For Jewish TV, look to...Australia?

The Australian period drama A Place to Call Home is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of a TV program putting the Jewish identity of a main character front and center in a respectful, meaningful way. No, it doesn’t always get it right (including some butchery of the Hebrew language and inaccurate portrayals of Jewish rituals); and yes, it veers into cheesy-melodrama territory a fair bit (including much that is reminiscent of Downton Abbey in family dynamics and unlikely plot twists). But its protagonist, Sarah Nordmann, is a concentration camp survivor and former resistance fighter who is deeply committed to her faith. Her story of coming home to Australia after the war, coping with trauma and alienation, finding a place for herself in an often hostile, antisemitic community, and trying to maintain her Jewish identity in an interfaith relationship makes this show more Jewish than anything I’ve seen produced for American TV, which tends to stick to broad Jewish characterizations and vaguely Jewish-inflected humor. 

With all the Jews working in American film and television, why is it left for Australia, with its 0.4% Jewish population, to give us a popular drama that deals substantively with being a Jew?

Quick thoughts post Will You Take My Hand?

I liked the Disco season finale, I really did.

1. But the MU Georgiou story echos the problem I had with the Lorca story. I was sure there had to be more to him, because it made no sense that Starfleet would trust a guy who killed his own crew. I was sure there was some big mystery to be revealed about the Buran. But no. Not only did Starfleet go with that really poor plan, but even after their mistake is revealed, they figure handing Discovery to evil Georgiou is a good plan? Hmm.

2. I wonder if the Enterprise just left Talos IV? (Hello Alexander Courage!) Will Burnham become involved in the fallout from the events of The Cage, and will that explain why Spock doesn’t talk about her? Hmm. (Adding: According to Wikipedia, the timing doesn't line up; The Cage would have been two years earlier (or three, now that they've jumped ahead nine months?). But maybe that's wrong?)

3. Culber. Mycelial network. Terrraforming. Genesis. Green spore on Tilly. Resurrection? Hmm.

4. I absolutely can’t wait to see what’s next for Burnham, Saru, Tilly, and Stamets. A new captain? Possibly a Vulcan? Or has Prime Lorca been hanging out on Vulcan? Hmm.

5. I’m still pissed that Lorca was so summarily discarded. I'm not getting over that. It's a grudge and I'm nursing it.

Adding:

6. I'm not entirely comfortable with the fact that Starfleet just released a genocidal maniac. Can we not try people for war crimes committed in other universes? Someone get Samuel Cogley on that.

7. When Tilly announced she was very high, at least two generations of fans for whom watching Star Trek stoned was a rite of passage achieved a moment of perfect joy.

Is Disco Trek enough?

ADDING: For the record, now that season 1 is complete, I stand by this analysis.

NOTE: I write this just hours before the finale of Disco’s first season. It’s dicey to offer an overview before getting the complete story, but what the hell. I will happily revise and recant as needed.


There is an entire book to be written — more than one, probably — about how each iteration of Star Trek extends the vision of the original while correcting perceived shortcomings of previous versions. Discovery is certainly no different, but people are having a harder time seeing it as part of this pattern. That’s because it feels so different; by Star Trek standards, so dark. But what many seem to have forgotten is how very different TNG felt from TOS when it first appeared, and for exactly the opposite reason: It was maddeningly bright. I think it’s fair to cast Disco as the anti-TNG. And just as that series started at an extreme and eventually moved back toward the center, I’m sure Disco will, too.

When Roddenberry launched TNG, he made a rule: No conflict among the good guys. The results were obvious and immediate: bland, uninspired storytelling, as seen in what is now widely agreed to be its weak first couple of seasons. Roddenberry had reportedly developed a giant ego, what with the whole Great Bird of the Galaxy thing and the adoring fans and all; some say he misunderstood his own creation. I think that’s only partly true. Roddenberry was not wrong about people wanting to believe in a hopeful, optimistic future for humanity. But he was wrong about what his job was — not to create an actual future, but to create fiction that illustrates why such optimism matters. They’re actually not at all the same thing.

Utopias do not exist. They never have, and it’s probably safe to say they never will. For that reason, fictional utopias always smack of authorial arrogance. They proclaim for all to see, “Here’s a guy so full of himself that he thinks he’s got all the answers.” Perfection being impossible, all utopias read more like religious visions than practical blueprints, and TNG was no different. And of course, the more the author tries to portray a utopia, the more the cracks show. In TNG, female characters were reduced to embarrassing stereotypes (Tasha Yar and Deanna Troi). The way the corporate boardroom replaced the chain of command was cringe-inducingly naive. The show's idealistic vision of the perfect futuristic community meant that vulnerable civilians, including children, were schlepped into the cold vacuum of space to face all the hostile aliens, disasters, diseases, and other assorted threats of the unknown. In its simplicity, this utopian future was excruciatingly unconvincing. (Arguably, poor Wesley Crusher, the embodiment of everything that seemed juvenile about TNG, paid the price in fan hatred.)

