Deep Space Nine Reviewed! (by a pedant) S2E23: CROSSOVER
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- Опубликовано: 8 окт 2024
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Today's Thought Experiment: What does Normal Kira do with the dress?
Saves it for a night with borial
Cosplay with her boyfriend. (He wears the dress)
Waits for a good opportunity to stuff it down someone´s throat...Dukat...Dukat is that someone.
Sell it to plain simple Garak ?
wears it again when seducing ducat in "Episode 6x17, Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night"
I'm not gonna lie, I love The Intendant. I know the tropes she embodies are frowned upon today, but Visitor just devours that role. The other mirror characters are not nearly as interesting or memorable as her, just playing largely generic brutes. At least Evil Kira is oozing with personality.
Agreed.
Even if that personality is just “Dukat but Kira”, its still more personality than all the other Mirror Counterparts in DS9 put together.
I think the writers and Visitor liked her too because she's one of the few Mirror Universe characters *period* with a recurring role.
@@Mobysimo Dukat is way more reserved and in his own words "joyless" than Mirror Kira. There are parallels, but there's plenty of distinctions.
Day went from excellent to AWESOME!!! thank you !!!!
The Kardashians built the station for ore processing for the Bajorans as Bajor was still a major source of raw ore in both universes. After defeating the Terran Empire, the Alliance set up the station as a works project to help restore the Bajoran economy and stocked the station with Terran slaves. The Bajorans were all too happy to see their former oppressors as now the oppressed.
Take a shot every time UL says "evil." Guaranteed death before the end of the episode.
Genuinely considered adding an "evil" counter in the corner. Total count: 73.
Cant wait till we get KCA worf with plain evil garik on a leash
I think you missed the whole evil Kira = Gul Dukat angle of the show. Basically if Kira was in Gul Dukat's place she would have done the same thing; I'm your benevolent protector while my underlings abuse everyone, also I exploit you for sex. The complaints about the outfit are valid, though, Dukat always had a standard uniform.
The DS9 mirror episodes missed a great opportunity to give so many characters a trademark evil goatee.
"Terrans don't have souls" - one of the best lines in Trek.
Kira: The Benjamin Sisko I know would never sell his soul, and allow himself to become part of this tyranny against his own people.
Sisko: Terrans don't have souls. We don't believe in them.
It sucks we didn't get an evil Bashir. Would have loved to see that
Soon.
@@FailSonOfAnarchy Given how Kira acted when he started talking, I don't think evil-Bashir lasted very long.
But if Garak is Evil, does that not mean he is not Plain?
@@mjbull5156 he's plainly evil.
@mjbull5156 it would have been funny, a bit too on the nose, but still funny, if this version was well known for always telling the truth.
He's the vanilla ice cream of evil.
They need goatee's or twirling mustache
The Evil Bastard Universe.😂
The Kirk Speech did not seem to work out.
It worked really well, Spock became Emperor and changed the Terran Empire, unfortunately, the mirror universe is not kind to pacifists.
I assume the colony is meant to bring in some more of those natural resources the Cardassians stripped Bajor of during the occupation
I assumed the Bajoran colony was a bunch of independent 'go-getters' and the Bajoran government is just like 'Can you go check on them? We don't have the resources, thanks'.
One of the things i like about the alternate universes is that the borg are a constant, unchanging inevitable
that dog wants pooping with red or yellow promptly and the computer wants wiping and re-formatting pronto
I always love mirror universe episodes. My particular favourite is the Enterprise episode, which plays on the familiarity with the characters in order to subvert them and give us the best ending. Discovery is also entertaining, giving us the best Philippa, one of my favourite characters.
By the way, "murderize" has entered my vernacular. Wanted to tell a friend I'm glad she didn't kill herself, without that tinge of seriousness.
"Proud of you for not murderizing yourself" hit the spot.
The idea of resource scarcity is kind of weird in a sci-fi universe where space travel is about as difficult as a car ride to the grocery store.
The only resource they should have trouble with is wood.
In Trek the scarcest material with practical use is dilithium, which is used in warp drives. There's a lot of it, and it can be made synthetically, but it's not as readily available as something like gold.
There's also a general list of materials that can't be replicated for one reason or another, including latinum.
In fact having all the dilithium in the galaxy go boom was a huge plot thingy for Discovery.
This is the episode that originally turned me real sour on DS9. The notion that one minute of an ethics pep talk from Kirk to evil Spock was enough to throw humanity into chaos and defeat insults both characters. It also insults the very concept of ethics but I suppose it's a bit old-fashioned to be worried about that.
