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.

lwaxana_katana ,

This was definitely my favourite episode of the season, and possibly of the series. I thought Kirk was badly cast, but actually after seeing him in this episode, I get it. He is not our Kirk, but he actually does bring something very Kirk-ish to the role that I hadn't appreciated previously.

arkclr ,

That is an excellent way of stating it, re Kirk. He wasn't doing it for me, and I thought I had it figured. He looks like Pine, who tried to mimic Shatner's mannerisms, but didn't really deliver the Shatnerisms. Here I was able to accept him as his own thing, and it was fine.

Klanky ,
@Klanky@sopuli.xyz avatar

This is the best episode of modern Trek since Magic to Make…

It hit all the right notes and felt so Star Trek. Don’t get me wrong, I love serialized seasons, but Star Trek is at it’s best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously, while also simultaneously dealing with serious plot points.

Continuumguy ,

Random thoughts as I watch (cross-posted from the old place):

  • Wow, first that outburst, and then Spock jams too much. Truly in his wild child phase.
  • BTW, was that a Denobulan?
  • Pelia totally worried that this whole utopia thing just a passing trend. And hilariously having to prove (?) she isn't a thief.
  • They really are taking advantage of Babs O's Jiu-Jitsu training this year, aren't they?
  • Captain James T. Kirk, the greatest menace of Temporal Investigations!
  • Oh boy, alternate timeline where the Federation doesn't exist time!
  • "Maple leaves, politeness, poutine."
  • Clever distraction.
  • I wonder if 3D chess is a thing in the United Earth Fleet timeline, because Kirk is good at the 2D in it.
  • Okay, I guess they do have 3D Chess.
  • I generally try not to be like this... but goddamn I'd like to thank them for having Christina Chong in various states of tight clothing and undress.
  • Good thing the time travel guy went to the ship Sam Kirk was on.
  • Oh man, I was looking forward to driving across Lake Ontario to Toronto (presumably from Rochester or Buffalo or something, right?), which totally would be a logical economic and engineering choice, I'm sure!
  • Mildly annoyed that Kirk doesn't drive to Beastie Boys.
  • James Discreet Kirk
  • Soongs gonna break in even to the timelines and series they aren't in.
  • Jim Discretion Kirk
  • OH FUCK ROMULANS
  • We have gone (zero) days without Romulans trying to screw up the timeline.
  • Probably the first time that DuckDuckGo has been mentioned in Star Trek.
  • Yeah, Pythagoras is the worst, Pelia.
  • Oh, so this is a predestination paradox where they make her become an engineer and as a result she is there to inspire La'An to go look for her later.
  • KHAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN! KHAAAAANNNNNNNNN! (Or at least the institute for him)
  • To be fair, this is like the third face that Captain Kirk has had.
  • We have gone (ZERO) days without a time-travelling Romulan that had to ditch the ears.
  • We have gone (ZERO) days without (a) Captain Kirk dying. We're three-for-three on Kirk actor deaths, folks!
  • KHAAAAAAAAAANNNN! KHAAAAAAANNNN! KHAAAAAAANNNNNN!
  • THEY CAME UP WITH AN EXPLANATION WHY THE EUGENICS WARS DIDN'T HAPPEN IN THE 90'S! THE MAD LADS DID IT!
  • Face to face with great-great-great-great grandpa Baby Genetics-Hitler.
  • Oh, great, temporal investigations. No wonder they hate Kirk so much, even his alternate versions screw stuff around.
  • Good ep. Way better than it sounded when I first heard about it.
Justas ,
@Justas@sh.itjust.works avatar

I wish the Romulan agent succeeded but that led to a stronger Federation instead just to spite those meddling aliens.

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

I didn’t expect to like this episode as much as I did.

Wesley’s Kirk is growing on me, and I give the EPs credit for using the alternate timeline Kirk’s to let his performance coalesce. I also like the deft weaving of the crazy car driving, heartbreaker Kirk with the think five steps ahead genius that he also had to be.

The acknowledgement in-universe that the timeline and humanity’s development has been interfered with is entirely credible given the accretion of temporal incidents across every era of the franchise.