And the jingoism. Good lord, the jingoism.

If we’re perfect and without conflict, then all the conflict has to come from elsewhere. All bad is without; most good is within. You can see the problem there. In TNG, Roddenberry’s secular, utopian vision inevitably and ironically starts to look exactly like what he’s railing against: cultural imperialsim and a sense of human supremacy (mitigated only slightly by the inclusion of aliens who are ultimately very much like us; Star Trek has always struggled with the fact that the Federation looks more like a human-led empire than a coalition of true equals).

What Roddenberry had forgotten — or more likely, never knew, but his TOS writers did — was that in storytelling, the negative space is crucial. There must be both yin and yang. Not only are we more keenly aware of what we perceive to be absent; we value it all the more for the lack of it. When crafting a tale designed to illustrate a moral compass, the tricky part is to give the audience enough positive input to make that compass clear, but enough negative input — space that has yet to be filled with the goodness we seek — to make us understand why it matters, and why the struggle to achieve it is worthwhile. TOS, for all its many flaws, did extraordinary things with that negative space. Its best stories demonstrated the heroes’ struggles to find the way forward without compromising their values, to battle their own demons and confront their own biases. Kirk is at first ready to kill Gorns and Hortas before realizing his error; Spock is forever tempted by the emotions he rejects; our heroes are shown to be not so different than Klingons through Organian eyes (or whatever Organians have). Not all endings are happy.

TNG started with no negative space — or more accurately, with all the negative space assigned to Them and all the positive space assigned to Us. Perfection is not a good look on the heroes of a supposedly progressive drama. (Aside: I think that it’s interesting how, in DS9, notable for being the first Trek sequel to commit to darker storytelling, Sisko is obsessed with baseball, a game weighted toward yin, its perfect form a no-hitter, in which what doesn’t happen is more important than what does. But I digress.)

Which brings us to Disco. In season 1, Disco is nearly all negative space, so much so that it’s disorienting. Burnham’s mutiny and the Battle at the Binary Stars set up a starting point of Star Trek values in near total collapse, and the culture aboard the Discovery is downright dystopian. We get the tiniest glimpse of positive space, and the moral compass that creates it, with Captain Georgiou, only to have it — and her — brutally cut down and eaten for breakfast (both metaphorically and, we eventually discover, literally).

Understandably, this was all too much for a lot of fans. I started the season as an avid defender of this choice because, frankly, I had so detested TNG’s flaws, and I welcomed a series that recognized them and was committed to doing it differently. Of course, there’s a danger in going too far in the other direction. If all that negative space — all that absence of morality — obscures the moral compass entirely, you enter nihilistic territory, the dark ’n edgy place of which contemporary storytellers are so fond. Everything is felt very viscerally in those kinds of stories because the threat level is always turned up to 11. But they’re grueling experiences precisely because they offer no hope of redemption and no promise of joy. The question is, did Disco wander too far into that territory? If so, those who say it’s not Star Trek are right.

I’d argue it didn’t. Those tiny glimpses of positive space, of Star Trek’s native moral imperative, are yanked away early in the story and then carefully, bit by bit, returned. There are acts that are clearly evil (including some that go for real shock value, like Tyler/Voq snapping Culber’s neck and Georgiou offering Burnham a ganglia “treat”), and there are acts that are ambiguous (nearly everything Lorca did, until his big reveal). But there is good, and we certainly know it when we see it. There is love (Stamets/Culber, Burnham/Tyler); there is joy (Burnham’s dance with Stamets); there is friendship (Tilly/Burnham); and there is growth (Captain Saru). And then there are the words in the title: Star Trek. When something has entered the cultural consciousness as much as Star Trek has, the name alone does an awful lot of heavy lifting. Invoke it, and you invoke half a century of storytelling that carries volumes of authority, for all its flaws. That accrual of meaning is why people revisit fictional universes and delight in creating new chapters there, both building up and chipping away at existing foundations. It’s not enough to expect the words “Star Trek” to constitute all of Disco’s positive space, but they carry an awful lot.

That said, I’m not sure the writers got the balance exactly right. As the season went on, I began to feel that they were rushing through the moments that should have provided clarity. For the sake of a breakneck pace and an overabundance of plot twists, they barreled through some story beats they should have paused on, and set up parallels that don’t seem to play out. The worst offender is the Lorca/Burnham parallel. Lorca’s arc bends from redemption to betrayal (having lost the Buran, he gets another chance with the Discovery, only to emerge as the ultimate traitor); Burnham’s, from betrayal to redemption (no explanation needed). But neither feels complete. I can’t help feeling that, at the end of it all, I don’t really understand why either character does what they do, so the significance of the parallel remains a mystery. (If the finale proves me wrong, I’ll be ecstatic.)

