Strange time to be watching Ashes to Ashes

Since I first said that I find crass, sexist, violent Gene Hunt hard to take in the age of Trump (not that Gene Hunt is Donald Trump,  though a number of people thought I was saying that), a few bazillion sexual harassment/abuse allegations against people in all sorts of positions of authority have come forward, making Ashes to Ashes even weirder to watch at this particular moment in history. To clarify: I get that I'm supposed to see the goodness underneath Hunt's offensive exterior, and that he's meant to be seen as redeemable. I get that Glenister is brilliant at playing layers. I actually do find the character's personality to be magnetic. But I'm not entirely comfortable with the notion that we ought to readily believe that what's on the outside doesn't reflect what's on the inside, and if we wouldn't want to make that argument about men now, knowing what we know about what goes on, we shouldn't make it about then, either.

Also, here's how I know we're in Alex Drake's imagination and not in 1980: the bra strap. I had my first office job in 1980. You did NOT intentionally show your bra at work.

What office attire did not look like:

What Alex Drake is wearing:

What female TV cops of the 1980s wore:

What actual working women of the 1980s wore:

I'm just partway through Ashes to Ashes season 1; quite a few people have said basically, "Just wait until the series finale, then you'll see." I am totally unspoiled (and plan to remain that way), so yes, it may be that, after I've seen it, I will swear it was all worthwhile, everything fits, and the character arc is a thing of beauty. That's not sarcasm. I really may. But even so, five seasons is a looooong time to wait.

Sisko of Arabia

So I'm rewatching the DS9 episode "Starship Down," a rather contrived, thinly plotted story about the Defiant being badly damaged, and the resultant personal struggles of survival that are meant to illuminate character relationships. A badly injured Sisko is trapped on the bridge with Kira. In an effort to keep him awake, she tells him Bajoran stories. The thought crosses my mind, How Arabian Nights-like. And that's when it hit me.

Benjamin Sisko is Lawrence of Arabia. I've never encountered that idea before, but now it makes so much sense that I can't unsee it. Certain characters enter the cultural consciousness as archetypes that pop up in fiction again and again, often with no conscious reference to the original, yet the influence is clear. I'm not saying anyone intentionally set out to create Sisko in the image of Lawrence (the movie version, not the historical one), but he fits the type so well. (If you've never seen Lawrence of Arabia, you should, if for no other reason than that it invented a good deal of the visual language we now associate with the "sweeping epic," including Star Wars. And if you ever get a chance to see it on a big screen, it's well worth going out of your way for.)

So how is Sisko like Lawrence? He's an officer sent to a remote location as a liaison from a colonial power that sees itself as enlightened and benevolent (British/Federation), but is not above pursuing its own interests in global/galactic conflicts. In this case, it is inserting itself into the conflict between a backward but noble, spiritually oriented people (Arabs/Bajorans), and an empire against which they are rebelling that is brutal, oppressive, and, one suspects, on the decline (Ottomans/Cardassians), but nevertheless remains a threat to remote colonies under British/Federation protection. In many ways, the depiction of Bajor in DS9 is reminiscent of the orientalism oozing from Lawrence of Arabia -- simultaneously admiring and condescending. Along the way, Sisko/Lawrence becomes a spiritual figure to the Bajorans/Arabs and comes to value their independent interests more than the distant ones he's supposed to be representing, which he never fully abandons, either. He is not one of them, but he respects them and is willing to use their regard as a valuable tool, a means to an end. He inhabits an awkward position between two worlds, never comfortable with the veneration directed toward him, but ultimately coming to see himself as chosen for some greater good.

(I know a lot of people bristle at the idea of the Federation as an inherently colonialist enterprise, pardon the pun, but it is. The Federation is yet another version of the grand tale we in the West like to tell ourselves about our highly evolved values that we have but to expose the world/galaxy to, and they will inevitably come to appreciate and share them, and when they do, they will be ready to join us in a kind of secular holy alliance. It's the story America tells itself, and Britain told itself before that. In aspiring to be better, we tend to take what we know and idealize it. When we set that story in the future, we call it sci fi.)

Thoughts on DS9: The Visitor

I always say, there are no bad stories, only badly written ones. And conversely, if a story is good, it's good because it's well written. DS9's "The Visitor" is a prime example of this rule. There's so much that could have gone wrong -- and in lesser hands, often does -- but that here goes very right.

I just rewatched this lovely episode, which, to be honest, I'd all but forgotten. This tear-jerker could have been embarrassingly cheesy. It could have been deadly dull, focusing as it does on a version of a character we don't really know (adult Jake Sisko) and featuring the regulars very little. The technobabble-based premise of Jake dragging his temporally shifted father through time could have stretched credulity to the breaking point. The framing story of old Jake's tale to a stranger is hardly original ("The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone/He cannot choose but hear/And thus spake on that ancient man/The bright-eyed Mariner"). And yet the episode manages to be authentically touching. By crafting a plot that's not killingly obvious, and by striking emotional notes that ring true, the writing walks a thin line, avoiding (sometimes barely) veering into the maudlin or the melodramatic, keeping us nailed to our seats and emotionally invested. (For comparison, check out "Facets," the Dax-centric story just a couple of episodes earlier. It's so thinly written, you can't get past the flawed premise that, if Dax has all the memories of her previous hosts, she ought to already know that Curzon had been in love with Jadzia. But I digress.)

Of course, the acting has to be up to the writing, and it is. Tony Todd as adult Jake is spot on, but the story also owes an awful lot to Cirroc Lofton, who sells bereaved young Jake for all he's worth. I mean, that scene in sick bay...wow. The kid delivered.

On the downside, if an episode makes me cry, but it doesn't have an impact on the characters and the series as a whole, I just feel so ripped off. Having grown up on the highly stylized, episodic storytelling of American television, I never used to hope for more. But now, when I see something like "The Visitor," where there's a climax with great emotional impact, and then the whole denouement is maybe two minutes, tops, it's so unsatisfying. What's more, because I'm binge-watching, I'm quickly on to the next episode, and it's like the whole thing never happened. That's why I'm so grateful ST is getting a chance to do fully serialized storytelling in Disco. But "The Visitor" also makes me realize that I hope Disco takes some time in its second season to slow down a little bit and give its characters room to breathe. All through season 1, it's been driving hard to pack a ton of plot into every hour, to deliver the kind of breathless pace that's become the norm for big-budget action film and TV, and to keep the audience guessing about the characters' secrets and motives. But once we get on a firmer footing and resolve some of that, I hope there'll be more (non-cheesy, believable) character pieces. We got a taste of that with Saru in “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum,” and even better, with Stamets in "Magic to the Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," where the character development was an organic part of an entertaining twist on a vintage plot (talk about "no such thing as a bad story..."). I want a whole lot more.

Welcome to my crystal ball

Five more episodes in the season, and now we have titles. Carefully considered predictions (i.e. wild guesses) we can all laugh about later:

10. Despite Yourself  Implies someone meets their double. We're in the mirror universe and we encounter alt-Stamets, who peeked out of the mirror so creepily at the end of "Choose Your Pain." Possibly other doppelgangers as well?  We learn that Lorca intentionally brought the Discovery there; tension is ratcheted up as the story feeds mistrust of Lorca. (I'm betting that, while this is the mirror universe and the crew does encounter some of the locals, the contact is very limited,  in order to preserve the TOS premise that Kirk et al arrive in the mirror universe with no knowledge of the place.)

11. The Wolf Inside  Resolution of the Voq/Tyler story line. I'm betting that Tyler is really human, not a surgically altered Voq, but Voq's mind has been implanted in him (resulting in the death of the real Voq, who has in fact sacrificed everything). Something activates the Voq inside; Voq/Tyler team up with L'Rell in an effort to steal the Discovery; they fail, and inner Voq is vanquished, leaving Tyler as himself again.

