I've seen a lot of people talking about how they want Star Trek 4 to introduce the Mirrorverse and… wow, do I hate everything about that idea. Actually, I think this fandom really needs to re-evaluate the way we deal with the mirrorverse, because frankly Trekkies have been dropping the ball here.

First of all, I see a lot of posts about the mirrorverse that are literally just TOS characters thinking about murder, or aesthetic posts of TOS characters with knives and blood or something. I think what a lot of people fail to understand is that done wrong, mirrorverse is not that interesting of a concept. It is not engaging, nor creative for the heroes to all be uniformly bad people. The dark reflection has to actually say something to be engaging.

The main point of TOS was optimism about the future, a world where humanity has overcome its' greatest vices, and while we still struggle with our demons, we are overcoming them daily. In some ways, mirrorverse is just… the evil Superman trope. Wouldn't it be cool if the good guys were… (best cartoon bad guy voice) EEEEEVIL?

Mirrorverse was a great concept for a single episode of a show, but I cannot express in words my lack of interest in an entire movie centered around EEEVIL Kirk/Spock/McCoy being EEEVIL and eDgY.

That being said, the mirrorverse does have some interesting things to say about each of our Big Three, and I think that doesn't get nearly enough appreciation. Also, there is one, exactly one story I would really like to see in Mirrorverse that would really get the point of Star Trek despite being very dark, and I shall therefore present my argument hereafter.

First of all, we need to understand the MU triumvirate - what kind of people are they, what do they want and what do they say about their normal counterparts.

Part 1 - James T Kirk

First things first… Mirrorverse Kirk is a monster.

Frankly, we don't get very much on MU Kirk, but I don't think we really need to. MU Kirk is the only one of the three who I would say is actually a monster. We are never given anything to humanize him, or to make us empathize with him at all. MU Kirk is actually just a power-hungry sadist and psychopath who feels no empathy, no remorse and would happily burn down the galaxy around him.

The ISS Enterprise is the perfect place for a man like he, because it gives him power, authority, the ability to terrorize others, and a position from which he can move up in his further bids for power.

By himself, MU Kirk is not that interesting of an individual. I'm sure there are all kinds of plotlines you could draw with his experience on Tarsus IV - no supply ships come so he spends years barely surviving on Tarsus IV, no supply ships come so he eventually leads a revolt and kills Kodos, or maybe he was actually an enforcer for Kodos the whole time - but frankly, however interesting his backstory might be, his final form is uninteresting.

However, I do love the idea that MU Kirk would be such an irredeemably bad person, because normal Kirk spends a lot of time talking about overcoming the dark side of humanity. For example his speech in a Taste of Armageddon - 'We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill today', and so on. Kirk talks a lot about how humanity will never be free of its' dark side, and how we will always have our demons to fight, but through civilization and effort we can rise above that darkness.

The idea that Kirk could easily have become the greatest monster in the galaxy, but instead chose to become a hero who cares more about others than himself is very inspiring. I like the idea that Kirk makes the choice to be a good person every day, and that he never had to make that choice. He could have been a monster, but he has tamed his demons and become a hero instead.

Part 2 - Spock

Mirrorverse Spock is a hypocrite.

In some ways, we know the most about MU Spock, and in other ways we know the least. He is the only MU member of the Triumvirate to get a lot of screentime, but he doesn't exactly talk much about his feelings, for obvious reasons.

Part of what makes MU Spock so interesting is what we don't know about him. Unlike with Kirk and McCoy, there are aspects of his backstory which are very difficult to infer. For example: why is he even on the ISS Enterprise? Kirk seems fairly obvious, and McCoy seems easy to figure out (I know we haven't gotten to him yet, so you'll have to take my word on it for now) but Spock is a conundrum.

He still ascribes to a philosophy of logic, and while he certainly doesn't shy away from torture, he doesn't seem to enjoy it, either. Of course, given that this is Spock we're talking about, this can be difficult to tell. None of this, however, tells us why Spock is on the ISS Enterprise. Is he there for the science? Is he working on a long-term bid for power? Is becoming an integral part of the empire a form of self-defense in something called the Terran Empire?

Whatever the case, Kirk's last conversation with MU Spock proves very enlightening. Kirk argues that logically, Spock shouldn't be supporting the Empire, and Spock agrees with him. Frankly, however, there's no way Spock wouldn't have thought of something like this sooner.