I’m not sure how I feel about it giving comfort to those who feel so strongly that this isn’t the same timeline as the original TOS one. (I see some chortling on this point elsewhere.) Likely the temporal physics of this is best left for a deep dive /c/Daystrom Institute discussion, but I prefer hold to a view that this is absolutely still the same Prime timeline but that the timeline itself has been perturbed repeatedly even if the key events have kept their integrity. In fact, the Romulan temporal agent, while not a reliable narrator, gave credence to the idea that the Prime timeline had proven unexpectedly robust against major intervention by humanity’s enemies.

I was delighted to see DTI show up and be named. It seems all of a piece of DTI’s rigidity that they would leave La’an alone to deal with the trauma. It does however mirror Pike’s own experience in sealing his future with the time crystal. One senses that there must be some kind of intersection or mutual revelation to come, leaving aside the Chekhov’s gun of the temporally dislocated watch.

Knowing that Anson Mount had to relocate to Toronto with his wife and newborn explains why episodes featuring others in the ensemble were front loaded for this season. He’d said before he committed to the show that creative conversations would be needed as he wasn’t wishing to repeat the production experience he had in Discovery season two. A creative conversation with the EPs that limits a principal character’s presence is fairly extraordinary, but Mount seems to have done it in a way that’s generous to the rest of the ensemble.

With an ensemble so strong, and as we didn’t see as much of Chapel or Una as we would have liked last season, I’m fine with waiting to see more Pike later in the season. It sounds as though we have a Spock focused and an Ortegas to come before some big ensemble pieces in the back half.

CeruleanRuin ,
@CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one avatar

That really explains a lot. Kudos to the production for really playing well to their constraints like this.

NuPNuA ,

If anything doesn’t this prove that this does take place in the same timeline as TOS but that timeline is in flux due to time travel and interference?

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

That’s exactly it.

Devastm ,

Its interesting what they are doing but god damn are they hamstringing the timeline by moving Khan to 2022/3.

First Contact happens in 2064 pretty reliably. So that means this PreTeen Kahn needs to become a Tyrant. Rule over a quarter of the globe, I guess start or be involved in WW3 and bounce on the botany bay. All in 40 years.

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

It can still kind of work. Montalban was about 45 when he was Khan, so let’s say Khan was around that age when he was exiled. The young Khan we see seems to be about 10 years old, maybe a bit younger.

So say baby Khan was born in 2012 if we want to take Sera’s 30 years literally rather than as an approximation. World War III (according to ENT: “In a Mirror Darkly” but the years may have slipped) starts in 2026 and lasts until 2053 (ST: FC, SNW: “Strange New Worlds”). Khan could easily have fought in the war and took power in the end days of the war - he’d only be 41 in 2053.

Even in the old timeline Khan only ruled one quarter of Earth for about 4-5 years between 1992 and 1996. So it’s not implausible that the Eugenics Wars happen around 2048-2053 (Khan would be in his mid-thirties, and augmented) and Khan escaped after his reign was toppled during the Last Day in 2053 on a non-warp powered sleeper ship, because Cochrane only managed warp 10 years later.

In fact, having the Eugenics Wars take place around 2050 works better because Archer said his great-grandfather fought in them (in North Africa). Since ENT takes place in the 2150s, that only makes about a century between their births, which is certainly reasonable, whereas if Archer-great-grand-pére fought in the 1990s then it’d be stretching his longevity just a tad.

NuPNuA ,

Having WW3 and the Eugenics Wars switched in canon would make a lot of sense. Humanity goes to war and ruins civilization, then the augments take advantage and seize part of the planet for their fifedom. Then people like Colonel Green start purging anyone with radiation altered genes in the west as part of a general paranoia over “divergent” evolution.

khaosworks ,
@khaosworks@startrek.website avatar

If we take the chronology in “Mirror Darkly” as still valid, then Green started the war in 2026.

2026: Earth’s World War Three begins, over the issue of genetic manipulation and human genome enhancement. Colonel Phillip Green leads a faction of ultra-violent eco-terrorists resulting in 37 million deaths.

bunkyprewster ,

I love that Kirk had to die saving his own worst enemy so that the Federation could exist.

FormerGameDev ,

and subverting the “hero goes back in time to kill a mass murderer” trope, with “hero goes back in time to save a mass murderer”

NuPNuA ,

I actually thought the plot of Picard series 2 was going to be something like this, Picard has to ensure WW3 happens, dooming millions to save his future. Instead we got, well what we got.

