Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x03 "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"

::: spoiler Logline La’An travels back in time to twenty-first-century Earth to prevent an attack which will alter humanity’s future history—and bring her face to face with her own contentious legacy. :::

Written by David Reed

Directed by Amanda Row

Note: This is a second attempt, as technical difficulties were preventing people from seeing the original discussion post. Apologies to the people who were able to comment in the original.

CynicalStoic ,

Really enjoyed this episode! Wasn’t quite sure where it was going at first but just went along for the ride and ended up really liking it. Refreshing to see a good temporal mechanics Star Trek episode again.

I’m not 100% sold on new Kirk yet but I also don’t dislike him either. It’s kind of surprising given how well Ethan Peck fits as Spock, I would have thought that Kirk’s casting would be equally spot on.

Still, curious to see where this goes, definitely loving the ride!

zalack ,
@zalack@kbin.social avatar

I feel like he fits the like... platonic ideal of Kirk, but he's not doing a William Shatner impression the same way that Peck is doing a Leonard Nimoy impression.

He's doing his own interpretation of the same character on the page.

chronicledmonocle ,

Man poor La’an. That ending broke my heart.

Lando ,

This was a classic Star Trek episode.

Spoken_Weakley ,

“This was supposed to happen in 1992!”

Is that a reference to how the eugenics wars were supposed to happen in the 90’s but obviously those came and went so they’re softly retconning when the eugenics wars took place?

XiberKernel ,

I kinda like this theory. The temporal wars are still affecting the timeline, but time is pushing back to repair the timeline. In-universe reason to both retcon and act as a story element as well (with hopefully a Wesley Crusher appearance at some point?)

JWBananas ,
@JWBananas@kbin.social avatar

Me at the beginning: Oh, great. More time travel. I'm so sick of time travel and temporal mechanics. The Science Vulcan Directorate has determined that time travel has been done to death.

Me at the end: 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

ryan ,

You echo my exact sentiments. I was so prepared to be disappointed by "yet another time travel episode to modern day, oh boy" and the writers pulled it off.

I've been incredibly impressed by S2 so far, gotta say.

BROMETHIUS ,

Am I confused or is this a Star Trek “sub lemmy” that is super active? Is this an rss feed from Reddit or something?

If this is already this active, then fuck yeah lol

IonAddis ,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Star Trek fandom is OLD. And a lot of the old fans go back to the BBS and email list days. They’ve/we’ve weathered plenty of technology changes.

This is in fact the one sub I am NOT surprised is so active. It’s one part Old Fandom, and one part the new shows coming out being pretty good, making the fandom alive and kicking instead of moribund and dead.

MichelleBirkby ,
@MichelleBirkby@geekdom.social avatar

@IonAddis @BROMETHIUS oh, I remember fandom when it was hand printed zines through the post - fandom survives, fandom finds a way

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

Mimeoed zines are in my past I confess.

I can’t say they were always as civil as they might be. Even in the late 80s with laserprint copies in vogue, there were folks who thought shouting everything in AllCaps was the way to get their message across.

@BROMETHIUS you may wish to check the pinned message at the top of this community.

This instance was created by the senior mods of r/startrek and r/DaystromInstitute. The original mod of r/startrek is modding here. They’re hoping to attract some of the other Star Trek subreddits to join. The invitations have been made. So far, they’ve decided to keep the number of communities to three in order to let the conversations get going.

Mezentine ,

Also it feels kind of significant that they finally dropped the word socialist on screen to describe the Federation? They've always danced around it before, but I'm glad they finally made it explicit, even in an off hand way. It helps make the Federation feel less "magical" and more like something that people who existed in history, connected to both the past and the future, had to actually build

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

Having Pelia say it, with the lens of historical perspective, is perfect.

The Federation may not use the word or describe its society that way, but someone who’d lived in the United States in the 20th and 21st century might.

Mezentine ,

I really really like Pelia as a character and a concept. I think its a very smart approach to immortality to have her be someone both used to and unresistant to change. The world happens. Time moves on. Over centuries kingdoms turn into empires turn into wastelands turn into spacefaring cooperatives and she's not jaded nor stagnant, she just continues to grow and adapt and change as things change around her.

lemillionsocks ,
@lemillionsocks@beehaw.org avatar

I do love also how she’s not some wisened genius race. She’s just old. Like maybe her people were space faring at some point in time, but given how long they live getting fast high end tech isnt necessary so they probably werent as advanced as most species we encounter in star trek.

But also even if they were it’s been a long time since they used their tech and even if they remember it it’s not like she would know how to build it. Like I know how to drive a car, and can do some basic mechanic work, and I know the broad strokes of how an internal combustion engine works. If someone asked me to build them a car they’d be out of luck.

Mezentine ,

The more I think about this episode the more impressed I get. There's so many small moments where they could have taken the easy, obvious choice and it would have been fine, and instead they were just a little more thoughtful and a little more creative and it shows.

They could have just had Pelia push a secret button to reveal her stash of alien tech, and that probably would have been fine. Instead they show her as this woman who's very smart and obviously immortal but otherwise...just a person living through history, which is so much better. Imagining the 250 years between the present and when she's one of the most famous engineers in the fleet is fun.

They could have had the Romulan agent just be a cold, ruthless assassin from the future who's here to get the job done, and that would have been fine. Instead she's this slightly unhinged woman, trapped out of time, stuck undercover on an alien world for thirty years on a mission that she's not sure exists anymore and I love the way she starts losing it at the end, that she just wants to kill this kid and be done with it.

