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.

JWBananas,
JWBananas 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.

JWBananas,
JWBananas avatar

Hold up.

The Klingons Romulans go back in time to save JFK kill Khan? And Spock La'an has to kill save him?

Wasn't this the original plot of Star Trek II?

Madison_rogue,
Madison_rogue 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.

Jon-H558,

I do wonder how Kirk got his initial stake against the chess hustlers though

Madison_rogue,
Madison_rogue avatar

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.

hmantegazzi,

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 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

lennier,

It felt to me like there was an idea for a scene that was cut somewhere in the process with them having to deal with there being borders on earth, but the idea of the bunker being in Vermont remained and was explained with this throwaway line

russjr08,

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.

ValueSubtracted, (edited )
@ValueSubtracted@startrek.website avatar

Apologies - my own thoughts on the episode also have been lost to time.

We've identified the problem, and it shouldn't happen again!

ShakaWhenRedditFell,

Lost ... in time... like tears... in the rain.

williams_482,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

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.

pinwurm,

A little late to the game but I really loved this episode.

Only thing that didn’t quite make sense to me was the romantic connection between La’an and Kirk. It felt forced - and I feel like the episode would’ve been just as strong without it. Just them bonding as friends, who are going through this deeply traumatic time travel experience together - would’ve been more than enough.

I can appreciate that La’an would be more vulnerable as a result Kirk not knowing her family name, but she oggled him in the changing room before that was revealed. Seemed out of character.

Otherwise, I’m really curious to see what kind of timeline implication all of this will have - and if the watch will make way back in the series somehow.

MooseGas,
MooseGas avatar

I am so late to this. I was up at the cottage for the long weekend and missed the episode until today.

Khan could be my neighbour.

SSH_2023,

So does this retcon how Khan comes to power in the 1990s and pushes the eugenics war further in the timeline? I have seen some people say this was done to keep the timeline consistent with ours.

StillPaisleyCat,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

Yes. Time heals.

Key events are preserved but the details may change and slip a bit. The details can include slippage in the dates.

The 90s date was implicitly overwritten by TNG’s premiere where Roddenberry himself decided to shift WW3 to the mid 21st century.

People had head canoned the link between the Eugenics wars and WW3 out of existence, while also ignoring that TOS implied Warp was discovered in the late 20th century.

Accepting that temporal incursions alter the Prime Timeline just makes sense of events like Voyager Endgame.

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.

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.

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

IonAddis, (edited )
@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 avatar

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

JWBananas,
JWBananas avatar

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

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.
Hypersapien,

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

Mezentine, (edited )

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.

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