12. Vaulting Ambition  A Tilly episode, as the concept of ambition seems most closely associated with her and her very specific career goals. No idea what it's about, but hoping she saves the day and receives the recognition she deserves.

13. What's Past Is Prologue  This is where my pet theory about Lorca's motives being all about rescuing the crew of the Buran, trapped in the mirror universe, plays out. The past to which the title refers is the supposed destruction of the Buran at Lorca's own hand, which could be prologue to the destruction of the Discovery. But in fact, the past is Lorca never giving up on his crew, which is prologue to the successful rescue of both the Buran's crew and Discovery itself, which safely returns to its own universe.

14. The War Without, The War Within  The resolution of the war without (with the Klingons) and the war within (the conflicts on Discovery). Along the way, Burnham (yet again) renders a vital service at great personal risk and is pardoned.

15. Will You Take My Hand?  Couldn't begin to guess at the story, but it ends with a peacetime Discovery (the spore drive having been abandoned and its existence buried in never-to-be-opened top secret files, lest it open a gateway to dangerous universes), a unified crew, Burnham restored to her Starfleet rank, and a new mission of discovery.

The pointing and laughing begins January 7,  2018. I'll go first.

Interesting choice of words

I'm still nursing the theory that, when Disco returns, we're going to learn that the reason Captain Lorca has brought the Discovery to an alternate universe is that he's on a mission to rescue the crew of his previous ship, the Buran, which was somehow trapped there. So I was interested to note that, in this promo video, Jason Isaacs says, "We find out that he lost his entire crew, and I am sure in his mind he could have made different decisions to save them." Lorca lost his entire crew -- not that he saw them die. Hmm....

Going back to "Choose Your Pain," his exact words regarding the Buran are, "I didn't let my crew die. I blew them up." I could be dead wrong (pun intended), but both Lorca and Isaacs seem to be choosing their words carefully and avoiding saying that the Buran's crew is dead.

An anniversary

Yesterday was the 38th anniversary of the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. So here's all I have to say about that.

Having become a Star Trek fan during what I now refer to as the Dead Years -- the period of time between the end of TOS and ST:TMP, when the common wisdom was that ST was well and truly dead -- the news that they were making a movie was beyond thrilling. Under any other circumstances, I would have been there on opening day -- but I was on a gap year abroad. Not only couldn't I see it on opening day, but six months later, I still hadn't seen it. In those days, there was a long delay in opening new films overseas.

On my return to the States, the first question I asked my brother was, of course, "How was the Star Trek movie?" I'll never forget the look on his face. It was kind of like this:

When I finally got to see TMP, I understood that look. Most ST fans wanted so badly to love it.  We were trying really hard...and it wasn't all bad, so...but still, it was hard to deny...I mean, we'd been waiting all those years, and they remade The Changeling?...it could have been worse though...but still, that's it?...that's all we're getting?...really?....

Hence, that look. ^^^^

I didn't realize it at the time, but the idea that was beginning to dawn on me was that it is possible to create something people will love without fully understanding its appeal. That's exactly what Star Trek was to Gene Roddenberry. (Chris Carter and The X-Files is another example...but that's a post for another day.) Eventually this realization would crystallize in season 1 of TNG. (But that's also a post for another day. A very, very long one.)

DS9: Duet and the Jewish Question

"Duet" is a brilliant episode -- DS9's first truly great one, and one of the best of any ST. ("What you call genocide, I call a day's work." That is a fantastic line by any standard.)

 But as I watched it again, I found myself wondering how it came to pass that DS9 incorporated Jewishness in such divergent and discordant ways. How in god's name did the same series morph every negative Jewish stereotype ever into the greedy, cowardly, lascivious, latinum-and-shiksa-craving Ferengi, and also transform the Holocaust into the Bajoran/Cardassian conflict? How did this crazy thing come about? Googling, I found this fascinating piece, with this insight: "To me, DS9 was largely about the Jewish diaspora. Cardassians are Nazis, Ferengis represent Jews as the world sees them (i.e., anti-Semitism), and Bajorans represent Jews as they see themselves (i.e., Israel)."

Now that has more than a soupcon of truth. But it got me thinking....

DS9 is Star Trek breaking away from Roddenberry's legendary, meshuganah commitment to a conflict-free universe. It brings back the untidiness and rough edges that make characters and situations believable and relatable. And intentionally or not -- I tend to think, mostly not -- the Jewishness of it is revealing in its messiness, too. We are outraged at the antisemitic caricature of the Ferengi, and yet somehow they refuse to be defined by our pearl-clutching. Quark just won't stay in that bottle. Armin Shimerman won't let you reduce Quark to the ugly stereotype that is so clearly his starting point. There's too much humor, exuberance, and sheer humanity about him. Who doesn't like Quark? NOBODY. Kira may embody the Jewish resistance, the Haganah, the early pioneer spirit, but she's kind of...well, dull. Quark is irrepressible. On a gut level, we know that, for all Starfleet's hoity-toity "we've evolved beyond money and materialism," and for all Bajor's spiritualism and feisty can-do attitude, you want to stick close to the guy with a backup plan. The universe could not possibly be that sincere, earnest, and perfect. The goyim and the idealists may deride the merchants, but we all know it's because they haven't figured out how not to need them.

Which is not to say that playing in the sandbox of racist stereotypes and casual bigotry is to be hand-waved. Too much about DS9's Jewishness feels accidental, like the writers didn't know how many cliches, inane conventions, and outright bigotry they were regurgitating. I will always wonder how it is that no one stood up in the writer's room and said, "Houston, we have a problem."  DS9 is a mess of contradictions that seem to have been created, at best, by shockingly unaware people. Nevertheless, that messiness somehow beats the hell out of TNG's sterile, WASPy, unconvincing niceness. They imitate, co-opt, distort, and conflate -- and it's so much better than the alternative.

One last point: As Disco's writers explore the ghosts of Star Trek past, they are clearly in the market for the aspects of the ST universe that don't quite fit the idyllic myth -- the exceptions that prove the rule. The Mercenary Outsider who doesn't buy into Starfleet's selfless altruism clearly fits that bill. Quark has a precursor: Harry Mudd. "I'm not siding with anyone. But I sure as hell understand why the Klingons pushed back. Starfleet arrogance. Have you ever bothered to look out of your spaceships down at the little guys below? If you had, you'd realize that there's a lot more of us down there than there are you up here. And we're sick and tired of getting caught in your crossfire." Without a doubt, we've not heard the last of that weltanschauung.

Ten years on, the shine is off Gene Hunt

I just woke up to the insane, egomaniacal, racist ravings of the President of the United States and realized (among other things) exactly why it's a lot harder to see the appeal of Gene Hunt in 2017 than it might have been in 2006, or to buy into the idea of now-times being enlightened but dull, while then-times were Neanderthal but exciting.

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.)

More theories. They're all I've got. SPOILERS!

OK, so we take as given that Lorca intentionally brought the Discovery to another universe, for all the reasons laid out here.

1. If Lorca's place of origin is wherever the Discovery just jumped to, why assume it's the same mirror universe we've seen in Star Trek previously? Infinite permutations, the man said. If Lorca has never seemed villainously evil, perhaps it's because he's not from THAT mirror universe, but a different one. One that's less evil, but where the Klingon war has gone very, very badly. Which brings me to the next point.

