Star Trek In Considerably Fewer Seasons Reimagined, 2: Through The Looking Glass

Star Trek introduced some of the greatest tropes in TV history. While some of the episodes can be difficult to watch through a modern lense, you can't deny that, despite many well-intentioned missteps, the original series did many long-term wonderful things for cultural diversity in television, as well as bringing us ridiculously fun ideas that other sci-fi shows, books, movies, and comics would pay homage to.

We saw a few in season one, and we get a few minor ones early on here with some time travel shenanigans, and running into a ship in distress that turns out to be filled with criminals. The big one for this season, though? THE MIRRORVERSE.

That's right, after Kirk's crew encounters a weird space anomaly with The Defiant sticking out of it (a ship we will see again...mostly in Deep Space Nine), the crew of not just Kirk's Enterprise but also Archer's Enterprise and Lorca's Discovery all end up in a universe where there are different versions of themselves with different motivations. Many of them have goatees and Are Evil. 

We will end this season coming out of the mirrorverse and seeing what is in store for the various crews in the blissfully restored reality we got used to in season one and the front half of season two.

We also introduce a new show this season, The Animated Series. There are no new characters, as it's basically just an extension of The Original Series but in animated form. 

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Season Two:
​Through The Looking Glass

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TOS - Star Trek (The Original Series), 1966-69         TAS - The Animated Series, 1973-74 
ENT - Enterprise, 2001-05          DIS - Discovery 2017-24

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Episode 201: This Side Of Paradise (TOS)
(Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Uhura)

Mellow out, man. Even Spock gets groovy in this tale of a planet that keeps everyone chillaxed and on the serious harmonius vibology. Will someone narc them out to Starfleet so they can get back to The Man's duty?


Episode 202: Yesteryear / Lethe (TAS/DIS)
(Spock, Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, Sarek, Amanda)
(Burnham, Sarek, Amanda, Saru, Tyler, Tilly, Stammets, Lorca, Culber, Detmer)

An animated episode? Yes. Fun with Spock and time travel and portals! On the way back from a time adventure, Spock and Kirk return, only to find that nobody on The Enterprise knows who Spock is. Let's see if poorly animated space travelers can restore the timeline!

Then, we learn that Spock's mummy and daddykins raised an adopted human daughter named Mike Burnham. You know, the protagonist of Discovery. So when Sarek ends up on the brink of death, it's his fully human daughter who comes to his rescue.


Episode 203: Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad (DIS)
(Burnham, Tyler, Mudd, Stammets, Lorca, Saru, Tilly)

It's time loop madness when Mudd comes back to exact his revenge on Lorca and Tyler for leaving him in the Klingon prison last season.


Episode 204: I, Mudd 
(Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Mudd, Scott, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov)

And now it's time for Mudd to have his revenge on Enterprise for what *they* did to him last season. Why so angry Muddsy? You have an entire planet of hot cloned androids to keep you company. Why would you ever want to get away from them?


Episode 205: Operation Annihilate! (TOS)
(Spock, Kirk, McCoy, Scott, Uhura)

Kirk's family lives on an outpost where something is going horribly awry.  Hopefully,  they'll be able to help out with---oh, it's another mind control thing? Yikes. This seems to be happening an awful lot. Maybe this time they'll just kill all the mind controllers in the universe, and they can start trusting each other again.


Episode 206: Immunity Syndrome (TOS)
(Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Chekov, Scott, Uhura, Chapel)

Another new type of...alien?...planet?...galaxy?...dimens---what is going on in this episode? Will the crew have to make an ultimate sacrifice to save the universe? I mean, probably not. We are only six episodes into the second season. But maybe one of the cast will die this time to establish some stakes. Maybe?


Episode 207: Space Seed (TOS)
(Kirk, Spock, Khan, McCoy, Scott, Uhura)

The Enterprise stumbles on an abandoned ship filled with prisoners once jettisoned from Earth, including a certain sexpot with the name Kirk most likes to yell in his sleep. That's right, it's the debut of KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!!!!!


