Star Trek: Enterprise/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Fridge Horror:

  • The "alternate" opening to Star Trek: Enterprise's Mirror Universe episode "In a Mirror Darkly" still says "Based on Star Trek Created by Gene Roddenberry." Do we even want to know what that looked like?
    • "Mirror, Mirror" gives a pretty good picture. And imagine all of Star Trek: Voyager with the evil crew from "Living Witness."
    • Alternate-Archer from the Mirror Universe, over the course of the episode begins to experience vivid hallucinations and demonstrates progressively more erratic behaviour that according to Forrest was previously atypical from him. Did he suffer a psychotic break, or is he beginning to display several of the symptoms of Clarke's Syndrome, the illness that killed his regular-universe counterpart's father? If so, what does that bode for his counterpart?
      • Keep in mind, Arik Soong postulated a possible cure could exist and the Denobulans could have researched one, given how they aren't against genetic engineering like Starfleet. It is possible that in our universe, Archer could have developed the condition and been treated for it.

Fridge Logic:

  • Bearing in mind that "In a Mirror Darkly" shows us the mirror versions of Phlox and Reed are the agony booth's inventors, and that the first prototype of the booth was later destroyed along with the Enterprise, one of its inventors has to have survived; by Kirk's time, the agony booth had been propagated to all Terran vessels. Since Phlox was most likely executed for his attempt to sabotage the Defiant (and most certainly would not have given his executioners any help in making his execution more slow and painful than it was already likely to be), Reed, whom Phlox indicated stood an equal chance of dying or recovering after his near-fatal encounter with Slar the Gorn's booby trap, probably did ultimately recover.

Fridge Brilliance:

  • I was all ready to post a thing on Headscratchers about the Vulcans using lirpas in the Forge rather than the Vulcan equivalent to assault rifles. I figured that as the properties of the Forge are known, they should at least have the Vulcan equivalent of park rangers trained in and armed with these weapons. But then I thought about it, and I realized a few things:
    • 1. Given the significance of the Forge to the Vulcans, the Vulcan priests might well control the Forge rangers. To them, assault rifles or similar weapons would be emblematic of their pre-Surak days, and they would find them repugnant.
    • 2. Even if they did have assault rifles, the Vulcan High Command would not trust these rangers to capture Archer, T'Pol, and T'Pau. If they saw them carrying the Kir'Shara, they might switch sides. And none of their own troops would have reason to be trained to use such weapons. Instead, the High Command found a few trustworthy soldiers who were experts at the ancient Vulcan martial art of lirpa-fu, and sent them in.