The Emperor's New Cloak

DVD, DS9 S7 (The Emperor's New Cloak) (2)

Three years had passed since most of the actors had portrayed the alternate versions of their characters, the Mirror Universe (always referred to in this episode as the 'Alternate Universe') created by Jerome Bixby for 'TOS' (this episode dedicated to him as he'd died the year this was made), ignored during Season 5, the last dealings with that sadistic, brutal parallel form to the one we know so well occurred on our side of the border when Intendant Kira and the Mirror Bareil visited for a rather different take on the concept in Season 6. So this was the series' last approach into that land which the Ferengi learn is best avoided - The Avoided Country rather than the The Undiscovered one. The last of 'DS9' and the last chronologically to date, since 'Voyager' never explored it (except in spirit with the EMH's fictionalised version of his crewmates in 'Author, Author,' or the future imagining of how history might have been remembered by an alien race in 'Living Witness'), and 'Enterprise,' set before even the first encounter our world had with the MU, showed that even in those early days it had deviated vastly from the Trek Universe we know and love. 'Discovery' apparently features the MU significantly, despite still being before Starfleet's first contact with it, so it'll be interesting to see how that pans out, most likely set entirely within the constraints of that reality, like the 'Enterprise' two-parter, unless they want to bend canon to breaking point, or possibly a secret visit that neither side kept records of.

I digress, for the history of the MU is not the question, but its final appearance in the timeline so far. When I thought about it, the way the actors were able to slip back into the selfish extremes of their alternate compatriots impressed me, especially as some had only had one previous outing (Regent Worf joined the fray in Season 4's 'Shattered Mirror'), while others had been there from the opening visit of 'Crossover' (Intendant Kira looks ever more different to our own Nerys thanks to the Colonel's beautification this season with a more loose hairstyle hanging over her face, while the Intendant continues to sport the short-cropped mean look she's always had), and still others made their debut and finale all in the one episode. These characters most impress upon the memory, with Brunt a capable hero and considerate friend, brave, moral and a skilled engineer and accomplished cook, so far from the slimy, bullying, coward of our universe. And Vic Fontaine is a real flesh and blood man of the evil Klingon-Cardassian Alliance which makes absolutely no sense. He should have been with the rebellion! I jest, for of course the fact he's not a hologram and yet has the same name and face as one created for an entertainment program is totally ridiculous and bends the rules of canon to breaking point - even if Vic were based on a real person he'd have been dead for centuries. But then that's the point of the MU, the desire to portray the Trek world in reverse to its usual good sense, careful scientific theory and thoughtful character development (which makes me think is the reason 'DSC' used it, by many accounts, as that series itself sounds more MU than Prime!).

The downside of this gay abandon to all sense and rules (well, not all the rules, they still have the same laws of physics, warp drive, etc, seemingly), is that while it can be fun, it also has little satisfaction unless the events are meaningful for characters from our side of the universal divide. In the past this has meant Sisko (or son Jake)'s connection to the Mirror counterpart of his deceased wife, Jennifer, something that made 'Through The Looking Glass' the best of every iteration of the MU I've seen, because it had real consequences. The point of the MU in general is to do whatever you want and have no consequences (which is why so many feel the 'Kelvin Timeline' as it's now known, the alternate reality of the recent trilogy of films, wears too thin, too quickly, a mere shadow for the Trek of old, too soon to develop bonds with imposters, flaky incarnations of people we've known so well for so long), which sounds like a recipe for a fun outing, and can be, but also can end up as little more than a cartoon. The idea of constraint breeding creativity proving so true, so often, that the petulant, entirely self-serving tyrannical versions of the characters have so little merit or attraction. I'm with Andrew Robinson, who found Mirror Garak a bit of a bore to play since there was nothing to him, but a cartoonish sadist (Hobbies: KILL! KILL! KILL! And when he's not KILL!ing he likes to dabble in a spot of torture), so far from the subtle, subtext-riddled isheaspyorisn'the? of our own glorious Garak.

