“Shattered Mirror”
Written by Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler
Directed by James L. Conway
Season 4, Episode 19
Production episode 40514-492
Original air date: April 22, 1996
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Jake is standing in his and Nog’s old spot overlooking the Promenade, attracting the attention of both Odo and Quark, thus once again giving Rene Auberjonois and Armin Shimerman a scene since their MU counterparts were killed back in “Crossover.”
When Jake goes back to his quarters, Jake is stunned to see his mother. It’s the Jennifer Sisko from the Mirror Universe. She’s come to give Sisko some good news. The Terran rebels have driven the Alliance off of Terok Nor and now control it. Sisko has to go meet with a Bajoran minister, so Jennifer visits with Jake for a while. The meeting is both joyous and devastating for Jake—as he says at one point, he never expected to hold those hands again.
After Sisko’s meeting, which lasts three hours, he returns to his quarters to find Jennifer and Jake gone—but she left behind one of the funky cylinders that Smiley used to transit someone to the MU. Sisko tries to transport over with Kira and O’Brien, but only Sisko makes it. As Smiley puts it when Sisko materializes on Terok Nor, they weren’t invited. Jake has been kidnapped to lure Sisko back to the MU.
The rebels have constructed a copy of the Defiant, using specs Smiley downloaded when he kidnapped Sisko in “Through the Looking-Glass.” But the ship is overpowered and damn near flies apart every time they power her up—it’s the same problem the mainline universe Defiant had. Sisko has four days to effect the same fixes to this Defiant so it can defend Terok Nor against the Alliance fleet that is en route. If he refuses, he and Jake will die with everyone else when the Alliance re-takes the station.
Jake gets to meet the MU Nog, who now owns the bar, with his uncle and father dead. Jennifer admits to Sisko that using Jake to lure him there was her idea. Sisko isn’t happy, but he’s going along with it.
The Alliance fleet that is heading to Terok Nor is led by Regent Worf, who has Gul Garak as his prisoner, wearing a metal collar with a chain wielded by the Regent. Worf tells Garak that the collar stays until every rebel on Terok Nor lies dead at his feet. Garak, meanwhile, is desperately sucking up, revealing that Intendant Kira surrendered to the rebels rather than face defeat—Garak, though, escaped, and is now the Regent’s prisoner. Worf paraphrases Darth Vader: “This time, I will deal with the rebels myself.”
Sisko’s assisting Smiley with the repairs is interrupted by Jadzia, who slaps him for making love to her under false pretenses. Then he finds Bashir torturing the Intendant, who tried to escape while being escorted to interrogation. Kira, however, admits that she was completely fooled by Sisko’s impersonation of his MU counterprt, and tries to get Sisko to help her in exchange for gratitude. This attempt fails rather spectacularly.
Worf is informed of the Defiant’s imminent completion, and accepts Garak’s suggestion that the fleet’s speed be increased to warp nine.
Sisko discovers that Jake has made dinner for Jennifer, and there’s food for him, but Sisko is too tired to eat (words one never expected Sisko to say). Jennifer also is starting to regret exposing herself to the son she’ll never have.
Smiley then informs Sisko and Jennifer that the Alliance fleet’s arrival has been moved up. Bashir and Jadzia offer to take their last raider to distract the fleet to give them time to get the Defiant ready. Sisko gets Kira to give them some intel: the targeting systems on the Alliance ships can be fooled into chasing sensor shadows. Bashir and Jadzia do that very thing, occupying the fleet with false readings while Sisko, Jennifer, and Smiley work overtime to get the Defiant ready. Jennifer also agrees to let Jake return to the mainline universe, as she and Smiley both trust Sisko to finish his work.
Jake stands in the same spot overlooking the Promenade, only this time Nog tells him to leave, unimpressed by Jake stating that the mainline Nog used to hang out there with him.
The Alliance fleet arrives. Smiley lets Sisko go, but Sisko decides to stay and command the ship in battle. The Defiant gets to kick some serious ass.
