Star Trek The Next Generation: Why wasn’t the Mirror Universe explored?

The Mirror Universe was featured in several shows but never Star Trek: The Next Generation

Since the start of the Original Series, the Mirror Universe has become integral to the fabric of Star Trek as one of its leading B-stories. Never a main series arc until Star Trek: Discovery, the universe was always featured as this alternate reality break from whatever main series decided to jump in it.

Discovery made it a major plot point for its first season, while Deep Space Nine had some of the better examples of the Mirror Universe DS9 characters. Such as the Intendant, Kira Nerys. For Enterprise, they may have pulled off the best version of the Mirror Universe idea with their portrayal with “In a Mirror, Darkly”.

Picard and Lower Decks haven’t really explored it yet, but they haven’t started airing their second seasons yet. So they have an excuse, however, Next Generation and Voyager never explored their Mirror Universe-counterparts. We’ll properly explain why Voyager never did another time, but why didn’t the Next Generation? It seems odd the first sequel series in franchise history wouldn’t want to do such an idea.

Why didn’t The Next Generation get their Mirror Universe episodes?

So why didn’t the Next Generation give us a Jean-Luc Picard from the Mirror Universe? When Brannon Braga did his pannel in 2017 at Star Trek Las Vegas 17, he was quite candid that they were afraid to do such an episode.

"We were a little frightened at doing it, and doing it badly, and maybe never really figured out what the Next Generation take would have been on it."

Seems rather soft of an answer. It’s so easy to come up with a few dozen ideas off the top of the head. Just some could’ve been the Enterprise crew discovery the Mirror-Enterprise nearly destroyed and each main cast member talking to their Mirror-counter parts before the Mirror-counter parts die. Perhaps the two ships are stuck in a void of source where only one ship can leave and are forced to kill one another in order to leave.

There’s also an idea that could see the two Picard’s realizing that their demeanors are very similar to one another’s and that maybe each man isn’t as far from the other as they had previously hoped.

Too many ideas, and not one of them hit the writing desk for the Next Generation. What a shame.