[7.0/10] The first Deep Space Nine Mirror Universe episode was an incredible thrill. The second one fell from that great height, but landed firmly in “pretty good” territory. The third one is a prime case of diminishing returns.
Nothing here is awful. “Shattered Mirror” has a solid emotional throughline, some decent stakes, and a raft of stupendous action. But the novelty has worn off. We know these alternate universe characters and their situation now. There’s not much left in the way of surprises, and the inherent excitement of seeing typically good people go bad quickly wears off by your third time at bat.
The tonic to all of this should be the major theme of the episode, which centers on the parallel dimension’s Jennifer Sisko, and what she means to her Prime Universe counterparts. The emotional undercurrent of the latest jaunt through the mirror is that even as Benjamin and Jake know she’s not their Jennifer, they cannot help but grow at least a little attached to her given how familiar she is. Ben is reluctant. Jake is exuberant. But they end up in the same place, and Mirror Jennifer starts to feel the same attachments.
That's interesting! The element that elevated last season’s “Through the Looking Glass” was Captain Sisko’s hesitance to get involved in the Terran Resistance until he learned that their mission was to save a doppelganger of his dearly departed wife. Reigniting that potent but attenuated connection, transposing it onto a young man who’s lost his mother and gets a second chance to know her (or someone like her) ought to up the ante, and be, if anything, more affecting in the way this mixed blessing presents itself.
But it just isn’t, and I think it comes down to a simple fact -- Felicia M. Bell, who plays Jennifer, just doesn’t click with Avery Brooks or Cirroc Lofton. That's nobody’s fault. She does a solid job in the role. But at no point do these reunions have the spark of people who feel like a family, like they’re falling back into old rhythms they’d thought lost forever. There’s no sin in that. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to pull off and convey. Unfortunately, it’s also the backbone of this episode, and so if that vibe doesn’t snap into place, everything else suffers.
It doesn’t help that for wanting to tell such an emotionally intense and intimate story, the Mirror Universe is inherently kind of cheesy. Pretty much everyone here is chewing scenery and going big, which can be lots of fun! Part of the joy of DS9’s first bite at the mirror apple was seeing button down Kira transform into a libidinous dictator. But having such an over-the-top, bordering on cartoonish tone to these misadventures cuts directly against the emotional wavelength “Shattered Mirror” seems to want to set the Sisko material on.
It doesn’t help that the new additions, and expansions, to the Mirror-Verse scene aren’t particularly good. Despite Jake’s wistfulness about Nog, the Starfleet cadet’s Mirror Universe counterpart is a pretty generic Ferengi, whose only interesting quality is his being glad his uncle and father are dead so that he can run the bar. Mirror Bashir and Mirror Dax gets slightly more shading (and more shade thrown at Benjamin for deceiving them last time), but they remain bog standard roguish freedom fighters, with only an unexpected romance between them to spruce things up at all.
And last but not least, we get Mirror Worf, who turns out to be the Regent of the Klingon-Cardassian alliance. Again, this should be a thrill. Worf is the first Next Generation character we’ve ever seen in the Mirror-verse. But he’s just your typical snarling Klingon, and we’ve seen plenty of those in the Prime Universe, so again, there’s little in the way of novelty or commentary on Worf. It is undeniably fun seeing the obsequious Mirror Garak plying his usual manipulations on his brutish captors/theoretical allies, but frankly, it’s the same sort of thing we see from Garak in normal episodes, so it doesn’t add much sweetener to the mix.
The one thing that does stand above and apart here is the space battle. Benjamin having to fix up the Defiant to help Smiley and the Resistance stand against an Alliance assault on Terok Nor is, again, a fairly typical plot. But once the battle begins, things really kick up a notch. The Defiant weaving through the various rings of the station, to escape or pursue birds of prey and use Sisko’s maneuvers to defeat them, is pretty damned marvelous, especially on a T.V. budget in 1996. There’s a skilled fluidity to the pursuit and fight, with moves slow enough for the audience to follow, but swift and twisty enough to feel exciting. And the best thing Bashir and Dax do in this one is pull off a Big Damn Heroes moment to save the day, and Benjamin’s skin.
