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Discuss this article by @Thande here
a computer system succeeding the original which has erased all creativity from the people and periodically turns their darker impulses loose in a ‘Festival’ of sex and violence.
@Thande Regarding the issues with the Mirror Universe, I'm curious whether you single out any of the (non-canon, I presume?) books set in that universe as being esp. terrible. I'm all too familiar with the "Shatnerverse" ones (liked them in my early teens, decidedly less now), but there are a few (brought up in this thread) which I'm somewhat tempted by, if only for the sake of "how bad are they?"
Dark Mirror, by Diane Duane, is 1) decidedly non-canon now but 2) actually good, fwiw.
The premise is that Mirror!Spock did try to reform the Empire, and initially had some modest success, but the inertia of the system was just too strong and he ended up getting disappeared. 80-90 years later, the Empire, having run out of systems to conquer (as this was before the size and shape of the Federation was established on screen, Duane limited all of Trek known space to an vastly detached branch of the Orion Arm) stealth-invaded the main timeline.
Yep, I'd heard about this one and was (morbidly) intrigued; didn't know about the Orion Arm aspect, though.
I actually think almost all of the spinoff media attempts at the mirror universe are better than anything that appeared on screen since they decided to bring it back in DS9 - but that's not saying much. I cover the first attempt at mirror universe spinoff media, in DC Comics, in a later article. I've not read "Dark Mirror" but I may do for the sake of this series.@Thande Regarding the issues with the Mirror Universe, I'm curious whether you single out any of the (non-canon, I presume?) books set in that universe as being esp. terrible. I'm all too familiar with the "Shatnerverse" ones (liked them in my early teens, decidedly less now), but there are a few (brought up in this thread) which I'm somewhat tempted by, if only for the sake of "how bad are they?"
Not come across that theory before, but makes a certain amount of sense.Regarding "The City on the Edge of Forever", I seem to recall reading that the Vietnam antiwar movement was a big influence on how Keeler's character/views were written, with the attitude of "right ideas, wrong time," which seems (somewhat, at least to me) like it could be a backhanded compliment or subtle rebuke--or prophetic, considering how rapidly the movement would grow in the following two years. What do you think?
The dark joke about the 90s and what wars we noticed makes me imagine a story that says the Eugenic Wars were completely public but were happening in the developing world, so 90s America, Western Europe, Japan etc went "oh that's a shame, oh well what's on TV" while the Free Mumbai Army make their last stand against Khan's legions.
Duane's Dark Mirror has a nice scene where Picard reads through Mirror-Picard's library and seems subtle differences in old literature & plays that just keep growing and growing and growing - instead of a single POD, there's growing rot.