Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x03 "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"
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.
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
@buckykat @ValueSubtracted
"Why is it always so sexy around this guy when we see what Kirk is up to? It's not sexy like this in different times, and now we know it's not like this in nearby places. Does this guy give off a pheromone, or what?"
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.
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.
Wow. You get my first Lemmy upvote on this post! Thank you for pointing out all these details.
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.
I think it's more that they're introducing Kirk sideways, by way of humanizing him through how he cares for Sam.
Did she leave that gun with that little boy?
Lucky for us this boy is not going to be a genocidal maniac.
What could go wrong?
More importantly, she brought the watch back with her.
She left the gun that had shot Kirk in plain sight to be found be the security team she believed were on their way.
And in fact we heard the footfalls of the team running towards the room just as La’an hit the button and vanished. She didn’t even have time to get herself out of young Khan’s sight.
That genocidal maniac little boy...
@Tired8281 @ValueSubtracted That was all I could think about while she was trasnporting back to the Enterprise. Especially since she talked at lenght about Khan's murderous crimes...
Wait what's this? Star Trek writers can still create a time travel story that wraps up in an episode (or two) instead of lasting a whole 10 episodes of nothing?!
And they can weave in minor plot points from previous episodes to give it continuity without feeling forced?
How can this be?
If you're referring to Discovery, I think the whole time jump saved the show. I really struggled through the first couple seasons but now I look forward to new episodes. It's still not peak Trek, but I've been waiting for something that doesn't center around Kirk or the Kirk era (similar to Star Wars and the Skywalkers) but instead jumps further ahead than previous eras for decades now.
What bugs me about discovery is that they ruin the efforts of all of my favorite characters in all of my favorite series by wrecking the federation.
Tolkien decided to not write a sequel to lotr because the happy endings were too well earned, even if mankinds nature is to become complacent with 'good', it's frustrating to restart the struggle.
I agree with your sentiment, but I wish they would have done it differently. In my head cannon, I accept later seasons of discovery as one possible future, but hopefully not the prime timeline.
Okay there was a lot that worked for me in that episode. The amazing decision to have Pelia knowing nothing about engineering to being a veteran warp core engineer in 200 years. Going for child Khan and really leaning into the fucked up reality that these children were science experiments kept locked in basements for the first time in the franchise? The reminder that Toronto is actually pretty damn photogenic when it's not shot on a CW budget.
And you know what? Paul Wesley doesn't have Kirks voice, and the script still doesn't quite sound right, but he's got the Kirk delivery really nailed. He doesn't sound like Shatner, but he sounds like Kirk
I would like to see a Short Trek of what went down during that 16hr+ road trip with Kirk & La'An
Lots of talking, probably. They probably spilled everything about their histories, and not just their personal histories, but the histories of their own universes. Thinking about that makes the ending all the more heartbreaking.
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.
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.
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.
She was discount Camina Drummer for me at first. Now I see her as her own character with a lot of potential.
I thought this episode was fantastic.
The pacing was good, the interactions between Kirk and La'an were fun, and the closing acts were a real gut wrench. Being forced through such a traumatic situation and completely unable to talk with anyone about it is a piece of the time travel/Prime Directive secrecy that Star Trek hasn't really dug it's teeth into before, and there's clearly something very powerful to work with here.
Also, hilarious use of their immortal chief engineer. In retrospect, no surprise that someone in that position wouldn't maintain exactly the same hobbies and skills throughout the centuries, and also no real shock that this particular individual got her jollies stealing priceless artwork. And then arguing statute of limitations when she is challenged on it centuries later? Brilliant.
I do not give the slightest of damns about a TOS one-liner placing Kahn in the 1990s. This is a good story which wouldn't work properly otherwise, and that was a poor choice from writers who couldn't have possibly known better. Absolutely do not care, and so much happier for it.
After a fairly meh first episode, SNW S2 has reeled off a pair of real bangers. Looking forward to the next installment.
But they also managed to explain the moving of the Eugenics Wars as the result of time hijinks, some of which we’ve seen on screen. I think this is a credible explanation Star Trek can use for TOS retcons without being too dismissive of canon.