2. Ever since the whole mirror-universe thing came up, I've been assuming that Lorca gets here accidentally, and that his interest in Discovery is exclusively for its ability to travel between the universes (whether because he wanted to do so, or because he wanted to prevent others from doing so). The fact that, after its last jump, Discovery is surrounded by Klingon wreckage indicates that they're having their own Klingon war over there. If Lorca's sole goal is to get back to his own universe, why does he wait this long? Or is there something else he needs to accomplish first? Like maybe finding a way to break the Klingon cloaking device and bring it back with him? So maybe that's been his mission all along -- that's why he came. That's why he needed this ship, this crew -- and Burnham. Not just for the spore drive, but for their ability to solve this specific problem. 

3. OR.....What if Lorca is NOT from the other universe? When Discovery first arrives, he seems genuinely surprised by the Klingon wreckage and genuinely interested in someone telling him where the hell they are. Maybe he's never been there before. Maybe somehow he has the coordinates, but he truly doesn't know where they'll take him or what he'll find when he gets there. But why? Why is he hell bent on going to this one spot in the multiverse? The single weirdest thing about Lorca's story is that he killed his own crew rather than let them fall into the hands of the Klingons. So what if that's a cover story for what really happened? Maybe all this is about rescuing the crew of the Buran, who aren't dead, but have somehow slipped into another universe. Maybe somehow plotting all those jumps has allowed Lorca to figure out the coordinates where his crew are. He knows that Starfleet will never let him turn all his attention to rescuing them, so he made up a cock-and-bull story as a cover while he pursued this secret agenda, because he refuses to give up on his crew. He's been on a dual mission: Win the war and rescue his crew. THIS IS OFFICIALLY MY NEW FAVORITE THEORY.

This just made the hiatus that much longer

An eagle-eyed fan found this: "Lorca totally hits an override command when he puts in the coordinates for where they are jumping to next. Seriously, this happens fast but if you go back and watch it, and pause when Lorca is punching in the coordinates you’ll glimpse a list of Spore Jumps, and then a command that says: OVERRIDE, LORCA, G. SPORE JUMP 133— UNKNOWN."

So I was right that he’s from another universe, or at the very least is aware of another universe, but wrong that he’s been trying to avoid going back. Now he’s back there, so what’s his game? I still feel he’s not just a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He did, after all, stick around long enough to basically end the Klingon war. He protected the Pahvans rather than throw them under the bus and manipulate the situation to just steal their natural transmitter. He did the right thing. But what’s his private agenda? I don’t think it’s as simple as just getting home. Maybe also rescuing his doppleganger and sending Discovery home with her “true” captain? Assuming I was wrong about that Lorca having actually died with the crew of the Buran? Because I really hope the thing about having killed his own crew isn’t true.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I really, really want Lorca -- the Lorca we've been watching -- to have an honorable reason for all the shit he's done. I suppose it's possible that he's not actually from the mirror universe, but has some good reason to want to go there -- but that seems unlikely. Still, even if his hidden agenda consists entirely of getting home, he made sure to defeat the Klingons and end the war first -- he didn't have to do that. But at this point, it seems likely that, if there is a Captain Lorca next season, it won't be this Captain Lorca, and I'm kind of bummed about that.

Into the hiatus I go

Disco’s midseason semi-finale, and a new bit of speculation I’ve seen floating around, leave me bursting with thoughts about all the clues and details that are starting to come together, and yet I feel compelled to start with the big picture, because it’s such an awesome big picture, which I don’t think people are talking about. And they should be.

The creators of this series have been telling us all along that they are dedicated to the positive vision of Star Trek. But the complexity of character and narrative, combined with the gritty subject matter of war and violence, have turned off a lot of old school Star Trek fans who think it’s too dark. Obviously, they’re entitled to think what they like about it. But that’s not what I’m seeing.

The title of this episode, “Into the Forest I Go,” begins a quote which continues, “to lose my mind and find my soul,”  widely attributed to naturalist and enlightened spirit John Muir. And that pretty much sums up every part of our story so far.

The unifying theme that's emerged over the first half of the season is anything but dark. It’s about becoming. It's about self-determination; self-realization; self…DISCOVERY. (Ha! See what I did there?) It’s about people who would seem to be one thing, but who choose to become something else. Something greater. Something better.

It’s about institutions — the Federation and Starfleet — trapped in circumstances that seem to be forcing them down a bad path, compelling them to be militaristic, defensive, paranoid about a hostile universe. But instead, they will choose something else — to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before. (Ha! Did it again!) If we don’t actually hear those words by the end, I’ll eat my hat.

And institutions are made up of people whose journeys are microcosms of that larger one.

Michael Burnham. The first two episodes constitute a prologue in which she is trapped in the role of mutineer, which launches her on her journey of self-discovery. She is forced to redefine herself, to put aside self-recrimination, to abandon the idea that her identity was crystalized at one moment in time. She must move on.

Saru. Seemingly condemned by his very biology to a life of fear and timidity, he has chosen instead what must seem to his people to be an insane path: risk, danger, war, exploration, leadership. On Pahvan, he confronts a choice: to take the selfish route and numb his ever-present fear but contribute nothing to the larger mission, or to embrace his own nature and overcome his limitations. Only with some outside assistance does he choose the latter (Spock; “This Side of Paradise”; it’s really a beautiful version of the same story). Star Trek has a long history of giving us aliens whose characteristics reflect both the gestalt and the aspirations of our times; the Kelpiens are a brilliant addition to the line-up. (More about that here.)

Sylvia Tilly: Conventional wisdom wouldn’t cast a garrulous, nervous, socially awkward person in a leadership role (and from the 21st-century audience’s POV, a woman at that). But she’s chosen her own path. She’s going to be a captain, she’s going to figure this out, and somehow, we don’t doubt she’s going to make it. That’s why she’s the character everyone loves to love; her dedication to her self-actualization is pure, her ability to overcome obstacles is endearing, and her commitment is unwavering. We instinctively get that she is, in fact, exactly who we would want as captain.

(At this point, I feel like I ought to be able to say something about Hugh Culber’s character arc, but I can’t because there’s so little. So far he’s just a foil to Stamets, so all I’ll say is, writers, please give this character a story before he withers and dies on the vine, because Wilson Cruz deserves better.)

Now we get to the characters who are on more obscure, subversive journeys of self-realization: Lorca, Tyler, and Stamets. These are the characters who harbor secrets and about whom we’ve been teased with a lot of clues. At this point, the discussion of their arcs is all wrapped up with theories about what hasn’t yet been revealed, so from here on:

SPECULATION SPOILERS

Like the others, these three characters are tightly connected to the theme of self-determination, but with an added layer of mystery and deceit. They may not be who they say they are, or they may be turning into something they haven’t been before, but I suspect that each of their stories will hinge on one question: Who do they want to be?

Ash Tyler: The speculation here is pretty well known at this point: He’s Voq. (More here, with intriguing screen shots of Tyler’s flashback.) The common assumption, under which until now I’ve been operating as well, is that Voq was whisked off to L’Rell’s family house to be surgically altered to appear human. There, he either willingly adopted the identity of Ash Tyler or, as seems to be more likely given recent events, he had his mind altered to really believe he is Ash Tyler, and as such is a sleeper agent to be activated at some opportune moment. But the events of “Into the Forest I Go” suggest to me something else: Ash Tyler really is both Ash Tyler and also Voq. L’Rell took a real human prisoner named Ash Tyler and implanted Voq’s mind in him. She told Voq he would have to give up everything, and she didn't just mean temporarily: Voq is no more. His mind is now entirely buried within Ash Tyler’s, waiting to be awakened. Tyler’s memories of L’Rell’s sexual obsession with him are true; she loves Voq, and therefore has a pretty fucked up relationship with Tyler/Voq, which includes both torture and sex. Voq can’t be restored in his own body, and therefore Ash Tyler is her only connection to him. My prediction is that, when this all becomes clear to Tyler, he will battle the duality in his head and choose to be Ash Tyler. I also think that this will fuck him up really badly, and he’s going to need help. It’d be cool if that help comes from Admiral Cornwell, who is ALIVE! YAY!, and singularly qualified to help him. So perhaps he will not remain on Discovery and Burnham will lose her love, but not in the horrible way we thought she would.

