On the Origins of the Mirror Universe

[RookieBatman]

I was thinking today about the MU, and my thoughts drifted to what might've been the point where Schrodinger's cat lived or died to cause the formation of this parallel universe, and I have a theory which you might find amusing.
First, let me say that I can't quite remember all the symbology of the MU theme sequence in IAMD, so I'm just going to ignore that episode for the purposes of this argument.
Now, it's being discussed in another thread here how the MU seems a lot like a Nazi version of Starfleet. So, basically, my theory is this: what if Edith Keeler surviving (which, as we all know, had a ripple effect that ended with the Nazis winning the war) was the event that caused the MU? In one version of the "City..." script, Harlan Ellison even had an element where some of the crew beamed back to the Enterprise after McCoy (or it might've been Beckwith at the time) went back in time, and the Enterprise crew had changed to a group of space pirates. Not entirely the same as the MU, but in short, Harlan therein postulated (even though that scene was added from some network pressure for more action) that after history was changed, the Enterprise would still be there, but its crew changed to a more belligerent, unruly group. Thus, my new pet theory is that in one quantum reality, Edith Keeler wasn't hit by that truck (whether she was saved by McCoy or just didn't happen to be there at that moment), the Nazis won the war, and the Nazi-dominated Earth gradually grew in to the Empire that we know and love. Possible? Laughable? Discuss.

 

[species5618]

I actually was thinking of starting a thread on this very topic--where exactly is the divergence between our universe and the MU? Has it ever been definitively explained? We know that had Edith Keeler lived, the Nazis would have won WW2 and conquered the world. What hasn't been explained (to my knowledge) is whether this event lead to the Terran Empire being formed from some sort of global Nazi government.

However, the preponderance of non-Aryans in the Terran Empire in important positions lead me to conclude this probably wasn't the case. If the Nazis had taken over the world, I'd figure the non-Aryan races would either be killed, enslaved, or a little from column 'A' and a little from column 'B.' Or perhaps the Nazis mellowed and figured non-Aryans were okay to help them take over the galaxy...

Anyway, it's late, hopefully others will have more cogent responses than mine tomorrow.

 

[RookieBatman]

Yeah, there was probably still some resistance that caused the Nazis to be ruling the whole world, but not able to exterminate all non-Aryans. Then, in the 300 years hence, Hitler died and the entity that gradually morphed into the Empire slowly tolerated and then accepted other races. It could happen; a whole lot can happen in 300 years.

 

[sbk1234]

I think it would be ironic if it was something much less dramatic, and more mundane that caused it. For example, in 1849, two boys were skipping stones in a pond in Pennsylvania, near Allentown. One of them accidentally hit a mosquito, which died instantly and sunk in the pond. Had the mosquito not died just then, a bird would have eaten that mosquito, and set a whole different series of events in motion which would have led to the Mirror Universe.
Just a thought.

 

[RookieBatman]

sbk1234 said:
I think it would be ironic if it was something much less dramatic, and more mundane that caused it. For example, in 1849, two boys were skipping stones in a pond in Pennsylvania, near Allentown. One of them accidentally hit a mosquito, which died instantly and sunk in the pond. Had the mosquito not died just then, a bird would have eaten that mosquito, and set a whole different series of events in motion which would have led to the Mirror Universe.
Just a thought.

But that's not easily explicable in macro-socialogical terms.
And besides, the diehard (and bored) Trekkie's tendecy is whenever there's a loose end, to tie it to something else in Trek, just like the little blond lab technician being Carol Marcus. That it fits is just icing on the cake of our rampant Trek obsession.
The key is, it's all in fun. I don't believe there actually is a mirror universe, and if someone has a different theory about how it came to be, I'm not gonna beat them up.

 

[Timo]

Oh, I'll risk it, then...

I don't think there is any sort of a divergence point for any of the mirror universes we have seen. Rather, there is a different basic premise to those universes, a slightly different set of laws of physics. The various MUs (which are subtly different from episode to episode) do not explore the "What if X had happened?". Instead, they simply explore the far more interesting question of "What if everybody was evil and lesbian?".

Mirror universes where everybody is evil and lesbian are infinite in number, in the exact same manner that regular universes where everybody is heroic and straight are. So it's always possible to pick a MU that corresponds to the RU so that the same/related characters are at the same place at the same time.

It is then theoretically possible to work back from that point of intersection and seek for the divergence point where the evil lesbianism of the MU folks caused things to go differently. Say, the moment when Cochrane had an itchy trigger finger for "IaMD", or some other moment for the other MUs. But that's not a "real" divergence point, because everybody in that MU was evil and lesbian even before that point. No doubt, before Cochrane fired his shotgun at the Vulcans, he had already killed Hawking's Head in a duel for the secret of warp drive, befriended and then backstabbed Emperor Gabriel I of San Francisco in order to get funding, and made a pact where General JS Christopher's rebellious cohorts would conquer Montana for the site of Cochrane's experiments.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[sbk1234]

^^^^I was going to say that!

 

[Plum]

Oh, and there's that universe that's made up entirely of shrimp.

 

[doctorwho 03]

More fuel for the fire. This is my theory, and keep in mind I've only seen the ENT and TOS MU episodes and never saw the DS9 episodes, plus I only count tv episodes as part of the true canon.

My theory is for every good, there is an evil. An equal and an opposite. A superhero and a supervillan. You get the idea. Anyway, when everything first began bagillion years ago, two of who knows how many of the parralel universes became polar opposites of each other; the Star Trek universe we all know and love and the Mirror Universe we all know and love. This MU follows a similar yet opposite historical path to the ST universe; for instance, the South wins the civil war and slavery becomes a commom occurance in America well into the 23rd Century, the British win the American Revolution, the Soviet Union wins the Space Race by landing a man on the moon, Osama Bin Laden was found in the first month after the 9/11 attacks, etc.