Did anyone else catch what looked like an unspoken, knowing look from Pelia when La'an appeared on the bridge after returning? Does Pelia somehow remember their prior encounter on Earth? Is it explicit, or more like the way Guinan would have an intuition, or a subliminal feeling? Or did I imagine that?
I feel like it was a “aha I remember when you wore that outfit.” I was kind of hoping they would have a conversation at the end. Instead we got the DTI 😄
Yeah I was really expecting pelia to come in and lift the watch back up at the end and comfort laan
Pelia remembers it, that meeting was before the timelines diverged, so it happened in the current timeline.
I'm sure Pelia had a flash of recognition, but she is not the same type of high and wise immortal as Guinan. 200 years is a long time, and perhaps her memory isn't perfect. La'an didn't tell her explicitly that she was from the future, so she might just be having some serious deja vu and wondering about the resemblance of this security officer to that weirdo who showed up at her door in 2022.
It's unfortunate that the writers didn't plan this beforehand, so we could have had some foreshadowing a few episodes beforehand with a first meeting between the two where pelia acts a little weird (because she remembers her from 200 years ago).
I love that Kirk had to die saving his own worst enemy so that the Federation could exist.
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"
Random thoughts as I watch (cross-posted from the old place):
I wish the Romulan agent succeeded but that led to a stronger Federation instead just to spite those meddling aliens.
I really like Paul Wesley's portrayal and the way Kirk is written. Honestly I can imagine this as a TOS episode with Shatner and co. Some more thoughts:
While I was not sure about the chemistry between the two main characters, I bought into their romance and I especially liked the final scene with La'an: it was an earned moment and the actress was very effective in her delivery. I wish the two had spent some more time talking about what reality they should preserve but I guess saving your brother's life is a good enough reason to risk everything. I would've done the same, tbh. Time shenanigans needn't be explained, honestly I can believe that the Augment Wars were so destructive that we don't know many things about the period; could've been in the 90s, could've been in the 21st century, there are real life examples of such gaps in the historical record, after all (and don't tell me Sarah Silverman was around for the rise of Khan). Still, a welcome reference.
I love Pelia, the accent, the delivery, the character backstory, it's all really good and she is a very nice addition to the cast. I laughed when she didn't know anything about engineering but it makes perfect sense. Imagine going back in time and asking a 10 year old Einstein to explain relativity to you!
With the positive out of the way, I have to say that I liked the first half of the episode more than the second for the following reasons:
I think they broke into that facility pretty easily. Why did the door open in response to La'an's DNA? Isn't Khan just a little kid? Can he enter and leave as he pleases? I thought he was like an experiment they are trying to keep under wraps.
I did not like the antagonist lady and I especially don't like the suggestion that Romulans have been secretly trying to keep humanity from reaching greatness. I always thought that one of the most important messages in the franchise was that humans were able to rise above their flaws and create a utopia but now it's the Romulans who were keeping us down and we managed to reach the stars even against these odds. How inherently great humanity is... Not a good message, imo, but perhaps the antagonist lady was simply exaggerating.
Overall a good episode. Kinda lost me in the second half but the final scene was a strong conclusion. Honestly, I can see myself re-watching this in the future.
I think they broke into that facility pretty easily. Why did the door open in response to La’an’s DNA? Isn’t Khan just a little kid? Can he enter and leave as he pleases? I thought he was like an experiment they are trying to keep under wraps.
Seems Khan and all the other kids are probably derived from older Noonien-Singh DNA, considering the name of the facility.
I think it was less humanity's greatness that allowed them to reach the stars in the alternate timeline and more of having no choice but to do so. Earth was a wasteland and they needed more resources beyond what was available in the rest of our solar system. La'an told Kirk at one point that he could be an explorer in her timeline, heavily implying humanity doesn't do that in his.
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.
I included this in the Discussion Thread 1.0, but I agree - Wesley brought a unique charisma to Kirk that worked really well without being Shatnerian.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
That’s exactly it.
That really explains a lot. Kudos to the production for really playing well to their constraints like this.
A little remarked side effect of time travel is that it causes infatuation (Kirk, in "City on the Edge of Forever") and horniness (Spock, in "All Our Yesterdays"). La’An experienced both!
