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.
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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.)
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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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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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