreated, right down to the sound F/X. They even used TOS computer disks!

So much of this series in the beginning was spent destroying Trek lore that it was really nice to see eps that not only connect to that history, but even recreate a bit of it. It's triple-X continuity porn. It's an entire case of Depends for Continuity pants-wetting orgy.

Too bad it came too late in the day.

Me too. After he donned the girdle/tunic, he started Shatnering (or trying to, anyway). It was way weird.

One wonders if the Enterprise evilverse got TOS tech why hadn't it grown to TNG tech by the time of "Mirror, Mirror."

I would imagine not having a need to innovate if you've already got a killing machine that's far superior to anything else in the quadrant. It probably took 100 years for the Empire to catch up to the Defiant...

Well, according to Diane Duane's freaking fabulous book, "Dark Mirror," the MU possesses significantly more powerful weapons and warp technology than our universe.

Okay, so, according to the bio of Quantum, he's "charming" and "bold"? Charming? In the picture that accompanies his bio, he looks like...well, he looks like Quantum. Stiff, boring, and irritating. I wonder who Quantum's competition was in running for the office of the President.

Quoth Grammarbitch:

I have a couple of quibbles with the Defiant, though they're admittedly of the "Get a Life!" variety. First, the triangular viewscreen in the Defiant's briefing room was all wrong. The screens were too big, and there was a little "hat" on the top. Also, the table seemed too small. And finally, the Federation logo they used in the Defiant's database looked more like the Next Generation version (with the 3 big stars) than the TOS version.
Having said that, I must agree with the other posts that said that they did a great job of making the Defiant seem more advanced than the contemporary ships while still being faithful to the 1960's designs. For instance, if you look at Aatrek's screencaps, the traditional blue border on the computer screen shows integrated controls that we can assume (or wank) were on Kirk's screen, but never shown clearly. Ditto the grav plating and plasma conduits at the end of the Jeffries Tube.

On another note, thanks to Cleo256 for ID'ing Gregory Itzen. Looking at his IMDB bio, I think he's a bona fide HiTG. I was amused to note that he had worked on Quantum Leap and was "Religious Zealot #1" in Airplane!, which makes him doubly cool in my book.

Remember, though - did we see the briefing room, etc., in The Tholian Web? This ship is not the Enterprise. Look at the NX-01 and the Columbia - same class of ship, but some internal details are different. Same with the Enterprise-D and the Yamato (TNG's "Contagion").

Gorn: The last of the classic "races" finially makes an apperance.

I am happy, I wanted to see the Gorn "return".


Personally, The Star Trek franchise should be leased to HBO and a "Dark Trek" series should be developed.

Were Captain Swearengen is in command.

You have me on the things you point out, Arnold Robinson; I'm afraid even back in the proverbial day, I never noticed some of the visual stuff, like the difference in uniform patches mentioned last week. Plus I've always been more aurally-oriented, so that's what stood out for me the most. That, and Hoshi using Uhura's ear bug.

Another that strikes me again with this ep is the things TOS presaged. Granted, there weren't a huge number of things, but the Trek floppies looked like 3.5" disks at a time when personal PCs didn't exist, and the monitors were very close to current LCD monitors. Kinda cool, that.

Did Linda Park have more lines in the last two weeks then she has had in the entire series, up until this point.

I know it has been said many times but if they had adhered to the story values and production values that they used in these two episodes we would not be looking at the end of the series. Enterprise could have gone on forever eclipsing TNG if they did to the entire series what they did in these two episodes. It is so discouraging to be faced with a future with no Trek in it like from "69" to whenever TNG started. As an original fan and one of the letter writers that got the third seaon of TOS I am truely sadened.

"Edited cause of too many typos"

Yeah, that was a great book. Too bad the evil DS9 episodes pretty much shoot them to hell.

Irish Wolf, I think you're on to something...that makes perfect sense! Not only does it explain why he didn't immediately kill certain characters (it was like he needed their approval before destroying them -- as illustrated in the scene when Alter-Archer whispered in Evil Leaper's ear, "If you find the Gorn, they [the crew] will respect you"), but it also explains the mood swings.

Upthread, someone said a Vulcan / Human hybrid did not fit canon because Spock was the first...I don't recall that Spock was the first. Can someone else with more knowledge of TOS elaborate?

That, to me, implies that Hoshi fails in her bid to take over the Empire, and that the Defiant was destroyed before they could salvage the ship for parts. Or Hoshi suceeds in her bid to take over the Empire and the Defiant is destroyed before they could salvage the ship for parts.

ETA: President? Quantum becomes PRESIDENT of the UFP?!?!?!

Man Evil is so goooooood......No wonder Anakin went to the dark side the chicks alone.

I wish they had too. I mean, if they hadn't said that he was a Gorn, I don't think I would have known. Hmmm... perhaps the Gorn were experimenting with Human DNA like the Klingons.

