It's not like there weren't alternative scenarios. He could have been taken prisoner by Phillipa. He could have escaped to mount a rebellion. He could have been transported into the network like Stamets. But having him executed after his deception and betrayal was the cleanest, most fitting resolution.
It would have been too easy to go in another direction. You have all of this screen time invested in a character, you don't really want to throw that away. But Lorca needed killing. Otherwise he morphs into a comic book villain that never really dies but just slinks away until you need him again.
I think what I meant was in hindsight or alternatively, from a writer's point of view. But honestly I'm not sure what I meant now. I didn't get any sleep and I'm pretty fried.You said it was clear they intended to kill him "from the very beginning".
I took that to mean the beginning of the series, not just this most recent episode.
That's a good point and I was thinking about that as it relates to Phillipa. My guess though is that they're probably not going to introduce whole new universes. They certainly could and there wouldn't be anything wrong with that but the impression I get is that they want to stay reasonably true to the TOS story line. And in terms of additional bad guys and ancillary characters from the original series, they have so many choices I don't see what the incentive would be to go so far afield.The mycelium network allows for travel to parallel universes, it is entirely possible he will pop up again.
That is always the problem with using parallel universes in a series. It is a very easy way to let a character return.
Now that i think of it, the Lorca plot was indeed nicely done. Building up with every episode.
But an end is best when it is a end.
I'm sure many of us are wondering where the other Lorca is. I'm guessing that they'll want to bring him next season?
I think they will bring him back, because many viewers will want to know what the "real" Lorca is like and will be rooting for his return. At this point their options are wide open, though. He could be an ace held by the writers for a future need.Probably dead in one of these ways:
He died with his original crew before the switch. IIRC Lorca was oddly the only survivor.
Lorca Killed him after the switch.
If he was somehow switched to the other universe, he died in whatever was supposed to Kill Lorca.
I assumed he was killed along with his entire crew.I'm sure many of us are wondering where the other Lorca is. I'm guessing that they'll want to bring him next season?
Didn't they just say long range scans did not work because of the atmosphere?This is new.
The atmosphere is to dense from Qo'nos yet the underground caves are below the surface and the surface can be mapped from below the actual surface with a drone. That is a first that the atmosphere is more dense than the surface itself from a planet.
he's still in the credits, so that is my hope. In return for sending MU Georgiou back to her universe, I hope they make her help them find PU LorcaI'm sure many of us are wondering where the other Lorca is. I'm guessing that they'll want to bring him next season?
Terran Georgiou remaining in the Federation would not bode well, so hopefully something like you envision will come to pass.he's still in the credits, so that is my hope. In return for sending MU Georgiou back to her universe, I hope they make her help them find PU Lorca
he's still in the credits, so that is my hope. In return for sending MU Georgiou back to her universe, I hope they make her help them find PU Lorca
We should take bets, haha. I think Lorca is out there, somewhere. Maybe he doesn't make it back right away, though. The adventures of Lorca in the parallel universe would open up lots of opportunities for good storytelling.
We'll see who's right. It's a fool's errand to predict this show, but fun to try, nonetheless.That sounds like opportunities for lame fan fiction, not good storytelling.
Lorca will either show up next episode (Season Finale) or he won't. I think he won't, but I wouldn't bet huge money on it because this series has lame, ham-fisted writing quite often. Losing him hurts because IMO he delivered the best acting performance of just about anyone in this series.
But I think the Finale will be all about dealing with the Klingons and the ticking time bomb Terran Emperor...
I hope that emperor Georgiou remains with them.
Arstechnica view on startrek discovery.
I kind of agree with it very much.
Do not read it if you are still watching the episodes : huge spoilers.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/star-trek-discovery-ive-made-a-lot-of-bad-emotional-choices/
Annalee is the worse writer at Ars, and that is just her typical garbage.
Arstechnica view on startrek discovery.
I kind of agree with it very much.