Edit: I forgot about Bashir and Jadzia in "Trials and Tribble-ations" but honestly they just seemed to be acting in character!
La'An fell head over heels for someone who had never heard of her. Absolutely makes sense. An entire lifetime of being treated differently, because everyone knows. Even if they don't treat her negatively, they still know.
This Kirk was the first person since grade school that she met someone who didn't know.
Absolutely makes sense.
Plus it ties in with the previous episode where she and Number One reflect on their augments, family history, and years of feeling shame about who they are.
This came out of left field for me but I really love La'An as a character and I want her to be consoled so hard 🥺
What about Sisko, Bashir, and Jadzia (then later O'Brien and Kira) in "Past Tense"? I didn't see any horniness except for maybe from O'Brien
Sisko did his horny stuff in the mirror universe.
Ah, well I had a more thorough comment typed out, but unfortunately that was on the thread that got locked and the app I'm using on mobile ate my response when it failed to post.
The gist of it though was that I was pleasantly surprised by this episode, as I'm not usually one for the time travel themes. The ending was painful (as in, the writing was very well done) to watch and hit me harder than I expected!
And it was also cool for them to reference DDG instead of Google, I'd be happy to see that sort of thing happen more often on TV.
Apologies - my own thoughts on the episode also have been lost to time.
We've identified the problem, and it shouldn't happen again!
Lost ... in time... like tears... in the rain.
Ah, well I had a more thorough comment typed out, but unfortunately that was on the thread that got locked and the app I’m using on mobile ate my response when it failed to post.
Sorry to hear that. We had some problems with language settings which required replacing that post; most people couldn't see it. That shouldn't be a problem going forward.
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.
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.
He felt more like TOS Kirk than movie and pop culture Kirk.
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.
Toronto passing as New York for characters was so meta and hilarious.
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
Copied and pasted from my comment on the original thread that is still in my profile (I'd noticed something was up with the previous post but figured it would clear up with time)
Nice character episode with a simple premise and a good amount of Pelia!
I’ve always thought Trek is at its worst or riskiest when doing time travel stuff, but the tone and focus of this episode being on La’an and her relationship to her heritage really centered the episode. In a way it was a subtle, but strong, IMO, character driven plot point to have her struggle with finding for once a real intimate connection with someone destined to be lost and “forgotten”.
Having Kahn appear as a child was low-key wonderful.
What’s up with the watch? Is there more to Pelia than meets the eye? Seems she’s conveniently forced herself and her myriad belongings onto the ship for this particular time period while also (and I forget what Trek’s take on time travel is here) knowing about that watch being on board at this point … ?!
Anyone else feeling a certain lack of Pike in the first 3 episodes? Not against it, it just seems somewhat conspicuous given that I imagine the character is half of the reason the show exists.
Anyone else feeling a certain lack of Pike in the first 3 episodes? Not against it, it just seems somewhat conspicuous given that I imagine the character is half of the reason the show exists.
Apparently Anson Mount had a new kid right around the time the beginning of the season was filmed, and they decided to give him some extra time to handle that.
Great episode, this seasons is just getting better every week.
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.
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.
I do wonder how Kirk got his initial stake against the chess hustlers though
Their badges are made of gold. IIRC in another time travel episode someone used their badge as ante before playing poker or some other game.
It was a hand-wavy reason to explain how they got across the border, but then they had to do it the other way too. I’m pretty sure bribing two different border officers the day after an incident of international terrorism is not that easy. I don’t care how good Kirk is at chess, you can’t raise the kinds of funds needed to do that by betting on games for an afternoon
Also, how did they get a fancy hotel room? Even if you’re paying in cash you need a credit card to secure the room (and ID)
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
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.
@IonAddis @BROMETHIUS oh, I remember fandom when it was hand printed zines through the post - fandom survives, fandom finds a way
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?!
The romance stuff felt very forced to me too
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.)
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.
I legit thought it was Cara Gee for the first few scenes she was in.
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
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.
my only thought about why they are so desperate to have Kirk around is that if the show runs long enough they intend to have Pike's accident during the series, and then tell the final 2 years of Kirk's original 5 year mission? I'd be up for that
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.
