Thursday, February 18, 2016

17 to 01: Mirror, Mirror


Ah, what a classic. We decode some decor, witness Kirk/Spock in action, and then talk Doctor McCoy: Spy. All-in-all a standard episode.

Has anyone else ever seen a dude do the vase trick? I feel like I'm pulling from a small sample size when I talk about it.

17 to 01 is available on iTunes. It updates Friday nights at 8:30 PM ET / 7:30 CT. We're also amazingly on Stitcher.

9 comments:

SkilTao said...

Post is titled "Mirror, Mirror" but has the file for "a Piece of the Action." Withholding full reply until I know which ep I'm meant to reply to.

VanVelding said...

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!

VanVelding said...

Fixed.

SkilTao said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
SkilTao said...

Cool. Onto the deep and meaningf--oh hey, blue dots on their forheads. These "we will die to preserve TOTAL PEACE" guys were meant to reflect a real life culture.

Uhura and Scotty on an away mission! Verbal and literal fencing from the helm! This *is* a good ensemble episode.
UHURA
YOU GOT THIS
YOU HAVE BEEN RE-EDUCATED FOR THIS
I wonder if all the "career advancement" in this ep was the basis for how TNG Klingons advance their careers.

I'd bet that Spock's higher status here comes down to his half-humanness being prized by Vulcans disenfranchised by the Empire.

The way I see it, every officer in the Empire has their Occupational Specialty, and than also their Cronyism/Corruption Specialty. "Body Guard" and "Captain's Woman" are just two of presumably many positions available.

I know the computer already knows (has always known, apparently - maybe Evil Daystrom's M5 computer actually worked and is running a long game) how to bridge universes, but it's still weird how Kirk is like "we're guaranteed to make it with four! five is an UNCONSCIONABLE risk!," and that Marlena actually goes along with it. It's not as though she wants to be / is going to survive as a rebel leader's wife; staying in this universe really seems like a lose-lose proposition for her. For Spock's sake, one hopes she'd be succeeded by that Romulan from The Enterprise Incident.

VanVelding said...

That's probably no coincidence; Gene Roddenberry has a lot of..."respect" seems like the best word for it, Eastern cultures.

I think Mirror Universe culture and Klingon culture pull from the same bag of "bad guy" tropes. Or maybe Gene Roddenberry was obsessed with the idea that Gene Coon was going to steal the show from him via murder. Who knows?

The thing with Spock's half-humanness probably plays that way. The Enterprise episode which takes place in the mirror universe (pretty good ep, btw) backs up that Vulcans are one of Terra's slave races.

I can see that, kind of a "what can you do for me," specialty.

Marlena does get the shaft in this episode. In a bad way. They wallpaper it, but...yeah. :(

SkilTao said...

Y'know, Marlena getting the short end here is probably what inspired the Enterprise writers to end their ep the way they did.

VanVelding said...

Could be. I did actually see that episode of Enterprise and it was pretty good.

SkilTao said...

Yep yep! Even people who disliked most of Enterprise tend to enjoy that two-parter.