Voq/Tyler’s appearance

I love this potential catch, kev may. I’ve done a quick search while traveling for the any sex scenes that were shown after Voq surfaced and I came up empty (I’m traveling, and let’s just say the CBS app on my phone isn’t so user-friendly!). Do you happen to remember when you saw the scenes?

I did see two neat things, however, as I was searching!

-In The Wolf Inside, after Voq surfaces, his torture flashbacks do replace Ash with Voq. The same exact scenes and sounds that had Ash Tyler on the table changed to scenes with Voq on the table. It’s pretty neat that his memory was so altered that even when remembering his transformation, he saw himself as Ash despite the fact that his physical appearance wasn’t yet altered (and if you think about it, how could it have been? I bet it takes a lot longer than that to heal from that kind of surgery).

-I had posed a question on the podcast about the technology that L’Rell used to “save” Ash/Voq at the end of Valuting Ambition. Well, it looks like the fancy hand tools that she uses to dig into Ash/Voq’s brain are very similar to the fancy hand tools that Ash used on the worker bee when he was trying to extract that data core back when they first landed in the Mirror Universe. At the very least, then, that means that the technology L’Rell used in Valuting Ambition might actually belong to (or has also been developed by) Starfleet.

I believe that the procedure took place either on the prison ship or more likely in the place of the matriarchs. I think L'Rell was involved in the surgery and the overlay of Ash's mind onto Voq. I think the sex flashbacks are of L'Rell and Voq with the overlaid psyche interpreting them and visualizing them as happening to ash. I'm not sure but in one of the flashbacks shown after Voq surfaced I could have sworn it was Voq and L'Rell having sex. This probably occurred before the surgery.

What I'm still unclear about is, where did this crazy Ash/Voq surgical procedure take place? And who exactly was in that surgical room performing the procedure? And was it really advisable for L'Rell to take a freshly-surgeried Ash/Voq, strip him butt naked, and then bang him within an inch of his weird new life? Lol I mean I cannot imagine any Klingon medical text prescribing rough sex so soon after... well... on second thought, these are Klingons we're talking about...

Oh, I like your explanation better than mine! Also, then they'd have to deal with Voq being out there somewhere while his mind is duplicated in another body, which is kind of dumb. I rescind my reasoning :)

Chris, that is a good point. Why mess with the brutal reshaping of Voq's body, if L'Rell could just spread Voq's psyche onto Tyler's brain? Something tells me the spreadable memory template is weak, incomplete, and/or temporary; that if this Ash/Voq character we've been watching had been left alone without any outward challenges to his rationale (e.g. seeing L'Rell, or then seeing his Mirror Voq doppelganger) that even without those confusing situations, the Ash part of Ash/Voq's psyche would have degraded in time. Maybe L'Rell was/is hoping that the remaining Voq underneath would be salvageable.

In regards to the related question of whether the real Starfleet officer Tyler is still alive or not, I would assume he is dead. If he were still alive, it would surely be easier to transfer Voq's mind into Ash's conveniently-existing body than to have to do all this horrible surgery and obfuscation of Voq's body to make it pass for human.

If it does turn out that real-Ash is still alive, then they could explain it away by saying that it's only possible to do the mind-transfer thing "on top of" the existing personality, as opposed to inserting it "underneath" the way Voq is hidden beneath the Tyler persona.

Jeez this stuff is difficult to describe clearly in writing. No wonder they make such a hash of it in the dialogue!

I'm still interested in the connection between Voq as an albino Klingon and The Albino Klingon in Deep Space Nine's "Blood Oath," and so I'm also not certain that Voq is truly gone.

Okay, so follow me on this chain of logic...

If Shazad Latif is going to remain on this series in the Ash Tyler guise (either as Ash-Voq, or as Real Ash) then they needn't have used this actor to play Voq at all. We are told that everything about Voq's appearance had been remolded by Ash Tyler's DNA and by major structural surgery, including his height, his vocal cords, etc. Also bear in mind that it was quite problematic to have Latif play Voq; they had to maintain that secret for months of production, and then for half a season of air episodes.* Truly, it would have been cheaper, easier, and would have secured the plot secret better had they used another actor to play Voq. Which leads me to the following hypothesis:

The showrunners cast Latif as Voq because they knew that, eventually, the character of Voq-in-Voq's-Body is who Latif would be (at least mostly) playing.

(*Btw, on AfterTrek, Latif revealed that the phony name used in imdb.com's credits for the series is, in fact, the name of Latif's late father :)

Rainbird, that's a great point. I found myself thinking of the surgery as something akin to plastic surgery, but of course an interstellar society would have vastly different types of surgery, including the ability to use DNA to reshape someone's skull.

Kev, thanks for the vote. We can't let Team Blue Sparkles win this one.

I fully agree with Glenn, As a member of starfleet ash would have a huge amount of background information in the system. The very first thing anyone would do on finding this officer they have not come across before is to pull his records to see who he is, this would certainly contain a photo. Dr culber also stated that he had seen his medical records so these also would have images of ash. So ash looks like the original ash who i believe is probably dead.