This episode was fantastic. Christina Chong's performance hit me in a way that a Trek performance hasn't since Connor Trinneer at the end of Terra Prime.
So far, it's my favourite episode of the season.
I enjoyed that episode a lot, although it would have benefitted from its length being tightened up by ten minutes.
What do we think was the nature of the Romulan interference with Earth? And what time period is Sera, the Romulan agent from?
The DTI agent appears to use 29th century tech, which is several hundred years after the Romulan Empire’s supernovae-driven collapse but possibly around the time of the Romulan-Vulcan reunification of Ni’Var. Is she from that same time period?
Sera also shows Kirk a picture of what looks like a TOS-era Bird-of-Prey as part of her alien conspiracy photo deck. It has the round nacelles typical of the 23rd century, rather than those seen in ENT’s 22nd century designs, or some other design representing the 20th/21st century in which these attacks take place.
Is she a time agent from the 23rd century (with the appropriate Romulan ship in orbit)?
Is that her guessing who Kirk is, and planting the evidence he’s most likely to recognize? Or was that really a Romulan design from the 21st century?
Which leads to me wonder if the Romulans started interfering with Earth’s development only due to temporal war shenanigans, or had they been doing flybys for as long as the Vulcans?
Never thought that letting an episode run longer in streaming would be viewed as a negative.
I wouldn’t have cut anything.
I agree. I'm usually the first to complain when it's obvious a show/movie needed an editor to cut unnecessary filler but this this episode used its time well IMO.
It's almost a throwaway line but I'm pretty sure she implies 21st century Romulans are interfering with Earth independently, and she's running a parallel mission?
Maybe, Sera is from a 29th century Romulan Star Empire that wasn't devastated by a supernova. Could the destruction of Romulus have been the result of a time war?
I suspect we will never get answers to any of that. The DTI has always been more about driving fun plots than establishing any sort of clear worldbuilding about how they work. And that's probably for the best, because time travel really doesn't make much sense, and that only becomes more obvious the longer you spend trying to make it make sense.
They literally just clarified how time travel works in this episode. Clarifying the DTI books take that only big probability wave changes form stable alternates, most collapse back to the "prime" waveform and reinsert key events elsewhere if they're interfered with. Also we know we have at least one other time travel episode this year from Mariner and Boimler to appear.
Pretty solid episode. Usually I dislike time travel episodes but this one worked given that it gave La'an opportunity for character development and the beginning of closure. I was a little worried that were edging back towards the temporal Cold War plot thread from Enterprise with the ending. Hopefully they will stay well clear of it.
One thing is the last 3 episodes in terms of content have felt like they belong in the back half of season 1. Not that it is bad thing, but there is the feeling that we are waiting for the season proper to kick off.
It’s possible.
The EPs have said that, in season two, they had used some script ideas that they had worked up for season one but didn’t have room for.
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!
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.
So, does a genetic engineering lab now have the corpse of a man from the future with all the future vaccinations, immunities, and whatever else that may provide?
Is this the Kirk that was in the project Phoenix project?
It’s not because the label on Kirk’s remains at Daystrom Station indicated that they were recovered from Veridian III.
As for alt-Kirk’s body, it could be that they do, but it’s also equally possible that DTI did a clean up.
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.
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.
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.
The most destructive war we ever fought as a species lasted only six years. Plenty of time for all this to happen still.
That was such a great episode. I watched it last night and woke up thinking about it. Really great. I love the addition of Pella in the crew, and that La-An went to her for help later in the episode.
Do have to admit that I was a tad disappointed that Pella didn't come to her at the end remarking something about the clothes looking familiar.
And this James T. Kirk is growing on me! I first wasn't convinced, but he really was so good in this episode. The call at the end was so bittersweet.
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.
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.
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.
Also, given that Kirk features, it was a missed opportunity to open with "Personal log: We've. Travelled. Back in Time...." without further explanation
This would be entertaining but wouldn't necessarily fit due to Star Fleet not existing and presumably no reason to make personal logs.
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.
I know I was like, “wait she just left the gun there??”
Chekovs gun (for a very long time I actually thought the phrase related to the good old Enterprise navigator)
I must be of the silent minority or something, but I really disliked the amount of advertising was done in this episode. I don't think I can remember this ever happening in trek before, but yeah. Not for me. Also, while I enjoyed that Kirk used chess to make money, the music choice ugh. What happened?