Plain Evil Garrak
I love it.
I'm genuinely disappointed we didn't get terrifying militaristic amoral Mirror Kira. Nana Visitor deserved better and it would make her mirror self infinitely more threatening.
Mirror Universe stories are...rather interesting.
Each entry gives new lore into the mirror universe and sometimes even gives new trek lore in general.
Even the Discovery jaunt into the Mirror Universe decidedly doesn't suck, and Evil Georgiou is like the Version 2.0 of Evil Kira. The reveal that Mirror Universe people are actually biologically different from "prime" universe characters to the point the self-destructive evil is practically genetic was rather interesting.
I get the impression you were having more fun with Voyager. I guess DS9 is pretty dark, and they really do make the space battles so large it feels more like Star Wars.
Nothing to worry about Space and Skull Dogs. Nothing to worry about. A militaristic, non narcissistic Kira would not have let the story happen. She would have been far more likely just to shoot our Kira and Bashir or have them tortured to death.
I don't feel that mirror Kira got where she was just by s8x and patronage. To get to her position, means she has been utterly ruthless and manipulative.
Yes, I feel this would have been better as a two parter.
'Fun Fact' The reason mirror universe Kira was almost always at the side of the bath when she was talking to Sisko, was orange oil had been added to the water to 'make it smell nice' causing her boob plasters to keep falling off.
I quite like Crossover and Shattered Mirror.
I'm not totally wild on the Mirror universe, but I thought this one was done well. It was an early example of star trek doing "gritty".
Weirdly, I always liked Mirror Odo's death. I thought it looked interesting
I could never get into the mirror universe episodes and I wasn't really a fan of how characters could move between universes.
I recommend the Enterprise mirror episode, season 4 ep 18. It's self-contained in that there's no universe-hopping and 100% of the plot unfolds inside the evil universe.
@@space.raider.2271 Well there's no movement of people... but there's a de-personed ship that travels through time and realities. Soit might still not be to jpaulo's taste (assumign they haven't already seen it).
@@space.raider.2271 I plan on binge watching the entirety of Enterprise soon. I've only seen maybe 10 episodes and of those, I liked Carbon Creek the most. I'll give ep 4/18 a watch, I won't skip it.
Cant wait to see how they get siskos code
While this is a ridiculous episode (though Nana Visitor hamming it up is a highlight) it does show one thing that Trek often neglects: actions have consequences (usually not a problem because the Enterprise buggers off at the end of every episode). You can't simply remove an Evil Empire and expect everything to turn out for the best, there are going to be unexpected consequences.
(Of course, things having consequences were mostly ignored when it came to further trips to the Mirror Universe...)
This is an intentionally a bit campy so analyzing it too much might feel a bit strange if maybe understandable given the circumstances.
I actually think I thought the point wasn't that Evil Kira "slept her way to the top" so much as that her power allowed her to engage in the kind of sexual harassment or maybe even flat out pressuring we see from powerful men in decadent Empires. (And sometimes in just regular societies going by Harvey Weinstein in America and possibly Mohamed Al-Fayed in your country.) In some way she reminded me of Baron Harkonnen and I think it's strongly implied she's using Sisko as some kind of boy-toy whereas I don't think we see her as having a man above her. Anyway "boy toy" is a role that Sisko accepts or at least tolerates as allowing him some degree of freedom, but he clearly seems to resent or be disgusted by it on some level. Although I'm not sure we see any male in the Mirror universe do this. (The implication, which gets much stronger in later Mirror Universe episodes, that villainous counterparts in their Universe seem to all be bisexual is a bit harder to justify or explain away though. For more socially conservative people of the era it would look unnecessarily salacious or worse but for progressive people it's likely aged even more poorly by maybe falling into tropes of "evil bisexuals" who are insatiable and untrustworthy.)
One thing I remember really liking is that when Mirror/Evil Kira mentions Kirk our Kira has no idea who he is and seemed almost indifferent. This is how it should be, considering her background and species, but at the time it felt "new" to me to see a character on a Trek show be ignorant or possibly even indifferent about a major Starfleet captain. I mean to her it would be like what some 19th century British admiral would be to us Americans. (If I knew names like Lord Walter Kerr once I don't now and I have a history degree.) Also the idea an aggressive Empire would fall by becoming kinder does have some parallels in actual history even if one might wish that was not so.
Yeah, I agree. I also never got "slept her way to the top" vibes from her. I always thought she got to the top first and then decided she can do whatever the fuck she wants because who is going to stop her now?