The actors seem to have fun, Regent Worf constantly having tantrums whenever things don't go exactly as he wants, completely dishonourable at every turn, and flying into a rage where he pulls apart his own command chair and flings it across the deck. Perhaps the fault is in the writing with this episode, that there's isn't a lot to grasp onto, apart from the literal grasping of the Ferengi, though for once in altruistic mode, as they carry the fritzing cloaked cloak of Martok's Bird of Prey through the station's corridors for the delectation of Mirror Ezri in the hope of securing Grand Nagus Zek's release from Mirror captivity. That was an excellent sequence, and the fact that the actors practiced dutifully to pull it off to a high standard shows how seriously they took their work, however comedic it was often flavoured. It's clear that the writers, as with so many stories in the first half of this season, wanted to have fun with a concept one last time, almost as if they didn't want to do too much war-related writing so as to leave the majority of the larger picture for the final third of the season when it would become an actual serial in order to wrap everything up. So they were enjoying themselves and being much more experimental. Not all experiments work wholeheartedly - real life Vic worked brilliantly as a flash in the pan, a surprise out of nowhere that served to remind us that in the MU anything can happen at any time, just as we first learned when Mirror Odo was splattered in 'Crossover,' or a Ferengi was murdered in each of the 'DS9' native MU instalments.

That's just it, the formula of the MU is all present and correct: a Ferengi is mercilessly killed; the same red-hued Transporter device developed by Smiley O'Brien, is used to travel between the universes; Regent Worf flies around in his outsized Klingon vessel; Intendant Kira slinks about like a Slinky; even what I took to be Dennis Madalone's Marauder was seen again, last known to be knocked unconscious by a metal tray from the hand of Mirror Nog. At least I think the scar-faced mercenary type that enters Terok Nor's Cargo Bay with Captain O'Brien and Bashir, was the Marauder, but he didn't get much exposure. So the elements are there, but as with 'Shattered Mirror,' it seemed to me to be all window dressing. At least in that one a few new elements were added thanks to Michael Dorn's addition to the cast since the previous visit to the MU. This time we have Mirror Ezri at the heart of the action, along with her good friend Brunt. Brunt, as I noted before, was strikingly different, and a character you wanted to cheer on, but Ezri… Yes, she was very different to our kind, caring, compassionate and self-doubting Counsellor, with her spiky hair and black motorbike leathers, but like the other MU characters she seemed very two-dimensional, even despite having an awakening of conscience (who'd have thought Quark would have ever become the kind of person to offer to help her work on her conscience, even if it was said partly in jest as an excuse to spend more time with her).

I can see where the germs of the established characters' growth was meant to come from: Quark has been infatuated with Ezri ever since he first saw her, and while Jadzia was more real to him because she loved spending time with Ferengi and playing their games, Ezri has remained something far-off, falling into the clutches of Bashir since they spend so much time together. So this episode was working off the back of that running theme for Quark this season, it's just sad that that was the best the Ferengi got in terms of ongoing story-lines, almost forgotten in the upheaval of a final season, the essentially Starfleet hero nature of the war arc, and as noted, the prevalence of experimental episodes which meant that a good chunk of the cast had little more than a few cameos in some episodes. To an extent it had always been the case that some characters would fall to the background for a few episodes before they got a starring role, and that was even more in evidence in the last couple of seasons as the growing roster of recurring characters ate into the time some of the main cast would have had, just as bringing in Ezri meant she took a lion's share of the exposure in Season 7. There was a line in this very episode that summed up Quark's entire season at a blow: when Quark pleads that he must go with Rom to help fix the cloaking device, Mirror Ezri  says, "You're a bartender, Quark, what are you going to do, mix him a drink?" Tending bar became Quark's main occupation as he'd grown out of the days of scheming and plotting behind the station's back, his plots causing many an adventure for DS9 when it was more reliant on adventures occurring within its bulkheads than being concerned with the vastness and fate of the Alpha Quadrant itself.