What I'm saying is there is only one real universe and one mirror universe, and all the parralel universes are derived from them. Good and evil, working together to keep creation flowing.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

Darn, I thought this was going to be a "real world" question. I came in prepared to tell how Jerome Bixby, while casting about for ideas to submit, remembered his 1953 short story One Way Street, which involved a guy bouncing from alternate universe to alternate universe (each just slightly different than the last), before finally making it home... only to realize he isn't in his universe when he notes a very very small detail that is totally skewed from what it was in his original universe.

Was gonna say that, but since this is an "in universe" question, I won't...

Sir Rhosis

 

[Plum]

^^^
Oh, do tell. It's on topic right?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yeah I've heard the Keeler Hypothesis before and it's a fun one and makes sense, so I'll go with it.

What hasn't been explained (to my knowledge) is whether this event lead to the Terran Empire being formed from some sort of global Nazi government.

However, the preponderance of non-Aryans in the Terran Empire in important positions lead me to conclude this probably wasn't the case

My theory is that the Nazis did take over, but eventually the American part of the global fascist empire rose to ascendancy just due to greater natural resources and dynamism, and the empire evolved away from its racist ideology, which was too much of a straightjacket, and more towards a more American concept of laissez-faire everything and unchecked hedonism, ambition and greed. The MU logo shows the Western Hemisphere, there's your clue who's the boss.

The people who didn't give a flip about ideology had an advantage over those who were stuck in old ways of thinking, so the non-ideologues took over and pushed the empire into space. It was social Darwinism at its finest. In the end, racist ideology is simply not as pragmatic as making full use of all your human resources, whatever their skin color, and motivating them by giving them the possibility of rising in rank, even if it is at the point of a stiletto.

The thing that strikes me about the MU is how functional it is - it motivates people to work for the Empire. It's not some depressing, drab communist or fascist state that is repressing people's natural impulses and making them bitter, surly and likely to rebel. The MU gang seemed to be having fun. And that makes the MU scary - it seems like something that could last, rather than destroy itself from within, or at least not quite as quickly as the totalitarian states we are familiar with, who in the end were their own worst enemies.

 

[Sec31Mike]

I think it goes all the way back to the garden where Adam picked the apple for Eve. Perhaps in the MU Adam ate the apple himself and that's when everything got reversed.

 

[Unicron]

I think it's one possibility. The origin given in the Mirror Universe Saga is very similar - after the Romulans had occupied the mirror Earth for about a decade, they were finally ousted by an organized resistance. But the resistance didn't simply disappear once they won the fight. They wanted to make sure that Earth would never be conquered again, and thus the political party arose that created the Empire. There are definite parallels to the rise of Nazism in Germany.

It would also not be unlike the alternate reality in "Parallels" where the Bajorans had overcome the Cardassians and became even more aggressive, even fighting the Federation.

 

[EnsignHarper]

Then there is Diane Duanes unofficial Dark Mirror, which flat out states the MU is literally rotten to the core - Picard is horrified at the changes and brutalization of Shakespeare...and not wanting to read The Bible at all!

This is supported by Spock's assertion at the end of Mirror Mirror, where he flat out states that the MU counterparts of the landing party were easy to detect, because where the 'real' landing party had a violent, brutal past to fall back on, the MU people had no humanity to fall back on...that and the fact the mirror Kirk probably got on the intercom, and told Sulu to program the phaser barrage on Halka!

The MU probably operated on some sort of different quantum reality - just as all the parallel Enterprise-Ds did in 'Parallels' - in fact, that was one different reality they should have shown - a MU Enterprise-D....trying to blast all the OTHER Ent-Ds.....

 

[Unicron]

Interestingly enough, the MUS actually shows that to not be the case. Many humans are indeed as barbaric as Spock described, but they're not all evil. David Marcus' counterpart didn't seem too different from his counterpart (aside from not being killed) and was alienated from his father. He was one of the leaders of a resistance movement against the Imperial government, along with Marlena Moreau.

I'll admit I like that better, since it gives some depth to the MU.

 

[Gojirob]

I wrote a MM-based fic called 'Transfer, Transfer', in which four MASH characters return from a trip to find the 4077th has become a death camp. But while the Nazi flag does fly over it, the Padre manages to reason out what really happened :

In this world, when Hitler's 1923 putsch failed, he was banished from both Germany and Austria, and no European country would take him. Emigrating to America, he allied with the Klan and other extreme nativist groups to build his party. In 1930, the Depression found the Nazis ready to make use of the Depression, and were voted into a majority in Congress. Changing the Constitution to allow non-natives to be President, Hitler was elected in 1932. Things went downhill from there.

 

[MANT!]

I always thought the Terran Empire 'evolved' from an American one..with the possibility of George Washington being much more self centered , interested in power and conquest, becoming a dictator instead of a President...


The founding of the USA could have been rather different if those revolutionaries were less "enlightened"

 

[Neopeius]

I don't think the Mirror Universe can have a separate existence from our universe. The parallels are too close. The coincidences are too great. I think somehow information leaks from one to the other, defining events. Perhaps the Mirror Universe didn't even exist until our party beamed over there, sort of a macroscale Enemy Within.

 

[Squiggy]

Plum said:
Oh, and there's that universe that's made up entirely of shrimp.

Don't forget the one where everyone is a hippie.