As to what event in the 1950s could have led to a Terran Empire, one's imagination need not go far. The blatant racism and retro-chest straps in the Terran Empire uniform smack of Naziism. One need only ask the question "what if Nazi Germany had won World War II?" Impossible? Consider the following.
Fact: Documents declassifed following the end of the Cold War reveal that Germany was sharing its atomic research and research raw materials with Imperial Japan. This was further corroborated with the discovery and historical salvage of one of Imperial Japan's few long-range submarines (I-252, I think?) It was discovered to have contained heavy water from Germany for Japanese atomic scientists (by physical prescence or written documentation, I don't recall.)
Fact: Before the end of the war, Japan had already designed, tested, and put into production a long-range bomber capable of reaching the west coast of the United States. Fortunately, the U.S. dropped the bomb before they were able to use it.
Hypothesis: Had Germany discovered the atomic bomb first, or had the U.S. hesitated to use the bomb to end the war quickly, Germany might have used V-2 rockets in Europe and/or Japan might have used long range bombers, to deliver atomic payloads and quickly force the world's remaining major powers into surrender to one or both of the remaining two Axis powers. Under either regime, racism and continuing military conquest would have been the obvious outcome. One could even speculate that the post-apocalyptic world of the parallel universe's Zephrem Cochrane was one caused by a final showdown between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, to see which one would finally rule the world. Since most of the senior officers in the Terran Empire seem to be Euro-centric, one could surmise that the Nazis won. Pity. I rather relish the idea of an old Hitler being beheaded by Emperor Hirohito of Japan.
Another scenario is that of the one in "The Fatherland", a very scary "what if " book. A movie of the same name starred Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson. Very worth while watching if you can find it.
Another possible hypothesis is suggested by the alternate screen shots at the opening of the alternate Enterprise. Instead of USS Enterprise, it shows HMS Enterprise. Perhaps this suggests that the American Revolution never began or at least never succeeded, effectively snuffing out the chain of democratic revolutions that swept both American continents and Europe before they even began. Democracy, individual rights, never existed in modern times, and the world cycled into more wars between empires and their colonies, right up to Cochrane. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.48.176.144 (talk • contribs) .
- mmm, well for one thing, if this speculation of yours is supposed to be based on real world history, it needs a lot of work, especially the bit about either Germany or Japan having functional nuclear weapons and bombers capable of attacking US shores??! Seems strikingly made-up, the thing about fascist countries, was they needed scapegoats in order to work, mussolini and hitler were blacklisting anyone with any socalist ties or even university education, right out of government, that's why most German and Italian Physicists left their respective countires, there was a bit of a brain drain, reducing most educational insitutions to little more than public policy pharms, that's why people like Fermi, Heisenberg, Einstein, etc all left their respective countries after being forced out of university posts for one reason or another, there simply wasn't anyone working for the Axis who would be remotly capable even doing the nessesary calculations, I mean hell Hitler outlawed the teaching of both quantum mechaincs and general relativity as "jew math", mussolini did the same thing only he blamed it on "socialist infiltration of education" not to mention the notion that Japan could have, by the end of the war, ever had the resources to attack the mainland of the United States, was pure WWII era propaganda.--152.163.100.136 17:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
- Another problem is the note about the HMS Enterprise. The writer of that statement seems to imply that only the mirror universe opening has the HMS Enterprise, and that the regular one instead has the USS Enterprise. Well, that just is not the case. Watch the regular opening again, you'll see the HMS Enterprise, right where it belongs. --OuroborosCobra 17:46, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