Captain Lorca: Not only is he really determined to stay on Discovery, but he’s also been tracking the data from Stamets’ jumps really closely to figure out how the spore drive is creating access to the multiverse. After initially rejecting it, I’ve been leaning toward the Lorca-is-from-the-mirror-universe theory for awhile (ever since "Lethe," as I wrote about here, including speculation that Cornwell suspects he’s an imposter and the real Lorca actually died with the crew of the Buran). As I’ve pointed out, not everyone from the mirror universe is evil. Mirror Spock isn’t, and even more significantly, neither are the Halkans, the pacifist race who refuse to sell dilithium to the Federation (in our universe) or the Empire (in the mirror universe). In fact, while it’s been pointed out that the Pahvans in Disco are reminiscent of the Organians, a superior race that impose a peace treaty between the Klingons and the Federation in “Errand of Mercy,” in many ways they are more like the Halkans, pacifists unwilling to be caught up in someone else’s conflict in "Mirror, Mirror." Lorca is determined to defend them at all costs. What if he’s a mirror-universe guy who always secretly hated the brutality of the Empire, and who is trying to win this war for the Federation and protect the spore drive tech, not because he wants to get back to his own universe, but because he wants to make sure this universe doesn’t go down that same road? In other words, like all the others, Lorca’s arc is very much in keeping with the overarching theme; he is waging a personal battle to become who he chooses to be rather than what circumstances have made him -- to define himself on his own terms, and in so doing, to contribute to the greater good. Granted, this is all more of a stretch than Tyler; the clues aren’t as clear, and there are a whole lot of other possibilities. But I suspect we’re going to find out pretty quickly after the hiatus. At least, we’d better, because this suspense is fucking killing me.

UPDATE: An eagle-eyed fan found this: "Lorca totally hits an override command when he puts in the coordinates for where they are jumping to next. Seriously, this happens fast but if you go back and watch it, and pause when Lorca is punching in the coordinates you’ll glimpse a list of Spore Jumps, and then a command that says: OVERRIDE, LORCA, G. SPORE JUMP 133— UNKNOWN."

So I was right that he’s from another universe, or at the very least is aware of another universe, but wrong that he’s been trying to avoid going back or prevent others from there following him here. Now he’s back there, so what’s his game? I still feel he’s not just a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He did, after all, stick around long enough to basically end the Klingon war. He protected the Pahvans rather than throw them under the bus and manipulate the situation to just steal their natural transmitter, He did the right thing. But what’s his private agenda? I don’t think it’s as simple as just getting home. Maybe also rescuing his doppleganger and sending Discovery home with her “true” captain? Assuming I was wrong about that Lorca having actually died with the crew of the Buran? Because I really hope the thing about having killed his own crew isn’t true.

Lt. Stamets: This theory was new to me this morning and is already one I’m wholly committed to. This NEEDS to be true. Stamets is becoming the Traveler of TNG. It all makes sense, up to and including all that stuff Lorca says to him about being an explorer. So again, self-actualization; the process of becoming; embracing a new identity. It’s a beautiful piece of the larger theme. (Side note: It also immediately reminds me of Jack Harkness becoming the Face of Boe in Doctor Who, raising some interesting questions about casting non-hetero characters as creatures destined to transcend the limitations of human mortality and to attain the wisdom of the gods — a subject for another long post on another day.)

Only six more episodes to wrap all this up. I should mention here, I have a really shitty track record when it comes to speculation. So if even a fraction of all this comes to pass, I’ll be very pleasantly surprised.

One more thing: I think the criticism of Disco that’s most justified is that there’s a lack of cohesive world building, which leaves the audience feeling always a bit at sea. The big thematic, plot, and character arcs are there, but they feel like they’re sort of floating in a void. What’s the hierarchy on the Discovery? We know Dr. Culber, but he’s not the chief medical officer, right? Whom does he work for? Tilly is a cadet on the fleet’s prized ship. Whom does she report to? Are there other cadets? Tyler is head of security. Does he have a staff of — I dunno — security officers? Where does he work? Where does anyone work? Where is stuff in relation to other stuff — like, physically, how is this ship laid out, and how does everyone have a huge personal space with an awesome view of the stars? And what about all those characters we’ve now seen onscreen over and over again who seem really interesting, but who don’t even have names, unless you look them up online? Like, the entire bridge crew? It feels like the writers have been content to just vaguely sketch in a lot of stuff, and that’s disconcerting to the audience. I realize they have to achieve a lot in limited screen time, both in terms of story and showing off the cool fx we’re paying subscription fees for, but the nuts-and-bolts storytelling is critical. I hope we’re about to get a lot of that stuff filled in.

Let’s talk about Kelpiens

Without a doubt, Saru is one of Discovery’s breakout characters. Also without a doubt, this is due in large part to the amazing performance of Doug Jones, who imbues Saru with so much soul, dignity, and powerful poignancy that he tugs at your heartstrings every moment he’s onscreen. But there’s also something about his species. Star Trek is famous for giving us aliens who capture something about our times and embody them in a way that only sci fi can.

In the 1960s, a time of cultural upheaval, when Americans began looking at philosophies from other parts of the world for answers to our problems, we got Spock, the embodiment of the cool, emotionally subdued, exotic East. And yes, that is as problematic as it sounds. Star Trek’s reductive treatment of cultural characteristics was an inherently flawed affair, as has been much discussed over the years; it was progressive in its attempt at cultural inclusion, even as it was also offensive in its stereotypes. (And yes, I’m well aware of the Vulcans’ Jewish roots as well. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.)

And of course, there were the Klingons. Born of the Cold War, over time they morphed into the foreign threat of the day, but always with a patina of uncivilized aggression that suggests sketchy racial overtones. In Discovery, we see again the tension between this reductive approach (Disco Klingons suggest the religious animus of radical Islam) and the more progressive contemporary impulse to understand and recognize commonality with the enemy (they’re not just aggressive lunatics, they’re understandably threatened by the Federation’s inherent cultural imperialism and ham-fisted diplomacy that fails to grasp the nuances of Klingon culture).

The list goes on: the Borg, TNG's most terrifying aliens, created at a time when we began to fear that the depersonalizing effects of technology might be catastrophic; the Cardassians, a highly successful, authoritarian, hegemonic race from an era when American dominance was beginning to flag; the Xindi, a post-9/11 existential threat to Earth; the Ferengi, emblematic of the ultra-capitalist, materialistic, me-generation boom years (whose disturbing resemblance to racist caricatures of Jews has been much remarked upon); etc. All things considered, Star Trek has an impressive track record of creating carefully differentiated, meaningful alien races.

Which brings us back to Saru and the Kelpiens, a species bred as prey, attuned to threat, sensitive to the coming of death, always in fear.

Welcome to 2017, the age of American anxiety.

