Review

After a painfully banal opening scene featuring yet another alien race that looks exactly like humans (except for a dot on their foreheads...), the landing party beams up into pure awesomeness: the mirror universe. Then after a brief moment of stilted dialog in which Kirk jumps to conclusions way too quickly about the exact nature of their predicament, the episode soars forward on this absurd premise masterfully extracting well executed comedy and even an inkling of terrific drama from an episode that turns out to be far more entertaining than it probably should be.

The irresistible fun of this story is mentally noting all the subtle differences in this parallel universe where the Federation is instead the Earth Empire and Kirk is a conqueror instead of an explorer. The bewildered landing party does an excellent job adapting to their new roles and slowly scheming their way back to their own universe all the while taking the audience for a wild ride filled with hysterically treacherous asides. My favorite detail of this story is the extensive use of secondary characters. Uhura beats people up, Scotty sabotages things, and Sulu turns into a violent womanizing villain.

Kirk's performance is the centerpiece of the story though. I can't help but admire his obvious inability to take any of it seriously. He acts as though throughout the entire episode he's questioning whether or not it's all some kind of freaky dream. Every time he sees another twisted absurdity he just shrugs it off with bemused amusement and it is perhaps this total detachment from the reality he ever so briefly inhabits that allows him to so nonchalantly persuade evil Spock to begin inciting a revolution.

The only thing saving this delightful romp of a story from a perfect score is a few brief moments of weak writing. Aside from the aforementioned unambitious makeup for the aliens of the week (who themselves for some reason are identical in demeanor in both universes) and Kirk awkwardly leaping to conclusions about being in a mirror universe (not to mention the computer just automatically confirming his hypothesis somehow as if computers know everything), Kirk's scenes with his counterpart's girlfriend were also a bit weak. I never really bought her motivations for helping the landing party, although I suppose if we just assume she's not very smart it works out well enough.

Likewise, the whole bit about the "Halkan prediction of galactic revolt" was a bit hard to swallow. I have a hard time believing that some sociologist somewhere has come up with a scientifically plausible theorem for quantifying a mathematically exact maximum possible lifespan for imperialistic, expansionist empires. A better ending scene in the mirror universe would have had Kirk use some other rationale to convince evil Spock that he had a shot at overthrowing the empire. The scene is nevertheless effective anyway and the episode as a whole stands out as among Star Trek's most entertaining stories so far. To me, the ending of this episode isn't an ending, it's a cliffhanger. I want to see what happens next! Well done.