Nog breaks the Intendant out of her cell, and he’s got a ship waiting for her to take her to Bajor. It’s his way of thanking her for killing Quark and Rom, leaving him with the bar. She repays his kindness by shooting him. She then stumbles across Jennifer and Jake. Now Kira has a very handy hostage, and Jennifer’s willing to be that hostage, even be her gift to the Regent—but only if she lets Jake go. She agrees, and then turns her weapon on Jake. Jennifer jumps in front of the disruptor beam to save Jake’s life. Only then does the Intendant discover that Jake is Sisko’s son from the mainline universe. She spares his life, telling Jake that she intends to collect on that debt from Sisko.
On the Defiant, Sisko takes the helm, as it’s just easier than giving Smiley orders he doesn’t entirely get. (“Pattern Delta? What’s that?”) He flies the Defiant very close to the Regent’s cruiser’s hull so they can’t lock on weapons. Bashir shows up with his raider, and between the two of them, they pound the holy crap out of the Regent’s flagship. The Regent is forced to retreat, furious. He’s convinced that he’s been betrayed, and Garak assures him that it had to be the Intendant.
Sisko and Jake get to watch another Jennifer Sisko die, as she conveniently waits until Sisko can be at her side to die (never mind that the same shot from the same weapon killed Nog instantly).
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The cylindrical doodad from “Through the Looking-Glass” can still make the MU as accessible as the room next door. The Defiant that Smiley and the gang construct has the same problem that the mainline Defiant did in terms of being too powerful, as Sisko mentioned in “The Search, Part I.”
The Sisko is of Bajor: Jake is overwhelmed by meeting his mother’s doppelganger, and mostly thinks it’s just the most awesome thing ever. Sisko expresses concern that Jake’s already got the three of them living together in his mind, but he isn’t giving Jake enough credit, as his responses are actually more complex than that. And in the end, the Siskos get to watch Jennifer die all over again. Fun stuff.
Don’t ask my opinion next time: The mainline Kira insists on accompanying Sisko to the MU, though Smiley’s preprogramming keeps that from happening. She obviously still remembers her trip there in “Crossover.” (And in a lot of ways, they missed a bet. I’d have loved to have seen more Kira/Kira action—er, so to speak—not to mention O’Brien meeting Smiley.)
The slug in your belly: Apparently the Jadzia of the MU doesn’t like to stay in the same place more than once, which might explain why we didn’t see her in “Crossover.”
There is no honor in being pummeled: The MU Worf is the leader of the Alliance, with the title of Regent. He’s more than a little power-mad, and more than a little egotistical.
Preservation of matter and energy is for wimps: Odo surprises Jake by not asking him to leave the spot overlooking the Promenade. Turns out that Odo was racially profiling by only wanting Nog to go away, Jake just happened to be with him.
Rules of Acquisition: Quark states that friends just lead to heartbreak, which leads Odo to say that that’s why he has no friends, leading Quark to tartly reply, “Look who’s talking.” Meanwhile, in the MU, the death of both Quark and Rom in the previous MU stories leaves Nog with the bar—at least until Kira kills him, thus making the MU episodes three for three in killing Ferengi.
Plain, simple: Garak insists that it was the Intendant’s fault that they lost Terok Nor, as she was the one in charge. He also ran as soon as things got bad, right into the waiting arms of the Regent, who keeps a metal collar and chain on him for the whole episode.
Tough little ship: When he was in the mainline universe in “Through the Looking-Glass,” Smiley downloaded a mess of stuff, including the Defiant specs, which was enough to build a match for it, all the way down to the LCARS displays (which makes no sense, as there’s no way the rebels would have access to the exact same material—it would’ve made more sense for the displays to be Cardassian or Klingon in design, since that’s what they’d have around, but that would’ve required too much set redesign).
