2x23 Crossover

[9.0/10] How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson presents an idea called “The Adjacent Possible”. The author posits that innovation begets innovation, change begets change, when some new development expands our conceptual borders for what is possible. Until those types of developments happen, it’s too difficult to imagine what lies beyond the known or proximate, but once new horizons appear, the floodgates open.

That’s my biggest takeaway from “Crossover”, Deep Space Nine’s first journey into the Mirror Universe. The Starfleet officers who jump to this alternate dimension don’t simply wander around the darker universe when it’s time to go home. They effect change by expanding the notion of what’s possible in those they interact with. Whether it’s Kira entreating a marauding version of Sisko, or Dr. Bashir enlisting the help of an even more beleaguered O’Brien, or Kirk speaking of peace to a goateed Mr. Spock. The interactions with these outsiders have ripples, because they give the Mirror-verse inhabitants a glimpse at how things don’t have to be this way.

It’s amusing, in light of how many times Star Trek has returned to the Mirror Universe since “Crossover”, that the writers feel the need to remind the audience of the concept and what started it. The Mirror-verse is such an accepted concept now, but this was the first time the franchise had revisited it in more than a quarter century. The way characters like Mirror Kira (Mira?) and Dr. Bashir both offer exposition on what happened in “Mirror, Mirror” from The Original Series, and expound on the effect Kirk’s visit had on the Terran Empire and its Alpha Quadrant rivals is fascinating. DS9 remains the series most devoted to its 1960s predecessor, and this is another brick in that wall.

But “Crossover” is most interesting as an extrapolation and contrast to not just the Prime Universe, but the events and setting of Deep Space Nine. There’s an inherent thrill to the notion of a Federation alternative led by a Klingon/Cardassian team-up, with the Bajorans as major enough players within “The Alliance.” It’s grim to see DS9 closer to its state as “Terok Nor”, only with Terrans forced to operate the ore refining sections of the station rather than Bajorans in this universe. The world we glimpse here is more than everything being the same, only evil. It turns the galactic order as we know it on its head.

More interesting still is the different versions of the characters we meet here. The Mirror versions of Bashir himself and Dax are conveniently absent, but we do see familiar faces in different guises. Mirror Garak is no simple tailor, but the first officer of the station who’s ready to climb the political ladder, even if he has to backstab his way to get there. (In line with at least some of the stories he told about himself in “The Wire”.)

Mirror Odo is an overseer in the refinery and given over to the authoritarian streak we’ve occasionally seen in his Prime counterpart. Watching him slap Julian around is jarring and seeing him actually smile when his iron first policies elicit the desired results is unnerving. And not for nothing, the way he explodes into a thousand pieces when hit with a disrupter is one of the coolest and most striking effects 1990s Trek has ever done.

In contrast, Mirror Quark is much meeker than the Ferengi we know and love. He’s not a smooth operator, more of a harried barkeep under the thumb of those governing him. More than that, he’s an ally to the Terrans! What little ability to work outside the law he has, he uses to help ferry humans off the station, and hasn’t even heard of gold-pressed latinum. To this point, the premise of the Mirror Universe was good characters made vicious. Seeing one of the more morally dubious figures on the station made less sly but more heroic is a great change of pace.

But my favorite “transformations” from one universe to the next are the ones that allow the actors to really flex their muscles and show us a different side than we get to see in their usual roles. Mirror Sisko and Intendant Kira fit that tack to a tee.

Holy hell, Avery Brooks! I like the normal Sisko, but he’s such a put-together, commanding presence that sometimes borders on stiff. We certainly see a softer side to him with Jake and Jadzia, but also the stern and steadfast leader who strives to live up to Federation values every day.

Mirror Sisko is...not that. I can’t tell you what a treat it is to see a more roguish version of the character, one who leads a group of state-sanctioned privateers on behalf of the Intendant, harangues and toys with his fellow Terrans, and is content with his lot in life. This version of Sisko is jovial, teasing, loose and free in a way we’ve never seen in the man who takes such care to don his Starfleet uniform.