What’s more, too much of Disco’s self-awareness comes not from within the story, but from its creators talking about the story. What with the immediacy of the After Trek interviews and the extensive social media campaign, it’s been too easy to tell the audience what the creators are thinking rather than actually craft the story in a way that shows them. So when Harberts, Berg, Sullivan et al reassure us that they “get” Star Trek -- or Wilson Cruz assures us they haven't buried their gays -- you can’t help wondering if they themselves are not sure they’ve done enough to convince us in the story itself.

In however many years’ time, when Disco has aired its series finale, I’m going to revisit all this. Nowadays, the arc of serialized TV plots is long and designed for binging, and thank goodness for that. I’ll be very glad to find that the long game makes perfect sense of a first chapter that, for all its flaws, has hooked me.

The War Without, the War Within, the mystery of Michael's sin

There’s something I was really hoping Disco would examine more closely, but it’s not looking likely at this point. Burnham’s main motivation throughout the season has been her deep remorse for her mutiny, but she’s never been shown to have been wrong. I mean, clearly she was insubordinate, and wrong in that sense. But her purpose was to implement a controversial strategy in order to prevent a horrible conflict. The plan was morally gray, certainly, but it might have worked. We’ll never know. She was stopped, and the horrible conflict turned out to be even worse than anyone could have imagined.

Since then, the series has operated on the premise that most people, including Burnham, believe she is responsible for the massive loss of life at the Battle at the Binary Stars, and for the whole Klingon War in general. But the story really doesn’t support that. It sure looks like all of that would have happened whether Burnham had attacked Georgiou and tried to fire first or not. The huge weight of guilt on her is kind of baffling. I had assumed we’d circle back to this, because otherwise it’s just bad writing. But now that I’ve seen Lorca’s long and intriguing arc cut short so glibly, I’m not so sure.

If anything, Burnham's choice to return to the Prime Universe with Mirror Universe Georgiou in tow seems like a much worse idea than her original mutiny, and it's weirdly compounded by Cornwell's decision to...make Georgiou captain? Really? WHY? OK, so she has strategic value. She can't offer her guidance as a civilian advisor -- and under close guard, at that? Again, if this were half a dozen episodes ago, I'd think there was some really clever plotting going on, with a cool twist soon to be revealed. But the way things have gone, and with not much time left in the season, I have to assume that, at best, the resolution will be kinda cool but rushed, and at worst, it won't make any sense of these bizarre decisions.

Unless these decisions are rendered moot when the season ends with a reset, where the Discovery time-travels back to the point of Burnham's mutiny, but this time fires on the Klingons first and the war never happens. But the Klingon war is canon, so that doesn’t seem likely, and they'd still have to figure out what to do with MU Georgiou. (However they end the season, I still like my batshit theory that MU Georgiou will end up as the Lethe of "Dagger of the Mind," but what are the chances?)

Holosuite whitewashing

Just rewatched the DS9 S7 ep “Badda-bing Badda-bang.” There's this really awkward scene I guess they felt obliged to insert, in which Sisko says he objects to the Vic Fontaine holosuite program because of the way it whitewashes Vegas history, presenting a false version of the early 1960s in which black people are welcome in casinos. And I’m like, y’know, that’s an irrefutably correct point, but if they were going to make it, they'd have been better off just abandoning the whole story altogether. Because Kasidy’s rebuttal, that the holosuite program represents an idealized version of history the way it should have been, rather than the way it was, is really silly and lame, given that the entire story is about Mob violence and corruption. But rather than point that out, Sisko is like, OK, now that I've recited the disclaimer, count me in.

So obviously, it's not history the way it should have been, but rather contemporary TV paying lip service to, but then blatantly choosing to ignore, the obvious problems raised by inserting characters of color into the conventional time-travel (or in this case, fantasy time-travel) story. They're basically saying, "It's 1999, and we can no longer ignore the elephant in the room, but we haven't come up with a good way to explain it, and we aren't willing to give up this popular trope that provides us with so many easy-to-write episodes that we can shoot for little money on the back lot using whatever costumes and props we happen to have lying around, so we're going to hand-wave furiously and hope everyone thinks that's good enough."

It's exactly like that moment in the Doctor Who episode "The Shakespeare Code," when Ten takes Martha back to Elizabethan England. When she questions whether, as a black woman, she'll be "carted off as a slave," Ten, whose appearance is as white and male as can be, blithely replies, "Just walk about like you own the place. Works for me." Well alrighty then.

[EDITING TO ADD: It seems to me it should be possible to write time-travel stories that neither put characters of color in awkward or dangerous situations due to their race, nor demand the audience to just ignore this obvious issue. But how to do it? Racking my brains...this is a tough one...I dunno...I guess you could have them time travel to places where people look more like them? Crazy idea, I know. Do continents that are not Europe even have a past?]

Also, pet peeve of mine: period pieces about the 1950s and early 60s in which men do not remove their hats indoors. I don't care if it's a holosuite full of fake people who don't even notice the aliens with bumpy noses and misshapen foreheads. They would be programmed to notice men wearing hats indoors. Otherwise, what would be the POINT?

Tantalus

This is totally batshit, admittedly. But still...