@@Wifenis Yeah. The more I think about it the more I think that's what they were doing. That she was "I can do what I want, with whatever man or woman I want." I don't think they ever indicate a man led her to this position at all.
do you think the Evil Dominion would of been more like the normal universe UFP, except not ignoring their own primary rule at the drop of a hat.
Please do not insult hacks by lumping them in with Rick Berman.
I’ll be honest, alternate universe episodes are mostly a skip since they have nothing to do with the plot of the show and it will never even matter.
Until Discovery comes along and makes it a massive part of their plot.
@@kyuven eh, sure. Good for them.
Andy Robinson hated playing mirror Garak because he was just a dumb bad guy. Plain Simple Garak™️ was a genius and had layers. Not so much in the mirror universe
I would have guessed evil-Kira to be a hippie. If logic stands EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is reversed, would Kirk even have gone to space?
This is something better-brains-than-mine need to forgive:
Sonic is faster than everyone.
Optimus turns into a truck.
Kirk captains the ship.
The mirror-verse is not the 180° shift of everything and everyone, it explores a choice the main-verse could have made.
They actually get into the weeds of how the Mirror Universe works in Discovery. It's an actual biological difference between "prime" and mirror beings that causes them to get backstabby. So it's not that they're the reverse of everything, it's that instead of a conscience telling them "you shouldn't do this!" they're all walking around with a little voice that tells them to burn things and stab their leaders in the back.
Which is why morally grey characters don't end up being THAT different from their counterparts aside from who they work for and their general dispositions.
@@kyuven I thought it was just an adaptation to seeing better in the dark and needing eye drops. The brain foregoes self constraints and lets ambition drive blind?
That makes the mirror-verse more prime than the prime-verse.
@@kyuven "they're all walking around with a little voice that tells them to burn things and stab their leaders in the back."
I kind of feel like a species like that would have difficulty advancing very far because its socialization would be poor.
I had a theory about the Mirror Universe. What if the one in DS 9 is slightly different than the one in the original Star Trek. A mirror reflects from a focal point. So the Mirror Universe's focal point has to be close to when they crossed in this episode. Then the history of that mirror universe is created. The changes in the mirror universe Kirk's traveled to would have created to much noise for the future we see in this episode. The people born decades later would have been different.
It would explain why we see a lot of familiar faces on board the Mirror Universe's DS 9. Plus in Kirk's Mirror Universe Spock exist. And the human's hated hybrids and anyone not human. And Spock needed technology to be born. (As least according the what we learn in Enterprise.) So when Kirk traveled to his mirror universe Spock was created, and it's history was created to explain how those focal points meet up.
Just a thought. Any thoughts anyone.
I hate the huge amount of coincidence in mirror universe episodes. So many things would be different, certain characters wouldn't exist, ship designs would be differnt etc
@malloc5014 there is the theory about multiverse that many events play out similarly to the one we know, sometimes with one major difference, or even one small one. I got that from The Simpsons when Homer went to a universe that seemingly didn't have donuts, but everything else was exactly like his universe, the twist is after Homer left it started raining them.
I'm glad I'm old enough to remember watching "Sliders" on TV.
Maybe we should have recommended that to the captain when he had a sore throat.
How much longer till the TOS episode? Perfect example!
Did you miss that not only did mirror Kira use Sexuality to rise above, she was also bisexual and that is evil in bermans eyes
Oh joy, the first Mirror Universe episode.......great....
I love DS9 but god the Mirror Universe episodes are just the worst part of the show. If it had just been this one episode, sure that's fine. But they keep....coming...back to it!
Not only that, these episodes don't have the fun factor of other uses of the Mirror Universe, that being the cartoonish ridiculous evil of the Terran Empire. Enterprise, fricking ENTERPRISE, did this better with "In a Mirror Darkly" because first it was just ONE time with them, and we got to see the crew act ridiculous and over the top with exaggerated makeup scars and evil scientists' outfits.
I mean yeah we have Mirror-Kira but....she's just Dukat. That it. She's Dukat played by Nana Visitor. She's not a twisted, over-the-top evil counterpart to Kira, she's Dukat! Right down to the wanting-to-bone Kira thing!
Like, Enterprise's take on the Mirror Universe gave us Archer as a gibbering lunatic talking to himself, Phlox as essentially Doctor Mengele, and Hoshi as an opportunistic and sadistic climber willing to do anything for power. Meanwhile, here we have...Dukat with Kira's face, O'Brian but he's a bit of a dick, Sisko but he's a bit of a dick, Bashir but he's a dick. And...for some reason a hologram character who's real just because the writers wanted to shoot him.