I feel the episode needed some unknown quantity to make it work better. Maybe Mirror Moogie, or creepy Keiko, or even Mirror Keiko… Only joking, I like Keiko a lot, and this was another episode she could so easily have been worked into, probably some scary assassin vying with Garak for Worf's approval. It would even have been an opportune point to get Jadzia back - though they mention her, it's said she was killed in an Alliance attack, more's the pity. I know the realities at the time meant Terry Farrell would never have been invited back, even for the tiniest cameo, it's a sore point, and in a universe where anything can happen, it's exactly where even in that scenario of the time, she could have been brought in. Perhaps she could have been given the heroic death that our Jadzia never received, piloting the Mirror Defiant in battle against Worf's ship. It wasn't really a battle thanks to Rom's shrewd use of the cloak to sabotage the great vessel, leaving it at the mercy of Captain O'Brien. One thing I will say, O'Brien in the Captain's seat was a natural fit, and with Bashir by his side it worked even better! What was missing from this MU story was the kind of thing that made Smiley a good character in the first place: the inspiration our Bashir brought to him in 'Crossover' that led him to rebel against the long-established order he'd accepted for so long. And look how far he's come, leader of the rebels, a brave, confident Captain in his own right. The MU wasn't enough on its own to carry a story, it needed the missing character development that some of the others had. The exciting possibilities of change for the better that made us care about Smiley in the first place.

I can't help thinking the MU had become a bit of a joke by this time. When they first went to that well, reexamining a classic of 'TOS' through the lens of the modern series, it was dark and grimy, hopeless and unpredictable. Five episodes and five years later, and it wasn't much more than parody, the extremes of the characters ruling over the story. Bashir, like O'Brien, was one of the few to still seem like a real person, even though he wasn't one of the more developed of the MU cast, and I liked that he and Smiley had something of the friendship our versions had. Maybe friendship is going too far, but they were well used to working together, you could tell, and had had success with the partnership. Back to Quark, though: his fondness for Ezri makes him stick up for the Mirror version to the point where he gets smashed to the ground, but it's the barest start of Mirror Ezri's understanding of loyalty to something more than money. Considering Quark's devotion to profit as a good Ferengi, that he could teach someone loyalty as a higher goal than money is hilarious, so there are good messages to be drawn from such a wacky episode. His personal loyalty to Zek is something else that continues her journey, even though Quark doesn't really know why he has such a drive to help the Nagus: he vaguely ponders that Zek is rich and powerful, so there could be reward, or maybe he admires the 'lobes' or success of his elder and better, and the fact his Mother is involved is another reason, but ultimately he has a simple ethic of 'when your Nagus is in trouble you're supposed to do something to help.'

Quark doesn't really seem to understand his motivations or his Ferengi beliefs, or see the polarity between them. I had the same confusion over his Blessed Exchequer piggy bank that he prays to asking for good fortune and attention from Ezri. He pays bribes by dropping Latinum into the idol's ear, but how does that work? Knowing the Ferengi, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a whole class of workers paid to regularly visit every Ferengi residence, wherever they may be, and empty out the bribes religious Ferengi have paid to their deity or whatever it is, taking them back for… I don't know, the state, a form of taxation, the personal coffers of the Nagus? Equally, the piggy bank could be wirelessly connected to the Ferengi banking institutions, and every clink that drops in registers and is kept account of. But even then it would have to be emptied by someone, and if it was Quark, then he'd have the money back, unless it's deducted from a central account. Either that, or it's a futile exercise in playacting, Quark merely taking the money back from the idol and all being metaphorical or a gesture rather than something literal. Ferengi lack of understanding is the running gag, with the easily confused Rom finding the puzzle of the MU too much to fathom for a brain that is so wired to mechanical understanding, which is why he's such a terrific engineer. Such effort at perception is one of the amusing parts of the episode, and really, Rom is responsible for when the story finally goes somewhere and the episode heats up.

