Stardate: 1581.2
Original Air Date: June 29, 2023
Writer: David Reed
Director: Amanda Row
“My name is La’an Noonien Singh. My ancestor is Khan.”
We begin with a rare security officer’s log from La’an Noonien Singh. She has been dealing with various personnel arguments and complaints aboard the Enterprise, such as a Denobulan dispute in the transporter room, Spock playing his lute too loudly, and Pelia stealing artifacts from the Archaeology Department. To let off some steam she has been sparring with Dr. M’Benga.
Suddenly, she spots a man in a suit who appears in a hallway of the ship, suffering from a bullet wound. He claims there has been an attack in the past. He hands La’an a small device and instructs her to “get to the bridge” before he disappears. Thinking he means the bridge of the Enterprise, she rushes to the bridge only to find she has been transported to an alternate reality –Kirk is now seated at the helm of the ship, and Spock is on the screen as captain of the Sh’Rel requesting help from the Enterprise. Kirk is unfamiliar with Starfleet, but he claims to belong to the “United Earth Fleet.”
They argue in Kirk’s quarters over the device she is carrying and then they are both suddenly transported to Toronto in the mid-21st century (this alternative version of Kirk claims to have never been to Earth, since he was born in space on the USS Iowa). They witness a bridge explode resulting from a photonic bomb (hence why the mystery man from the beginning of the episode said “get to the bridge”). While chasing the culprits of this bomb, Kirk and La’an encounter a quirky young woman named Sera, she seems to be a conspiracy theorist of sorts. They learn of a cold fusion reactor which threatens to decimate humanity, but without a tricorder to help them, they search for an engineer.
Kirk and La’an travel to Vermont to meet with the alternative version of Pelia, but unsurprisingly Sera turns out to be a traitorous Romulan agent who traveled from the future in order to slow human progress and eliminate Khan. Sera was sent back in time to earth in 1992 and she has been waiting thirty years to complete her mission (thus making the year 2022 –this is a bit of a retcon of the Eugenics Wars of the ’90s as described in TOS). Sera tragically shoots and kills Kirk (a sorrowful moment for La’an, since the two were beginning a new romance). Sera forces La’an to head into the Genetics Laboratory at the Noonien Singh Institute for Cultural Innovation where children are being tested upon, but rather than opening the door to “Khan” La’an fights Sera. In the scuffle, La’an steals Sera’s gun fires at her which causes Sera to disintegrate and disappear.
After pausing for a moment, La’an enters Khan’s room and, rather than murdering this future Hitler, she consoles him before departing. When she returns to her own time, La’an finds Agent Ymalay sitting in her quarters, an agent from the Department of Temporal Investigations (which she admits does not yet exist in the SNW timeline). However, she praises La’an for not altering the timeline but she also directly instructs La’an never to mention this experience to anyone –La’an must keep her secret love for Kirk in the alternate timeline a secret. She makes a brief call to the Kirk of her own time, whom she has never met, and fabricates a story about his brother, but in the end she is left alone in her room, full of tears.
My Thoughts on “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”
An obligatory time travel/alternate universe episode, unfortunately I found “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” to be mostly a droning, head-shaking episode clearly inspired by “City on the Edge of Forever,” but falling wildly short of that episode’s lofty expectations. The first two-thirds of the episode is a mixed bag at best, while the latter third manages to nail the conclusion.
The character of Sera immediately took me out of this episode –her arc was obvious from the start– and Paul Wesley’s performance as Kirk continues to miss the mark for me (capturing the Kirk of TOS is an impossibly difficult task), and the romantic sub-plot between La’an and Kirk seemed a bit contrived to me at first, but by the end La’an’s tragic secret makes her a more sympathetic character in the series. Also, what is the lesson learned by La’an? Should genocidal murderers like Khan remain alive? Is La’an merely preserving herself? Or has she learned to accept her heritage?
Stand-outs for me in this episode include Christina Chong’s performance as La’an, the re-appearance of the Department of Temporal Investigations, and a forbidden secret that La’an must now bear in the show. I look forward to seeing where this narrative goes but admittedly I’m losing interest in all the romances in this show.
Star Trek Trivia:
- Alternative Kirk claims he spent 6 months in a Denobulan prison cell, his room-mate was a Vulcan, and he can make Plomeek soup in the toilet. Kirk has apparently been taught how to perform a Vulcan nerve pinch.
- This episode reaffirms that Pelia is a Lanthanite, a humanoid species who live for thousands of years undetected.
- The title of this episode is an allusion to Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
- The image on the device given to La’an is the same as the visual as portrayed in the Star Trek Voyager episode “Relativity.”
- In this alternate universe, there is an amusing discussion about the middle names of James Tiberius Kirk and George Samuel Kirk.
- In the background during the scenes in Toronto, a store sign can be briefly seen which reads “Dr. Keeler” –a nod to Edith Keeler in “The City on the Edge of Forever.”
The temporal Prime Directive can be the boldest example of how forcefully unfair some laws in the Star Trek future can be. La’an faced the same dilemma that the Doctor faced when he encountered Davros as a child, and she too couldn’t kill a child even if she knew he would grow up to become an infamous villain. As for her love story with alternate-timeline Kirk, quite imaginably as with Kirk’s with Edith and Spock’s with Zarabeth, hers was bound to end unhappily. Certain repetitions can as always become wearisome in the Trek universe. So if she does keep this sad adventure a secret, it’s still going to influence how she might see Kirk again in her own timeline, or the next time traveling episode. Thank you for your review.