WHY WE LIKE IT: Captain Killy and other Mirror Universe stuff.
WHY WE DON'T: A good character wasted.
REVIEW: Wow, didn't take long to do a Mirror Universe story (which will have to be expunged from the public record, I guess), and even less to reprise the "infiltrate the enemy ship to get MacGuffin" plot, at the center of the previous episode. But first things first. The MU. I'm game. It's always a fun bit. Tilly as some kind of battleaxe captain, the return of the Shengzhou, nasty agonizer booths... This is definitely a redesigned MU with a slightly different Terran Empire logo, and the uniforms have an armored quality to them instead of showing more flesh. Makes more sense, and perhaps that will take us away from the DS9 idea that the MU isn't just more evil, it's hornier. (But then there's that final scene, oops!) We're staying for at least two episodes, so more to discover (can they resist showing a Mirror Saru, for example? and they mention the mystery of the Emperor's identity, so that might be a thing, "stay out of the palace"), but the characters act like they're really stranded, modify the ship (that's kind of easy, but fun to see), and Tilly gets to shine by putting on an act. I do think more should have been made of the Mirror Discovery having exchanged placed with them, because it's out there, in our universe, wreaking havoc, presumably.
Oh, and it would seem fans of the theory that Lorca is actually from the Mirror Universe have been disappointed. Sure, you could say MU Lorca is a fugitive, why can't he have run to the Prime Universe? But he really does seem clueless of what's going on. Sorry, guys. He can be from Prime and still be a ruthless son of a bitch; somehow saying that such a character existing in Starfleet requires a quantum moral inversion would have been cheap and gone against Discovery's exploration of whether the ends justify the means. And for Prime fans who somehow want Discovery to be neither Kelvin nor Prime because of the redesigns, well, this story explicitly ties into the MU seen in Enterprise, with the MacGuffin the time-and-dimension-displaced Defiant from TOS' The Tholian Web so it's pretty unlikely. Then again, you've got glib talk about the power of destiny affecting all universes similarly, so by all means, chalk up any continuity references to fate and consider all discontinuities proof we're in mutually exclusive timelines.
Anyway, we already have a mole in the cast, in Tyler, who is creeping ever closer to being awakened and turning back into Voq. An interesting twist on the sleeper agent trope is that he is desperate NOT to lose his Tyler identity, presumably because he's in love with Burnham. Going forward, what we may have in Tyler is not a villain in disguise (like Seska), but a core character with a strange back story, perhaps access to Klingon skills and info, etc. (like Dax), possibly played as PTSD. That's if we can forgive him for the murder of Dr. Culber, which I have to say, doesn't look too good for the show. Beyond the terrible cliché of snapping a guy's neck, which I find ridiculous and annoying, they just killed one half of a gay couple, a dynamic as yet unexplored on Star Trek. It's shocking, sure, but the optics leave a bad taste in one's mouth. Also: Is sickbay severely understaffed? Of course, with the temporally transcendent Stammets in the mix, it could be undone. A Mirror Culber might even make an appearance, who knows.
Burnham is still the main character, shows her skill at anthropology by quickly understanding the Terran Empire's psyche, getting a good - and for her, emotionally harrowing - fight to the death inside a turbolift, but will she ultimately be more at risk from Tyler/Voq, a possible blind spot? He's much creepier now that he's killed someone to cover up his secret (though he may not remember the event, he was triggered by his programming). Though there's tension there, it does resolve into a weak cliffhanger as Lorca is tortured (voluntarily, in a sense) while Burham and Tyler... have sex? Isn't time of the essence, especially while one of your group is literally in agony?
LESSON: Always set a little time away for lovin'.
REWATCHABILITY - A touch above Medium: The Mirror Universe's cool factor is mitigated by the familiarity of certain plot points and tropes.
Comments
(Finally, after months of frustration, I can comment as myself and not use the Anon function.)
Were this still the days of the ST CCG, I would want as many MU versions of characters as possible :)