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Nog at one point mentions that he doesn’t trust tall men, but he likes tall women (given that his head is right at boob level, this makes sense). The Intendant hits on one of the rebels, and when he informs her that she had his wife killed, she just smiles and says she was hoping he wasn’t married. Jadzia insists that she was suspicious of Sisko from the start when he impersonated his counterpart in “Through the Looking-Glass,” and Sisko just says, “You hid it well.” She now is slinking all over Bashir.
Keep your ears open: “The Intendant was bad enough. She was irrational, accusatory, unappreciative, but at least—”
“At least what?”
“At least I was able to please her now and then.”
“You are not my type.”
“I never said I was.”
Garak complaining about the Intendant to Worf, and saying too much before he realizes he should’ve kept his mouth shut, and Worf pointing out a significant difference between him and Kira.
Welcome aboard: Recurring regulars Andrew J. Robinson and Aron Eisenberg return as the MU versions of Garak and Nog, while Felecia M. Bell makes her third and final appearance as some version or other of Jennifer, following “Emissary” and “Through the Looking-Glass.” Carlos Carrasco, last seen as a Klingon in “The House of Quark,” plays a much dumber Klingon here. Stunt coordinator Dennis Madalone again plays one of the rebels, this time getting propositioned by the Intendant and clubbed in the head with a food tray by Nog.
Trivial matters: This episode obviously continues the Mirror Universe storyline that began way back on the original series in “Mirror, Mirror,” and continued on DS9 in “Crossover” and “Through the Looking-Glass.”
The original intent for “Crossover” was to have Worf be part of the crew in charge of Terok Nor, but Michael Dorn’s shooting schedule for TNG didn’t allow him time to come over to the other lot. Now that he’s in the cast, though…
The MU novel The Sorrows of Empire by David Mack will establish that the title “Regent” comes from the Klingon Empire of the MU believing that the leader of the High Council is simply warming the throne, as it were, for Kahless, acting as his regent until his prophesied return.
Another MU novel, Saturn’s Children, also by Mack (under the pseudonym of Sarah Shaw), will see Smiley and the rebels spearheading the construction of many more Defiant-class ships, among them the Jadzia (captained by Bashir), the Terra Victor (captained by Kasidy Yates), and the Capital Gain (captained by Zek). Later novels with the MU will see both Leeta (The Soul Key by Olivia Woods) and Ezri (Rise Like Lions by Mack) in command of the Defiant. Your humble rewatcher’s MU novel The Mirror-Scaled Serpent, which takes place prior to this episode, has a team of rebels led by Chakotay acquiring material for Smiley’s construction of the Defiant.
This is the first of two times (the second chronologically) that the face of the MU is changed by a Federation ship called Defiant. The other will be seen in the Enterprise two-parter “In a Mirror, Darkly,” which has the Defiant from the original series episode “The Tholian Web” crossing over into the MU.
Walk with the Prophets: “Make it so!” This is my favorite of the MU episodes, even though it isn’t necessarily the best. It’s stronger than the limp “Through the Looking-Glass,” while also picking up from that episode nicely, but not as strong as “Crossover” was.
What makes the episode, really, is every single scene between the Regent and Gul Garak. This is the first time Andrew J. Robinson and Michael Dorn have been put together, and it’s comedy gold. (The two will be thrown together again in the mainline universe more than once, most effectively in “In Purgatory’s Shadow” and “By Inferno’s Light.”) The screen just sparkles every time they’re together. “Spoken like a Klingon.” “I’m trying!” “You are just trying to shift blame to yourself!” “Am I succeeding?” And, of course, the sequence quoted above, which is a masterpiece of comic timing: Robinson perfectly showing Garak realizing as he’s talking that he’s going down a road he really really shouldn’t, but unable to stop himself, especially when the Regent prompts him. Even the totally useless and pointless scene where Worf stabs Garak to see if he swallowed the key only to discover that his dumbass aide dropped it in his boot is delightful, for all that it’s, as I said, totally useless and pointless. Hell, at different points Regent Worf quotes Darth Vader and Captain Picard—how awesome is that?????
