Warning! Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: The Mirror War #6!
The same Cardassian Wars that spanned three different Star Trek spin-off series is miraculously at risk of being one-upped completely by Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s upcoming Mirror War from IDW Publishing. Though not all of Star Trek’s mirror-universe stories are great, the latest is a sight to behold,
Also known as the Federation-Cardassian War, this series of conflicts between the United Federation of Planets and the Cardassian Union lasted for nearly 20 years in the Star Trek universe with the two sides normally clashing along their borders. These border disputes were so vast that they couldn’t be contained in one TV series, many of them documented in The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager. Now a similar conflict is reaching its climax in a mirror world that flips the normal Star Trek universe upside-down, where an evil version of the Federation (known as the Empire) is battling against not just the Cardassians but the Klingons as well.
In this parallel universe, the evil Captain Jean-Luc Picard has been endeavoring to amass an armada large and mighty enough to allow himself to lead the Empire’s charge against the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance with him at the helm of the ISS-Enterprise. For five long issues, the evil Picard has faced obstacle after obstacle to achieving his goal – even from the Empire itself, which, ironically posed his greatest challenge – but now he’s finally gained enough recognition from his superiors and is finally leading his massive fleet into battle in Star Trek: The Mirror War #6 by writers Scott and David Tipton, artist Gavin Smith, colorist Charlie Kirchoff and letterer Neil Uyetake.
Although Star Trek‘s original Cardassian Wars were quite vast and highly nuanced, even its greatest conflicts paled in comparison to what the latest issue of The Mirror War promises. One such incident is the so-called Setlik III massacre where a Cardassian vessel slaughtered the inhabitants of the eponymous planet even after the reason for their assault was proven false. While tragic, the majority of the struggle only transpired on the eponymous planet as the crew of the first-responding vessel, the USS Rutledge, focused on saving the planet’s surviving civilians. Conversely, The Mirror War‘s impressive armada creates the impression that a huge space battle will take place involving numerous warships (and possibly more than one planet). Additionally, the actual events of the Setlik III massacre were never captured in any of the aforementioned three Star Trek TV shows. Instead, viewers only heard the accounts of what happened on that fateful day from conversations after the fact, in TNG‘s episode “The Wounded” and DS9‘s episodes “Paradise,” “Empok Nor” and “Tribunal.” Meanwhile, the battles that actually appeared on these shows were normally isolated incidents and usually involved no more than two ships.
Aside from Star Trek: The Mirror War‘s incredible spread that details the Empire’s impressive and speculation-inspiring armada, the fact that the Empire and the evil counterpart of The Next Generation‘s Picard will not only battle against the Cardassians but the Klingons as well already promises a much larger war than the TV’s border disputes could have ever delivered.
To actually see how massive these clashes will play out, fans will have to read issues #7 and #8 out July 20 and August 17, respectively.