• Generalized anxiety; a constant companion, especially among younger people, manifesting in many ways and taking up an enormous amount of everyone's energy. It’s the hallmark of an entire generation, certainly in America, and arguably elsewhere.
• The anxiety of marginalized groups: people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ, the poor, Muslims, Jews, women, and more. All feeling constantly under attack, threatened by forces both institutional and cultural. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Voicing their concerns in ever greater numbers, but somehow never seeming to make a dent. 
• Political anxiety; the horrifying spectacle of an America led by an incompetent, immoral, unhinged fear-monger who scapegoats every vulnerable group and distorts reality in order to manipulate his fear-driven base. And not just in America; the spread of propaganda, doublethink, and division the world over in service of the consolidation of power in the hands of an oligarchy.
• Fear; the sense that we are not safe. Mass killers striking without warning. Gun proliferation. School lockdown drills. Data breaches and identity theft. The cognitive dissonance of security measures that are meant to keep us safe, but feel more like violations themselves. 
• Economic anxiety; a feeling of financial insecurity that haunts all but the wealthiest.
• Epistemic anxiety; the sense that we are losing our ability to function as a society because we no longer have a shared understanding of reality. My facts are not your facts; my evidence is not your evidence; my truth is not your truth.

In this age of anxiety, the Kelpiens, beings whose defining attribute is fear, which they have elevated to a superpower (not a coincidence that the same theme appears in Doctor Who just a couple of years earlier), strike a deep chord. Who among us doesn't have metaphoric threat ganglia? Once again, Star Trek aliens turn our TV screens into mirrors that reflect us: our culture, our world view, and our sense of self.

But like the Star Trek aliens who have come before, this reductive exercise isn’t without its problems. What are the implications of getting us to identify with a species whose DNA dooms them to victimization? In the time of Black Lives Matter, Dreamers, Me Too, Pride, etc. — do we really want to be summed up by an alien race that was bred as prey -- or for that matter, that was bred at all? I'm sure that’s a question destined to be much debated as Discovery consolidates its position in the Star Trek universe.

The price of peace

“Let me tell you about scared. Your heart is beating so hard, I can feel it through your hands. There's so much blood and oxygen pumping through your brain, it's like rocket fuel. Right now, you could run faster and you can fight harder, you could jump higher than ever in your life. And you're so alert, it's like you can slow down time. What's wrong with scared? Scared is a superpower. It's your superpower. There is danger is this room, and guess what? It's you! You feel it?”

Wasn’t that a beautiful moment in the Star Trek Discovery episode “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum”? Oh wait…

Seriously, I have to believe that Kirsten Beyer took some inspiration for Saru’s story from the Doctor Who episode “Listen,” which is absolutely fine by me, as it fit perfectly, not just with Saru’s bred-as-prey, ruled-by-fear character, but also with a major Disco theme: learning to embrace your flaws, turn your weaknesses into strengths, and accept that, without the things that have hurt you, you wouldn’t be who you are. This has emerged in every single character: Burnham’s emotional repression, Tilly’s atypical social manner, Lorca’s closed-off hardness, Stamets’ pigheadedness, and Tyler’s…well, we’ll see about Tyler. At any rate, Saru’s ass just got kicked hard. Given the opportunity to just walk away from his fear, he jumped at it, and now he’s got to live with that knowledge. But presumably, also with the knowledge that he must embrace who he is, fear and all, in order to be a great Starfleet officer.

Since Disco is very much about Burnham’s journey, there’s a sense that we get all this from her POV, even when narratively we move away from her. It’s almost as though everyone else’s experiences and lessons are hers, too. As the other characters gain insight and self-awareness, so does she. We started this story watching her be completely torn down, brick by brick, and we can never escape the sense that we are watching her rebuild herself better, stronger, with greater self-awareness.

That’s the beauty of the way Disco is telling its story, starting with the Shenzhou. It takes patience to let the story unspool, but I’m finding that the rewards so far are worthwhile. The suspense of not quite knowing whether a development is good or bad, a character is trustworthy, or a choice was correct is enjoyable as long as you feel the payoff is coming. The payoff doesn’t have to be a simple answer, or the answer you were hoping for, but it does have to provide a sense of closure. So far, I’m optimistic that that’s what we’re going to get.

Also: The whole in-your-weaknesses-lies-your-strength theme? Now where would be a fascinating place to explore that? Maybe, like, an alternate universe where characteristics like empathy, compassion, and mercy are seen as weaknesses? Just saying.

Also again: L’Rell wants to get over to the Discovery awfully bad, doesn’t she? I wonder who is over there that she’s so eager to hook up with, and what they could possibly be up to, hmmm?

Which brings me to the question of the fall finale, as they’re promoting next week’s episode. They’ve set up three big reveals, and I really hope we get at least one of them. There’s Lorca and his mysterious motives (about which I’ve speculated extensively and have already been proven at least partly wrong — I, and I suspect a good chunk of the audience, want so badly to see him justify himself and emerge a sympathetic character, which is a tribute to Jason Isaacs’ charismatic portrayal — but his actions toward Cornwell remain unredeemed, and things are just not looking good on that front); Stamets and his mysterious Sporegasm®-induced, mirror-related condition; and Tyler, who’s been throwing off not-who-he-says-he-is signals right and left. The only prediction I’m willing to make at this point is that, whatever next week brings, Burnham is going to be using everything she’s learned since the Shenzhou to save the day…unless the day-saving is entirely reserved for the latter half of the season. Either way, it’s going to be a loooooong hiatus.

Disco is more TOS than TNG

Riley Silverman writes:

"For the first time, I suddenly know what it must have felt like to be someone in 1987 who saw the debut of Next Generation after a lifetime of love for the only Star Trek they’d ever known. To be like the people who were handed this strange new series with a brand new Enterprise that looked more like a space hotel than a Federation starship and told 'Nope, this is Star Trek now, deal with it.'”

A-yep.

Many TNG-era fans never really understood why TOS broke through all the pop-culture noise of its day to become a cultural touchstone, and why it didn't just attract fans, but inspired the very invention of fandom. They see TOS through the lens of later received wisdom; it was positive, uplifting, and optimistic, and TNG was its natural successor. But for its time, Star Trek was actually often edgy, though no one back then would have described it that way. In a TV landscape of Andy Griffith and My Three Sons, against a backdrop of Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and a burgeoning counterculture, Star Trek was a new voice (not a lone voice -- other shows reflected cultural change as well -- but rarely with the seriousness and philosophical bent of Star Trek). It didn't reflect a perfected humanity, but one that was a little more self-conscious about trying to do better. And context matters (you might even say it's king). What seem like hokey, milquetoast lessons about ideas like racial harmony, multiculturalism, and the responsible use of power were a lot more subversive in the 1960s and 70s. Star Trek's message wasn't consistent, and it wasn't always good drama, but it wasn't vanilla, and its early audience responded to that. When TNG came along, a lot of us wondered what the hell Roddenberry was thinking. It seemed so very vanilla by comparison: everything so clear-cut, everyone so righteous, every answer so obvious. It felt more like a corporate training film about team-building than like Star Trek. 

It was only after Roddenberry left the stage that others tried to nudge Star Trek back toward that more challenging place, to varying degrees and with varying success. But all the series from TNG on were trying to be hybrids that would not alienate that TNG base. 

Until Discovery. They really don't seem to give a shit about that base, and that's pretty gutsy. What's more, they realize that the goalpost for edgy 'n philosophical has moved considerably. A lot of the existing ST fan base seems to think that a show with a point to make about how to do right in the universe ought to be a show in which the right thing is always done. But our reality doesn't lend itself to that kind of storytelling, and frankly, that's never been the best way to make the point, anyway. 

I have little doubt that, as Discovery goes along, its POV will come more into focus. It will become a little easier to tell which way the needle of its moral compass is pointing (though I sincerely hope  they always tell the kinds of challenging stories that make demands of us).  It'll be interesting to see how much of fandom is willing to come along.

