What does the MU in Star Trek represent?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I'm mostly curious about allegory, but any thoughts on that mushy section of Trek lore are encouraged.

I have an idea, but it might be rather anecdotal.

[Frustration]

Old school, or more recent material?

The TOS episode "Mirror, Mirror" was a way to examine the natures of 'good' and 'evil' as the scriptwriters perceived it, as well as the concepts of 'barbarism' and 'civilization'; both sets of paired concepts have a lot of associated assumptions, granted. The important thing is that both 'barbarism' and 'evil' were presented as something to be eschewed, and possibly a way of critiquing aspects of then-current world politics and society.

In more recent stories, the Mirror Universe is presented as cool and edgy.

[CharlesPhipps]

It depends on the version but generally there's actually a funny story going behind the scenes that Gene Roddenberry's vision of the Federation really PISSED OFF a lot of the actual writers (freelance or otherwise) on Star Trek and quite a few of them had scripts rejected because they tried to make the Federation darker and edgier.

Part of this was suspicion of the idea of a growing expansionist explorer based United Nations in Space that would somehow avoid colonialism and conquest. Harlan Ellison particularly HATED the premise of Star Trek in many ways and his original script for "City on the Edge of Forever" dripped of it.

The Mirror Universe was actually written in part as a kind of rebuttal to the idea of the Federation as the kind of supremacist, colonialist, profit-driven explorers that the Federation empathically is not. The thing about "Mirror Mirror" is that while they act like pirates with discipline problems, they're not nearly as silly as the concept would get latter.

They're no more ridiculous than Cortez and Christopher Columbus. They are out in space to make money and you do that by threatening the locals, trading with the locals, taking their stuff by force directly, or some combination thereof. Historically what explorers did and as a rebuttal to what the Federation is about.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

They're no more ridiculous than Cortez and Christopher Columbus. They are out in space to make money and you do that by threatening the locals, trading with the locals, taking their stuff by force directly, or some combination thereof. Historically what explorers did and as a rebuttal to what the Federation is about.

Interesting you say that. Isn't that a little reminiscent of the Klingons in TOS?

[CharlesPhipps]

They're no more ridiculous than Cortez and Christopher Columbus. They are out in space to make money and you do that by threatening the locals, trading with the locals, taking their stuff by force directly, or some combination thereof. Historically what explorers did and as a rebuttal to what the Federation is about.

Interesting you say that. Isn't that a little reminiscent of the Klingons in TOS?

Roddenberry was no stranger to recycling ideas as you may note by the dozens of "What if God was an alien and showed up?" episodes.

Though I'd argue the Klingons were half Soviets and half Nazis. Which bluntly is an ugly CommuNazi combination.

I do think that the best use of them was actually "A Private Little War" rather than "Errand of Mercy" because you can tell Kirk wants to do the right thing but his idea is probably horrible.