As for the rest of the episode, it’s mostly made by Colm Meaney’s sarcasm and Cirroc Lofton’s emotionalism, with some fine moments from Avery Brooks as well (the facial expressions he goes through as he convinces himself to stay and captain the Defiant are a rhapsody in self-guilt). You can tell that Smiley’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and he’s just tap-dancing as fast as he can. He’s done the impossible, but it hasn’t made him mighty quite yet, as he doesn’t expect any of this to last. His snark is magnificent (“Captain Bashir, Captain O’Brien, Captain Sisko—we may not have enough weapons or troops or ships, but we’ve got plenty of captains!” “Ah, Pattern Suicide.” “Surprised? I’m astonished!”).
Lofton does excellent work as well. Jake reacts exactly like a normal person would react when confronted with fun-house mirror versions of the people he knows and loves—and when he sees a woman who is so much like his dead mother. His reaction is actually fairly restrained, but fairly mature, too. He knows this isn’t something that’s going to last—Sisko’s words notwithstanding—but, like Smiley, he’s going to enjoy it while he can. But then it’s turned on his ear, first when MU Nog turns out to be an asshat, and then when he watches his mother die again, this time while saving his life.
Speaking of whom, this time around, Felecia M. Bell’s severe limitations aren’t quite as bad, mostly because the script doesn’t ask as much of her as “Through the Looking-Glass” did.
The plot doesn’t always cohere. The Defiant’s an awesome ship, yes, but it shouldn’t be able to turn away a whole fleet that easily without support, the Intendant’s reasons for sparing Jake boil down to “we needed a feeble excuse to not have an opening-credits regular be executed,” and Bell still can’t actually, y’know, act. It’s worth it for the Worf-Garak banter, but the joke is starting to grow stale. (And will only get worse from here, but we’ll cover that when we get to “Resurrection” and “The Emperor’s New Cloak.”)
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido reminds everyone that he has a bunch of stuff coming out over the course of the rest of 2014: his latest Star Trek book, The Klingon Art of War; two anthologies that have Cassie Zukav stories in them, Out of Tune (edited by Jonathan Maberry) and Bad-Ass Faeries: It’s Elemental (edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Jeffrey Lyman, L. Jagi Lamplighter, and Lee C. Hillman); and the “Merciless” adventure for the Firefly role-playing game Echoes of War. If you’re not following Keith on Facebook or Twitter or reading his blog, why the heck not??????
I’ve mentioned before how much I dislike the mirror universe episodes, and this one doesn’t really do much to change my mind. The Garak and Worf show can function just fine in the mainline universe. The whole point of this episode seems to be to make the Sisko men live through the death of Jennifer again. It seems rather unnecessary. Ben has finally begun to move on and Jake seems to do an excellent job of seeing MU Jennifer as someone distinct from his mother. No matter how well these seem to be done (and this is hardly the best exemplar) I can only see the flaws.
This had its fun moments, but credibility-wise it’s a mess. How the hell did a ragtag band of rebels gather the resources and expertise to build an exact replica of the Defiant — which, let’s remember, is an experimental design even in the Prime universe — in such a staggeringly short time, if at all? It makes no sense and is little more than an excuse to make use of the standing sets.
Also, there’s enough small-universe syndrome in the MU as it is, with the same characters always somehow managing not only to exist in both universes, but to end up in the same place at the same time. But having Worf show up as the leader of the entire Klingon Empire? Even Charles Dickens would find that a contrived coincidence.
While we’re at it, what about the coincidence that the same ship designs end up existing in both universes? As I recall, Rick Sternbach’s thinking behind the design of the Vor’cha and Negh’Var warships is that they included some elements similar to Starfleet designs due to decades of technology exchange between the Federation and Empire. So if that’s the case, then logically the Negh’Var shouldn’t even exist in the Mirror Universe, or should at least have a significantly different appearance. But again, they’re stuck with using the sets and miniatures they have, as well as the actors they have, and credibility be hanged.