Disco gave us an episode named "Lethe," which dealt a lot with Admiral Cornwell, prompting fans to speculate that she might somehow become the Lethe who was a character in the TOS episode "Dagger of the Mind" -- a woman on a penal colony for the criminally insane who describes her former self, before treatment with the neural neutralizer, as malignant and hateful. Seeing Emperor Georgiou snatched by Burnham and brought along for the ride to the Prime Universe, I speculated, mostly facetiously, that she, not Cornwell, seems more likely to become Lethe. Certainly, the words malignant and hateful describe MU Georgiou pretty well.

And then something hit me -- something I somehow had never noticed in my four-plus decades as a TOS fan.

The penal colony in "Dagger of the Mind" is on Tantalus V. The Mirror Universe device used by Kirk to destroy his enemies in "Mirror Mirror" is the Tantalus Field.

Tantalus is a figure from ancient Greek mythology -- he invited the gods to a feast and cooked up the body of his own son to feed them. ("Here, have my ganglia. You deserve a treat.")  This offended the gods, causing Zeus to hang him forever above a stream for which he eternally thirsted, but of which he could never drink.

Also from ancient Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the rivers of the underworld across which the dead were ferried by Charon. Emperor Georgiou's palace-ship is the ISS Charon.

That's a whole lot of coincidence going on right there, unless it's not. Could Emperor Georgiou actually become Lethe, and somehow her Tantalus V experience find its way back to the MU in the form of Kirk's Tantalus Field?

Crazy, right?

The trouble with Lorca

Not gonna lie: The Disco writers have disappointed me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fate vs free will; this must be Star Trek

Three more Disco episodes to wrap up Lorca's arc. I've already predicted that Discovery is returning to the prime universe with rescued prime Lorca and some or all of the crew of the Buran (who, I'm starting to suspect, may comprise some of MU Lorca's rebel followers). Whether or not that's correct, I feel sure that the Lorca we've been watching throughout this season will either die or be left behind in the MU. But here's one more prediction: The theme of the season is redemption, and there will be some for Lorca.

"I'm responsible for forging my own path. We all are."

That's Burnham, coming down on the side of free will, from the trailer for "What's Past Is Prologue." Clearly, that's her response to Lorca's harping on fate and destiny. I've already said that, in the Burnham/Lorca relationship, we see the pupil becoming the master. I think MU Lorca will have learned something from his PU experience and defy his "destiny" in order to help the Discovery get home.

I predict that the moral of the story will be, don't be too quick to hand out the black hats and the white hats, or at least keep some gray ones on hand.

However one feels about Lorca's arc this season (and I'm deeply ambivalent), Jason Isaacs deserves an enormous amount of credit for keeping us guessing. He makes it abundantly clear that something is very off about this character, but he also never lets us give up on  him. An impressive performance.

Vaulting Ambition, Vanishing Optimism

Before I get into the Lorca stuff: I keep meaning to write something long and profound about how Disco has lulled us into identifying with the Federation and its values of justice and equality, and then pulled a gigantic switcharoo, forcing us to wonder if we are in fact more Terran than Federation, which also forces us to wonder whether our enemy is more Prime Universe Klingon or Mirror Universe rebels. Insert all the appropriate parallels (America/Western democracy/multiculturalism or imperialism/Trumpism/fascism? Radical Islamic fundamentalism/brutal warmongers/xenophobes or spiritually motivated anti-colonial freedom fighters?) So I'll just leave that there and move on.

Me being Team Lorca ‘n all, there’s a lot about his story that looks like it’s not going my way, unless there’s a further big reveal about how he’s not as bad as all that (and I do hold out some hope on that score, given that the bad report comes from Emperor Evil herself. Though that whole Ava thing didn’t sound good at all...sigh...).  As I said elsewhere:

I hate it when they pull the “We made you love this character just to freak you out when we reveal he’s evil” trick. I mean yes, obviously there were lots of warnings. But I figured there were too many for the truth to be quite so simple. Of course, at this point we only have Mirror Georgiou’s word for it, and she’s hardly an entirely reliable reporter. (This is suddenly and weirdly taking on a Woody Allen/Mia Farrow vibe, a situation I try never to think about because everyone is so fucked up.) Further twists are possible, and I’m hoping for one that shades Lorca with more complex motives. But it seems more likely that, if we’re to get anything positive about Lorca at this point, it’ll be the rescue of Prime Universe Lorca, which I’m pretty meh about. I’m feeling…deflated.

But at least there's this: I called the MU Lorca/Burnham connection -- specifically, that he, not Sarek, was her father figure in the MU -- way back in October, after Lethe (which was when the evidence for MU Lorca became too compelling to dismiss -- especially when he chose not to rescue Cornwell). That one was all mine. I didn’t see it anywhere else. So yay me. Here’s what I said then:

“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?”

Given the nature of the relationship we’ve seen between Lorca and Burnham up until now, I wonder if MU Georgiou’s claim about him “grooming” Michael and having a sexual relationship with her is overstated, the product of Georgiou’s jealousy? Maybe it was really paternal? Of course, this could be me clutching at straws, because the whole hero-turns-out-to-be-secret-villain thing is a bulletproof squick of mine, especially if you throw sexual predator into the mix, and I will not concede this point until there are no more outs.

That said, I’m calling this now: Discovery is returning with Prime Lorca and some or all of the crew of the Buran.

Other miscellaneous things:

• I always thought it was "vaunting ambition," not "vaulting ambition." Apparently both are used, but the quote from Macbeth is "vaulting." 
• "Here, have my ganglia" is the new "REDRUM."
• So we know that Tyler is physically Voq transformed, but now his mind is all Tyler -- so he's going to have to live the rest of his life in a body that isn't his? That's disturbing.
• I can't imagine Culber isn't returning to the land of the living. Kudos to those who caught the name of MU Stamets' ship, Charon, the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron. I didn't.

You do what you must

This piece covers a lot of ground on the mirror-Lorca theory quite well -- and I really hope it's wrong. Because if we've been watching mirror Lorca, and the other Lorca is dead, then I can’t see how any Lorca will be on Discovery in season 2. Even if mirror Lorca were to survive, the series is going to move on from the Klingon war and this particular story line, and there won’t be a place in it for him. And I really want to keep him. More than just keep him -- I want to be right about him. I’ve gotten really invested in the idea that he is not a bad guy; that all the bad-guy signals are misdirection; that there’s some greater good in play; that he's complicated, not evil. And I hate being wrong.

But obviously, Lorca has known about the mirror universe all along and has some reason for bringing Burnham and Discovery there. So I concocted a theory about a mission to rescue the Buran crew (more on that here). I'm trying not to think about the fact that I have a history of overthinking; of seeing misdirection when there's just plain old direction; of looking for a redemption arc where there isn't going to be one (hello, Tenth Doctor).

But I take heart from these lines: “From now on, we're Terrans. Decency is weakness, will get us killed. And the lives of everyone on this ship and in the Federation are at stake. So you do what you must. Whatever you must. To anyone. Understand?” He says it like he means it -- like a guy who’s had a lot of experience repressing his natural decency for the sake of the greater good. And sure enough, the next thing we know, Burnham has knifed her former friend’s doppleganger, then two seconds later stepped out of the lift, put on her game face, and hailed the Empire. If she can do it and still be the hero underneath, so can he. Right?

DS9 shines a light on the Shithole

On this Shithole morning, when we are so painfully reminded of the racist culture of which we are a part, I find myself watching DS9 "Far Beyond the Stars." It just happens to be up next in my rewatch. And it absolutely guts me. Somehow, I'd basically forgotten this episode entirely, and it's like watching it for the first time. I'm not even going to describe it, because maybe someone reading this, like me, has forgotten it -- or maybe they never saw it at all -- and it's out there, waiting to be discovered or rediscovered.

If you love Star Trek because of the possibilities it unfolds, or if you just believe that telling a story can be a powerful act of illuminating the present and imagining the future, take an hour out of your day and watch "Far Beyond the Stars."

Lorca, Lorca, in the booth, what you up to? Tell the truth.

After "Despite Yourself" (SPOILERS AHEAD), it's more obvious than ever that Lorca has brought Discovery to the mirror universe intentionally, and that he has an agenda there. We learn that mirror-Lorca (who may or may not be the Lorca we've been watching all along) has been on the run after mounting a coup against the mysterious emperor (who people seem to feel might be Philippa Georgiou, and I guess that makes a certain amount of sense). Obviously, he's known all along that he needs Burnham to accomplish whatever he's trying to accomplish, because he's gone out of his way to get her on his ship and make sure she doesn't get herself killed.  He needs something that only Burnham can get, that much is clear. Presumably, he knows that mirror Burnham is dead, so he has to bring this Michael back with him. (ETA: Come to think of it, there's no reason to assume this, only that he knows mirror Burnham wouldn't get him what he wants, but this one will.) What exactly he needs from her, I don't know.

And what is he trying to accomplish, exactly? Could he be an agent of the anti-Terran rebels planning to use Discovery to overthrow the empire? Was that the nature of mirror Lorca's coup, and he's out to finish the job? If so, he won't succeed, because we know the empire will still be there when Kirk & co. arrive a decade or so later. Or does he simply want to seize power for himself? Maybe, but I don't think so (I'll get to my reasons in a minute).

I think it's far more likely that he has a smaller, more specific agenda, and, as I've been saying for ages, it has to do with the Buran. As I pointed out previously, when Burnham brings up the mirror-Buran, Lorca jumps at the chance to ask if the crew is alive, and he seems genuinely not to know. Whether the Lorca we've been watching originated in the mirror universe or ours, it seems clear that whatever happened to the Buran is the driving force behind everything he does. It's the only thing we know about him, really.

From "Choose Your Pain," he says of the Buran crew's fate: "Degradation. Torture. Slow, public death. It's the Klingon way to spread terror. Not my crew. Not on my watch." (Was he really talking about the Klingons there? Or the Terran Empire? Noteworthy similarity.)  And there's this: "Tyler: Your eyes. That happened when you destroyed the Buran, didn't it? Lorca: We choose our own pain. Mine helps me remember." There's a sincerity and a depth to this part of Lorca's story that is missing from every other aspect of him. I feel it has to be the key.

Whether this is a rescue mission and the crew is not actually dead (my preferred theory), or this is simply an attempt to avenge them, or he's after something else related to his crew's fate, I feel sure this is about the Buran. That's why I don't think we're watching mirror-Lorca just making a power grab. Everything about this guy's motives feels personal; his loyalty to his crew feels utterly sincere. I have drunk that Kool Aid. I'm buying it. It's why, no matter how devious he is and how much he manipulates events, you can't quite despise him. Leastwise, I can't. I just can't shake the feeling that, whatever it is he wants, it's not for himself. And if I prove to be wrong -- well, boy howdy, will I be disappointed.

The burning question is, which Lorca is this? Have we been watching mirror Lorca all along, and if so, will Discovery return to its own universe with him, with his doppleganger, or with no Lorca at all?

I just can't shake the feeling that this is not mirror Lorca. I know there are lots of sign pointing to yes, but I have a gut feeling that it's intentional misdirection. As Spock said in "Mirror Mirror": "It was far easier for you as civilized men to behave like barbarians, than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilized men." Could a mirror-universe barbarian pull this off in command of the most important ship of the fleet through an entire war? Doesn't seem likely. And there's something else. If there's one thing we learn in "Despite Yourself," it's that Terrans don't apologize. But what's the first thing Lorca says when startled awake by Cornwell in "Lethe?" "I'm sorry. I'm not used to having anyone in my bed." Maybe mirror Lorca is so good at playing the part that, even in an unguarded moment, he thinks to apologize, but again, doesn't seem likely. So much about Lorca just doesn't fit the Terran mold, especially if I'm right about the authenticity of his feelings about the Buran. Because another thing we know with certainty about mirror Terrans, other than that they don't apologize, is that they are treacherous, self-serving back-stabbers, and they don't make captain by being fiercely loyal and self-sacrificing. They're not the types to voluntarily step into an agony booth so that others may live. So either this Lorca is a freakishly deviant mirror-universe native -- or he isn't, and there's some other explanation for the scars, the deceit, and Cornwell's conviction that he's not himself.

One last point. Tyler and Lorca's stories of subterfuge are set up in parallel. One of them is such a nice, sensitive guy that he earns Michael Burnham's affection. The other is such a sneaky bastard that he alienates Kat Cornwell's. I'm guessing that, by the end, we'll be meant to see some irony there.

Random thoughts and speculation: Despite Yourself

Before I get into my usual bananas-cuckoo speculation, a few things (SPOILERS AHEAD):

1. All hail Captain Tilly!

2. What have you done to Rickie, you bastards?!?! (Is this the end for the Dynamic Duo? Tune in next time…Same bat time, same bat channel…)

3. Lorca in the agony booth: If you didn’t believe he was working for some greater good before, that should change your mind, because it takes some serious commitment to something to volunteer for that duty.

4. This isn’t going to end well for Tyler, is it? Poor Burnham.

5. Am I the only one who caught the reference to Organia? Lorca: “What happened, here? I don’t remember reports of battles anywhere near Organia.” So apparently Starbase 46, to which they had intended to jump, is near the future birthplace of the Organian Peace Treaty. Significant plot point, or just a passing nod to canon?

Now that that's out of the way, let's look a this snippet of dialogue:

Burnham: I was the captain of the Shenzhou, and you had the Buran here, too, Sir.
Lorca: My crew? Are they alive?
Burnham: No.
Lorca: Well, there’s me hoping hoping I’d find a better version of myself over here.

If that doesn’t support my theory that Lorca brought the Discovery to the mirror universe to rescue the crew of the Buran, I don’t know what does. A better version of himself – i.e., one who didn’t get his crew killed, the way this Lorca got the mirror-universe Buran crew killed in his own universe. 

We learn that this Discovery probably got switched with its mirror twin, which suggests that the same thing could have happened with the Buran. If my theory is correct, Lorca, having figured it out and brought Discovery to the mirror universe on a rescue mission, obviously believes the Buran crew to be alive. But if they are, why does the Klingon ship’s database say they’re not?

The secret to returning to their own universe lies in whatever the Defiant did – which involved not just universe hopping, but also time travel. Soooo…the Buran crews from both universes may be dead now – but now may not be where this story ends up, if you see what I mean. With a little time-travel magic, the Buran crews might be returned to their native universes before they die. What’s more,  they’re saying the Stamets/Culber story isn’t over yet. Given that little…incident…in sick bay, perhaps the Discovery is destined for a little time travel as well. Though, if they return to a time before the Buran is destroyed, they’ll have to do a lot over again. Hmm.

ETA: I just realized…duh…if Discovery’s return to its own universe involves time travel, that could not only solve Culber’s little neck problem and bring the Buran crew back to life, but also explain why Kirk & co. never heard of the mirror universe. The Discovery crew may return and remember nothing about it. For that matter, Ash Tyler may not remember having been Voq – or intimate with Michael Burnham. That would be one really big reset button.

Remembering My Spock

This was originally published in 2016 on another blog. I'm reposting here because this is really its proper home.
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As my social media feeds fill up with posts about Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, I find myself remembering Spock.

Not the original-series Spock. Not Leonard Nimoy. My Spock. A long time ago, when Star Trek and I were very young, I had a best friend. Her name was Rifka. I was Kirk, and she was Spock. That pretty much says it all.

Rifka and I fell in love with Star Trek when we were about 10 years old. It was the early 70s, a couple of years into Star Trek’s seemingly endless syndicated run on Channel 11 in New York. I’m pretty sure I was the one who started it, having been introduced to Star Trek by my older brother, but our passion for the show soon surpassed his. It surpassed that of everyone we knew.

The Star Trek universe was our universe, or at least, everything we wanted our universe to be: exciting, dangerous, just, beautiful, honorable. It was how we saw ourselves. Star Trek wasn’t just what we watched, it was what we did. For the next few years — long past the age either of us would have willingly admitted — Rifka and I spent most of our time together playing Star Trek. We played other things from time to time — the Hardy Boys, Lost in Space, board games — but at least 90% of our time together was spent playing Star Trek. And always, always, I was Kirk and Rifka was Spock. At school, there were others who joined our game. Scotty, Bones, Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu were divided up among whoever else wanted to play. Interestingly, the one boy in our group, Arthur, always played the alien. (There’s probably a whole dissertation to be written about that, but I’ll just leave it there.) But Rifka and I were tyrannical in our control of the lead roles. She was Spock, I was Kirk. Always.

The funny thing is, I don’t think we had any clue just how accurately those roles reflected who we actually were.  I was brash, she was measured. I was smart, she was brilliant. I was impulsive, she was thoughtful. I was the tomboy, the risk taker, the girl who wanted to beat the boys at everything. Rifka was the hard worker who mastered everything to which she set her formidable intelligence. And in the world of our Jewish day school, my faith was showy but shallow, where hers was quiet but deeply spiritual.

As we moved into adolescence, the very things that had drawn us together began to drive us apart. In high school, I wanted to reinvent myself. I thought of  myself as a rebel, a rule breaker, a free spirit (though looking back, it was all rather tame and pretentious). Rifka remained cautious and studious. We were still friends, but we were no longer inseparable, complementary, flip sides of the same coin -- Kirk and Spock. As the years went on, we spoke less and less. By the time we went to each other’s weddings, we hadn’t seen each other in years.

And then, in 2002, some three decades after Rifka and I began playing Star Trek, word reached me that she was very ill. Rifka had cancer.

The news kicked me in the gut. All the stupid stuff that had ever come between us fell away, and the realization of all the time wasted, the friendship I should have cherished but instead allowed to wither, stood stark before me. So I did what I should have done years earlier: I wrote her a letter.

Rifka was a writer, too. By then, she was a columnist for the Jewish Week. This is what she wrote in June 2002 in a piece about the Beatles, another passion we shared (later published in an anthology of her work):
“Perhaps the only silver lining to having been diagnosed with cancer several months ago is that I have reconnected in unexpected ways with people from all walks of my life, but most particularly, with old, dear, and long out-of-touch friends.

“If I may quote from a recent letter from that same best friend who introduced me to the Beatles so long ago — and with whom I have not been in touch in years: ‘For me, talking to old friends has this kind of magical power to make me real — not just me, sitting here at this moment, but the me that’s been me all along, since the very beginning of me….Whatever else we may be today, the two little girls we were then are here with us now. They never left us.’”

A little more than a year later, I saw Rifka at her father’s shiva. He was a Holocaust survivor, a businessman, and a lovely human being, but the massive turnout at his shiva was not entirely for him. For so many of us, it was an opportunity to see Rifka without having to say what was readily apparent: one last time. In a stroke of luck, when I arrived at her brother’s house, I found that our alien friend, Arthur, whom I hadn’t seen since elementary school, was there as well. The three of us sat and talked for hours. Rifka was tired but still very much herself, her wit and insight as keen as ever. Her husband and children were there as well. As the other shiva callers came and went, I lingered, soaking her in, until finally I had to go home to my own young children.

Rifka died just a few weeks later at the age of 42. The injustice of it still makes me weep bitter tears. For my Spock, there was no Genesis planet, no katra, no miraculous resurrection. She lives on only in the memories of those who loved her.

I never think of Star Trek without thinking of my Spock. And when I say never, I mean never.

Last weekend, four decades after Rifka and I went to some of the earliest Star Trek conventions together, I attended the 50th anniversary Star Trek Mission convention in New York. As I entered, I saw this banner.