It's impossible that Spock looked at a system built on genocide, backstabbing and conquest, filled with ships of people broken into divided alliances and superior officers in constant danger of assassination and thought: "Yeah this seems logical to me. I can participate in this system with no logical qualms whatsoever."

Despite this, Spock participates in the system without protesting, which leads me to my conclusion: MU Spock is a hypocrite.

He is a hypocrite because he claims to be a logical being, whose actions are only determined by logic, and yet he still participates fully in an illogical system without protesting or trying to change anything, probably in an attempt at self-defense. After all, if Spock challenges the status quo, he could be in a lot of danger.

This mirrors (hah) normal Spock well, because hypocrisy is one of Spock's greatest struggles. He's constantly pretending to be motivated by nothing but logic, even when he's actually making decisions based on emotion. For example, in The Menagerie, he commits treason, mutiny, kidnapping, risks the death penalty and steals a starship for no other reason than to give his former captain a chance at happiness. Despite this, he 'believe(s) (he) has been entirely logical about the whole affair'.

Spock is in a constant battle to find a balance between logic and emotion, and anytime the balance tips toward emotion, he sees that as a failure of himself as a Vulcan. If he admits to emotion, then he will be a Bad Vulcan, which he is terrified of being because of his traumatizing childhood that gave him internalized racism towards his entire human half.

Ironically, of all the triumvirate, Spock is the closest to his mirrorverse counterpart because he is the weakest to his particular vice. Kirk and McCoy consistently overcome their inner demons with far more success than Spock does (mostly because the show doesn't care about anyone's longstanding internal conflict as much as Spock's), but it takes Spock a very long time to make peace with himself.

In the end, Spock will come to find a balance where logic is no longer the end-all be-all of the world. Quoth the Vulcan: "Logic, logic, logic… logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end" (The Final Frontier). Eventually, Spock will find a place where he can be honest with himself and with everyone else. If Vulcans don't like the place he's found for faith and hope… too bad. If humans can't stand his logic… too bad for them too. He's at peace with himself, and that's all he needs.

In both universes, it is hard for Spock to live up to the standards he sets for himself, and harder still for him to be honest about his own values and beliefs. Hopefully MU Spock winds up finding the peace Spock Prime did.

Part 3 - McCoy

Mirrorverse McCoy is a coward.

I think MU McCoy is probably the most misunderstood aspect of the entire mirrorverse. Everywhere I go, I see drabbles that say- "Leonard McCoy used to know compassion and empathy… but that was all drained out of him by the empire. Now he's a cold-blooded killer and torturer… just ask why they call him BONES. He tears people apart without an ounce of remorse, murdered the man who tried to steal his wife, and now he's the greatest sadist in the Empire.

This interpretation, to be frank, sucks.

While we don't see or hear much about MU McCoy, I think he is actually one of the most critical elements to our understanding of the mirrorverse. First of all, MU Spock tells Kirk that McCoy "has a plenitude of human weaknesses; sentimental, soft. You may not tell me what I want to know, but he will".

This is an extremely telling sentence. First of all, this has widereaching repercussions for our understanding of the entire mirrorverse. The first time I was watching Mirror Mirror, I assumed that this was just… the bad universe. The universe where everyone was evil. Everyone is the opposite of what they are in the good universe. It's in their nature.

This line, however, implies that the difference is actually nurture. MU McCoy never lost his innate compassion and empathy… it's still there. It was always there. None of these people were born differently than in the main timeline… this is who our heroes actually would have been if they had been raised in another world. And that difference makes the mirrorverse so much more meaningful and interesting.

Now, let us ask ourselves a question. Why is MU McCoy even on the ISS Enterprise? The first step in answering this is probably: why is normal McCoy on the Enterprise? Well, he doesn't like space, doesn't like violence, doesn't like when people get hurt and doesn't like when they're in danger. All of this adds up to most of space.

The main reasons normal McCoy is on the Enterprise probably boil down to scientific discovery and the power of friendship (I'll probably expand on this in another chapter), and frankly I don't see any reason for MU McCoy to want to be in space any more than normal McCoy. MU Bones definitely isn't in space for the power of friendship - his compassionate nature wouldn't let him be close with the sadists on the Enterprise and from Spock's initial leaning toward torturing information out of him clearly they aren't close either - and I don't think he'd be into scientific discovery enough to put up with the Empire of his own violation.

