Mirror Universe Star Trek: Encyclopedia II - Mirror Universe Star Trek - Parodies and homages

Mirror Universe Star Trek - Parodies and homages

Although the mirror universe is never visited in Star Trek: Voyager, the episodes "Living Witness" and "Author, Author" pay homage to it with a portrayal of a sinister alternate Voyager.

The Mirror Universe concept has been much parodied, notably in an episode in the second season of South Park in which a friendly, helpful Cartman with a goatee (and mean-spirited versions of Stan and Kyle, also wearing goatees) briefly cross over into the regular "South Park" universe. (Goatees appear to be common in the various parodies of the Mirror Universe. This is possibly because the major difference between Spock and Mirror-Spock in "Mirror, Mirror" seemed to be Mirror-Spock's goatee.)

There have also been episodes of the 90s television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess that reveal a "mirror universe" where all of the main characters are polar opposites of the normal characters (Hercules is power-hungry and an arbitrarily evil villain with a goatee; Ares is a meek pacifist without the goatee of his normal counterpart). This same line of logic (or illogic) was used in an episode of Sealab 2021 and a This Modern World strip. In 1994, episode 611 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 featured a plot in which two of the show's robots, Tom Servo and Gypsy, become trapped in the Mirror Universe while their counterparts are trapped in the regular universe. In this Mirror Universe, the counterparts of Dr. Clayton Forrester and TV's Frank are the ones who are trapped on the Satellite of Love and forced to watch bad movies by the Earth-bound Mike Nelson (who sports a goatee and a Mirror-Kirk sleeveless tunic) and the robots.

Also of note is an episode of Red Dwarf, Angels and Demons, where the crew encounter both "perfect" and "evil" versions of themselves after Lister uses a device designed to triple an object. The last episode of Red Dwarf, Only the Good..., featured a Mirror Universe in which Rimmer was the captain, Kochanski was a ditzy secretary, and Cat was a brilliant scientist (a deleted scene would have featured an upper-class Lister).

The Mirror Universe concept has been used by Doctor Who in the serial Inferno and by the Justice League of America in stories featuring the Crime Syndicate of Amerika. It is unclear to what extent these have been inspired by the Star Trek setting.

In Futurama, the robot Bender has a twin, Flexo (with a magnet goatee). It was later revealed that Bender himself was the evil one of the two. There's also an episode The Farnsworth Parabox involving a mirror universe. A Running gag in the episode is the natural assumption by most of the characters that their counterparts are evil.

An episode of Codename: Kids Next Door, "Opereation P.O.O.L", featured a mirror universe, where everyone was the exact opposite of their normal selves. Negative Numbuh 4, the Numbuh 4 of the mirror universe, wore a goatee to tell him apart from the real Numbuh 4.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Parodies and homages", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki