Star Trek: It’s about time we talked about time
Image: Paramount Pictures
The Mirror Universe
The Mirror Universe was introduced to us in 1967’s Star Trek: Original Series episode ‘Mirror Mirror’ and showed us a version of humanity that was ambitious, callous and evil, a far cry from the optimistic future the show had shown us so far. It was a brilliant episode and would go on to have influences on Star Trek shows to come.
I can hear the naysayers now and I will agree to a certain extent that the Mirror Universe isn’t technically an alternative universe, not in the sense of what I have been discussing in this article, but bear with me. It does indeed fall more into the multi-verse category in which every decision we make is played out in parallel universes. This is born out from the Enterprise two-part episode ‘A Mirror, Darkly’ in which we see the father of warp drive Zefram Cochrane deciding to offer the wrong end of a gun instead of a hearty handshake during first contact with the Vulcan’s (as established in the film First Contact), a decision that set’s up the parallel mirror universe.
In the same episode as Cochrane’s gun happy exploits the crew of the ISS Enterprise NX01 race to secure a ship that has advanced technology which has appeared in Tholian space. That ship was the USS Defiant which had come from 100 years in the future and from a different universe; evil Archer plans to capture the ship and use it to become emperor of the Terran Empire. A plan that ultimately backfires as he is killed by the mirror universe version of Sato who takes the Defiant to Earth and, we assume, uses its superior firepower and defences to becomes emperor.
Now surely using technology from the future to take over the empire must create an alternative timeline in the Mirror Universe? Everything that comes after it including the Original Series and Deep Space Nine episodes is a direct result of an incident that involved time travel. So I give you an alternative timeline. An Alternative timeline that also could have had an impact on Star Trek: Discovery as told by the theory that Emperor Georgiou is a descendant from evil Sato.
"“I was raised on Vulcan and attended the Vulcan Science Academy” – Michael Burnham “My Uncle Everett plays in a Beatles cover band, it hardly makes him John Lennon” – Paul Stamets"