WHY WE LIKE IT: A proper goodbye for the deceased. More Mirror coolness.
WHY WE DON'T: One impostor and one Star Wars reference too many.
REVIEW: If the previous episode was about facing the person in the mirror, one's own dark self, then Vaulting Ambition is about facing one's ghosts. And the Mirror Universe allows for that by resurrecting dead Primes. Strong on theme, it's not the only way it does so, however. Stammets, for example, finds himself inside the mycelial network - using the old tired chestnut of showing a person's mind as empty ship sets - where he not only finds the Mirror Stammets responsible for his visions and the "corruption" his amoral experiments have caused the network, but Hugh Culber as well. Or like the ship, a memory of Hugh from his own mind. And though Culber was killed rather unceremoniously by Voq-Tyler, here the two can say proper farewells, and his departure is more satisfying dramatically. Of course, he also used as a mouthpiece for the network so it can drop exposition that essentially introduces the Force to the Star Trek universe. But this version of the life-unifying Force has been infected with something, which could end up killing all life in the multiverse. Gives the guys on Discovery something to do while Burnham has her A-plot adventure.
Of course, they also have Voq-Tyler to deal with, a man at war with himself, trying to claw his way out of his human body. He's Schrödinger's ghost, in a sense, either lost to the crew (if he is Tyler) or to L'Rell (if he is Voq). The way L'Rell describes the operation, it really sounds like he's a composite of two people, not simply a modification of a single individual. That opens the possibilities up to recovering either or both to be continuing characters, but once she's involved in saving him, it only seems to be from a psychological point of view. Is she recovering the Voq personality, or reestablishing Tyler's? Are they mutually exclusive now? Why does she let out a Klingon Death Yell unless Voq is erased from this matrix? Or would a merged personality create a new person that is not her Voq? It's certainly intriguing.
Burnham's ghost actually IS a Mirror Universe version of a dead character. Philippa Georgiou is the Emperor in this reality (yay! more Michelle Yeoh!) and it's interesting to see how their relationship is the same and yet different. It seems here that history is wildly divergent in the facts, but not in their thematic underpinnings. Georgiou and Lorca were apparently Burnham's parental figures, just as they are in the Prime Universe, but absent any involvement from Sarek, this is more literal. Sins of the Mirror follow her - she's Brutus to Georgiou's Caesar - so she has to tell the Emperor everything to save her life (but not before she's forced to eat Kelpien meat - the Terran Empire as cannibals I can stomach, but the idea that our heroine has to eat a guy that looks a lot like Saru makes me queasy). Georgiou needed to be the Emperor because the only way continuity really works is if the cover-up is right at the top. If only Georgiou knows about the Prime Universe and Defiant, no retcons are needed to accept TOS' Mirror, Mirror as is. But then there's the revelation that Mirror humans are more sensitive to life than Prime humans, and no, no, that doesn't fit established continuity.
So here they lose the plot a little bit. Cue flashback to every "clue" that Lorca has been from the Mirror Universe all along, and while this has been a fan theory almost since the beginning, I can't say I like it. The clues, such as they are, have always seemed thin to me. He wants Burnham on his crew, but he can't say why. The ship's jumps coincidentally mapped possible entrances into another universe. And his amorality, of course. And there lies the problem for me. I think it's more interesting that a Starfleet officer has gone off the rails with his pragmatic "ends justify the means" philosophy, than have him be a product of an amoral, villainous culture. It's an ethical deus ex machina meant to pacify the fans who scream "THIS ISN'T STAR TREK!!!" because one character does not pursue the right ideals. It takes the stuffing out of his betrayal of Admiral Cornwell at the very least, and also forces us to believe in an improbable grand manipulation of Burnham and a deception that's meant to confound the audience as much as anyone. It seems VERY complicated and contrived. And because it is contrived, he must show his hand just as Burnham figures it out.
LESSON: Fan theories are the devil.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: Despite my dislike of that final revelation, there's still a lot of cool, crazy plotting going on, and the sting of Culber's death is soothed by his coda.
Comments
So both of the straight male human main characters are not what they appeared to be. It's a bold choice in storylines, and I can work with it so long as they play it out in a good way. We'll see...