And the MU episodes’ handling of sexuality is still deeply problematical. Jadzia just slaps Sisko for sleeping with her under false pretenses? That was essentially rape by deception, and I’d think she’d feel far more violated. And we get maybe the closest the franchise has ever come to an acknowledgment of male homosexuality, and it’s just a homophobic joke as Worf shows disgust at Garak’s unintended insinuation.
This is the episode which makes me wonder how Paramount is going to approach the Blu-Ray treatment for DS9.
This show never had the same ratings as TNG did. I don’t see Paramount redoing the visual effects on DS9. At the same time, I wonder if the effects really need a 2014 intervention.
I think the Defiant battle sequences on this particular episode hold up pretty damn well, even today. Great sense of scale, superb use of models (as good as the CG animation they would use on the Dominion War sequences).
Bottom line is, DS9 doesn’t look as dated as TNG.
#2
Isn’t the whole point of the Mirror Universe its deeply problematic morality? It’s homophobic. It’s racist. It’s violent. It’s absurd.
It’s pretty much Star Trek taking an occasional trip to our world.
@@.-@: It’s not about what’s happening in-story, it’s about what it implies about the attitudes of the writers. Like treating rape by deception as a harmless thing or even a source of comedy. Or being unwilling to portray homosexuality at all except as a sleazy or comical insinuation in MU episodes.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this one, but was there some reason that the MU rebels wanted to bring Sisko and only Sisko? If they were having engineering problems with the Defiant, I’d think they’d want O’Brien to come with him.
If memory serves, they wanted Sisko because he designed the Defiant while serving at Utopia Planetia.
Bobby
#5
Sorry, I’ve never been able to take the MU seriously. Whether it’s Garak in a collar or the Carol Marcus underwear show, whenever Trek goes universe hopping it seems to ditch any pretense of being true to the progressive-minded Trek we usually expect. Call it springbreak for writers, I suppose.
Though I will admit there is some fun (in a debased Mad Men sort of way) seeing these characters act completely awful for a change.
I really wish the writers had thought this episode out a bit more, because the fact that the rebels manage to build their Defiant in less than a year, after capturing Terok Nor and without proper shipbuilding facilities and personnel, means that the class is insanely easy to mass produce (which would make some sense as an anti-Borg design criteria). And if that’s the case, then Starfleet is too dumb to live, because they don’t spam the hell out of the class like the US did with Fletcher class destroyers in WWII and assign a few dozen Defiants to each member planet as a dedicated defense force. That would’ve solved or mitigated so many of the dumb defeats that Starfleet suffered because of their non-existent planetary defenses.
I liked the previous mirror universe episodes but this one kind of bothers me. The rebels essentially manipulate Jake, preying on his love for his deceased mother, so they can hold him hostage to get his dad to fix the Defiant. That is a major betrayal, but Sisko seems only mildly annoyed by it all (just as he seems mildly annoyed that the Terrans torture their prisoners). That he decides to captain the Defiant to help the rebels at the last minute doesn’t make any sense. I would think that in Sisko’s mind, the Terrans are not much better than the Alliance.
Post-Script: One other problem with this episode is that the real fun of the mirror universe episodes is seeing the mainline characters interact with versions of themselves and their friends whose values are totally antithetical to their own. So Sisko already has already seen the Mirror Universe and nothing here is really new (except for Jake meeting Mirror Mom). I was really hoping to see mainline Dax, Odo, Quark, Garak or Worf (or even Gul Dukat) interact with the MU.
One of the things that always depressed me about the DS9 Mirror Universe Episodes?
It threw Diane Duane’s “Dark Mirror” out of the canon. I liked that book.
This is the episode where to me the Mirror Universe fully transitioned from a dark mirror to a funhouse mirror. The actions and motivations are over the top hammy. The morality on display here is more Adam West Batman series villian than creepy menace. I suppose it was fun for the writers but I think they ran the MU concept into the ground. As for Jadzia, by reusing Sisko they had to acknowledge she would be upset by it, but could not make her resent it too much, as that was not the story. I wonder if they regretted writing that suggestion that Sisko might into his universe’s Jadzia into the earlier episode?
