Scott Bessent reminded me of.

They basically have the same personality.

Saw the recent post about these mugs, and found one just waiting for me today.

I’ve been rewatching the show recently, and during Season 4, a realization hit me about the Mirror Universe episodes, Especially S4E20 'Shattered Mirror'. The mirror universe episodes in contrast to the rest of the show are campy, melodramatic, wildly hyper-sexualized, and completely throw out the grounded political tone of DS9. My theory:

The Mirror Universe in DS9 isn't an actual alternate dimension. It is a series of pulpy, highly embellished sci-fi manuscripts written by a 19-year-old Jake Sisko. I'll give some examples of why I think this explanation makes a lot of sense.

In the Season 4 episode "Shattered Mirror," the story kicks off right after Jake has a conversation with Odo about being stuck on one of his short stories. Almost immediately after, he gets whisked away to an alternate reality where he becomes the absolute emotional center of a galactic conflict, gets to be a hero, and reunites with his deceased mother. The timeline of this event happening right as he mentions being "stuck" with one of his stories opens up the possibility that what we're witnessing is his imagination running wild rather than a genuine event happening in the real DS9 world.

It has all the classic hallmarks of a young writer inserting himself into his own high-stakes fantasy novel to resolve his personal trauma, and it resolves the issue of why the characters behave so strangely. Such as:

Why are the women in the mirror universe so unreasonably horny? Especially Kira and Dax. This is the biggest giveaway. In the main timeline, Major Kira is a formidable, deeply religious former freedom fighter, and Jadzia Dax is a 300-year-old wise sage trapped in the body of a supermodel. To Jake, these women are intimidating, high-ranking (and extremely hot) authority figures who walk around his home station every day. We already know based on the episode when Troi gave everyone the 'love bug' that Jake has at least some latent attraction to Kira. And Dax is, well hot by any standard of beauty. So it's unsurprising that a young man would be fantasizing about them.

How does a young male writer diffuse that intimidation when building an experimental sandbox? He turns them into campy, bisexual femme fatales in skin-tight leather who spend half their screen time crawling across tables and aggressively flirting with everyone. Intendant Kira and Mirror Dax don't read like believably real alternate-universe counterparts. They read like a teenage guy trying to write "dangerous and evil women" but overshooting the mark straight into 90s pulp softcore by turning them into over the top, stereotypical and semi-one-dimensional sex objects.

One thing that always bothered me about Mirror Jennifer Sisko is how emotionally flat and wooden her characterization/performance feels compared to Avery Brooks' hyper-intense acting. Maybe the actress just wasn't very good at acting... but I don't think it's just that.

If this is Jake's manuscript, that total lack of emotional depth makes complete sense. Jake was just a little kid when his mother died at Wolf 359. He doesn't actually know how to write her as a complex, three-dimensional adult woman with real nuance. Instead, he writes a flat, idealized "Mother" archetype whose sole narrative function is to come rescue him within the story and for them to have a few more moments with her before again saying goodbye. The fact that she dies again in this episode gives this fact away. Jake isn't trying to ignore the fact that she's dead, he's just trying to simulate a few moments with her through his writing.

One might also ask, in an alternate universe, what are all these people doing on Deep Space Nine aka Terak Nor?

History had to unfold a certain way in order for this set of people to end up on the station together. In an alternate universe with a totally different history, the series of events leading up to the present would have been totally different, and Sisko, Dax, Kira, O'Brien, Bashir and the rest of them wouldn't all be there. They'd be on Earth or on a different planet or space station or ship or anywhere else but not there. Or they might not have been born. If history had been completely different the set of people alive at any given moment would be different. The mirror universe being a product of Jake's imagination, a writing exercise where he recasts all the people he knows on the station into some similar in some ways but completely different in other important ways kind of world... it makes sense out of the whole thing. The tone. The over the top characters. The oversexed women etc.