Episode 208: Shore Leave (TOS)
(Kirk, McCoy, Spock, Sulu, Uhura)

This season has been so taxing. The crew rather desperately needs some R&R, so they find an abandoned planet, send Sulu and McCoy to check it out, and prepare for a nice, uneventful time. Wait. Did McCoy just see The White Rabbit from Alice In Wonderland? Is he on shrooms? Are there people here? Are we back in mind control territory? Damn it, will the crew ever get to properly relax?


Episode 209: Dead Stop (ENT)
(Archer, T'Pol, Reed, Trip, Mayweather)

The Tellarites give the crew of The Enterprise some terrible advice, and they end up getting repairs from a surreal space station. Crew members will die! Plots will twist. 


Episode 210: For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky (TOS)
(McCoy, Kirk, Spock, Scott, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, Chapel)

A McCoy-centric episode where they visit a ship full of people who don't know they're on a ship. There's a love plot, the possibility of a character being left behind, and some mind-control, so it's pretty tropey, but fun!


211: Metamorphosis (TOS)
(Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott, Sulu, Uhura, Leslie, Zefram)

Particularly during TNG and Enterprise, the Star Trek franchise loves to wax poetic abnout the inventor of warp technology, Zefram Cochrane. Well, here's his first appearance in our watchthrough.  Here, he falls in love with an intangible ball of living energy. Ahhh, the classic forbidden love.


212 & 213: Broken Bow (ENT)
(Archer, T'Pol, Phlox, Reed, Mayweather, Sato, Tucker, Zefram)

Hey, it's Zefram again! Here we see his first inteaction with aliens (which we'll see again in a few seasons), and also see the origin of this version of the Enterprise's crew. Oh, sure, we've already seen them a bunch in this chronology, but these were the first episodes of the series that was aired, so it's sort of a flashback origin story for us!


Episode 214: Tholian Web (TOS)
(Spock, McCoy, Scott, Sulu, Uhura, Chapel, Chekov, Kirk)

The beginning of a dimension expanding saga finds The Enterprise Crew encountering The Defiant, another Starfleet ship that appears to be phasing through dimensions. When Kirk also phases, Spock decides the ship can't leave the location, even though an alien species called the Tholians are ensnaring The Enterprise in a web that could doom them to the same fate.


Episode 215 & 216: In A Mirror, Darkly (ENT)
(Archer, T'Pol, Phlox, Sato, Mayweather, Reed, Forrest)

So where did The Defiant go when it phased? The Mirrorverse. An alternate dimension where good and evil are flip-flopped, and nobody behaves in a familiar way. The crew of The Mirrorverse Enterprise become embroiled in a political conundrum where they think their best chance of survival is to take The Defiant as their new ship.


Episode 217: Mirror, Mirror (TOS)
(Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott, Uhura, Chekov)

It's TOS's crew's turn to explore the Mirrorverse, as Kirk ends up in the topsy-turvy world where crew members must kill to be promoted. Will Spock help him return to his home dimension? I mean, he must, otherwise this would be the end of the series, right?


Episode 218: Despite Yourself (DIS)
(Burnham, Saru, Tyler, Stamets, Tilly, Lorca)

Oh no! Discovery is ALSO caught in the Mirrorverse? This is crazypants. But unlike the other series, there seems to be a reason for them being here besides random chance. 


Episode 219: Vaulting Ambition (DIS)
(Burnham, Saru, Tyler, Stammets, Tilly, Lorca, Georgiou)

There is Definitely a reason that Discovery ended up in The Mirror Universe, and as they try and figure their way back into the regular universe, we (the audience...not so much the crew) learn the messed up truth behind all of their adventures so far.


Episode 220: What's Past Is Prologue (DIS)
(Lorca, Georgiou, Burnham, Saru, Tyler, Stammets, Tilly)

Once the crew catches up with the audience, they are even more motivated to get the hell out of the Mirrorverse. Turns out pretty much nothing is ever as it seems. I'm sure their return to the regular universe will make everything status quo again, though. Isn't that how Star Trek works?