@@@@@ ChristopherLBennett: I don’t take the sexuality aspects quite as harshly as you. Sisko’s line “You hid it well” which KRAD quotes implies (at least to me) that it wasn’t the sex that Jadzia was objecting to, she still enjoyed that. It was the lying.
And as for Worf-Garak, I didn’t take that as homophobic at all, just as turning him down in no uncertain terms. I don’t see it as any worse than Crusher turning down Odan 3.0 in “The Host”, which is a subject you agreed with me on in a TrekBBS thread – just saying “No I don’t want to have sex with you, thanks” doesn’t make one homphobic. It just sounds tough cuz Worf’s a Klingon.
An extra trivia point – “The Soul Key” also establishes that Worf doesn’t rule the Alliance as a whole, only the Klingon half of it. He is equal in rank to MU-Dukat, Supreme Legate of the Cardassian Union.
SPOILERS FOR S5 JUST IN CASE
The appearance of MU-Bashir makes one wonder about his genetic status in this universe. Was he still enhanced as a child, or is this what Bashir ended up like without the enhancements? He still seems intelligent if not a genius, but not particularly developmentally disabled either, unless he hides it well under aggression. So maybe he did have the enhancements, they just didn’t turn out as well or focused on other traits from his RU version.
Jeremy: Dark Mirror was never in canon, none of the novels are. Having said that, “Parallels” makes it easy to say that it’s just a divergent branch of the MU from “Mirror, Mirror.” :)
(Hell, in the tie-in fiction, there’ve been at least three different interpretations of the MU, and that’s not counting the comics….)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Jeremy Marr @12, krad@15
I, too, loved Dark Mirror (the “dolphin” scientist!), but then I love any of Diane Duane’s work in ST. She’s the best writer, IMHO, in Trek. Especially when Paramount allows her to write non-human characters.
@14: But portraying Dax’s reaction that way is grossly misunderstanding how a woman would probably feel if she learned that a total stranger had tricked her into having sex. As I’ve been saying, that is a form of rape. The legal term for it is rape by deception. It’s a profound violation. It’s sexist and insensitive to think that a woman would excuse being sexually assaulted just because she “enjoyed” it at the time.
Now, maybe it would be different for someone raised in the Mirror Universe, used to being exploited and victimized. Maybe she’d take that in stride, so her reaction wouldn’t be too implausible. But in that case, it’s a tragic reality to be treated with sympathy. Making the show’s own protagonist into the one who violated her, and treating it as a matter for humor, is wrong. It’s Sisko’s attitude toward the whole thing, and the writers’ attitude toward it, that’s the real problem.
As for Worf-Garak, you’re missing my point. If the one and only open acknowledgment of male homosexuality in the entire franchise is a scene where a man reacts to the prospect with displeasure, then yes, that is homophobic. Because there’s no more positive portrayal of the idea to balance it out.
The jaunts to the MU are fun once you get around the fundamental issues that it’s impossible to have a mirror universe. How do the Rebels construct a mirror Defiant? Do they have a shipyard somewhere? Where do they get the resources? Why is Julian Bashir around- he was genetically enhanced in the “prime” universe, is he genetically enhanced here? Was he not born with a developmental delay? Why is Jadzia Dax, Jadzia Dax? Jadzia does not have the Dax symbiont in the Mirror Universe (the novels establish that the symbionts have been wiped out with Dax existing in Curzon). Shouldn’t she be Jadzia XXXX (we never learn what her pre-joined last name is).
