Star Trek Thoughts: Mirror, Mirror
Jan. 6th, 2014 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerHaving watched what I supposed a sufficient number of episodes from the first season set of Star Trek episodes, I opened up the second season set. I hadn't got around to watching the episodes I'd just recorded off cable from that season, although in looking at the lists of episodes on each disc I got wondering just how many of them I still intended to watch. However, in getting started I was at least getting to an episode I had some particular interest in seeing, "Mirror, Mirror."
If someone says "mirror universe," or even "evil goatee," they're calling up in some small way this episode. I did watch a few episodes of Star Trek Enterprise near its end, and two of them were the ones set in the "mirror universe," going where fanfiction, official spinoffs, and an episode of Deep Space Nine I haven't seen had gone before; I also mused on Mystery Science Theater 3000's "Last of the Wild Horses" as much poking fun at the episode as trying to reverse itself. Now, I was getting to where it had started, although as in many other cases I had a first familiarity with what was going to happen through the short story adaptation by James Blish.
I knew that at least for a while Blish was working from early drafts and hadn't actually seen the episodes himself; it sometimes led to a personal feeling of things missing or narrow perspectives in his own work. In noticing additional encounters in the episode itself, though, I did begin to wonder a little whether it gave the slightest impression of "padding." In hearing "evil Spock" tell Kirk he's not about to jump at the chance of taking over through assassination, though, I did happen to think I hadn't imagined a mirrored version of their friendship before; of course, by the time things are over and this episode's transporter accident has been corrected Kirk just may have convinced "evil Spock" to turn on the "evil Kirk" he'd already known.
If someone says "mirror universe," or even "evil goatee," they're calling up in some small way this episode. I did watch a few episodes of Star Trek Enterprise near its end, and two of them were the ones set in the "mirror universe," going where fanfiction, official spinoffs, and an episode of Deep Space Nine I haven't seen had gone before; I also mused on Mystery Science Theater 3000's "Last of the Wild Horses" as much poking fun at the episode as trying to reverse itself. Now, I was getting to where it had started, although as in many other cases I had a first familiarity with what was going to happen through the short story adaptation by James Blish.
I knew that at least for a while Blish was working from early drafts and hadn't actually seen the episodes himself; it sometimes led to a personal feeling of things missing or narrow perspectives in his own work. In noticing additional encounters in the episode itself, though, I did begin to wonder a little whether it gave the slightest impression of "padding." In hearing "evil Spock" tell Kirk he's not about to jump at the chance of taking over through assassination, though, I did happen to think I hadn't imagined a mirrored version of their friendship before; of course, by the time things are over and this episode's transporter accident has been corrected Kirk just may have convinced "evil Spock" to turn on the "evil Kirk" he'd already known.