I stopped to look at it awhile, and yet again, I shed tears for my Spock, who did not live long enough to see this day. I miss her. I have been, and always shall be, her friend.

The whole Trek-chilada

An old friend on Facebook asked for recommendations about consuming the whole Trek-chilada, so of course, I had Things To Say.

***Rolling up sleeves, cracking knuckles***
You knew I would jump on this, right? HERE WE GO.

It's impossible to say what you can/should skip, because it's entirely a matter of personal taste. Many people (like your friend above) hate Enterprise and will tell you not to bother. I, on the other hand, think Enterprise beats the living daylights out of TNG, which I think is much cheesier. So you are about to embark on hundreds of hours of TV viewing to decide for yourself. So my recommendation is to watch in broadcast order, which is not the internal chronological order (ENT is a TOS prequel, after all), but gives you the sense of the conceptual evolution of the franchise. In other words, broadcast order is internal-logic order. So my viewing order would be:

TOS: Cuz it's first and best, duh.

The Animated Series: OK, no one includes this, but YOU SHOULD. TAS is weird as hell. The animation quality is the lowest of the low. But the stories themselves range from dumb cartoon to surprisingly sophisticated -- so much so that you quickly come to realize why this series totally failed as a children's cartoon. Bonus: There's one episode that takes place on Vulcan that offers some interesting insight into Vulcan culture you'll get nowhere else. Extra bonus: When we were kids and TAS was first broadcast, it was on Saturday mornings, which meant I couldn't watch. So instead, I read the novelizations by Alan Dean Foster. This is actually not a bad way to tackle this part of the ST canon, because, as I said, the animation quality is terrible, and the stories have to be stripped down to the bare minimum to fit a 1/2 hour cartoon, so the novelizations are actually superior.

The TOS movies: 1 & 5 are the worst and most skippable. The rest are super-groovy-rad. Enjoy.

TNG: Oy. I will never understand the appeal for so many fans. It certainly got better as it went along (the first couple of seasons are truly painful), but I find most of the characters really hard to take, and if I never see another holodeck episode, it'll be too soon. Poor Wesley Crusher took the brunt of fan hate, but it's Troi I want to throw out an airlock. That said, there are more than a few very good episodes (spread thinly over 7 seasons!), and obviously a ton of vital world-building. Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner are great; I like Q and the Borg (though Q gets overused and loses much of his luster). As tempted as I am to say just skip the first couple of seasons, canon is canon, and you'll be confused later if you don't know it, however painful it might have been to sit through. (I'm looking at you, "Skin of Evil.") TNG is a good choice for watching while cleaning or paying bills.

TNG movies: Now that you know my feelings about TNG, you won't be surprised to learn that I never saw any of these after the first one. This is the only ST I have not seen. Make of that what you will.

DS9: You may have heard that there was much kerfuffle about its similarity to J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5, and who stole what from whom. IMO DS9 clearly did rip off B5's concept, and B5 is overall better because of its more heavily serialized, planned-out story line. That said, DS9 is much better than TNG, in large part because Roddenberry wasn't involved, and his "characters aren't allowed to be in conflict with each other" rule was dropped. At the moment I'm nearly though rewatching the whole series for the first time since it aired, and it really holds up. I find that I like Sisko much better this time around. Initially, Avery Brook's weird, stilted line delivery bugged the crap out of me, but I guess you just get used to it when binging. While there are certainly quite a few weak filler episodes, overall I find the acting in this series to be much better than TNG, and it's very easy to binge. It keeps me company while cooking. Enjoy.

VOY: Such a mixed bag. They started with an interesting premise of a combined Federation and Maquis crew lost on the far side of the galaxy, then quickly abandoned everything that was interesting about it. And Janeway is my least favorite commanding officer. And, while DS9 is beginning to do more serialized storytelling, VOY is still heavily episodic, which by the late 90s already felt antiquated. A lot of people see VOY as TNG-lite. But IMO, the fact that the premise builds in a higher level of jeopardy for this series actually helps keep up a level of dramatic tension that TNG usually lacks. VOY is another good choice for multitasking viewing.

ENT: I will go to my grave defending this much-maligned series. Yes, the Rod Stewart-sounding theme song is painful (and yet it grew on me upon rewatch in ways I am ashamed to admit). Yes, they shamelessly used T'Pol in teen-titillating ways that gratuitously sexualized an inherently good character. Yes, the characterization of Jonathan Archer is somewhat inconsistent. And yet I find it overall to be a much more ripping yarn than anything told by TNG or VOY. I think the third season Xindi story arc, created in response to 9/11, is bloody good (literally). I think the story of a Vulcan woman grappling with inner demons is the most compellingly complex characterization ST gave us up to that point. I think Shran is a wonderful character. I don't want to spoil anything, but this series goes to places with character relationships that breaks the suffocating rules of drama previously aimed at a male teen demographic. Sit down and watch this. Give it a chance. It does not disappoint.

DISCO: Wheeeeeee! Away we go!