They could have cast Khan as a hot 20 something available in the Toronto area and had him to a Ricardo Montalbán impression and give us a tense standoff, and I would have been annoyed at that, but it probably would have been fine. Instead they show us an actual child, and remind is that Khan was a horrifying monster, but he was created by a world with monsters of its own, monsters who built a child in a laboratory and raised him in a basement, and suddenly its a piece of implied context made explicit that I didn't even know I wanted.

And of course they could have just had Kirk agree to fix the timeline because its the right thing to do, or because he loves La`an, or because...honestly, because the plot has to happen, this is something that so many stories would just gloss over to keep the story moving. And instead we get one line, "Sam's alive?" and my heart jumped to my throat a little bit and immediately we understand why he's willing to go through with this.

I'm really really impressed with the writers on this episode.

Mezentine ,

Although it does remain very funny that they're doing this much work to make us care about Sam Kirk, a character who's fate is to die off screen to a brain parasite before the episode even starts. Sorry Sam.

IonAddis ,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I think it’s more that they’re introducing Kirk sideways, by way of humanizing him through how he cares for Sam.

stuck ,

Wow. You get my first Lemmy upvote on this post! Thank you for pointing out all these details.

IonAddis ,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

They could have just had Pelia push a secret button to reveal her stash of alien tech, and that probably would have been fine. Instead they show her as this woman who’s very smart and obviously immortal but otherwise…just a person living through history, which is so much better. Imagining the 250 years between the present and when she’s one of the most famous engineers in the fleet is fun.

It’s not just fun–but it speaks to a different demographic than most shows speak to.

It’s telling older women that it’s not too late to change and grow and learn. Here she is, obviously having already lived a long life–but then we learn she hasn’t ALWAYS been an engineer from the start. She did not begin as someone obviously fascinated by science.

She realized later in life. And then she was able to SUCCESSFULLY pursue her career and become an expert. Just because she wasn’t a child prodigy didn’t mean she couldn’t learn and grow. There’s SO many stories focusing on people who have things 100% right immediately out of the gate. Top grades in school, top performance at work, accolades, reccomendations from the time they were teens.

But this story is of an ordinary eccentric retail worker…who goes back to hit the books and succeeds with her change.

This lesson will go over 75% people’s heads…but in true Star Trek fashion, even if it elludes many, it’ll hit home with the demographic it’s meant to talk to. Older women who feel like they’re too old to change. That they shouldn’t even try. It’s talking to THEM like so many other characters in Star Trek talk to other overlooked people.

And that makes this detail–one out of many in this excellent episode–top Star Trek.

Hypersapien ,

At the very least the Time Agents could send La-An a therapist or something.

plasmoidal ,
@plasmoidal@startrek.website avatar

Just here to note two details I appreciated:

  1. La'an still doesn't know what a Romulan looks like after her adventure. The only one she met was surgically altered to look human, although Sera did drop a hint by complaining about the ears. Still, there's plenty of aliens with non-human ears, so not really much to go on.
  2. If she was paying attention, though, La'an did get another clue about Romulan physiology: When she shot Sera, the blood spray was green! Of course, Sera remembered her grandma's old recipe for molecular solvent, so La'an may have thought that was the reason for the coloration.
JWBananas ,
@JWBananas@kbin.social avatar

Maybe once Mariner gets there, La'an can finally talk about what she went through.

IonAddis ,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I ended up liking this a lot. For one, I’m glad Pelia really is a part of the cast now because I LOVED her introduction and was fearful she’d be a one-and-done character.

But secondly, in the past all I could see with La’an was (as someone else said) “a budget Camina Drummer”. And I love Drummer, but seeing almost!Drummer every time La’an was on screen was so fricking weird.

I think this episode gave La’an some of the development she needed so I wasn’t seeing almost!Drummer all the time.

(And for those who don’t know Drummer is…go watch The Expanse. It’s as if the new (is it still considered new?) Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek had a baby. One part grittier sci-fi universe, one part wonderful character/crew exploration.)

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

I agree. At one point, I wondered if the EPs had wanted Cara Gee for the show.

She’s her own person now. Strong and closed like Drummer but from a very different context.

Many of us who are fans of both Trek and The Expanse have wished Trek had some of the complex strong women along the lines of the Expanse. I can’t criticize the EPs for wanting to bring that into the franchise. Now all I want is a Trek version of Avrasala.

zalack ,
@zalack@kbin.social avatar

I legit thought it was Cara Gee for the first few scenes she was in.

Argonne ,

Is La’an supposed to be stronger than regular humans? She gave that Romulan some good ass kicking. That’s really impressive

Lamhfada ,

I think the end episode before this kind of implied that La’an feared or suspected that some of her augmented genes were active in her conversation with Una’s lawyer.

Argonne ,

Good point. Hope we get to explore more of her powers

crazycanadianloon ,

My initial reaction is that that story was told very well and Christina Chong was phenomenal at acting it out too. But I think I need more time to actually digest the ramifications of what just happened to her too... yikes.

shirro ,

That was a love letter to trek time travel stories and a nice character piece for Christina who feels less and less like a budget Drummer ripoff. Like any episodal television SNW is a bit hit and miss but better the occasional highs than a season long arc that drags and disappointments.

briongloid ,
@briongloid@aussie.zone avatar

Yes, first season it was jarring, this season she feels more like an original character.

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