Star Trek: Discovery 5-05: Mirrors (Quick Review)

Episode:

60

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Writer:

Johanna Lee & Carlos Cisco

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Director:

Jen McGowan

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Air Date:

25-Apr-2024

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the 60th episode of Star Trek: Discovery! Okay that's not really that notable as a milestone, not compared to 50, but it's the last round number that the series will ever reach. And honestly, I don't think we'll see another Trek series reaching 60 in the foreseeable future. Short Treks made it to 10, Picard ended at 30, Prodigy seems like it's ending at 40 and Lower Decks is ending at 50.

It's a shame, because 60 episodes was nothing to the '90s shows; that'd barely get you into season 3. Though on the other hand, it brought Doctor Who from the start of Christopher Eccleston's run all the way up to Matt Smith, and it was all the Original Series had in it before it started going downhill, so you can be plenty iconic in just 60 stories. If they're really good.

Anyway, the episode's called Mirrors, and 'mirror' is an important word for Star Trek, especially when it's next to the word 'universe'. I don't think that's where they'll be going with this, for all kinds of reasons, but hey the episode could surprise me.

There will be SPOILERS below for this and other Star Trek shows. So if I do have reason to start talking about TOS' Mirror, Mirror or DS9's Crossover, I will.

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RECAP

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The Discovery crew discover that Moll and L'ak disappeared through a nearby wormhole while they were unstuck in time. Burnham and Book head inside with a shuttle and discover the ISS Enterprise! A phaser fight with the fugitives activates a forcefield and Moll and Book have a chat about her dad while they work on that.

Meanwhile, Burnham and L'ak have a fight which leaves him injured and gives her a chance to swipe the next clue: a vial of liquid. Unfortunately Moll's impatient approach to problem solving creates a new problem: they're now stranded in interdimensional space without a shuttle. Burnham uses the tractor beam to send a message that Rayner understands and he gets Discovery's bridge crew brainstorming ideas. Together they get the wormhole to open wide enough to pull the whole Enterprise through, but Moll and L'ak escape in a warp pod.


REVIEW

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We got to see the 32nd century Breen in this episode and they've been given a pretty decent update.

Though obviously I saw them first in a YouTube thumbnail, next to another thumbnail of the Enterprise in interdimensional space. I think that one had a red arrow on it as well. YouTube is like playing Whac-A-Mole sometimes; whenever I banish one of these channels from my home page another one soon pops up. But I do get some satisfaction in knowing that I'll never be bothered by that particular channel again. There's no chance of them getting any likes, subscribes or views from me. Ever.

It makes me very cautious about how much I'm giving away in my own thumbnails.

Anyway, I knew that the Enterprise and the Breen were going to be in the episode, but I didn't know that it was going to be the Mirror Universe Enterprise and I didn't know that L'ak was a Breen, so I did get some surprises!

Star Trek: The Original Series 2-04 - Mirror, Mirror

When I saw that they'd kept the design of the Constitution-class exactly the same I was a bit shocked, but in a good way. It put a huge smile on my face, not just because it was nice to see the old ship again, but because it gives me some hope that the Strange New Worlds Enterprise wasn't meant to replace the iconic TOS ship, and it'll get a refit after the end of that series to bring it back to its more familiar appearance.

Oh, I'm not talking about anything from this episode, I'm just thinking back to a scene we got in Star Trek: Picard a while ago, when we got an old Constitution-class right out of the '60s filling our entire HD screens. No in this episode Discovery is going all-in on the Strange New Worlds ship design also being what the TOS ship will look like.

I mean, I can understand why. They already had the 3D model and all those nice sets to shoot on, so it made all the sense in the world for them to retcon the ISS Enterprise. The episode's not getting any points from me for doing it, however. There's no smile on my face.

Also, I finally got my story about a 23rd century ship that was abandoned for 900 years and it's the wrong ship! What are the chances that the Discovery and the Enterprise would both turn up in the 32nd century, just a few years apart? Well, okay it's not our Enterprise, but it's from the same time period!

