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star trek - Why didn't the mirror universe's tech progress past the main timeline's?


In Star Trek TOS, we see the Defiant disappear to unknown parts ('The Tholian Web'), and Star Trek: Enterprise revealed that the Defiant went back in time to the mirror universe ('In a Mirror Darkly', parts 1 & 2).


Because of this, one might wonder why (in-universe) the mirror universe didn't obtain (and maintain) technological superiority over the main timeline. (Granted, the out of universe answer is that TOS depicted the two universes as having essentially the same level of tech)


So does any work (whether STO, or a pocket books work) address why the mirror universe didn't simply leap frog the main universe's technology?


(Or to put it another way, why did the mirror universe's technology appear to stagnate for a century after obtaining access to the Defiant's advanced technology?)



Answer



In the novels (specifically Age of the Empress and the short story "Nobunaga"), the Empire tried to reverse engineer the Defiant, but was unable to make much progress for a number of reasons: the ship was urgently needed to deal with rebels, information on it was tightly controlled for political and security reasons, there was sabotage (for instance, Mirror Trip was a key player in the reverse engineering project who went over to the rebels), and it was simply too advanced for them to replicate much of its technology even when they began to understand it.


They unquestionably gained some progress from their studies, but nothing groundbreaking. Essentially, by the time they fully understood what they'd reverse-engineered, they'd invented half of it anyway.



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