That doesn't happen until towards the end when Mirror Garak is confounded by the three Ferengi telling him how worthless he is compared with the mastery of their Garak (another thing that would have been so dramatically ripe with possibility is if both Garak's had met - what a change that would have made, perhaps with both torturing the other and certainly our Garak running rings around his alternate self verbally if nothing else!). The sabotage kicks in, the Defiant comes in firing (although I think that was just a reuse of some footage from 'Shattered Mirror' - reuse is how the whole episode comes across to me, when I used to quite like it), and the Ferengi escape with Ezri's assistance. That's how the episode needed to feel throughout: dangerous, exciting and unpredictable. But it was the fact that the MU had come to have a formula at all that softened its shock value. If we'd seen the world from the Ferengi perspective as never before, every dream of avarice within their grasp, tempted to stay in such an off-the-wall universe, but rightly realising they needed the stability missing there, it would have added depth to what was a broadly comical entry in the MU canon. I can't even say it's a good Ferengi episode, and I love the Ferengi ones. It was neither humorous enough to be lumped in the comedy category, nor was it a strong enough dramatic story for Quark, who's proved himself a number of times to be capable of that role. It's good to see the changes in Quark and Rom that had taken hold over the seasons relatively stark (Quark's generousness; Rom's development of a backbone, standing up to Garak's threats), but there wasn't quite enough to hang a story on.

There were parts of it that remained underdone or never explored at all. The main being the consequences of the whole affair - we last see enraged General Martok smashing through the Cargo Bay to get at the fleeing Ferengi and the stolen cloak, but how did they get themselves back into station life without being flayed? No wonder Quark wanted to stay a bit longer - it wasn't Ezri, it was the thought of Martok waiting on the other side! I can imagine him posting Klingon guards at the Cargo Transporter night and day, especially once he knew where they'd beamed. But would he have known, would anyone have known, since they don't tell anyone where they're going, it all happens so fast? Maybe something could be extrapolated from the Transporter signature and Sisko just doesn't have time to go off on a mission to retrieve two missing Ferengi and an irate Klingon's cloak. I'd have loved to see them return and face the music. Presumably they would have been able to go home with the cloak again, although the rebels might well have commandeered it for the cause, though with the Regent in custody and his massive ship on their side, maybe they wouldn't have need of it? If they did go back without it how would they have escaped the wrath of Martok? It's all left unexplained (although I did like the fact a Klingon brings the cloak to Worf singlehandedly, while it took the two Ferengi a great effort to carry between them, showing the different physiologies of the races). I also wonder why they had to cross over on DS9 - I suppose they could have used any Transporter, but the cloak was at DS9, and perhaps it made sense that the device only works on those specific Transporters that had previously been tuned, otherwise anyone could beam between universes any time, but then Zek wouldn't have come to DS9 to use the device so it must be useable on any Transporter… Good to see the Brig (even the MU variety), as I don't recall it being used this season until now.

The Mirror Universe is a hit or miss affair, crazy, wacky, but fun in a disturbing sort of way. It's nice to know that it's still living and breathing thanks to 'DSC' so it's more relevant than ever to see these older episodes though they take place later, just as weird a thing to contemplate as anything else in that timeline - actually timeline isn't the right word because different universe's in the Trek view are different entities, whereas the timeline is something that is held to be what we know as the Prime Universe, a convention that wasn't required until the meddling of the Kelvin Timeline. Which is annoying, but at least it means that that 'timeline' or universe can be separated and dismissed from the 'serious' canon with no need to account for all the crazy wackiness within. Which can also be said of the MU, an entirely separate universe that has nothing to do with branching off timelines that current science likes to theorise about, but have just as little reality as actual time travel, and a whole lot less relevance since it means everything we do splits off into some quantum universe, or something, making us both more powerful by our every effect creating entire dimensions, and also ever more vastly insignificant as who's to say any one of the theoretical versions of us is the 'real' one. Trek has wisely tended toward keeping a coherent timeline, one that does have meaning and development, and while it's a bit of a holiday to go off and explore a variation like the MU or the Kelvinverse, especially if it appears sparingly, but regularly over the years, and changes in that time to show it's a living, breathing place, it's the original universe that matters, which is why you can kill off characters for shock value (or bring back ones that had died in our universe), and it can still make dramatic sense despite having no lasting repercussions. 'The Emperor's New Cloak' was a superb title, probably the best of the MU, and the episode has all the trappings, but sadly, it isn't an essential foray into that world of dark horror that had become a world of dark humour, nor does it reward us as prodigal daughters or sons returning to it as lavishly as we might hope.

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