The episode is called Mirrors, so I suppose it's fitting that the ISS Enterprise being recovered in the Prime Universe's future mirrors the USS Defiant being recovered in the Mirror Universe's past. Hey, maybe they can give the ship a refit and make it this era's new Enterprise. They could let the Starfleet Academy series play with it.

Plus I did like twist in the ship's story though, even if it was a bit weird that it was printed on a dedication plaque.

We know from Deep Space Nine that Captain Kirk convinced Mirror Spock to reform the Terran Empire, and this ultimately left it vulnerable to its enemies. In fact, I actually feel like DS9 did Mirror, Mirror a bit dirty, because it spoiled the upbeat ending where it seems like Kirk may have saved their universe with a speech. But now we've got a bit more of the story, with Mirror Saru (confirmed not to be eaten) leading refugees through to the utopian Prime Universe, where they actually did really well.

What's interesting about this, is that it mirrors Moll and L'ak's story (and Tarka's last season), with them doing anything to escape through a wormhole to a paradise. And these Mirror Universe refugees actually pulled it off! The final voyage of the Enterprise's evil twin was a mission to save people.

Well, I mean the final voyage up until this point. Obviously the ship's still intact and doing fairly well, all things considered.

Well, the ship was intact. It doesn't take much to get the explosions started on these old vessels. I can just imagine the Strange New Worlds production crew coming in to film season 3 and seeing all the scorch marks they have to scrub off.

Fortunately, the ship did survive to be driven off at the end by Owo and Detmer (and presumably other people, seeing you need a crew to run a ship), and... hang on, did the series just write out Owo and Detmer without even giving them a proper farewell episode? They should've sent Rhys, he loves the Constitution-class! Well, at least this means that Owo is now the captain of the Enterprise (assuming Detmer is the one at the helm).

Their seats on Discovery have been taken by Lt. Gallo and Lt. Cmdr. Asha, who were apparently also in earlier episodes. I guess they're going to continue to occupy that zone between bit part and supporting actor, where they're frequently prominent in scenes and do talk to the leads, but never get upgraded to a Jett Reno-level character.

The episode is Rayner's first test of leadership and he seems really reluctant for some reason. I know he got shouted at for doing it wrong in the last episode, but he's been a starship captain for a long long time and should not look so baffled when people throw technobabble at him. In fact, he's reluctant to even go near the captain's chair, so it seems like something's up there.

I did like how he got the whole bridge crew involved in brainstorming ideas at the end though. They did the same thing at the end of last season when trying to communicate with Species 10-C, but the scene worked better for me here as they weren't awkwardly teleported into the conversation to make a point about the value of different perspectives.

The winning solution, 'replace the photon torpedo payload with antimatter', seems to have one obvious flaw: torpedoes already use antimatter in their payload, but maybe they don't anymore! I would hope that the technology has improved a bit in last few hundred years.

Meanwhile, Burnham and Book had the job of dealing with their own reflections, Moll and L'ak. Burnham made the tactical decision of only bringing two people in order to make the fugitives feel less scared, which kind of worked I guess. I mean yeah one of them got stabbed, but no one died and they got the clue after only moderate violence.

I feel like things could've gone better though if Burnham had been a bit more flexible. Her and Book both found redemption after their crimes, but this is a Red Directive with the fate of the Federation hanging in the balance, and the ends justify the means. So maybe she could've just let them go! She could've offered them a ride to a planet where the Breen could never find them.

Then Malinne "Moll" Ravel could've finally moved on from her life of piracy (interstellar), piracy (intellectual property) and loitering, and Discovery wouldn't have any competition while searching for the Progenitor tech.

I did like that there was absolutely zero drama between Burnham and Book about how to deal with the two fugitives, even though he was in Moll's position last season and considers her to be his only family.