My memory is Mirror O'Brien was kind of a nice guy. He was maybe standoffish and unhelpful at first, but that made sense considering. But I do agree Enterprise did better with the Mirror Universe, one of the only things they did better than DS9. (That said I liked the first one, it's just the Mirror Universe has increasingly diminishing returns.)
@@ThomasReeves-s7uI think what helped Enterprise was the fact they ran all the way with it. Giving us a militaristic intro all about conquest, letting the actors go ham with their evil counterparts, showing just how derranged the Terrans are due to their entire society being based around backstabbing, torture and sadism. And it gave a chance for Hoshi to take center stage which she never got to do before.
I feel your pain man, that's exactly how I feel about Enterprise's Temporal Cold War episodes
Minor spoilers, but: the Dominion never shows up in future DS9 Mirror Universe episodes. From a writer's perspective, it makes sense: there's plenty of strife and warfare going on over there without the evil Gamma Quadrant empire. Or maybe the Founders figured the problem would resolve itself without their involvement: warlike solids tend to destroy each other altogether.
I've always felt that 'Mirror Universe' was a misleading name for this reality. It's not like everyone is their exact opposite: it's simply that people who grow up with extremely brutal, totalitarian societies tend to be different. Take Odo for instance: 'our' Odo is also a stickler for rules and regulations and loves order more than justice. He's bound by a different set of morals and rules in the Mirror Universe, so he quickly becomes a tyrannical overlord to those under his rule. Not so different from the Founders after all ;-)
The Bizaro world episodes are my least favorite but I enjoyed your review very much😁👍
"Mirror, Mirror" had established that quid quo pro sexual relationships were not only allowed but open and routine. It was one of the things that made that reality evil. Granted, that was in the Terran Empire, but this episode shows the other Alpha Quadrant cultures are no less morally askew than the Empire. I think part of the fun for the writers in the Mirror Universe is to make a character like Kira into a hypersexualized villianess. Also, Normal Kira has shown she will sexualize herself if it means furthering a covert op.
That being said, I do not particularly like DS9's take on the Mirror Universe. Not only trashing the hopeful ending of "Mirror, Mirror", but it does not feel as real of a society as the TOS version. Everything seems cartoonishly evil, especially the Intendant. While Nana Visitor chewing the scenery can be fun, it is also a bit much, especially since it is not a one off episode
I have to disagree with your assessment of Evil Kira. In the prime universe, she was a freedom fighter who often solved problems with violence, especially in DS9's early seasons. If Evil Kira was to be normal Kira's mirror opposite, using seduction as her primary weapon would make the most sense. It can be considered misogynistic and Nana Visitor might have played it over-the-top, but it fits in context.
By that logic, Odo should've been so sexualised that he was porking all the workers. He's been the most physically violent of all the characters thus far, regularly using force against others. It also ignores that O'Brien was not a technophobe, or Garak guileless. The counterparts of others were not perfect opposites of their prime selves. This choice was made just with her as an excuse for appealing to a demographic, and that's a real shame as it tarnishes an excellent performance from her.
@@Unlimited_Lives I agree. In the TOS mirror episode, evil Spock and evil Sulu are evil alright but also retain a lot of their original traits.
I like the TOS version better.
Teenage me really found evil Kira to be a very fascinating character and one that should have been more in the show.
Voyager got better after the Scorpion 2 parter as well according to teenage me's judgement.
@@binaryghosts5131 I wonder why. 😏😏
wetded-lol
There is a point to be made that Mirror Kirk, the real one, not our Kirk pretending, wore a sleeveless shirt with a low neckline showing off his chest. It seems maybe flaunting ones sexuality is a power move in general in the mirror universe. In general the setting is one of moral ambiguity. Our Kira has a sexual side but she's also very professional about her dealings, often conflicted between her desires, spirituality, and duty. Intendant Kira has power, can have whoever she wants, and wants it known thats how things are. The provocative outfit may be overboard, but I think it was deliberate to show this Kira indulged her decadent nature, even to the point of visually. I'm not just apologetic on these wardrobe decisions, Seven of Nines skintight catsui, or T'Pols from Enterprise were just direct decisions to show off the actresses curves blatantly. I just think that Intendant Kira has at least some baseline reasoning for her amped up vampy behavior and dress choices.
Same here. There was a reason mirror universe Kira wore what she wore. It wasn't 'eye candy'.