But the bigger issue for me is how the writers chose to do the mirror universe in DS9. The DS9 era has been flipped from the TOS- Spock’s prediction that the Empire will fall has already come true. The book series (which came out after the DS9 episodes) establish that it was Spock that brought around the downfall of the Empire. Personally, I thought that the DS9 episodes should have been the Empire’s downfall (it’s still a centruy before Spock’s prediction in Mirror, Mirror). This puts the Humans in the position as protagonists, with the Klingon-Cardassians as the antagonists. But if Spock’s prediction was accurate- that the Empire wouldn’t fall for centuries to come, then why not have the Empire be evil… have the non-Humans (the Cardassians, the Bajorans, the Klingons primarily) be struggling against the Human-dominated Empire’s aggression and dominance. If you want to add some color, have a Maquis type group of idealist Humans join them in opposing the Empire. That way you still have a culture v. culture clash that makes some sense. As set up now, it’s a dominant group (the Klingon-Cardassians) versus a bunch of ragtag rebels, which very rarely makes sense in general, and doesn’t make sense at all here specifically.
@18: According to the tie-ins, Jadzia’s original surname was Idaris. Not canonical, of course, but there’s no competing claim.
@17 – The MU Dax-Sisko is the writer’s problem. I suspect they wanted to have their cake and eat it too by putting Sisko in MU Jadzia’s bed. In the story the earlier episode put Sisko in a situation where he, through no choice of his own, had to plausibly be the MU Sisko under threat of death. Arguably, Sisko did what he did to survive the situation and did not terribly regret the deception because of that fact. As to Worf/Garak: maybe a word fraught with hyperbolic connotations should be used a bit more sparingly to describe a rather normal reaction to such an extreme form of toadying that woudl not appeal to the character it would be directed at?
@20: The fact that it’s the writers’ problem is exactly my point. They should’ve written it more sensitively.
Surely Ham is the whole point of the mirrorverse? You might as well complain about all the ham in your ham sandwich…
Not that I could take too many more mirrorverse episodes.
I actually thought Jake’s reaction was a bit odd. I think I’d just find an MU version of my dead parent kind of creepy and sad and a constant reminder of who they weren’t.
The MU episodes are kind of like junk food though, I can enjoy them once in a while, but once a season is about right… :)
TOS, TNG and ENT all did the MU right. But, man…DS9…just no. It was just throwing sh*t against the same wall over and over to see what stuck. None of it did. All they were left with was a big pile at the end of it all.
Um, TNG never did the MU…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Watching this almost a year late, but how does the Main Universe get so repeatedly surprised by the Mirror Universe? Do they ever put precautions online to make sure they don’t get kidnapped to go help out a parallel universe? And if it’s so easy to swap universes, why don’t they go in with a few Starfleet ships and right everything? All the MU episodes just seem contrived to me. Fun, but contrived.
Bashir hits Sisko too; it’s a reversal on someone slugging Bashir in each MU episode. Since he’s dating Dax now, no wonder he hit Sisko. Did the Intendant ever collect on that debt? I’m not sure she did. It’s a bit convenient the Mirror Worf (the Regent of the Alliance, no less) turns up now that Michael Dorn’s a regular. I guess Broik inherits the bar now, at least until the next MU episode. Is it possible that Carlos Carrasco is playing the Mirror D’Ghor? Is there a Cardassian equivalent of the Regent? If there is, it’s probably Gul Dukat and in a much more successful position then our Dukat.
For such a devoted dad, Sisko makes some shockingly inappropriate parental decisions here. I would not let my son meet an MU version of their deceased mother at all, much less do it by letting him walk in unprepared to a casual tete a tete on the couch. Then Sisko leaves them alone. Strike 3, Dad. And gee, she was up to no good in using your son as bait to put you and him at risk in order to save people in a reality you aren’t even supposed to be a part of. Shocking.
Those were very stupid decisions by Sisko.
I feel like a bowl of petunias that spawned alongside a sperm whale high in the sky. Because all I’m thinking is “Oh no, not again!”
Isn’t there enough stuff to deal with in “our” universe? Why do we have to care about what’s happening in some parallell universe, too? I get that a season has to have a certain number of episodes and granted, those episodes are a lot better than TNG’s “Shades of Gray”, which was just a clip collection anyway. But if I’d ever rewatch DS9, I guess I could simply skip the MU episodes (along with some other fillers. Yes, I am looking at you, “The Visitor”) and save a lot of time.