Do not read it if you are still watching the episodes : huge spoilers.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/star-trek-discovery-ive-made-a-lot-of-bad-emotional-choices/
Exert:
The Mirror Universe is one of those tropes that allows the show's writers to do pretty much anything. We've had everything from time travel and resurrection (I mean, yeah, it's a Mirror Georgiou, but basically she's back from the dead) to creepy alternate timelines (Burnham/Lorca—gross), cannibalism (sure, not technically, but c'mon), characters acting completely unlike themselves, fungus heaven, and extremely weird haircuts. It's kind of a mess.
When you've got a plot device that can make almost anything happen, it seems like your story should explode with new and interesting possibilities. But most of the time, and certainly in STISCO, the Mirror Universe has the opposite effect. That's because fascinating stories are built from equal parts structure and free play. Especially when you're in the science fiction or fantasy genres, a big part of the fun is figuring out how the rules of the world work. There's a distinct pleasure in worldbuilding that sets up limits, because that's when our heroes come up against complex challenges.
The rules of a world can be outlandish, of course. You can have a spore drive that blips all over the universe and accesses a "mycelial network" that's packed with macro tardigrades. That's fine. Problems start cropping up when literally every episode invents a new magical thing that the spore drive can do. Yep, it can travel to alternate universes. Yep, it can travel through time. Yep, it can access the spirits of the dead. At a certain point, this stops being amazing and gets, well, boring.
As I watched the last few episodes of STISCO, I realized that I'd stopped caring what happened because there were literally no stakes. People could basically come back from the dead via their Mirror versions or if the ship traveled back in time (I dread the possibility that we'll see this subplot in a future episode). Nobody had to worry about running out of spores, because Stamets could just destroy the ecosystem of a handy moon by injecting fungus colonies into its crust.
Of course, Star Trek has always had its share of magical tech and just-in-time transporter saves. But, generally, the franchise doesn't suddenly do a 180 and turn transporters into time travel devices or make replicators capable of churning out sentient goblin armies. In Voyager, for instance, one of the major technological limitations (other than the speed of the ship) was that the holographic doctor could not leave the medical bay. But over several seasons, this situation changed. First, the Doctor had a longstanding wish to move around freely. Then he got a piece of future tech that allowed him to wander the whole ship.
The fact that this change merited an entire episode of discussion—and was part of a longer character arc for the Doctor—illustrates how limitations lead to creative challenges. How boring would it have been if the Doctor had suddenly said, "Oh, I just discovered that I actually can move around the whole ship"? There would have been no struggle and no chance for us as viewers to develop sympathy for him as he worked toward his goal.
I'm not saying the characters on STISCO don't struggle. But the rules change too fast for us to feel like it takes heroic (or even ordinary) effort to overcome challenges.
Then came the reveal that so many of us had glumly predicted: Lorca is actually from the Mirror Universe. Suddenly, the murky ethical landscape of the Discovery became a simplistic black-and-white. Lorca wasn't morally conflicted; he was just evil. Stamets wasn't going crazy; he was just in touch with the Mirror Universe.
On a macro level, the Mirror Universe also had the effect of letting the Federation off the hook for all its problematic decisions. In the first half of the season, we felt a sting when Discovery's scientists were told to turn their research into weapons. We experienced Burnham's shame over starting a war that was avoidable. Saru had to swallow the Federation's orders to kill his sparkle people friends to improve the fleet's signals intelligence. Sarek, who was shaping Federation policy, nevertheless felt that humans were an inferior race.
My point is that the Federation was doing all kinds of things that would have gotten Picard's knickers in a bunch. Our beloved interspecies institution of exploration began to seem proto-fascist, at least until we saw the so-extreme-it-felt-like-parody fascism of the Mirror Universe's Terran Empire. Once we've seen Burnham eat the brain tentacles of Saru's pals while everybody on the Mirror Shenzhou murders each other to get promotions, the Federation can claim the moral high ground.