- This also suggests that there was a divergence point between the two universes, which I believe has been suggested not to be true. I can't recall where this was described, so perhaps its not widely accepted or relevant, but my understanding is that the mirror universe Terrans were always more aggressive or sadistic throughout their history, i.e. the universes never diverges from each other, rather they've always existed in parallel. There was a Socrates, Caesar, Charlamagne, Shakespeare, Washington, Mao in the mirror universe in similar roles; they were just meaner versions of themselves. Not to offer speculation, but to provide a suggestive example, Washington may have the rebellion against the "weak" George III and his empire, then disgusted with infighting and weakness between his governing allies under the Articles of Dominion led a conspiracy which turned the allied states into a centralized empire. He would be later assassinated by a chief ally (Vice Emperor?) from the northern part of the Empire a decade later. (hmm... fun speculation. Maybe i should write a non-canon novel.) Tfleming 18:27, January 20, 2010 (UTC)
Reply to above
Well, all that is very lovely, but talk pages are to be used for discussion of the content of the article, not for idle speculation. Granted, I broke this rule recently, but that was to reply to another user, so... yeah. Anyways, I move that this talk page be deleted for lack of useful history (no offense to the user who wrote the above, but like I said, talk pages are to be used for discussing the content/quality of the article, not for speculation.) --From Andoria with Love 13:13, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
- My motion to delete this still stands. Any objections? --From Andoria with Love 05:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
- delete. The idea of an alternate history is interesting, but the mirror universe was a stupid plot gimmick and this is not a place for a serious discussion about such things. IMO. --Bp 05:25, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
- Everything I said was irrelevant. delete that as well. --Bp 05:26, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
- Delete (but first move the ISS Enterprise description below to the ISS Enterprise page) Tfleming 02:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that a lot of people (including me) like to speculate on possible histories of the mirror universe. The pages here are not for speculation, so I opened a new group on MySpace called "Stare In A Mirror Darkly". There, those people who want to speculate can do it as much as they want in my group. All you need to do is get a MySpace account. The adress for MySpace is http://www.myspace.com/ and the adress for my group is http://groups.myspace.com/stareinamirrordarkly.
- Seems this myspace group has been deleted. Anyone have an update? 71.191.182.221 18:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Defiant Tech and the Mirror Universe
I moved the following to this page as it is merely speculation and doesn’t belong in the main encylopedia area. --Trekker2006 17:52, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
- It's not known if Hoshi became Empress but given the advanced technology of the Defiant it's almost certain she became Empress in fact as well as in name -- though it is certainly possibly she may have suffered the same sort of treachery she had just inflicted on Archer, or that the Defiant may have malfunctioned, or any other series of events which may have prevented it.
- The Empire of 2267 did not seem to have been significantly more advanced than the Federation, as one might expect if it had a hundred-year head start with the Defiant's technology, nor did the people of the mirror universe appear to be aware of the existence of the Federation's universe prior to Kirk's transposition, and in fact, according to the mirror Kira Nerys, it was the Kirk incursion which made it known. This may be explained by one of Mirror Archer's last decisions before his death: to erase the Defiant's historical database. Of course if the Defiant's superiority was the only thing keeping Hoshi (or whomever) in power, not to mention keeping the rebels at bay, it would have been very difficult to reverse engineer it to advance general trechnology in any meaningful way while it was in use. Also, the mirror "Enterprise" could have been an older Constitution class ship and the most cutting edge ship at that time might have been more advanced. It goes to figure that the "Defiant" would have been the most revered namesake and flagship in the mirror universe since it is the ship that started the new order. There is also no proof that the mirror universe visited in 2155 is the exact same one visited in 2267. It wasn't until Kirk returned to this universe that any mirror universe would have a way to pinpoint another specific alternate universe and vice/versa.
My take on Defiant Tech "discrepancy"
Everything we know about the Empire's technology in the 23rd Century comes from what we saw aboard the "evil" Enterprise in "Mirror, Mirror". Remember this exchange after Kirk and his party beamed aboard?
Kirk: "Report on technology." Scotty: "Mostly variations in instrumentation. Nothing I can't handle."
Ok, so the technology was "mostly" the same... aboard the ISS Enterprise. That doesn't mean the Imperial Starfleet doesn't have more advanced ships in its fleet.