Book even got to spend some time with Moll, discussing her dad and how terrible he apparently was.

I do want these conversations to happen, It's nice that the heroes can finally have a chance to chat with the villains about what they want and what's motivating them, but I can't say I was 100% enthralled by what we got here. I think that might be partly because all the flashbacks establishing their tragic backstory take place in the same Breen cargo bay.

I mean, it looks cool, but I feel like a love story as episode as theirs should've taken them to another room at some point. Maybe Moll's hair could've changed a bit to imply the passage of time.

They have four flashbacks which add up to 10 minutes of episode time, and the episode packs a lot into that time. Moll was a courier selling the Breen impure dilithium, L'ak was disgraced nobility working as a shuttlebay guard, they fell in love and he had to attack his uncle to save her. Okay, I was wrong, that wasn't much at all! In fact, they could've saved a lot of time by cutting the meet cute and skipping a couple of scenes.

Though I suppose they did have to set up the surprise reveal of what the Breen really look like under their Boushh-from-Return-of-the-Jedi suits.

They're made of translucent green rubber! Well, only sometimes. They have 'two faces' and I guess the second face is just the skin becoming opaque. I dunno, they've got a whole thing about it which I guess will be elaborated on later.

The Breen were kind of a running joke in the '90s series, with the writers deliberately keeping them vague, but they were slowly becoming less mysterious over time. They were first mentioned in 1990, then 5 years later they made an appearance on screen (with helmets) and 4 years after that we got to see their ships. So it seems like the right time to finally learn what they look like.

I'm not really enthusiastic about the design they went with in the end, but I don't hate it. My biggest issue with the whole thing is the idea that no one in the Federation ever found out what a Breen looked like in all these centuries. I don't buy that at all.

Anyway, everything works out except for Moll and L'ak escaping in a warp pod... from a ship that was supposed to have no escape pods or shuttles left. If there was any chance there was another way off the ship they would've taken that instead of going with an incredibly risky plan to open the wormhole bigger. It also raises the question of why the fugitives were still there after 6 hours if they had a way out the whole time.

Though I suppose the warp pod does explain how the two of them could've escaped to cause the destruction of the Federation seen in Face the Strange. Incidentally, if they'd collapsed the wormhole with Moll and L'ak inside then they would've ended the chase right there and saved the the Federation... at the cost of never being able to find the Progenitor tech for themselves. Now Moll and L'ak are going to go steal another ship and then they'll be right back on their tail again.

Everything is resolved in about 50 minutes, which already makes this one of the longer episodes, but then it just keeps on going... for over 6 more minutes. This is a trick that Babylon 5 loved to pull, but Babylon 5 episodes weren't pushing an hour in length! Plus Babylon 5 used to make its epilogues interesting.

I think the writers deserve credit for actually doing something with the fact that Culber has a lot on his mind, after being resurrected and discovering that all humanoid life was seeded by aliens. But a big part of me wanted to say "This is all great, but can you wake me up when you start approaching a point?" I mean, does Culber even have an arc this season or is it just his turn to be wowed by the Progenitors?


RATING

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I'm going to compare this episode to The Galactic Barrier, from the previous season. That's the episode where we got Tarka's flashbacks revealing how he'd grown close to a dude with too much rubber covering his face and wanted to escape to a paradise far away. So, there are some similarities between the stories.

Mirrors has the advantage of actually revealing new information about the villains, so its flashbacks weren't entirely redundant, and I think I liked it a little bit more in general. Though only a little bit more, and I'm still sulking about it retconning the bad Enterprise, so this is another...

6/10

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NEXT EPISODE

Star Trek: Discovery will continue with Whistlespeak. I am not going to make any assumptions about that episode's quality by its name, but somehow I don't think I'll be seeing that title show up in any 'Top 100 Best Trek Episodes' lists.

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures it's more Star Trek: Picard season 3 as I'm up to episode 4: No Win Scenario.