The trouble with Lorca

Not gonna lie: The Disco writers have disappointed me.

It turns out Lorca's story was simply, "He was fooling everyone; he's evil." So all the things that didn't make sense...just don't make sense. And not just on a plot level, which I could easily forgive under the right circumstances, but on a thematic level, in a way that leaves us dissatisfied and disbelieving the internal logic of this world.

A captain destroys his own crew, ostensibly to save them from torture at the hands of the Klingons. So Starfleet claps him on the back and gives him the most important command in the fleet. He goes on to run that ship in a decidedly un-Starfleet-like way, and the only person who's especially troubled by this is Cornwell. He throws her to the Klingons and gets away with it easily. He dupes his own crew handily, threat ganglia notwithstanding.

All the while, the story is peppered with signs that none of this is as simple as it seems; things that make us think that all this is about a leader in a time of war making tough decisions and sacrifices in order to achieve the larger goal; a man tormented by something (PTSD?) but trying to power through. How else could they expect to keep the audience on the hook? They have to make us feel that there's a reason this character is getting away with it; that there's some internal thematic logic playing out, and there will be redemption in the end.

I had assumed we were in Search for Spock territory: Kirk disobeys the rules because of his internal moral compass that places loyalty and friendship even above duty. He risks everything to save Spock. It made so much sense to me to think that the crew of the Buran was alive in the MU, and Lorca, Kirk-like, was going after them. Better yet, in The Undiscovered Country, Kirk is chastened; he must confront his own failings and prejudices; he hasn't always been right. That same kind of story arc would have made sense of Lorca's story; you'd still have had to squint to accept Starfleet's lack of concern about his actions and the Discovery crew's credulousness, but at least you'd have a sense of thematic logic that justifies all that squinting.

[EDITING TO ADD: Then there's that memorable Spock quote from the end of "Mirror Mirror": "It was far easier for you as civilized men to behave like barbarians than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilized men." That should have counted for something; Lorca should have been able to pull off the charade only because there was something more to the story.]

But...no. Lorca is simply a very sneaky villain; Starfleet and his own crew just look foolish. Hence my disappointment. It feels like the writers crafted an interesting, complicated character on a meaningful arc, and then just tore his page out and threw it away unfinished. It's a shame. While I'm still interested in the rest of the characters, the spark is a little dimmer. Next season they're going to face an uphill battle getting me to re-invest in them. Burnham, Tilly, Saru, and Stamets all seem worth the effort, but despite Lorca, not because of him.

And then there's Emperor Georgiou. If she's the one who gets the redemption arc, I'll be dumbfounded, because she's a known genocidal psychopath who eats sentient beings. Hey, maybe she, and not Cornwell, turns out to be the Lethe of "Dagger of the Mind." Now THAT would be a neat twist. It certainly fits that, in the Prime Universe, Georgiou would wind up in a facility for the criminally insane, mind-wiped, describing the person she once was as malignant and hateful. But it sure seems like Burnham should have just left her to die in the Mirror Universe.

Aside: There's a certain glee in evidence on social media from those who've decided that Lorca "stans" have just been mindlessly fan-girling the white man and have now gotten their come-uppance. But the writers worked hard to misdirect the audience about this character, so you really can't blame the audience for being misdirected.

Last thing: That speck that fell on Tilly’s shoulder? Either Culber, who was last seen wandering the mycelial network, or Lorca, who was last seen disappearing into the heart of the mycelial engine. Or Tilly hears a Who. Or something else. With my track record, I wouldn't put much faith in me.

The problematic nostalgia of Gene Hunt

Halfway through season 2 of Life on Mars, I feel ambivalent. I get the appeal. I feel the love. It draws me in, and when I finish an episode, I can't start the next one fast enough. But at the same time, Gene Hunt is making me really uncomfortable. He's unapologetically flawed, yet charismatic, visceral, elemental. He's meant to have this seductive power to entice me to compromise my modern sensibilities and give in to his charms. It bothers me.

Sure, he could just be a mental construct, Sam Tyler's imagined ghost of policemen past. (Reminder: I haven't finished watching. If this becomes clear down the road, I don't yet know, and please don't tell me.)  But on a Doylist level, that doesn't matter. Whether through conscious imitation or artistic osmosis, the Gene Hunt type has infiltrated the period cop drama: the old-school boss who uses primitive, ethically dubious, but effective tough-guy methods that get results, contrasted with a younger, more enlightened protagonist who embraces modern, intellectual methods. Fred Thursday in Endeavour, vs. the young Morse; Thomas Brackenreid in Murdoch Mysteries, vs. William Murdoch; Geordie Keating in Grantchester, vs. Sidney Chambers. Yeah, the tough guys are routinely chastened, but their hearts of gold remain undiminished.

This seems to be a narrative way of having your cake and eating it, too. We self-righteously relate to the younger man, who represents a civilized approach we see as representing our contemporary values. But we vicariously thrill to the emotional power of the older character, who seems to be more in touch with his gut instincts and who acts without overthinking. His biases, which we understand to be emblematic of his times, are reduced to quaint quirks that allow us to adopt an attitude of moral superiority. Homophobia, misogyny, and racism are too easily written off because we're meant to sense some deeper moral compass that bends toward justice. The fact that the old-school mentor is inevitably characterized as more masculine than the younger, more cerebral character is also troubling. Raw masculinity is portrayed as problematic but seductive in its strength and directness, while the methods of the new man, by comparison, come off as a bit indecisive, punctilious, compromising, and weak. Sure, the new guy tends to be right a lot, but the boss's methods work often enough to remind us to respect the supposedly practical wisdom of experience.

 (Interestingly, the dynamic looks very different when the protagonist is female, as in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries or Peggy Carter; you can't muster enough sympathy for a hypermasculine sexist pig if it's a woman who has to put up with him, I guess. Also interesting: In all four of the series mentioned above, the major female characters are linked to the younger, sensitive man. The wives of the older men are minor characters whose stories play out only in relation to their husbands -- not happily, but also not centrally to the main narrative. Gene Hunt's wife is never even seen at all, a too-convenient narrative elision.)

I'd love to see a show that tweaks this formula, possibly by providing more serious consequences for antediluvian attitudes. (Maybe Joan Thursday's story is that in Endeavour? But if so, I'm not convinced Fred gets it. And don't get me started on Margaret in Grantchester.)