Still, the question remains: if the Defiant wasn't destroyed, why isn't the Mirror Enterprise a lot more advanced? Shouldn't the ship have quantum torpedoes and Mark X phaser arrays? I see three possible explanations:
- 1) The ISS Enterprise is more powerful, we just never saw it in action. If Kirk's Enterprise faced off against her sister ship from the mirror universe, for all we know Kirk's vessel would be blown to smithereens. (One of the cool things about Diane Duane's (non-canonical) Dark Mirror novel was her postulation that the Mirror 1701-D outgunned Picard's Enterprise, and could also run circles around it, too.) The ISS Enterprise could have had phasers and torpedoes that were on par with those of a century later.
- Well, if the phasers and torpedoes were so much more powerful, why didn't Scotty notice? Maybe he did, and didn't think it worth mentioning (his "mostly differences in instrumentation" could partially cover this). Or maybe what's more likely -- Scotty didn't have the necessary clearance to review the specs on the ship's weaponry. Don't forget, when he tried to short out the main phaser couplings, a guard stopped him, told Scotty he needed Sulu's approval just to access the weapons. It stands to reason Scotty might've also needed Sulu's approval to access more specific information on the phasers as well.
- Let's not forget there was one significant "weapon system" aboard the ISS Enterprise that Scotty knew nothing about -- or at least said nothing about: the Tantalus Field in the Captain's quarters. If Scotty didn't know about the Tantalus Field, there may have been other details he missed.
Another possibility:
- 2) The Mirror 1701 is a much older ship. We know Kirk's Enterprise has been around over two decades by the time of Mirror, Mirror, if you accept Okuda's 2245 launch date. The Mirror Enterprise could be four times that age or more, which isn't that outlandish. We know the Galaxy class was designed (according to production personnel) to last a hundred years. Moreover, a quadrant-spanning Empire will likely need to keep as many ships as possible on active duty -- even old, outdated ones. The USS Enterprise may be the pinnacle of Starfleet technology -- that doesn't mean the same is true of the ISS Enterprise. There could be three-nacelled dreadnaughts with quantum torpedoes and interphasic techity-techs patrolling the Empire's borders.
- Even if the Mirror Enterprise isn't 80 years old, there's nothing wrong with a successful design being used for decades with relatively little change. The Russians are still using a 40-year old Soyuz rocket design. We also know that Starfleet has utilized certain starship designs for 100 years -- look at the Excelsior and Miranda (Reliant) class ships.
The third possibility... maybe my favorite, if the least likely:
- 3) The Mirror Enterprise is actually the USS Defiant!
- Maybe the Defiant wasn't disassembled for its secrets. Empress Sato might have kept the ship close to home, claiming it as her Imperial flagship. The ship would be a symbol of the Empire's power and her authority -- it might not make a lot of sense to tear it apart. Reverse-engineering is a gamble -- there's no guarantee you'll be able to duplicate whatever it is you're examining, or that you could put it back together once you're done. Instead, she may have had the ship re-christened, named in honor of the NX-01 on which she served.
Anyway, they're all just theories. I think there are many possible explanations for this "alleged discrepancy" between "In a Mirror, Darkly" and "Mirror, Mirror". --Trekker2006 17:52, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
- Fascinating article, and well thought out, even if the ideas may be implausible. Should be moved to the TALK page for the ISS Enterprise and/or Defiant. Tfleming 02:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
- No, there not actually about the ships, rather, they are about technology discrepency between having 2260s technology in the 2150s, and still using it with no advance in the 2260s. That is history, not about the sships, but about the Empire. --OuroborosCobra talk 02:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
1969
In planting of the empire's flag on Luna is clearly done in a 22nd century EV suit, which means either that no progress was made in EV suits in 150 years or so, or that the flag was planted much later then 1969. - Archduk3 15:29, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
- I was also going to point out this possible discrepancy, suggesting that the flag must have been planted much later. However, if we accept the scenes in the opening as more or less in chronological order, then the flag would have had to be planted prior to Cochrane's initial flight. So maybe not 1969, but also later than the early 21st century. 96.255.138.190 18:06, January 20, 2010 (UTC)