Fireworks aside, though, Captain Sisko’s whole attitude and involvement in this thing scans as pretty off. Again, I get that the Mirror Universe tends for the light, colorful adventure side of Trek rather than the serious personal and political examination side. But Sisko seems pretty blase about the Terran Resistance kidnapping his son, and about risking his own life to help fight their battles. Everything has a fingers-crossed, “just go with it” quality. I never quite believed that the characters would react this way or make this choices so readily, which makes it hard to warm to this one if the intrinsic fun of an alternate-universe hop has started to dissipate.
It also makes it harder to care when Mirror Jennifer sacrifices herself to save Jake. In theory, it’s a big deal. This Jennifer feels such an attachment to someone who could have been her son in another life that she’s willing to give that life up to keep him alive. Jake loses his mother all over again after just making contact with her. Ben loses his wife all over again, with the added ironic sting that her willingness to defend Jake with her life makes her closer to his Jennifer than he’d dare admit to himself. The bones of a great and affecting story are there.
But Jake and Mirror Jennifer don’t have that instant rapport that sells them as a quick-bonding mother and son. (Though damn, Lofton acts his heart out in the moment when he touches Jennifer’s hands.) The script spends too much time on Mirror-verse mishegoss to develop the two of them together. And it never seems believable that Benjamin would skip out on personally ensuring his son made it back to the Prime Universe safely so that he could go on a dicey mission for the Terrans, such that he wouldn’t be there to protect Jake from Intendant Kira’s disruptor fire instead of Jennifer. The material is solid enough on paper, but never generates the level of feeling or emotion it ought to.
The Mirror Universe is a cool idea. Returning to it in different eras to see how the ripples and changes have affected it is intriguing. Seeing different casts ham it up or show unexpected dark sides can be a thrill. But the magic trick only works so many times. And sometimes, it even gets in the way of the deeper emotional story you’re trying to tell within those darker confines. This episode is fine, but the glint of the mirror is plainly starting to fade.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-03-01T22:10:39Z
[7.0/10] The first Deep Space Nine Mirror Universe episode was an incredible thrill. The second one fell from that great height, but landed firmly in “pretty good” territory. The third one is a prime case of diminishing returns.
Nothing here is awful. “Shattered Mirror” has a solid emotional throughline, some decent stakes, and a raft of stupendous action. But the novelty has worn off. We know these alternate universe characters and their situation now. There’s not much left in the way of surprises, and the inherent excitement of seeing typically good people go bad quickly wears off by your third time at bat.
The tonic to all of this should be the major theme of the episode, which centers on the parallel dimension’s Jennifer Sisko, and what she means to her Prime Universe counterparts. The emotional undercurrent of the latest jaunt through the mirror is that even as Benjamin and Jake know she’s not their Jennifer, they cannot help but grow at least a little attached to her given how familiar she is. Ben is reluctant. Jake is exuberant. But they end up in the same place, and Mirror Jennifer starts to feel the same attachments.
That's interesting! The element that elevated last season’s “Through the Looking Glass” was Captain Sisko’s hesitance to get involved in the Terran Resistance until he learned that their mission was to save a doppelganger of his dearly departed wife. Reigniting that potent but attenuated connection, transposing it onto a young man who’s lost his mother and gets a second chance to know her (or someone like her) ought to up the ante, and be, if anything, more affecting in the way this mixed blessing presents itself.
But it just isn’t, and I think it comes down to a simple fact -- Felicia M. Bell, who plays Jennifer, just doesn’t click with Avery Brooks or Cirroc Lofton. That's nobody’s fault. She does a solid job in the role. But at no point do these reunions have the spark of people who feel like a family, like they’re falling back into old rhythms they’d thought lost forever. There’s no sin in that. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to pull off and convey. Unfortunately, it’s also the backbone of this episode, and so if that vibe doesn’t snap into place, everything else suffers.