Lockdown Rewatch. I know I’m in a minority in liking the mirror universe stuff and I know there is no real weight to any of it.. but I do find it so much fun. As the main review says the real highlight of this is Regent Worf and Garak I could easily have had just entire episode of these two and the banter, Michael Dorn clearly loving every scenery chewing moment and Andrew Robinson of course is gold as any version of Garak, There is a bit more a Chemistry this time between MU Jennifer and Sisko but it is not harsh to say I was not disappointed to see the back of her, And another Ferengi bites the dust in the Mirror Universe.
I really enjoyed “Crossover” and not so much with “Through the Looking Glass”, but at least the latter episode still kept up the sense from the former episode that the MU was a dangerous, foreboding place and filled the audience with dread. But with “Shattered Mirror” we make the unfortunate pivot into over the top hamminess and cartoony villainy. I didn’t enjoy the Worf/Garak scenes at all. It’s contrived that Worf is the regent first of all, but my main gripe is I found Dorn’s performance to be cartoony. I don’t know if that was the direction he was given but it doesn’t make him feel menacing or scary at all. And I think my response to MU Garak is also influenced by Andrew Robinson’s own comments that he didn’t particularly like playing this version of Garak because he’s a one-note villain whereas mainline Garak has a lot of nuisance to him. I think there could have been a lot of drama mined from Jake interacting with the “ghost” of his dead mother but the episode didn’t deliver there for me personally either. Even MU Jennifer’s death didn’t hit as powerfully as I think it should have for me or even Jake. While I still had an emotional reaction to the death, it was me mentally filling in the blanks with how I would have reacted to the events as opposed to what I was seeing on the screen. The battle scenes were nifty at least. And I did like the scene where Sisko convinces himself to stay on the Defiant and command it into battle. That was an amusing turn of his heel and felt like an audience-pleaser even though 1) he shouldn’t be risking his life when he needs to get back to his universe and his son, and 2) he’s involving himself way too much in the internal affairs of the MU.
@3: Hello from 6 years in the future! Obviously DS9 on blu-ray never came to pass and still might not for a long time if ever. But regarding the special effects done on this episode and on DS9 in general, a lot of the CGI elements (and there were a ton of them in the latter seasons) can’t just be ported over to a high-def remaster. These were all in computer files that have long since been lost. So if there was to be a DS9 remaster on blu-ray, the CGI for the show would have to be created from scratch and that would be a huge and expensive undertaking which the powers that be would not deem worth the trouble as the TNG blu-rays didn’t sell to their expectations and DS9 isn’t as popular as TNG.
How old is Jake by this time? Twenty? I would say Benjamin doesn’t have any say on who Jake spends time with. Unless he is invoking some classified issue, and I think the station in general knows about the MU by this time, even his Commander authority is moot. And being a good father, he likely realizes that trying to keep Jake from talking to Jessica is likely to cause alienation with Jake then any positive result.
I don’t think the MU is general knowledge, not even on the station, or to Jake (as far as I remember).
32: The Regent is the Worf who never had a human upbringing so we get an idea of how our Worf might have turned out had he chose never to become a Starfleet officer and lived in the Empire all along and I think you mean Garak is nuanced, although it’s tempting to say nuisance(d). If you put an eyepatch on Kira’s guard, he’d look a dead ringer for Snake Plissken.
@35: Yes, “nuanced!” Haha. I wonder if I typed that subconsciously or was auto-corrected.
And mainline Worf turning out like his MU counterpart if he was raised in the Empire is a depressing thought.
Each Mirror Universe episode is less enjoyable than the last, in my opinion, at least until we get to the Enterprise two-parter. The only thing I actually enjoyed about this one was Worf and Garak.
As silly as it is to post pointing this out, it nonetheless Needs To Be Said Somewhere: Sisko is dating Kasidy at this point. I am all for nonmonogamy but I believe they should at least have acknowledged this SOMEwhere in the script…