The Mirror Universe has become a tedious Trek default. Deep Space Nine had a Mirror Universe episode just about every year of its run, in which the actors all got to play evil versions of themselves while wandering around increasingly half-baked plots. Discovery spent much of its first season mired in the evil Terran Empire, attaining dangerous levels of technobabble and the main storyline languished. Mirror Universe episodes are a supposedly fun thing you’re reluctantly dragged into, like a cruise ship or an office birthday party.
It’s a relief, then, to return to the episode that started it all, and find that it remains untouched by the mediocrity of its successors. This isn’t the first evil double Trek episode: “The Enemy Within” and “The Alternative Factor” are both precedents. It’s got enough twists to make it feel new, though. And you can’t argue with that solid Cold War moral: We are better than them, even if we are them.
Ask Nice, Ask Less Nice
The episode starts en media res. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) has just failed to persuade the Halkan Council to allow the Federation to mine dilithium crystals on their planet. The Halkans worry that the Federation will use the crystals for war. Kirk asks the Halkans to reconsider and promises he will not use force to demand the crystals. Then he and the landing party—including Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Mr. Scott (James Doohan) and Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) beam up to the Enterprise.
Unfortunately, there’s a big old ion storm, and the transporter beam is interrupted. The landing party finds itself on a ship that is identical to the Enterprise… almost. First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) has a beard, and indulges in excesses of cruelty, zapping a transporter tech with an “agonizer” for the crime of making a mistake on beam up. Also, everybody gives Nazi-like salutes, which is a bad sign.
Our heroes figure out with unlikely alacrity that they’ve beamed into an alternate universe where good is evil, and not so much vice versa. The mirror Enterprise’s mission is still to get those dilithium crystals, though—except they’re not so nice about it. The Halkans are (for some reason?) still peaceful people who won’t give up their crystals to the bloodthirsty Terran Empire. Kirk is supposed to destroy the planet in retaliation.
Kirk stalls, making the still logical, albeit evil, Mr. Spock very suspicious. Meanwhile, Lt. Sulu (George Takei), with a piratical scar and a joyfully piratical sneer, tries to molest Uhuru, though he’s stopped when Kirk walks on the bridge. Then Ensign Chekhov (Walter Koenig) gets his henchmen to attack Kirk in an assassination attempt. Intra-crew violence is the normal way to advance on this Darwinian ship, apparently.
One of Chekhov’s henchdudes betrays him, allowing Kirk to overcome him. Chekhov gets tossed into a full-body agonizer, but Kirk doesn’t want to kill him—which makes Spock even more suspicious.
Civilization Good, Barbarians Bad
In between assassination attempts, the good Starfleet folks are planning to get back to their Enterprise. There’s much technobabble, the upshot of which is that Scott, with McCoy’s help is going to rejigger the transporter from the engine room.
Kirk goes to his quarters where he discovers Lt Marlena Moreau (BarBara Luna), who is apparently the “Captain’s woman.” She thinks he’s got some scheme cooking to make himself admiral, which she thinks is awesome. She also tells him he’s got something called a “Tantalus Field”, which allows him to monitor anyone (On the ship? In the universe?) and press a button and make them disappear. Useful!
Spock informs Kirk that if he doesn’t destroy the planet in four hours, Spock has orders to kill him. Scott does his engine room stuff. To keep Sulu from noticing the alert, Uhuru distracts him by pretending she was just playing hard to get. “The game has rules,” she says, huskily. “You’re ignoring them. I protest and you come back. You. Didn’t. Come. Back.” Sulu is understandably pleased (Nichelle Nichols in skimpy warrior-wear is a sight.) But then she reverses course again and holds him at bay with a knife. Because she is awesome.
Spock has figured out something is wrong, and confronts the good guys where they have gathered in sick bay. There’s a big fight, which ends when Uhuru hands Kirk a vaguely spherical thing he uses to bash Spock over the head. That seems like it…but then Sulu shows up with his henchman, ready to kill everyone and take command of the ship. Instead, Marlena uses the Tantalus field to zap all the henchman, and Kirk overpowers Sulu.
