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Within the “Star Trek: Picard” episode “Penance” (March 10, 2022), Admiral Picard (Patrick Stewart) is visited by the impish cosmic deity Q (John de Lancie) for the primary time in a long time. Q, for causes all his personal, has determined to check Picard’s cleverness and resolve, and has orchestrated somewhat recreation for the Admiral. Q whisks Picard right into a parallel universe whereby Earth is dominated by evil, xenophobic, genocidal tyranny. Picard finds that his parallel self is a mass-murdering common who retains the skulls of his enemies in his den, and that every one of Earth’s sources are actually dedicated to monitoring down and killing different species. It is fairly bleak. Picard finds that this evil timeline started someday within the 12 months 2024, and he gathers his compatriots to journey again and time to determine what went unsuitable.
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Curiously, the tyrant timeline in “Picard” is not fairly the identical because the mirror timeline seen a number of occasions all through “Star Trek.” The mirror timeline was named after its first look within the unique sequence episode “Mirror, Mirror” (October 6, 1967), an episode whereby a number of Enterprise crew members, due to an ion storm, have been by chance beamed right into a parallel universe the place everybody was evil. In that universe, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) had a goatee, assassinations have been a standard incidence, and miscreants have been punished with journeys to the Agony Sales space. The mirror timeline was revisited a number of occasions all through “Star Trek” thereafter, together with a couple of occasions on “Deep Area 9” and commonly all through “Discovery.”
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In fact, in gentle of the tyrant timeline on “Picard,” Trekkies (who like to overthink issues) would possibly start to ponder: If Q created the tyrant timeline — or a minimum of granted Picard open entry to it — did he maybe do the identical with the mirror timeline? In any case, each are an effective way to check the ethics of these from the “Prime” timeline. Was the Mirror Universe one other take a look at?
Did Q create the Mirror Universe?
The primary time Trekkies noticed Q, it was within the “Star Trek: The Subsequent Era” pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint” (September 28, 1987). Within the episode, Q stated humanity had ventured out into the galaxy fairly far sufficient, thanks, mentioning that people have been, for the majority of their historical past, a violent, warmongering species. Picard broadcasts that people are actually peaceable and enlightened, so Q determined to check them. The occasions of “Encounter at Farpoint” have been to be the primary take a look at. Q would return in subsequent episodes to maintain the take a look at going. Humanity needed to show they would not slip again into tyranny at a second’s discover — that they weren’t motivated to worship autocrats simply because, say, grocery costs started to rise.
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In that gentle, one would possibly be capable of see the Mirror Universe as a multidimensional experiment performed by Q. Maybe Q created this universe (or a minimum of subtly motivated its evolution) by letting humanity comply with its basest instincts towards domination and violence. Q is aware of how horrible humanity will be, as a result of he created what was basically a “management group” of people that leaned laborious into torture and evil. When he heard Picard discuss how enlightened humanity was, Q was imminently skeptical, as he was only a godly snap of his fingers away from a model of humanity that cherished to torture, conquer, and dominate.
In fact, within the “Deep Area 9” episode “Crossover” (Could 16, 1994), it might be revealed that, within the mirror timeline, humanity would ultimately be overthrown. An evil model of Main Kira (Nana Customer) explains that the visitation of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to the Mirror Universe in “Mirror, Mirror” (set a century earlier) impressed a strong army alliance between the Cardassians, the Klingons, and the Bajorans, forming an empire much more highly effective than Earth’s. They conquered Earth and enslaved all people. Maybe that was the tip results of Q’s experiment. If humanity was dedicated to conquest, maybe the one logical finish result’s being conquered.
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To simply accept the speculation, although, we even have to just accept that Trelane was a Q
The human characters in “Crossover” are cowed, cowardly, and do not have the bandwidth to exert evil over others. They have been dropped at hell. And naturally, if “evil” humanity had been conquered within the Mirror Universe, Q would now not use it as his management group. “Crossover,” not by the way, aired concurrently with the ultimate episodes of “Subsequent Era.” Maybe Q’s look to Picard within the “Subsequent Era” finale was a method of “re-upping” his take a look at of humanity’s ethics. He now not had an “evil” model of humanity to show his level, so the trial needed to have some new parameters. It could additionally clarify why Q needed to create a second Mirror-like universe in “Star Trek: Picard.” With one model of “evil” humanity taken care of, he merely created one other.
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The “Q created the Mirror Universe” principle additionally dovetails with a well-liked Trek principle that Trelane (William Campbell), a godlike alien from the unique sequence episode “The Squire of Gothos,” was an adolescent member of the Q Continuum. Trelane was obsessive about humanity, particularly its many historic wars. Trelane, nonetheless, was by chance Earth many centuries in its previous, and assumed that the entire planet was nonetheless concerned in international European colonialism … one thing he thought was delightfully and amusingly barbaric. When Trelane meets Kirk, he’s dismayed to see that humanity has developed right into a peaceable society. It could ultimately be revealed that Trelane is a baby who seen humanity as playthings. On the finish of the episode, he was admonished by his “dad and mom,” depicted as glowing balls of sunshine.
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Trelane is as impish as Q, main some “Subsequent Era” followers to posit that he’s certainly one of many identical species. This principle was semi-confirmed by the (non-canonical) Peter David tie-in novel “Q-Squared.” And if Trelane was a younger Q people at their most barbaric … may he have been wanting into the Mirror Universe by mistake?
The opening credit to Enterprise supply an extra clue
As Trekkies know from the opening credit of the “Star Trek: Enterprise” episode “In a Mirror, Darkly” (April 22, 2005), the mirror timeline break up from abnormal human evolution in 1705, about when the HMS Enterprize was first constructed. That episode came about completely within the Mirror Universe, and the showrunners cleverly altered the episode’s opening credit to match the evil tone of a tyrannical humanity. As a substitute of being a montage of the historical past of exploration, it was a montage of the historical past of conquest. By the timeline of that opening credit sequence, humanity appears to have been following its traditional historical past till about 1705, when the HMZ Enterprize was constructed. After that, it was all wars, destruction, and compelled colonization.
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If we’re to just accept that timeline of the Mirror Universe, then it is doable Trelane wasn’t wanting into Earth’s previous, however on the Mirror Universe. As a result of if Trelane was a Q, he would have had entry to the ethics experiments that the Q Continuum was conducting, and any “evil” parallel universe they have been overseeing. Maybe Trelane’s obsession with Earth’s habits on conquest stemmed from his unintended glimpse into Q’s Mirror Timeline.
In fact, that principle would make “Mirror, Mirror” much less fascinating. It is extra thematically salient to level out that humanity was evil and tyrannical by itself — and {that a} distant alien would make assumptions about us — with out the necessity for Q to create a complete evil universe. Possibly the “Q created the Mirror Universe” principle solely holds water if we go away Trelane out of it.
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