I gotta push back on your argument that Evil Kira being overly sexual is misogynistic. The most evil men and women I've ever personally met in life acted exactly like her, other than they were less open about the sadist aspect. I've discovered sadists always have some aspect of their personality is exacerbated to help mask the sadism. For the beautiful sadists, acting overly sexual is an incredibly efficient strategy.
Look at it this way: The mirror versions of her and Garrak are flipped. He's the soldier with adaptive thinking and she's the one that causes trouble for naive Bashir types. He's direct in the mirrorverse, and she's the plans type.
One of the few times Trek gets Bi representation and Mirror Kira has to be a villian.......
Funnily enough even Nana didnt like that part of the Mirror Kira character.
My recollection is she was fine with Mirror Kira SPECIFICALLY having a thing for her own counterpart, as that could be seen as narcissism. She objected to her just being bi in general, however, because of the representation issues.
I will say this and I won't say it often: this is an area voyager did better. Voyager's living witness is a better episode about the crew but twisted evil. I do sort of like this episode but it's not great or amazing.
Only good mirror universe episode of DS9. It's all downhill from here.
Oh yeah, it gets old quickly, and rapey too.
These “evil bastard universe” episode were the ones I hate the most. I skip them. They are so dumb!!!
Gotta say, you make some good points here. There's a few "Now That I Think About It..." things in this episode, and having Alt Kira being in tight leather instead of being a dark version of Normal Kira's soldier/freedom fighter thing is the best one to start with.
If you'll forgive my getting a little spoilery for a minute, this episode sets up a few other good ones like it, and I rather enjoyed what they did with the mirror universe in DS9, though I am glad they didn't do any more with it.
I know a lot if people love the mirror universe especially in ds9 but it's never being my cup of tea. I always found it fantly ridiculous not only in conspect but DS9 wastes so much time on the mirror universe and brought it back form the goffie irrelevance it was form tos. When it could have slipped into obscurity is one of my major issues with the series
Episodes wasted on this farce could have being spent on exploring and elaborating on shit that matters in the prime univese. Like developing the marquise, the Dominion or ki win.
Not only that if the mirror universe was just being allowed to die. Would it have come back in STD and made that cluster of a show all the worse for its inclusion
There are so many better ways of doing a dark reflection of star trek than this nonsense
So... normal is better ...
I have a fundamental problem with "Mirror Universe" episodes, even the original TOS one, which I dearly love, but:
Although it's an amusing setup, the whole "Everyone We Know Is Still In The Same Place, They're Just Evil Now" concept really crumbles if you apply any kind of logic to it, and it's a bit of a stretch for me that any of our "main cast" would have even been born.
How is it that anyone's parents even had the chance to meet if everything is so different? And how the heck did our main cast's mirror selves end up at the station with the geopolitical situation flipped on its head?
Evil Kira is also heavily tased bo be bisexual (and into herself) this falls into the 'depraved bisexual' trope, so add on some low-key biphobia in addition to the rest of the puratinism. But on the other hand it raises some questions since the counterparts are similar to their prime universe counterparts. In Buffy the Vampire slayer "evil vampire Willow," foreshadowed Willow being gay, ccould we infer that Kira is somewhat bisexual but is repressing it cause of her own cultural and religious norms?
In a future episode we'll see a seen where she refuses to play out the Guinevere/Lancelot romance on the Holodeck (or discusses it with Dax), because of the sanctity of marriage. For the inherent negative implications of the Attendant's portrayal what it says about our Kira if you remove her inhabitions is very interesting indeed.
On Kira's outfit, I find her regular uniform to be oddly formfitting as well. I've got the impression that her costume is a lot tighter than the one for any other female Bajoran staff member, so...
I suppose it's the time old tradition of sticking female leads in more or less impractically tight clothing, with accentuating features to boot. Oh and of course none of the male Bajorans are dressed so formfittingly. There are of course plenty of coomers who would complain about my feminist view through the feminist lens, but it always strikes me how much of this sort of thing you find once you stop taking it for granted and start questioning it.
I've alwaysdisliked alternate reality episodes because they always take place on the same sets with the same characters. If they really wanted to do an alternate reality, show something completely different with only a few alternate versions of characters we know being in that situation.
@@reaverofjillsandwiches Part of the practical point of doing alternate reality episodes is to do different characters with the same actors and minor redressing of the sets. It is something of a cost savings measure.
Too bad they they seemed to have a revolving door to the mirror universe installed. The setting eventually loses everything interesting about it and eventually becomes nothing but a farce,
Nope, i hate every mirror universe episodes. They just boring.