I gave up on this show about mid-S1 because it was so dreary and ponderous, so I'm flipping around the channels the other day, and what do I find? Classic starships! In Spiffy CGI clarity! Oh my god, that made me happy. Classic uniforms! The original blue phaser beams! Faithful reproductions of original hallway sets! A reproduction of the old bridge! Holy crap! It was this bizarrely intense nostalgia attack. I would give my eye-teeth for a modern resumption of TOS like this: classic stories with modern production values. But apparently it's just a couple of episodes as the series drags itself off to the graveyard? Sigh.

Oh My...
*shudders*
...and you thought that Dubya was scary.
Can you imagine the horror of having UFP President Jonathan Archer; for eight years?

Seriously, I second that, bmills. And I was thinking yesterday that it would be sweet to see another Star Trek series on the air in the Fall of 2006 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of TOS, one that would be true to the original, unlike this show was at the start.

OK, while watching yesterday's ep, I honestly thought that they had fucked it up when Archer and company were just creeping about looking for the Gorn. It was sleep inducing. That whole diversion was unnecessary and wasted too much time. Someone said earlier that just like other story arcs so far, Part I had too much story and left Part II with next to nothing. I disagree: Part II could have been more satisfying had they cut out the 10 mins of Gorn and used that time to make an even more suspensful Defiant sabotage/space battle sequence. The second half seemed rushed and ended abruptly. I was caught off guard when they faded to black and the end credits popped up.

I'm probably going to piss off a few people, but who cares about the Gorn? They aren't really a classic race, unless you count everything that ever showed up in early TNG as a "classic" race. Andorians are a classic race, as they had a big impact in TOS, with many recurring roles. Tholians were integral to this story and were one of the few highlights of TOS' S3, so they can be seen as a classic race. What's more campier than two Tholian ships ever so slowly trapping the Enterprise in a web? It reminds me of that Turtle Logo program. But the Gorn? Come on, it was a dude in a cheesy dinosaur costume. It just wouldn't stand up to modern scrutiny.

AD35 Said:



You reminded me of something...no security officer. I can't remember all the details but every starship in "Mirror, Mirror" had someone who watched out for starfleet's interest. I'm pretty sure it was Sulu in that episode. I was under the impression he or she wouldn't care about the power plays as long as the ship's missions were accomplished. If a Captain got out of hand, the officer calls starfleet and they hunt the ship down and destroy it. I think the Captain also needed authorization from the security person for major ship functions...maybe that's just from the "Dark Mirror" book.

You'd think this Earth would need people like that assigned to every CO throughout its military history.

It's possible that the security office was an invention after this time period, or perhaps was secret. Remember, Archer beat up Forrest looking for the identity of the sabatour.

It's also possible that with all the deaths in Star Fleet that they were short officers.

As for why TOS Mirror was behind, I think some others have hit on the reason. It takes a long time to reverse engineer something. Evil-Trip admits that he doesn't know what half the systems even do. It would take years of taking them apart and putting them back together to get it all together, and then you have to manufacture the facilities to make the parts. Imagine taking a laptop computer back to 1912. You wouldn't be able to pump them out in quantity or quality even if you had all the schematics.

Also, Empress Evil-Hosi wouldn't allow her trump card, the Defiant, to be disasembled until she was well protected. As long as she held control of that ship, she was in power. Once it's in pieces, she's just another target.

Another thought I forgot to add, why did the biographical information show Archer as a Captain in the lead photo? He ended his career as President of the UFP, and even his career in Star Fleet took him to fleet admiral status. If you look up pictures of Eisenhaur in a general bio, you usually see him as President, not a general or a lower rank.

Same thinking with Hosi. I couldn't really read the bio that well, but was she still an ensign when she left Star Fleet? Odd with all the attention to detail, they didn't artificially age the photos or something.

That's basically the old Soviet system of a commanding officer and a "political" officer. Such a struggle was the real-world basis of what became the Hunt for Red October", though it was a Red Fleet frigate, not a boomer.



Once the Defiant entered the MU, the ST;TOS timeline should have diverged anyway from the future of ST:TOS's "Mirror, Mirror". In Kirk's encounter with the MU, the Defiant never arrived with the Empress sato at the helm. We sorta'know that Intendent Kira's MU's was Kirk's since she mentions Kirk's interferance and Spook's ultimate failure to civilize the Empire.

I think I'm reading you right: The mirror universe we just saw in these eps wasn't the exact same Mirror setting as the one in TOS. Or at least it could be read that way.

That would explain a couple of discrepencies, like the fact that time isn't running at the same rate, and why the Mirror settings we've seen don't take into account the Defiant.

It could also be supported, in an oblique way, by a TNG episode. Can't recall the title, but Worf goes universe-hopping. At one point, there are over 250,000 copies of the Enterprise D from various universes, implying that there are possibly thousands of Mirror Mirror settings.

My theory (for which, naturally, I have no evidence whatsoever) is that everything Archer does after being Captain is as a reward for when he commanded the Enterprise. So he's like Ulysses S. Grant, who did a good job as a general but was then a disaster as President. Why not focus on the part of Archer's career where he was (sort of) competent?