It's fine, I don't hate the show, just didn't like this episode and really it's a skip for me. Doesn't add enough to anything to be a required watch as part of a rewatch.
I enjoyed the episode a lot, but I do agree about the product placement. It really was unnecessary and jarring.
Heh... I didn't notice the product placement at all. I'll have to watch again and see what y'all are talking about.
I'm pretty agnostic regarding brands. It just doesn't register to me, and advertisements usually disappear as background noise. If there's a can of Coke™ on the table, I don't usually recognize it as a proprietary brand, and translate it to "soda".
[Copying my post from the original thread and adding something to the bottom]
Christina Chong absolutely killed it, especially in that final scene. Imagine finding someone you can connect to for the first time in your life, and immediately lose them. It even makes someone who is usually very unemotional crack.
Also, Pelia is such a delightful character. Great addition to the show.
Other than that I’m not really sold on the episode. It’s over an hour long and it did feel (too) slow and meandering at times. And I feel as if it just existed to shove in Kirk once again (and once again in an alternate timeline scenario to stick to the Trek canon) and explain the postponement of the Eugenics Wars by some Temporal Cold War shenenigans.
Final nitpick: how can Spock exist in the alternate timeline if humans and Vulcans are enemies?
Others wrote about how it was interesting that La'an had to choose to keep baby tyrant Khan alive for the greater good (of the future paradise Earth). And I agree that it's an interesting conundrum – but that was given so little space in the episode that it fell entirely flat for me. La'an found out early on that Kirk didn't know Noonien-Singh but that plot point was dropped for 30 minutes and only brought up again in the final minutes. In that aspect it reminded my of "The Elysian Kingdom" last season where nothing happens for 45 minutes and the interesting stuff comes out of the left field at the very end of the episode.
Maybe I'm being too harsh (I'll rewatch the episode in a couple of days together with a friend) but for now I'd say this was one of the weaker episodes of the series.
how can Spock exist in the alternate timeline if humans and Vulcans are enemies?
Where they enemies? I got the impression they were on good terms, but just never allied like they did in the main timeline.
Ooh, I like the nitpick. Good point.
Annotations at c/DaystromInstitute here.
Minor thing but the teaser jumped straight into the opening credits (without fading into black first) and I thought that was cool.
Small aside, but I appreciate the mention of how the timeline slowed down, and Khan was suppose to be in 1996
@ValueSubtracted
A nice La'an episode.
@ValueSubtracted
IMHO the time travel is more the background for the La'an and Kirk episode.
They rush so through it that it doesn't seem to me the A plot.
I guess I'm one of the few voices of dissent again... I enjoyed last week's episode, but this episode is disappointing again. The romance between La'an was very unnecessary and unnatural. They had no chemistry and it felt incredibly awkward. I still can't stand their choice for Kirk. Feels like I'm watching Darrin from Bewitched (or some other "ordinary working man" type character) doing cosplay and not a star ship captain, and certainly not a captain like Kirk. Not only does he not have "the look," but I hated the way he delivered all his lines.
The only breath of fresh air for me is that a disaster takes place someplace other than New York, LA, or the US in general. However, they definitely didn't hire enough extras for Toronto. Everywhere looked too under populated and not enough racial diversity (ie: where were all the Asians? Toronto is filled with East, South, Subcontinental Asians). I've never seen the streets of Toronto so sparse.
For me there was a couple wild suspensions of disbelief that just didn’t work. Earning enough cash from an afternoon of playing randoms at chess in the park to afford a full on suite at a decent hotel downtown Toronto. And the police just letting them go, no license, no identification of any kind…
I did really enjoy Toronto in general and thought the main plot was strong enough, but agree the romance was unnecessary and also think the dialogue needs some work.
As a security officer, La'an is highly trained in social engineering, and Kirk is cunning on his own, as we see in how he zeroes in on the best car around and steals it with minimal physical harm to the owner. I'd say there's a good chance they didn't pay for the hotel room at all, but conned their way in on someone else's credentials. Same deal for crossing the border twice.