TheGayTramp ,
@TheGayTramp@lemmy.ca avatar

Seems to me that they are merging the eugenics wars and wwiii together in canon. Maybe the eugenics wars are the catalyst for wwiii or something like that?

NuPNuA ,

Makes sense to be fair. The Augments take advantage of the War to seize a portion of the planet in all the confusion.

FormerGameDev ,

So… La’an goes back in time to bootstrap paradox Pelia into becoming the engineer she is in the current timeline, and saves Earth’s next Hitler from being killed, because without that, humanity never really gets it’s shit together. And ::speculation alert!!:: maybe her leaving that gun there begins his murderous spree, so maybe she bootstrap paradoxed Khan into being the tyrant he becomes, too.

What a wild ride.

I just … this series… is just so consistently enjoyable. I love it.

linux2647 ,

I know I was like, “wait she just left the gun there??”

Jon-H558 ,

Chekovs gun (for a very long time I actually thought the phrase related to the good old Enterprise navigator)

Basilisk ,

I’m just kinda thrilled to see Canada in the Star Trek universe. Obviously they’ve been doing a bunch of filming out of Toronto so technically we have seen it, but it’s nice for them to sidestep the fact that 99% of the time they get thrown into Earth’s past and they end up in California. Kirk “recognizing” the city as New York was a cute touch given how often Toronto doubles for it. Also technically I guess this means that the greatest tyrant in Earth’s history technically is canonically Canadian too.

Kirk being a chess hustler was cute too, explaining how he’s able to keep up when playing Spock in TOS.

Aside from that, the episode was fine. I like seeing La’an getting some development, and seeing her spar with M’Benga (and getting beaten) was nice since it justifies him being actually kind of a badass, and makes the fight scenes in the first episode of the season more reasonable. Also a bit more behind the curtain of Pelia.

A lot of the episode was just goofy “man out of time” stuff, which is cute in its own right but doesn’t really add a ton. But it was entertaining and fun, and worth watching again, so I’m still calling it a winner.

deepthaw ,

After the first episode of the season and seeing how he handled himself as a sparring partner, M’Benga should henceforth be called Dr. Seen-Some-Shit

triktrek ,

Toronto passing as New York for characters was so meta and hilarious.

gnuplusmatt ,

repost my original comment from last night’s failed thread:

Canon purists are making leaps about the placement of the eugenics wars. Sounds to me like they’re blaming the Temporal Cold War for changing things.

Must be pre USS Relativity time agency…

Fun episode, but the gymnastics to tell Kirk stories without impacting TOS is getting a bit obvious, this is our 2nd alternate Kirk

dan ,

Seriously. They need to stop giving us time travel stories to shoehorn Kirk into the series. Let it stand on its own without having to hearken forward to the Original Series.

It’s a good show, and it deserves to be its own good show.

triktrek ,

I agree. SNW has a really strong cast, and great writers. The show truly can be episodic without referencing any previous canon and still be fantastic and even appreciated more by new watchers of Star Trek.

buckykat ,

Kirk gets a mysterious call in the middle of the night from a woman he’s never met asking weird questions and his response is to ask her out

10/10 Kirk behavior

SamC ,

I enjoyed the episode. I think what makes SNW stand out for me is the characters. All the main crew are interesting, likeable characters, and that for me is generally a key ingredient for great Star Trek.

It has been quite a weird opening to the season. We haven’t had the crew together on the bridge (or even the ship) for 3 whole episodes. I’m guessing there was a real world reason for this (i.e. availability of the cast), but kind of hoping the next episode is a bit more “normal”.

Also, given that Kirk features, it was a missed opportunity to open with “Personal log: We’ve. Travelled. Back in Time…” without further explanation.

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

I don’t think we’re going to see in this show any Starfleet officers committing information to personal logs that could threaten history.

SNW seems very conscious that personal logs aren’t entirely personal beyond access.

Una recorded and deleted her personal log acknowledging she is Illyrian in season one.

Later shows in the continuity have revealed to us that some personal logs to become available to next of kin, or are even studied by future Starfleet personnel.

