Weekend Trek “In A Mirror, Darkly Part 2”

Ah, I think I am just digging this Mirror Universe story.  Phlox of all people looks badass in that all-black outfit.  Soval, here a Starfleet officer, has the same beard Spock had in the original Mirror episode, though I think Leonard Nimoy pulled the look off better than Gary Graham,  Travis has no lines, but he may have won out in the end.  Maybe.

Let’s just say it didn’t go anyone’s way except the one person everyone discounted.

Yeah, so…Empress Sato by the end of the episode?  Sure?  Why not?  Hoshi over the course of the episode is, well, not romantically, but at least lustfully linked to “Captain” Forest, Archer, and finally Travis.  Actress Linda Park never really got to play the sexy role before, even when Hoshi was having some luck with the guys, but it makes for a nice change of pace as her seductive ways, even when T’Pol throws some shade at it during what might even be called a cat fight, is what gets her exactly where she wants to be, and using what was no-doubt Archer’s plan:  use the advanced tech of the Defiant from the main universe to conquer the Earth.

Of course, Archer by then was taunted by his prime universe double, or at least what Mirror Universe Archer thought he was.  The two never actually meet.  Instead, he and Hoshi briefly look over the prime universe data banks to see their counterparts and have a good laugh at those folks’ expense, but Mirror Archer just can’t seem to get past the fact that, for all that his counterpart did everything while using peaceful tactics and the like, managed to get stuff named after him and was still celebrated 100 years later while this Archer will die after his mistress poisons his drink.

Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.  By the time he’s died, he’s already kicked all the aliens off the Defiant (except for Phlox because his people don’t rebel) because he just plain doesn’t trust him, has killed two of his commanding officers to take their places in the hierarchy, tortured prisoners, kept slaves, and wouldn’t even try to negotiate with a Gorn slave-master that was on the ship when Archer and his small group took them.  He might not even care that Porthos was dead, but this Porthos was a mean Rottweiler as opposed to the friendly beagle.

And by then, he and some of the others are wearing classic Trek uniforms because they came aboard in the spacesuits and, I suppose, they didn’t have anything else to wear.  Hoshi and Phlox get to keep their standard Earth Empire uniforms because they were rescued after Forrest’s Enterprise had been destroyed and only a handful of escape pods were rescued.

Then again, Archer might not be the only dead character from the main cast.  T’Pol and Phlox are in an unknown status.  Malcolm was severely injured and possibly died between scenes.  Trip is OK if mad at everyone.  Travis is a kept man.  Hoshi is (probably) the new Empress.

And for the record, this is still early 2000s TV-budget CGI, but the Gorn looks much better than the previous episode’s Tholian.

In the end, this two-parter was mostly trying to be fun, a throwback to an earlier Trek era, one that had, as part of its original concept, a possible William Shatner cameo.  I just enjoyed watching the normally-straight arrow heroes be as bad as their actors wanted them to be.  Some were better than others, true, but man, did it hit the right itch for me.