And yet, there’s a dark side to it. He gets such freedom despite being human because he is Intendant Kira’s pet, a reflection of the “wife” Mirror Kirk kept in the 1967 episode that started it all. Brooks does some incredible work in the contrast between the bravado Sisko shows around his marauding buddies on the subject of having sex with the Intendant, but also the discomfort and resignation to the fact that he is effectively a powerless rape victim in more private moments. There’s so many layers to a character we barely know, and such a different side to Brooks as a performer on display, which makes this journey extra worth it.

The coup de grace, though, comes from Nana Visitor, who not only shows us another side to her as a performer as he Intendant, but pulls off something William Shatner was never good at (despite being called to do it multiple times) -- playing opposite herself.

I love the characterization and performance here. It’s a hoot to watch Visitor vamp it up as a sultry queen of her domain in contrast to Kira’s typical straight-laced, militarily efficient existence. The Intendant is a version of Kira who has fun, who is fun, and seeing Visitor cut loose in the role is not only entertaining and demonstration of her range, but as with Brooks, also a sign of her restraint and talents as an actor to keep her character so contained on a regular basis.

Beyond the performance, the writing for The Intendant is golden. Long before the Loki series, here was an individual who could only love themselves. Her lascivious fascination with Prime Kira is strange, but in a way that reveals who this person is: enamored with herself, prone to enjoying her luxuries without care for where they come from, and cautious about outsiders polluting her “perfect” world.

More to the point, it’s fascinating seeing Prime Kira’s reactions to all of this. Her dream is to have Bajoran leadership of Deep Space Nine and the sector more generally. She wants to see Bajor become a major player that can chart its own destiny. But when she sees how the Intendant achieves it, what it might take to make that work, it again chastens Kira a bit. The Intendant speaks with her voice, shares her same principles that violence is bad but sometimes necessary, and yet Prime Kira would never want this factory of oppression to be her people’s future, or hers.

It’s all positively spellbinding. The scenes where the Kiras play off of one another are both electrifying and technically impressive. The glimpses we see of Sisko as the “favored Terran”, with the subtext that comes from putting a black character in such a position, are telling of the injustices in this world and the difficult place he occupies within it. The wisps of a budding resistance, torturous plots, and the inertia of a bad situation amidst our heroes’ efforts to escape all excite and intrigue.

Amid all of this, though, the one character who feels more or less the same is O’Brien. He’s not evil. He’s not awful. He may not have his wife and kids, but he’s still a “tinkerer and putterer” who fixes things around the station, albeit under much worse conditions. There’s an unofficial mandate on DS9 that O’Brien must suffer, and he certainly does, a microcosm of the poor humans steadily ground up under the bootheel of The Alliance.

And yet, something changes in him, in Sisko, in the status quo aboard Terok Nor. Julian tells Mirror O’Brien that this is no kind of life, and that his Prime Universe equivalent can live and love and achieve in ways Mirror Miles will never be permitted. Kira tells Mirror Sisko that she understands making the best of bad choices, but fighting for freedom is always a worthwhile endeavor, and certainly better than the comfortable complacency of a different sort of imprisonment.

Dr. Bashir speaks from a place of what he knows people like he and Miles can achieve. Kira speaks from a place of seeing her own people rise against their oppressors and pursue the cause of freedom. They expand the minds of people like Sisko and O’Brien in the Mirror Universe, who’ve only known this way of life, and need to know that there’s a better way before they’re willing to fight for it.

Intendant Kira talks to her Prime counterpart about contamination, about procedures in place to make sure that no one comes to disrupt their world with destabilizing ideas like Kirk once did. And yet in her curiosity, self-flattery, and peculiar form of self-love, she makes the same mistake. The ideas that Kira and Dr. Bashir bring with them do disrupt the order as it stood before they arrived. They show the inhabitants of this world that something else is possible, in a universe very much like their own, and yet profoundly different. From there, the change is inevitable, but it took seeing the brighter reflection, just past the edge of the frame, to make it seem visible, and thus possible, at all.