If I woke up in 1973...

I'm three episodes into Life on Mars (UK version, of course), and it's such a delight, I have absolutely no idea why I've ignored all advice to watch it until now. One thing that keeps bothering me: If I woke up in 1973, the first thing I'd do is try to find the people I know -- especially me. I'm completely unspoiled (please keep me that way!), so this could be coming, but Sam's lack of curiosity and the fact that he just keeps going to work contributes to the surrealism. I mean, I get it, policing is in his blood, but still.

As an American who was old enough to remember 1973, the whole thing feels more like an homage to Starsky and Hutch than like real life, especially in the UK, where I strongly suspect the real-life cops were even less Mod Squad than in the US. And they probably weren't total idiots on either side of the Atlantic. (I'm pretty sure "don't handle the evidence" wouldn't have been an unfamiliar concept in 1973.) The nice thing about this premise, though, is that you can give the writers all the benefit of the doubt, because anything that doesn't seem realistic could be intentional.

And anyway, who cares? John Simm and Philip Glenister.

A page ripped from the comics

If "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" establishes anything, it's that Stamets' sporegasms give him a kind of superpower to perceive things others can't, like being trapped in a time loop. Anything else?

Well, he does have a weird, seemingly throwaway line in this episode. After colliding with Burnham and giving her a sweet hug ("Why would you apologize for a random act of physical interaction? Y'know, these are the moments that make life so gloriously unpredictable!"), he turns to Tyler and, for no apparent reason, says, "You're a very tall man." Only...he's not. Tyler is on the tall side, but he doesn't seem to tower over other men around him. Saru towers. Tyler doesn't. But Stamets thinks he does.

Klingons are pretty tall, though. Hmm.

And then Stamets follows up with this: "May I say, you're astonishingly grounded for having endured seven months of torture." It's almost as though something he sees triggers this observation about the extreme unlikelihood of Tyler's story. Hmm again.

So Stamets has a superpower. Does it let him see Tyler's secret identity? Stay tuned...

Continuity, schmontinuity. It's all about wish fulfillment. Mine.

Making stuff look cool with state-of-the-art fx is not a continuity error, any more than suddenly changing a show from black and white to color is. Introducing a character’s never-before-mentioned sister is not a continuity error, any more than any backstory revelation is. A new look for a known alien is not a continuity error, any more than having a character played by a different actor is. I see no reason to insist that Disco is set in the Kelvin timeline.

A true continuity error directly contradicts something we’ve been explicitly told to be true. It’s not just new information never before mentioned, and it’s not a look-and-feel change, no matter how substantial. I have a lot more problems with Disco’s intraship beaming, which TOS explicitly established as very risky and therefore not done, than with Burnham's backstory or hairless Klingons. And as soon as they give me some technobabble that supposedly resolves it -- even if it's not terribly plausible -- I’ll be satisfied. Even if they don't, I'll hand-wave it, because it's pretty trivial. I don’t want to watch something excessively constrained by production values established a half century ago, and I don't care if poetic license is taken, as long as it makes sense within the current story and can pass a very cursory sniff test. I don’t want writers with creative, entertaining, thoughtful ideas to be hamstrung by slavish adherence to every picayune detail of canon.

If that doesn’t work for you, fine. A bi gezunt, as my grandmother would have said. You’re entitled to find Burnham's backstory unlikely and inelegant, or to feel that you're being asked for too much suspension of disbelief in accepting that the Discovery predates the Enterprise. But these issues are kind of like farfetched plot twists — like when a character in a novel discovers after 800 pages of hardship that his troubles are suddenly over because the relative who was mentioned in passing in chapter one just left him a fortune. Not impossible, but not naturalistic storytelling, either. Might not be your cup of tea, but it has its rewards. Yes, a high degree of adherence to continuity — actual continuity — helps bind Discovery’s story into the larger Star Trek universe. But a certain amount of poetic license allows Discovery’s story to be new, exciting, and worth telling.

Meanwhile:

• There's only one thing I want out of life right now -- and that is to hear blissed-out Stamets call Lorca "Herbert." PLEASE let this happen. Oh god PRETTY PLEASE let this happen. That would be incredible.
• And while we are catering to my fantasies, I want another Disco party with cameos by Claire Danes and A.J. Langer playing beer pong with Wilson Cruz.
• Something I look forward to: When Tyler is revealed as a Klingon spy and Burnham is crushed — and Tilly gives her a hug.
• I’m not sure how long it’s been since Admiral Cornwell was captured by the Klingons, but it seems like a fair bit of time has passed, and that’s…disturbing. Is Lorca really such a dick? Does it actually take that long for Starfleet to issue orders? The preview promises to return to that story next week, and I hope this is not as foul as it seems.

Also:

Burnham: I wasn’t attempting to be rude. It’s just that my experience with parties is limited.
Tyler: Easy Burnham. I get it. The Vulcans don’t party? What about the Shenzhou? You served on her for what, seven years?
Burnham: Due to my rank, interpersonal fraternization was not appropriate.

So apparently Sarek turned up on the Shenzhou, said, “This is my ward, give her a job,” and they instantly made her First Officer.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Random thoughts after Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad (SPOILERS)

• Far be it from me to judge, but doesn't it seem like a terrible idea to let people get drunk on a ship with a spore drive during a war? I mean, isn't that what your mother always told you? No getting drunk on a ship with a spore drive in the middle of a war? No? That was just my mother?
• Oh Burnham. You just can't catch a break, can you? Well, love is highly overrated anyway.
• Spore-tripping Stamets is everything.
• Spouse: Why didn't they just put Mudd in the brig? Me: Same reason Kirk didn't. Spouse: Which is? Me: Better story.
• We will not ask why, if time-repeating tech exists, it hasn't been exploited as a weapon. Same reason we will not ask why, if time turners exist, Dumbledore doesn't just go back in time and kill Voldemort. Or why the Doctor doesn't prevent the Daleks from being invented. Hey...LET'S KILL HITLER!
• So Stamets must remember dying all those times. That's a pretty bad trip. 
• If someone tells you to tell them a secret that you've never told anyone so that they can convince you in the next time loop that you've had this conversation before...you do NOT say "I've never been in love." Especially if you're Michael Burnham. That's like making your password 1234 or hiding your key under a doormat. OBVIOUS.

Also, in the preview for next week's episode: Cornwell! Secret rescue mission is go! But what are those things in front of her face? Klingon torture devices? Barbecue utensils? Oh dear.

Bonus: A planet! At last! 

And: I really hope we start getting some insight into Lorca's motivations...which I hope are not loathsome. Because a) waiting for the other shoe to drop is only pleasantly suspenseful for so long; b) it's bad enough worrying about Ash Tyler; c) Jason Isaacs is so damn charismatic, and d) I crave the endorphin rush I'm going to get from the big reveal, when all the misdirection is stripped away and the redemption arc becomes apparent. I want to believe. (I know, wrong show.)

Disco thinky thoughts, Part II

More of the pixels I've spilled talking about Star Trek Discovery so far. Spoilers, obviously, so don't tell anyone who doesn't want to know.

After The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry:

If Discovery is Section 31, I really could get my wish of at least an Enterprise shout-out, if not a cameo (T'Pol most feasibly, but others not impossible), given that Section 31 dates back to Enterprise, and ST novels established Trip as an agent.

__________________

I love that the IDIC at the heart of DSC is not limited to race or culture; it’s also diversity of thought. Good people who take different approaches to the same problem can synthesize them into a unified effort that is more effective than any one would be alone; their differences serve to check excess and to balance each other, creating a stronger whole. And of course, Michael Burnham is a walking, talking synthesis: Vulcan and human cultures; science and intuition; intellect and emotion. She can be the linchpin around which they all coalesce.