It doesn’t help that for wanting to tell such an emotionally intense and intimate story, the Mirror Universe is inherently kind of cheesy. Pretty much everyone here is chewing scenery and going big, which can be lots of fun! Part of the joy of DS9’s first bite at the mirror apple was seeing button down Kira transform into a libidinous dictator. But having such an over-the-top, bordering on cartoonish tone to these misadventures cuts directly against the emotional wavelength “Shattered Mirror” seems to want to set the Sisko material on.
It doesn’t help that the new additions, and expansions, to the Mirror-Verse scene aren’t particularly good. Despite Jake’s wistfulness about Nog, the Starfleet cadet’s Mirror Universe counterpart is a pretty generic Ferengi, whose only interesting quality is his being glad his uncle and father are dead so that he can run the bar. Mirror Bashir and Mirror Dax gets slightly more shading (and more shade thrown at Benjamin for deceiving them last time), but they remain bog standard roguish freedom fighters, with only an unexpected romance between them to spruce things up at all.
And last but not least, we get Mirror Worf, who turns out to be the Regent of the Klingon-Cardassian alliance. Again, this should be a thrill. Worf is the first Next Generation character we’ve ever seen in the Mirror-verse. But he’s just your typical snarling Klingon, and we’ve seen plenty of those in the Prime Universe, so again, there’s little in the way of novelty or commentary on Worf. It is undeniably fun seeing the obsequious Mirror Garak plying his usual manipulations on his brutish captors/theoretical allies, but frankly, it’s the same sort of thing we see from Garak in normal episodes, so it doesn’t add much sweetener to the mix.
The one thing that does stand above and apart here is the space battle. Benjamin having to fix up the Defiant to help Smiley and the Resistance stand against an Alliance assault on Terok Nor is, again, a fairly typical plot. But once the battle begins, things really kick up a notch. The Defiant weaving through the various rings of the station, to escape or pursue birds of prey and use Sisko’s maneuvers to defeat them, is pretty damned marvelous, especially on a T.V. budget in 1996. There’s a skilled fluidity to the pursuit and fight, with moves slow enough for the audience to follow, but swift and twisty enough to feel exciting. And the best thing Bashir and Dax do in this one is pull off a Big Damn Heroes moment to save the day, and Benjamin’s skin.
Fireworks aside, though, Captain Sisko’s whole attitude and involvement in this thing scans as pretty off. Again, I get that the Mirror Universe tends for the light, colorful adventure side of Trek rather than the serious personal and political examination side. But Sisko seems pretty blase about the Terran Resistance kidnapping his son, and about risking his own life to help fight their battles. Everything has a fingers-crossed, “just go with it” quality. I never quite believed that the characters would react this way or make this choices so readily, which makes it hard to warm to this one if the intrinsic fun of an alternate-universe hop has started to dissipate.
It also makes it harder to care when Mirror Jennifer sacrifices herself to save Jake. In theory, it’s a big deal. This Jennifer feels such an attachment to someone who could have been her son in another life that she’s willing to give that life up to keep him alive. Jake loses his mother all over again after just making contact with her. Ben loses his wife all over again, with the added ironic sting that her willingness to defend Jake with her life makes her closer to his Jennifer than he’d dare admit to himself. The bones of a great and affecting story are there.
But Jake and Mirror Jennifer don’t have that instant rapport that sells them as a quick-bonding mother and son. (Though damn, Lofton acts his heart out in the moment when he touches Jennifer’s hands.) The script spends too much time on Mirror-verse mishegoss to develop the two of them together. And it never seems believable that Benjamin would skip out on personally ensuring his son made it back to the Prime Universe safely so that he could go on a dicey mission for the Terrans, such that he wouldn’t be there to protect Jake from Intendant Kira’s disruptor fire instead of Jennifer. The material is solid enough on paper, but never generates the level of feeling or emotion it ought to.
The Mirror Universe is a cool idea. Returning to it in different eras to see how the ripples and changes have affected it is intriguing. Seeing different casts ham it up or show unexpected dark sides can be a thrill. But the magic trick only works so many times. And sometimes, it even gets in the way of the deeper emotional story you’re trying to tell within those darker confines. This episode is fine, but the glint of the mirror is plainly starting to fade.