We reach the halfway point of the final season with a strong episode that gets away with being the second bottle episode in a row by keeping things interesting with character moments, lore revelations, new questions and some effective action sequences. Yes, it's a bottle episode but it doesn't feel like it, partly due to cleverly pinching the sets from another series. There will, however, be a couple of big spoilers below the cut.
The latest piece of the puzzle is located on a ship, in interdimensional space, through a new kind of wormhole that's invisible to normal sensors. I understand that the scientists wanted to keep the Progenitor tech secret from all but the most worthy, but come on, this is getting silly.
There's absolutely no reason for the ship in question to be the ISS Enterprise, but why not? The Mirror Universe, for good or ill, has been a fundamental part of Discovery since the first season so it feels right to have on last link to that nastiest of parallel universes. It's obvious that the Enterprise sets are those from Strange New Worlds dressed and distressed, but it allows for a different environment with unexpected links to earlier iterations of the franchise. This linking together is a theme of the season and, while it's sometimes contrived, it really does feel like a celebration of the minutiae of Star Trek, and don't we fans all love that?
Admittedly this episode commits the cardinal sin of ignoring "show, don't tell," but when what it's telling us is so tantalising you can forgive it. It's a missed opportunity for Burnham to learn that the Terran High Chancellor was killed after reforming the Empire, but not to learn that this was the Mirror version of Spock. Still, at least she got to hear about Action Saru leading the rebels in another universe, and that the refugees managed to escape to the main reality, even if their ship got stuck between planes. The different eras of the Mirror Universe story all link together, with the events of Enterprise's "In a Mirror, Darkly" furnishing the Empire with the technology that makes Emperor Georgiou so powerful in Discovery; Saru's rebellion now linking with Spock's reforms following the original "Mirror, Mirror," and inspired by the prime reality's Burnham and Kirk respectively; and the reforms leading to the overthrow of the Empire, whose aftermath we saw on Deep Space Nine. Nicely done.
Moll and L'ak get some much needed focus as the ship finally catches up to them. Eve Harlow's flippant, breathy femme fatale thing was already starting to wear a bit thin by the time the flashbacks arrived, so it's good that she got to play more sides to Moll and give her some depth. In spite of her apparent confidence, there's the sense that she's bitten off more than she can chew, and in running from her past she's put everything into the hope of an impossible future. Does anyone think that this perfect colony world in the Gamma Quadrant actually exists? I suspect this will turn out to be a tall tale from Cleveland Booker Sr.
As for L'ak - I said his species would turn out to be important! I said he was a Breen, too, only not on here or anywhere that can actually prove I said it between last week's episode and this. But I'm taking it as a win. We might not have gotten to see a Tzenkethi yet, but we finally learn what's going on under those all-encompassing Breen suits. I love that it's been 816 years since the end of DS9 and still no one's seen what a Breen looks like. In a way, revealing that they're, at least in some respects, fairly ordinary humanoids with recognisable emotions is a letdown, but it's firmly in the tradition of Star Trek finding common ground between us and alien beings. Plus, we see a whole other side to the Breen, their second, "true" face, which shows them to have a gelatinous, almost liquid form, far more what I expected to find under there. It's all very intriguing, raising more questions than answers along with the revelations about Breen royalty and complex politicking. It fits with the inconsistent titbits we learned in the older series about their species and homeworld. Perhaps in their gelatinous form they need to be kept cooler, hence the refrigeration suits... if they even keep them cool at all? Are the suits an enhancement that allow them to take this form? So far, we don't know. As an aside, I like the high-tech 32nd century Breen suits, but I miss the grungy old ones with the muzzle.
Elias Toufexis and David Ajala give excellent performances this week as L'ak and Booker, both sharing strong chemistry with Harlow. Book's need for a family, even if it's with someone who adamantly not one to be involved with him, is tangible, as is L'ak intense, cross-species love. There's a bit of Guardians of the Galaxy vibe going on between Moll and L'ak, and I like it, as well as their mirroring (it's in the title, see) of the Burnham/Book relationship. They'll be back together before the season's up.
Back on Discovery itself there's some pretty strong material, with Rayner starting to slip into their way of doing things. I love that he's anti-technobabble - if only we'd had him on Voyager! He's also dead right to protest against the captain heading straight into danger, although I get the sense it's also motivated by envy, given how he too through himself into trouble in his first appearance. Culber and Tilly get some nice moments, but they're too brief to have a huge impact on the episode.
Talky, contrived, and full of niggling plot fudges and errors (I'll moan in a minute), "Mirrors" nonetheless works as a solid chapter in the story.
Nitpicks and niggles:
- It's a huge plot point that there are no escape pods or shuttles on the Enterprise... except for that huge "warp pod" that Moll and L'ak escape on at the end, which they somehow kept hidden.
- Thingy on the bridge suggests replacing the payload of a photon torpedo with antimatter. Photon torpedo payloads are antimatter, that's how they work.
- The Breen talk about blood oaths and L'ak appears to bleed when Burnham accidentally stabs him up, but we were told before that the Breen don't have blood. Still, it's not the first time info on them has been inconsistent, and maybe that's one of the advantages of their lime jelly form.
- The Breen can take a fluidic form and are, to a limited extent, shapeshifters. Is there any kind of link to the Changelings? Is that why they were so keen to work with the Dominion, recognising a similarly "evolved" lifeform?
- The Kellerun apparently boil cakes, and have epic poems about Krull. But probably not that Krull.
- I still love that the Discovery bar is run by a Ferengi and there's a Lurian regular sitting at it... just like the DS9 days.
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