I love it when Lorca plays the recording of the desperate colonists shipwide, reminding the crew that they are all working for the same goal: to save lives and relieve suffering. It shows us that even Lorca, the militarist, is not motivated by hatred, a desire for power, or a need to dominate, but by the same things everyone else wants.

DSC is a very different Trek stylistically; it makes more demands of the audience to work to find the ideas behind the story. It’s more show, less tell, which to me is a great version of Star Trek. But because it’s so different from the most popular versions of the franchise, I think a lot of longtime fans will never warm to it.

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Disgruntled fans: Discovery is too dark to be Star Trek, and Lorca is evil.

Me: I know, right? It's not as if Kirk ever freaked his crew out by faking being crazy, ordering the Enterprise into the Neutral Zone, disguising himself as a Romulan and stealing technology. Or loathed Klingons so much he called them animals. Or broke the rules because he refused to accept a no-win situation. Or Picard was going to let an entire species die in a natural disaster because of the Prime Directive. Or refused to sacrifice one being in order to wipe out the Borg, who had already destroyed billions and would go on to destroy billions more. Or Sisko allowed an entire planet to revere him as a mystical religious figure because it was politically expedient. Or Janeway nearly let aliens kill her prisoner to get him to talk. Or Archer created and killed a clone to harvest its brain tissue.

Disgruntled fans: That was different. They were good people in difficult situations.

Me: ?

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Remember when they announced Star Trek Discovery casting and there was all this bitching about political correctness gone mad and kumbaya in space and being hit over the head with diversity and pandering to snowflakes? You know – before people actually saw it and started bitching about how the characters are too flawed and untrustworthy and there’s too much conflict and the story is too dark? Life’s little ironies.

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I’m starting to think that a lot of criticism of DSC is not about content so much as format, by which I mean the serialized nature of the show. I’m seeing a lot of “This is not Star Trek” comments that seem to focus on the tone of the show. People are perceiving it as uncharacteristically negative and dark. As I and others have been saying, ST has always had dark stories and characters who make questionable choices, but it seems to bother people a lot more in DSC, and I think that’s because the negativity is carried over, mostly unresolved, week to week. The audience has to live with the uneasy feelings for a lot longer. Instead of the dark story being wrapped up in an hour, or at most two or three, it’s going to take a whole season to play out, and we have to walk around with all these questions: Was that action justifiable? Is that person trustworthy? Will this wrong be righted? Whose side am I on? We can’t make instant judgments, and that makes some people hesitant to allow themselves to get invested. This prolonged state of unease is intolerable to a segment of the audience. I think that’s part of the reason Enterprise caught so much flak; it gave us more flawed characters who needed to grow over time, and eventually a season-long story arc. (DS9 managed to walk a thin line, telling a long-form story within mostly stand-alone episodes. The serialized story evolved slowly over the run of the show, and they never committed to it fully. And it came in for A LOT of criticism at the time; it’s only in retrospect that it’s widely admired, which I hope will happen to DSC as well.) I wonder if there’s a big generational difference in response to DSC? I suspect younger viewers who are more accustomed to long-form, serialized TV storytelling are more receptive than fans of my generation. 

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After Choose Your Pain:

So regarding that highly convincing, spoilery DSC speculation (if you want to know, click here and start reading at “This episode introduces…,” but be warned that it’s a MAJOR spoiler):

If (SPOILER) is really (SPOILER) – does Lorca know? I think there’s some very subtle storytelling going on. Lorca really should have gotten his eyes fixed…or should he? Ohhhh…SYMBOLISM. Do his eyes need fixing, as Admiral Cornwell says? Or is he the one who truly sees? Are his eyes broken, or are they more sensitive? Has his past, dreadful experience blinded him, or lifted the veil from his eyes?

On a larger scale, I think this gets at what this story is all about. Who is seeing the real situation? The soldier? The diplomat? The scientist? Or does each have a valuable point of view that must be synthesized into one complete vision? 

(I really think Lorca will turn out ok, but boy are they making this a bumpy ride. Nevertheless, I remain Team Lorca. Watch him carefully in Choose Your Pain. He’s no dummy.)

(And no, I didn’t figure out that spoiler for myself…but I wish I had.)

__________________

So let’s talk about the two most popular theories that seem to be getting tossed around about DSC at the moment (and warning, this is spoilery speculation, so SPOILER ALERT): 

1. The show we’re seeing is the mirror universe, or we’re seeing mirror-universe Lorca in our universe.

2. Discovery is a Section 31 ship.

That it’s mirror Lorca I think we can dismiss, because we just got the big tip-off that mirror Stamets is….well, mirror Stamets. And the idea that we’re seeing a whole mirror universe I was willing to dismiss out of hand even before Choose Your Pain, because if this is the mirror universe, it’s a mighty tame one. Tilly? Not from the mirror universe. Nuff said. So yes, the  mirror universe is coming into the story, but it hasn’t yet, or at least not much.

So what about Section 31? The problem with the theory that Lorca and Discovery are Section 31 is that Starfleet Command seems to be more or less aware of what they’re up to. What’s more, Discovery conforms to Starfleet protocol: they wear the uniform, they have the chain of command, the crew doesn’t seem to be trained for or involved in covert operations…and the ship is actually named Discovery, which implies that that’s what it was made for and will get back to. Of course, it’s possible that, in a time of war, the black-ops organization would be more closely aligned with the military. So, while Discovery isn’t exactly part of Section 31, it could have something to do with them.

Here’s a thought. We’ve seen Lorca on a very slippery slope, willing to break rules and take ethically dubious actions for the war effort. We know that  he interprets the latitude he’s been given broadly, taking outrageous actions without getting approval first (that’s how he got Burnham). What if Lorca has tapped into Section 31 through back channels that his Starfleet superiors don’t even know about? Maybe that’s where he got a lot of the weird stuff found in his secret lair. He’s been steadily slipping over to the dark side, ever more willing to operate entirely outside the bounds of Starfleet rules. And the masterminds over at Section 31 are eager to have a highly placed Starfleet war hero secretly working for them, so they’re actively cultivating him.

So is that what Discovery is going to be about – a rogue captain serving evil masters, and a crew ever in conflict with him? I seriously doubt it. It’s possible Lorca will be killed off or otherwise replaced. But I suspect that, underneath it all, Lorca is still all about saving lives and defending the Federation. So maybe something big will happen that makes him stop, take stock, and pull back from the brink, because if Lorca is anything, he’s an independent actor and nobody’s fool. Something makes him realize that a universe where Section 31 is really pulling all the strings is not a universe anyone wants to live in, including him. So what could make him realize that?

A trip to the mirror universe.

End season 1.

Or not. But I think that’d be cool.

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Somehow it doesn’t bother me at all that Spock has an adopted sister he never mentioned – but all this intraship beaming without so much as a transporter pad is driving me nuts.

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If DSC weren’t suggesting that the Federation is perceived at least in some quarters as cultural imperialists, they wouldn’t have named its flagship at the Battle of the Binary Stars the Europa.
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After Lethe:

Lorca appears to have just done something that, if true, is his first wholly inexcusable act, just as Burnham puts her faith in him, and just as we begin to have sympathy for him. Rather than power-hungry and cruel, he’s scared and suffering, but his betrayal, if it is one, would be unforgivable even so. I really, really hope this isn’t what it looks like. I don’t think it is, if only because it’s too obvious, but I haven’t yet figured out what else it could be (unless Lorca and Cornwell have cooked up some scheme together despite her mistrust of him? Which would be weird, but possible I guess). DSC is so deliciously frustrating.