McCoy insists on treating Spock, who will otherwise die, even though time is short. The others go to the transporter to set up. Spock wakes up, and (somewhat inevitably) overpowers McCoy, using a mind meld to find out all his secrets (of which there are a lot.)
In the transporter room, Marlena shows up demanding to be allowed to go with Kirk. When he says no, she pulls a phaser. But then Spock and McCoy enter—and Spock is eager to help because he wants his Captain back so he doesn’t have to take command himself (he prefers science and not being the target of assassination.)
Kirk tells Spock that the Terran Empire can’t last because it’s too horrible, and suggests that with the Tantalus Field, Spock can put the Empire on a less rapacious and happier path. Evil Spock says he will consider becoming less evil.
And then they’re back from behind the looking glass. Good Spock assures good Kirk that he identified bad Kirk almost immediately (as we saw in a brief scene earlier in the episode.) “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,” he says. Civilized men, supposedly, don’t commit genocide. And with that dubious proposition, the episode ends.
We Wouldn’t Do That
Doubling in OG Star Trek almost always references the Cold War. That’s certainly the case in “Mirror, Mirror,” which is, among other things, a story about colonial resource extraction. Good Enterprise and bad Enterprise both want dilithium crystals (read, “oil”) from the Halkans. The difference is that the good Federation (ie, the US) tries to obtain the crystals through negotiation. The bad Terran Empire (ie, the USSR) tries to obtain them through threats, and ultimately through genocide.
In reality, of course, the US was quite willing to resort to force in the Cold War to secure its interests or access to resources. The US collaborated in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and in the Indonesian genocide, to name just two Cold War atrocities that occurred before Star Trek aired. The evil other here isn’t just the USSR. It’s the US.
Which is in fact what “Mirror, Mirror” seems to be trying to say. Immediately after Kirk promises the Halkans that he won’t use weapons to get the crystals, he beams up to the Enterprise—where (evil) Spock is planning to use weapons to get the crystals.
In the narrative, this is a swap; Kirk isn’t a liar, he’s just been transported to an alternate dimension. But as a metaphor, maybe the message is that good Kirk and evil Kirk are in fact the same person. The line between kind, ethical imperialism and violent, genocidal imperialism is just a transporter glitch, and transporter glitches (like transporters) don’t actually exist. Maybe Kirk just beamed into his real self, and the Halkans were right to mistrust him in the first place.
The glee with which the episode leans into ethnic, racial, and gendered stereotypes is also telling. The bridge crew of the Enterprise, in the “real” world, is meant to demonstrate interracial and international amity and progress. But it just takes a slight shift in perspective, and that diverse crew turns into a bargeful of stereotypical scum and villainy.
Chekhov, eyes shifting with calculated malic, becomes a typical thuggish Russian heavy. Spock, with that Fu-Manchu beard fully embraces the lurking evil Mandarin caricature, while Sulu with his scar becomes a nightmarish predatory Asian. Even Uhuru, who is supposedly still “good,” has to hypersexualize herself, per Jezebel stereotypes of Black women.
The evil version of the characters allows writer Jerome Bixby and director Marc Daniels to embrace their evil selves, and the pulp racism that Star Trek, in theory, rejects. The good Federation stands against racist imperialism, but its mirror image—what it sees as evil—is defined by racist imperialism.
That imperialism includes a presumption that evil is linked to insufficient civilization. The evil Terran Empire is as technologically advanced as the good Federation—more advanced, if you count the Tantalus Field. But they’re still framed by Spock as less sophisticated “barbarians.” No matter how sophisticated the (vaguely Asiatic) other, they are still less advanced than us, and therefore less fit. The bad Enterprise is bad because it believes in Darwinian struggle—and also because it is further down the Darwinian scale.
In “Mirror, Mirror,” Star Trek projects its moral and conceptual failures onto a Cold War other, even as it claims them as its own. Imperialism, violence, racism, hypocrisy—those are all sins of the enemy. And who is the enemy? It’s the face you see in the mirror.
Rating: 9.3/10 SPECS
This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.
Noah Berlatsky is a freelance writer based in Chicago. His book, Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics was published by Rutgers University Press. He thinks the Adam West Batman is the best Batman, darn it.
