Do you like complex stories with no beginning or end? How about characters that look familiar, but yet you don't know them at all? No? Well how about midriffs? Yes? Well then you're going to love "In A Mirror, Darkly." We start the two-parter with a familiar scene: the Vulcans are making first contact with the humans, and Zephram Cochrane is there to greet them. Except....he pulls out a gun and shoots the Vulcan, and then the mob behind him raids the ship. We then are greeted with an unfamiliar theme song and a new opening sequence. Gone is the awful Rod Stewart song, and in it's place is a dramatic score that nicely accents the violence that we are witnessing on the screen. The accomplishments of humans are no longer moments of peaceful exploration. Instead, they are of war and destruction.
Soon the viewer can piece together that we are in the mirror universe, and these are not our characters. We follow Archer as the main character, and at times we are led to believe that perhaps he is up to something altruistic and this is all going to have a point, but that's not the case. I actually thought for awhile that perhaps he was our Archer, transplanted into a different universe. But, no. Everyone is just evil, whether it's Sato hopping from bed to bed as a captain's woman, or Archer selfishly wanting to boost his career, or a disfigured Trip being somehow even more annoying than ever, or Phlox torturing people and dissecting his pets....there are no good guys.Archer takes over the Enterprise, then loses it, but then ends up taking over the prime universe Defiant when the Tholians cast their web and destroy the Enterprise. With this futuristic ship from another universe, he thinks he'll really become somebody, but those in charge have no intention of giving him his own command. So he kills an admiral. But this is where it gets a little fun, as we get to see the old TOS set, and for some reason the characters even start wearing the old uniforms. But this is also where a for-real Star Trek plot develops, as the oppressed aliens on board begin to plot to sabotage the ship in order to begin a revolution for equality among species. They succeed in poisoning Archer, and the constant turn-coat Sato takes command and declares herself empress of Earth.
If you were waiting for the moment that this ties into the current Enterprise storyline, then you are definitely left disappointed. There is no crossing between universes, and none of the plot has anything to do with our usual universe. For this reason, "In A Mirror, Darkly" is merely Meh. I can't give it a horrible rating, because I appreciate the thought that went into following up with "The Tholian Web" and answering the question of what ever happened to the Defiant. Also I liked seeing the old set. But a 100% mirror universe storyline is just not something that matters to this series. The plot is meaningless, and there's no point in becoming invested in it. This episode is only enjoyable as a complete aside to the series, where it's just fun to see our characters behaving completely differently than we're used to. Oh, and midriffs.Published March 2, 2018
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