Meanwhile, Burnham comes out of her shell and reveals someone I want to go bowling with.
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I’ve been really resistant to the mirror-universe-Lorca theory because, well, I like the guy and I don’t want him to be all evil-like underneath. Especially because I am rather personally invested in heroes over 50 (I hate the fact that older characters are either villains or avuncular sidekicks – and yes, my feelings about this have everything to do with my age). Lethe made things very complicated, Lorca-wise. His actions regarding Admiral Cornwell don’t look good, no matter how you look at it.
And then I read this theory, which I must say is pretty compelling. And that got me thinking….

I’m thinking, if Lorca is from the mirror universe, having been brought to ours via the Tantalus Field or something else, there’s an obvious question: What happened to the Lorca from our universe?

So it hit me: The part of Lorca’s story so far that makes the least sense is the idea that he destroyed his own crew in order to prevent them from being captured by the Klingons. So what if that’s not what happened at all? What if Lorca died with his crew – and just then, mirror-universe Lorca appeared, realized what had happened, and concocted a story to explain how he survived when all the rest of the crew died? This makes an awful lot of sense. Then, as he learns about this universe, he realizes that he much prefers it to his own and tries to make himself useful in order to assure his role here. He recognizes that, in a time of war, his ruthless mirror-universe training will prove invaluable.

Maybe he also realizes that the spore tech Stamets is working on is in fact a gateway to the mirror universe – one through which his compatriots could enter and attack this one. So he maneuvers himself into a position where he can take control of the tech and redirect it toward what he thinks is a safer use as a propulsion system. Little does he know that it doesn’t work; the doorway to the mirror universe opens anyway. But Burnham saves the day…somehow. Because she’s brilliant ‘n stuff.

I would love a story line where the truth comes out, and Cornwell (now rescued) realizes that this Lorca, a  misfit in his own universe because he’s too good, is a valuable asset and decides to keep him. He, liberated from the need for subterfuge, becomes a worthy captain. IDIC. End season 1.

Crazy, but it could happen.
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A couple of days ago, I posted this speculation (above) about Lorca. And then I saw this interview in which Jason Isaacs says:

“The relationships get richer and deeper, and there are surprises, there are turns, there are secret agendas and reveals, and that’s my roundabout way of saying, I can’t tell you about my relationship with Michael, other than she seems to mean quite a lot to me, maybe more than is apparent when we first come across her.”

So….

We know that Lorca has gone to great lengths to waylay Burnham, bring her to Discovery, and get her on his crew. The only explanation for this so far has been that he sees her as potentially useful. But if Lorca is from the mirror universe, then it would make a whole lot of sense that he already knows Burnham, and she is already very important to him. Or at least, mirror Burnham is. That’s why he found her and brought her to Discovery, and that’s why he indulged her desire to find Sarek. We know from Enterprise that, in the mirror universe, humans have subjugated Vulcans, so maybe there, it’s not Sarek who is her adoptive father – it’s Lorca, and he would do anything for her. If he plans on staying here, maybe he hopes he can cultivate Burnham as an ally – one to whom he might eventually reveal his true history, even?

Would it be too crazy to hope all this is correct, and that, once Lorca is found out, Cornwell decides to keep him on? Maybe bust him down a couple of ranks and make Burnham captain? Crazy, yeah. But my kind of crazy.
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Just rewatched Lethe, keeping in mind the operative theory regarding Lorca from above.

This time around, his encounter with Admiral Cornwell looked very different to me…..

…. It seems safe to assume that, if this is mirror-universe Lorca impersonating our-universe Lorca, he sees Cornwell as a threat because she’s one of the few people who knows him – the other him – well. She says she’s worried about him and brings up his psych evals, so he distracts her by getting personal and breaking out the single malt. She brings up that time they watched the Perseid meteor shower, and he seems to hesitate for a fraction of a second – of course he doesn’t remember it, because he wasn’t there – and then he shifts to seduction mode in order to distract her again. He’s playing her.

Except watching it again, I think it’s possible that she is also playing him. Maybe those psych evals have her worried because, as an expert who also knows Lorca intimately, she sees not PTSD, but something much stranger, something really wacky, and she’s come to Discovery to see for herself. She’s thinking he’s not him. But that’s crazy, and she’s not going to act on it without further evidence. I’m thinking that, when she mentions the Perseid meteor shower, she’s watching him closely because she’s testing him. They never did watch the Perseid meteor shower, and he fails her test by pretending to remember it. Later in bed, she may be reading those unfamiliar scars on his back as evidence supporting  what she already suspects: He is an imposter. And if I’m right, then her parting words to him take on a whole different meaning: “I hate that I can’t tell if this is really you.”

He, meanwhile, suspects that she suspects, and that’s why he’s slow to go after her when the Klingons capture her. He can’t lose the Discovery, not because he’s emotionally needy, but because the spore drive somehow opens the door to the mirror universe – which is either what he wants in order to get home, or what he doesn’t want in order to stay here. Either way, he needs to control it. For that matter, maybe he’s afraid of who else might come through that door between universes, and maybe that’s why he’s sleeping with a weapon under his pillow (besides a lifetime of conditioning by an environment where people try to kill you in your sleep for personal advancement).

Of course, I could be completely wrong. But even if I am – and especially if I’m not – I just LOVE Admiral Cornwell. She’s pretty kick-ass, and of course, bonus points for not trying to make her look any younger than she is.
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This theory about Admiral Cornwell is incredibly compelling. And if you buy it, it prima facie puts Lorca in a pretty bad light, given that, at the end of Lethe, he seemed to be dragging his heels about rescuing her from the Klingons. Now I freely admit, I like Lorca and I’m looking for a redemption story line for him, so that got me mulling over how this might not be what it looks like. And then I remembered Ash Tyler.

Lorca has dropped enough clues to convince me that he doesn’t believe Tyler is who he says he is, and that he knows Tyler to be a Klingon spy. And yet he makes Tyler chief of security and sends him on an important mission to rescue Sarek. Why? Probably to earn his trust, so that Lorca can use him to feed bad intel to the enemy. So, as if his situation weren’t difficult enough already, now Lorca has to run the Federation’s secret-weapon ship with a spy on board.

If you needed to mount a sneak-attack rescue mission to free someone from the Klingons while you had a known Klingon spy on board, the very last thing you would do would be to announce your plan to the entire ship. You might, instead, tell your first officer to contact Starfleet Command to request orders, which would buy you the time you need to conduct a clandestine rescue mission known only to a trusted few. So that’s my theory. I think Lorca will take Burnham and do the job himself. But by then, Cornwell will have been tortured and will have become the Lethe we see later.

Of course, this presumes that Cornwell/Lethe’s inability to strip Lorca of command is an unintentional consequence of the situation, and that Lorca would never have purposely engineered something so terrible. Whether or not he’s from the mirror universe (which I think quite possible), I’m hoping he’s a secret good guy. Am I doomed to disappointment?
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Leaving Mudd behind in that Klingon prison ship sure seemed inhumane of Lorca. But maybe he had good reason…

If Ash Tyler is a Klingon spy, and if Lorca has known that from the get-go, and if Lorca intends to convince Tyler that he is trusted so that Lorca can use him as a conduit for false intel to the Klingons – then Lorca would have had to leave Mudd behind. Either Mudd or Tyler was the snitch in prison, and the two people who must surely know which one it was are…Mudd and Tyler. If Tyler is the snitch, then Mudd knows it. And if Mudd goes free, he will undoubtedly use that knowledge in a manner that screws up Lorca’s plan to use Tyler. Hence, Lorca leaves Mudd behind. The needs of the many…
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