I'd argue that was more believable than "wave a tricorder at a cash point" like we've seen in the past. Also, how far did the money from one pair of second hand glasses go in Voyage Home and we didn't doubt that.
Not just the hotel, but enough to bribe two separate border officers to let them cross the border the day after a terrorist attack
I liked the episode but I’m kinda with you on Paul Wesley’s Kirk. I like the actor, I like the new Kirk as a character… there’s just no connection in my mind between him and Shatner’s Kirk.
I felt the same way about Ethan Peck for quite a while, but he grew on me too.
I'm with you on this. La'an is my fave character in this show so I was really looking forward to this episode. But after watching it, I felt it just wasn't very good. I think, for me, it was mostly the writing, followed by the pacing, and the fact that while Kirk is my all-time fave Trek Captain... I just do not like the Kirk in this show. I just don't find the actor they chose to be a suitable fit at all, unfortunately.
Still, the episode did have a few good moments, and it's only 1 of only 2 episodes, so far, that I haven't enjoyed with this series. So that's still a good batting average.
Hopefully I'll like the next episode more!
I was not a fan of Wesley's Kirk in S1, but he won me over here. He has a physical gawkiness that I don't associate with the character, but he nailed the confident bravado and understated nerdiness that endeared Kirk to sci-fi fans fifty years ago.
I totally agree about the change of locations! Where were the exterior scenes filmed? Was it really Toronto?
Like Discovery, Strange New Worlds is filmed in Toronto, so it was a fairly easy location shoot for them.
Yeah, that was definitely actually Toronto. The big area they're wandering around in at the start is Yonge-Dundas Square, and I'm pretty sure this is the clothing store they stole from. The "Noonien-Singh Center" at the end was actually the Royal Ontario Museum - both the interior and exterior.
Kinda weird seeing Star Trek characters actually wandering around in an area I know decently well.
As others have mentioned, far too many suspensions of disbelief in this one. I’m not sure which is more ridiculous though: Kirk hustling general public at chess winning enough money for a downtown Toronto hotel suite or the brutally awkward romance between La’an & Kirk.
Wasn't that somewhat of the point. Laan doesn't have chemistry with anyone due to her tragic childhood and family lineage making her an outcast. Kirk is a good enough man to see though that.
where were all the Asians? Toronto is filled with East, South, Subcontinental Asians
Well the romulans have been pushing humanity apart fro a while they delayed Singh by 30years. Maybe they been working even longer
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.
Really liked it. It was the best SNW episode for me so far. However I really don't like the whole changing of established continuity via time travel.
It’s never been in any way realistic that most of the time travel incursions didn’t somewhat change the Prime continuity.
There are exceptions with the Guardian of Forever’s intervention, but First Contact and Voyager’s temporal interventions had to had changed the small things.
Besides, Roddenberry himself decided to change the timing of WW3 and the first human warp technology in TNG Encounter at Farpoint. There has been a change in continuity since at least that point.
This actually makes sense of it in-universe and in terms of physics.
It’s fans rigidly trying to ignore these revisions in the Prime timeline that is an issue in terms of physics.
Anyone else notice that The Orville has an episode with this same name? S02E13, "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"
Nope, never watched the Orville. But variations of this particular quote from MacBeth occasionally pop up in entertainment media.
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
Yeah, I noticed before I watched and then told my fellow trekkie friends I thought it would be time travel. My reasoning was the only episode of any Trek I could remember that contained the words "yesterday" or "tomorrow" and didn't involve time travel was "Return to Tomorrow." Called it.
Btw, it was a good episode of The Orville. :)
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: 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
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.
At the very least the Time Agents could send La-An a therapist or something.
Is La'an supposed to be stronger than regular humans? She gave that Romulan some good ass kicking. That's really impressive
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.
Good point. Hope we get to explore more of her powers
Just here to note two details I appreciated:
Man poor La'an. That ending broke my heart.
"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?
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?)
That fits with how they described time travel and alternative universe's working in the DTI books too which is nice. It takes a major shift to the probability wave to spin off a new timeline (Human physiology difference like light sensitivity or the Narada incursion) smaller changes collapse back into the main timeline quickly.
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.
Yes, first season it was jarring, this season she feels more like an original character.