Therefore, I believe that the reason McCoy is even on the ISS Enterprise is because he was too good at his job as a doctor, and he got drafted. He just couldn't keep himself from helping as many people as he could as well as he could, and therefore he popped up on the Empire's radar. Off he goes into space under threat of torture and death if he doesn't comply.

This leads me to conclude - Mirrorverse McCoy is a coward. We know from MU Spock that he still has something of a moral compass, but he still works for the Empire. This is a man out of control of his own life. Normal McCoy describes the sickbay as a 'chamber of horrors' and describes his assistants betting on how long patients would take to pass out from pain. This does not sound like something someone who is 'sentimental and soft', even by Mirrorverse standards, would enjoy, leading me to believe that Mirror McCoy doesn't even have control of his own sickbay.

Everyone knows he doesn't have the stomach to play the assassination game, which makes him extremely valuable as a doctor who isn't going to kill you. Therefore, of course, Kirk would never let him leave, and anyone who might consider killing him off would have to face Kirk's wrath. McCoy never lost his conscience, but he did learn to ignore it as much as he could; to scrape by doing the bare minimum. He may not torture patients himself, but he won't stop his assistants from doing whatever they want.

This is a great parallel to normal McCoy. See, Bones may be one of the most nervous, anxiety ridden protagonists Star Trek has given us yet, certainly from the original series. He's scared of space, transporters, the unknown, his friends being in danger - you name it, it freaks him out. That being said, McCoy is also one of the bravest people in Star Trek. No matter how scared he is, or how much he doesn't want to do something, the second he decides it's the right thing to do… it's a done deal.

He'll face down murderers to save his friends, throw himself in the transporter, expose himself to dangerous viruses, untested vaccines or angry aliens if he thinks his friends need him. And he'd do all of that if it was what he thought was right. Because McCoy may be scared, but that is always less important than doing the right thing, no matter what, and protecting his friends, regardless of what that means for him. As he said in Search for Spock "I choose the danger", and he chooses that danger every day without blinking an eye.

So what's the point?

Now that we've spent an unreasonable amount of time on character studies, what is this great plot that we can make out of the mirrorverse? Well, at the end of Mirror Mirror, the only MU character to see the light of good is MU Spock, and the way this happens is through Kirk's appeal to logic. Mirror McCoy, the only other person to be given any humanizing material, is ultimately lumped in with the other displaced MU crewman as one of the 'savages'.

The implication behind this narrative choice is that if we lived in a world where society was completely corrupt, the only way to realize something is wrong and be willing to inspire change is an appeal to logic, not to the 'better side' of humanity, or an emotional appeal.

This is… odd for Star Trek.

Star Trek was big into secular humanism, and the idea that the humanity of individuals would not be enough to help inspire change against widespread evil seems… incomplete for them.

So if Spock is rebelling against the status quo via logic, then whoever could bring the emotional side of the equation? Hmmmmmmmmm….

Oh, I've got an idea.

So clearly MU McCoy needs to be the emotional appeal to morality and once you work that out… baby, you got a whole plot cooking.

So in this idea, Spock would recruit McCoy to his side after the MU crew got back to their normal universe. Maybe he does this because of his mind-meld with McCoy, where he was able to see both McCoy's specific inner strength and the strength that is more generally possible from someone with the positive attributes Spock dismissed previously.

After teaming up, Spock and McCoy have to find a way to both overthrow the Empire, and to work out what morality even is on a daily basis. Spock is working at it from a point of logic, but since the systems around them are corrupt, logical self-preservation would corrupt his view of morality by making him avoid causing too much of a splash and err toward evil.

McCoy, meanwhile, has his innate moral compass, but since he's grown up in a ridiculously corrupt world, that compass has been banged up and twisted a bit, and his emotions have been tainted just by being in the world around him.

Between the two of them they have to figure out how to be good men, and they go on many adventures where they have to figure out what the practical thing to do is, as well as the moral thing. Think Zuko Alone, but with two people. And in an episodic TV show/comic book format.

Of course, the whole time this is going on, Kirk is the boogyman in the background, making his bid to be the emperor of the empire and kill them both once he learns of their betrayal.

Now that is a plotline I could get behind for Mirrorverse, but it would require a long form kind of media (like a TV show or comic book) and a movie… just wouldn't have the time needed to work out all the details.