Writers frequently build hypothetical scenarios to stress-test their real-world acquaintances through adversarial conflict. The Mirror Universe is Jake throwing the historical figures he knows into extreme, oppositional roles:

What if my noble, heroic father was a chaotic, cynical mercenary?

What if the strict station commander was a hedonistic tyrant?

What if humble engineer Chief O'Brien was a grizzled rebel leader?

What if Worf was a stereotypical Klingon warlord?

What if the Federation was weak or non-existent and there were other sadistic rulers in charge?

It’s a young author letting his imagination run totally wild, untethered from the historical realities going on around him such as the pressing threat of the Dominion War. He's also grown up in close proximity to Bajor, with the plight of the noble rebels being something that would be on his mind due to how much time he's spent around them and learning about their history. So when it comes time for him to write a story, this is the one he wants to tell, but instead of Bajorans fighting the occupation of the Cardassians it's the 'Terrans' fighting for their freedom against a cruel oppressor.

TL;DR: The Mirror Universe episodes feel like campy 90s pulp noir because they literally are 90s pulp written by a horny, traumatized teenage Jake Sisko sitting in his quarters and roaming the promenade on DS9 brainstorming, trying to figure out how to write fiction. The 'flavor' and tone of this setting is based on the vibe that Jake was going for with one of his earliest writing projects and reflect his mental and emotional state at that point in time. They are a projection of the psyche of a young aspiring writer and his surroundings, his life experience, his fantasies, and his conception of a hero's journey mirroring that of the noble Bajorans fighting for their freedom.

Curious to hear what you all think.

*The scene is they're leaving Odo's office walking down the promenade after Quark went riffling through Odo's computer and found some unsavory reports that invalidated early compliments made by Odo to Quark.*

Quark: Name a ferengi who's more devious than I am.

Odo: Grand Nagus.

Quark: All right, name another.

Odo: DaiMon Tye

Quark: One you personally know.

Odo: Your brother Rom.

Quark: My brother!?

Odo: Your Uncle Frin.

Quark: Frin?

Odo: Your cousin Galia.

Quark: Galia! The one with the moon?

Simply amazing banter between the two of them. Quark has the emotion while Odo is the straight guy. Wonderful.

This is just a random thought that came into my head, and I felt like I had to share it if only to see if my feelings make any sort of sense, or if it's just me.

So, when I think about Vedek/Kai Winn and her rise to power and her general attitude, all I can think is that she is the Karen that Karen'd so hard that she became the Manager.

Does that make any sense? Please tell me it's not just me, I beg you!!

Seen in a display at the Walmart Museum in Bentonville, AR

I just rewatched it.

I find myself wondering if the fictional writers in the episode were meant to represnt real 60s scifi authors.

Miles O'brian's character I think was supposed to be Isaac Asimov. Mostly from the references to writing about robots. But, Asimov never smoked a pipe.

Totally forgot I'd pre-ordered this back in April, nice little surprise 😁

Could not help but screen shot and share this one.

I had been looking for a while, and not all the series are, but I know Ive been looking to get the various series cheap and was glad to see it go on sale

TOS complete series is still $60 but the individual seasons are 5, 10 and 10 respectively

Not trying to spam or anything just seemed like a place to mention it if you're getting tired of keeping Paramount plus basically to just watch TOS and DS9 like I do.

Likely going to forget instances of it etc. But early seasons they tend to go down to Bajor and show the city etc, ussually as Sisko is talking to someone down there. That tended to go away and if he was talking to Bajoran figures they came to the station. Can understand if it Dominion War related etc, but just felt like something that was going to be a regular occurrence and it just kind of faded away.

Was there a bigger story or budgetary reason? Or am I just overthinking things.

I am looking for any books that feel like Deep Space Nine. I am flexible on genre, but I would like to see a complex story with a large, likable cast and a general skew towards optimism the way DS9 has, even if there are darker elements.

I have seen books recommended that are like Star Trek, but on the whole I found they are more like TOS or TNG, with a ship travelling from place to place. Like DS9, I was hoping for something in a more fixed location.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.