Having Uhura pointedly resist providing the personal logs to La’an in ‘Ad Astra Per Aspera’ also underscored to us that it’s the ethics of communications officers that protect privacy.

vewave ,
@vewave@kbin.social avatar

It was a fun ride overall. Especially with Kirk basically treating the mission as a field trip for the first 20 minutes. I'm glad I didn't completely jumped ship after Paul Wesley's incredibly wooden delivery of "oh my god, what have you done" nearly broke me. Meanwhile, the romance felt forced and rushed to me, so I didn't feel much at the end. But the most shocking reveal to me: George Kirk... is apparently still on the Enterprise?!

khan_shot_1st ,

The romance stuff felt very forced to me too

astroturds ,

Kirk was superb, I don't think I could have accepted the car scene if it was anyone else. It's Kirk, of course he's going to drive like a nutter. I was genuinely shocked when he got shot. I thought there couldn't possibly be a way for him to make it but they still got me.

La'an has grown on me so much, she was the one I was most dubious about in the early episodes of season one. I felt really sorry for her at the end, losing Kirk and being unable to talk to anyone about what she's experienced. She's gone through some pretty serious trauma already due to her genes and name and now she's had to go through this pure insanity. I wonder what the significance of the watch is.

ObsidianBlk ,
@ObsidianBlk@lemmy.world avatar

This does bring up an interesting observation… The Temporal Agents apparently have no qualms about coming to not only take back their gadgets and gizmos after someone from the past uses them, but seems to just drop in on the past and cryptically hand out missions to those same ancestors out of literal nowhere! This time travel stuff can be so mentally damaging that even those agents trained to directly work with it (Captain Brackston, for example) can mentally break. Whatever stress La’an was shouldering at the start of the episode has now surely compounded.

You would think that Starfleet of the future would have put together some form of “Temporal Psychology” department, or something. People who’s jobs are to go back to ancestors emotionally effected by time travel, and help them deal with any trauma. Telling La’an to, basically, just “shut up and suck it up” is a horrible way to deal with someone who, essentially, just saved your existence. I get she can’t talk to any of her contemporaries, but surely someone from the past could pop-in and act as a counselor of some sort.

IDK… I felt the temporal agent’s cold response to what La’an had to deal with was rather un-starfleet.

cybervseas ,

Yes I was thinking the same thing, like “Lady you’re acknowledging how difficult this is to bear, could you offer like 6 free therapy sessions at least?”

StillPaisleyCat ,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

Maybe they know that she has Pelia there to comfort her?

La’an couldn’t tell Pelia the details around Khan or the Romulan incursions, but if Pelia recognizes her and asks after the handsome young companion she has with her in the 21st century, she could at least offer comfort for his nonexistence in this presence. I doubt Pelia could see La’an with this universe’s Kirk and not put her memories together.

cybervseas ,

She was discount Camina Drummer for me at first. Now I see her as her own character with a lot of potential.

Madison_rogue ,
@Madison_rogue@kbin.social avatar

When the cab pulled up to Pelia's cabin I initially wondered how they got across the border, and then La'an mentions they bribed a border guard. Pretty good save there. You know it would've ended up in someone's plot hole YouTube video, or a clickbait ScreenRant article if they didn't cover that.

This was another solid episode; even though the ending was gut wrenching. Who would have thought that a writer would shoehorn a ship between Kirk and the descendent of his greatest nemesis. I really love this series.

hmantegazzi ,
@hmantegazzi@startrek.website avatar

True, but as someone on Tumblr observed, they could have avoided that just by placing Pelia's "bunker" on Nova Scotia or somewhere else in Canada.

Madison_rogue ,
@Madison_rogue@kbin.social avatar

I think it's fine; I don't think it's a huge deal that this could've been solved by moving her to someplace like Quebec (Toronto or even Ontario would've been too convenient). Like I said, it was just a thought when they arrived at the cabin.

SnackingRaccoon ,

I thought about this too, it would work, but would have softened the big "Canada" reveal a bit. As a Torontonian I was delighted by the big reveal in Dundas Square

GuyFleegman ,
@GuyFleegman@startrek.website avatar

I liked Wesley in "A Quality of Mercy" but hot damn, he nailed it here. He is easy to recognize as Kirk and yet is borrowing very little from Shatner's performance. Wesley has managed to "echo" Kirk in a way that Peck and Gooding haven't quite dialed in yet for their characters.

It's funny—given that in both appearances he has depicted an "alternate" Kirk, he's had some built-in leeway to miss the mark and still be credible. He doesn't need it. This man can play Kirk.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • [email protected]
  • All magazines
    •