“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 3 – Debuted Thursday, June 29, 2023
Written by: David Reed
Directed by Amanda Row
Buoyed by a standout performance from Christina Chong, Strange New Worlds delivers another classic Star Trek setup with a bit of fun mixed with serious character development as the show takes one of its “big swings” into the past of La’an Noonien Singh.
Everyone remember where we parked.
WARNING: Spoilers below!
RECAP
“This is a fork in the road, your future and mine.”
Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh is having a routine day handling various security issues ranging from missing items to noise complaints (keep it down, Spock!). She has her hands full with Pelia, as the new (ancient) engineer came on board with enough archeological contraband to make Indiana Jones weep. La’an works out her frustrations sparring with Dr. M’Benga, who interjects some counseling into the jiu-jitsu, but she’s more interested in the punching than facing her self-isolation issues. The mundanity is broken by a flash in a corridor revealing a man in a grey suit, and he’s been shot… like with a real gun. The dying man tells La’an there has been an attack in the past and she must “get to the bridge,” and hands her a mysterious device before a distortion wave passes through the ship and he disappears. Spooky. She does as the mystery man suggests, finding the wrong man in the chair… Captain James T. Kirk of the United Earth Ship Enterprise, who’s dealing with Captain Spock’s dire request for aid. His Vulcan ship is in bad shape and the war with the Romulans is going badly. Kirk has his own problems so he denies the request and turns his attention to the intruder: La’an. This Enterprise captain has never heard of Starfleet and is skeptical of her story, demanding she hand over that time gizmo for inspection. She refuses. As they struggle over the device, it activates, landing the pair in a graffiti-filled alley, where repeatedly pushing the red button does nothing. …Bet she is missing dealing with those boring security issues right about now.
They quickly work out they are in mid-21st century Toronto in old Canada (“You know, maple leaves, politeness, poutine”) and Kirk is peeved to find himself in the past without any of his cool sci-fi stuff. La’an is immediately on mission: Find the attack and stop it before it changes the timeline. But first, they are going to need some local clothes (insert cute shopping/stealing montage) and some local currency (insert fun Kirk chess hustling montage). During this, we learn this Kirk comes from a dark future: He has never even been to Earth, which is a smoldering ruin after a devastating war with the Romulans. (Those guys again!) Despite La’an’s stiff focus, he’s relaxed, taking in the moment to enjoy street hot dogs and a real sunset. In their impressive hotel suite (just how much can you make playing street chess?), La’an is starting to warm up to this casual captain, but they clash over the plan. Kirk’s best move is to do nothing beyond raiding the minibar—or risk erasing his own future. Sure it’s a bit bleak, but humanity found a home in the stars and he has his ship and friends so all this talk of a correct timeline and a federation “utopia” falls on deaf ears. “We don’t need anyone’s help to survive”—sound familiar La’an? She argues he could be more than a soldier fighting a losing war, he could be an explorer. He starts to listen, especially once he learns she knows Sam, a dead brother in his future. As they ponder history, it arrives with a bang… the beautiful bridge outside their amazing hotel suite explodes. Oh, “get to the bridge.” Duh.
Do they have anything in maroon?
“My friend and I are on a mission to protect something beautiful”
Arriving at the bombing site, they realize this can’t be the attack that splits the timeline because they both remember this terrorist incident. However, the eagle-eyed security officer (with the assistance of a helpful local photographer) spots signs of future weaponry. Determined to follow some sketchy guys loading “photonic bomb” evidence into a van, Kirk decides to add carjacking (thanks to a Vulcan nerve pinch learned in a Denobulan prison) to his growing rap sheet, kicking off a car chase and more playful banter. Then La’an learns something crucial to the mission that also hits really close to home: James has never heard of an infamous guy named Noonien Singh. The chase gets interrupted by the Toronto PD and James ends up in cuffs, thankfully the photographer from earlier shows up to livestream the arrest. She starts talking about how the cops are harassing that famous civil rights attorney who crusades against police harassment… so they let him go. Really? Anyway, meet Sera, who is revealed to be a conspiracy theorist tracking evidence to prove the government is hiding how aliens are behind attacks geared to keep humanity fighting itself and not out exploring the stars. Crazy? Perhaps, but Kirk starts listening when she shows him a picture taken by an astronomer of a familiar ship. Of course… Romulans!
La’an is skeptical of Sera, but Kirk points to how close she is to the truth. Plus she has surveillance of one of the sketchy van guys observing the explosion, and tells them about a rumor that there is a secret facility in Toronto full of experimental tech that includes a cold fusion reactor. This is the key difference — as Jim recalls this reactor being destroyed, taking out Toronto in a Romulan first strike and kicking off his dark timeline. Stop the attack, and they fix the future, but without a tricorder, how can they find the reactor? La’an has an idea, remembering she just might know someone close by that could help. Since Pelia’s stuff came from the “Archeology Department” in Vermont, it’s time for a road trip as they track her down in what turns out to be a curio shop full of what she will smuggle onto the Enterprise in a couple of centuries. La’an talks her way in, revealing she knows Pelia’s secret of being a Lanthanite hiding out on earth for thousands of years. But it’s still the 21st century, where Pelia has yet to take up engineering, noting “I work retail,” so she can’t really help building them a cold fusion detector. After some brainstorming over beers, Pelia has an idea after hearing about how any cold fusion reactor will put off tritium, which she suggests would get the face of an old watch that used tritium to glow… and now they have their detector. The experience has Pelia pondering a predestination paradox of a career change as the pair of future Enterprise officers makes their exit, showing how they make a good team, and can even have a bit of fun along the way, on their temporal adventure. Who can resist James Tiberius Kirk in any timeline?
I just learned this new word… “chill.”
“You can be free of him.”
Back in Toronto, the duo playfully debates over who gets to wear the watch/detector as La’an’s icy shell continues to melt; she even admits she would have never gotten this far without his help. All this fun has her wondering if, after they succeed, maybe the time thingy can bring him to her future. Maybe she won’t be so lonely in the 23rd century, where “people are usually difficult for me.” This Kirk doesn’t see her genetic baggage, allowing her to let go of the “scarlet letter” she has been carrying, opening her up to his charms… and a kiss, of course. The romantic moment illuminated only by the city lights is interrupted by a glow from Pelia’s detector. Back on mission, they find the source and La’an’s own temporal journey starts to make sense as they see the sign for the “Noonien-Singh Institute for Cultural Advancement.” Using the unique qualifications that had her chosen for the mission, she successfully passes the secure facility’s hand scanner (DNA marker, maybe?) but the moment is ruined… by Sera, with a gun. Yep, her previous appearances at just the right times and places all adds up now. Impressed by facing down the Captain James T. Kirk, Sera fesses up to be the time-traveling Romulan baddie they have been hunting. But she differs from the ones in the Institute who are content to just slow down human progress; she has a more aggressive plan. Kirk is unfazed, saying if she shoots, then security will be alerted, but she doesn’t believe him and tests the theory by shooting him in the chest. OMG! As alarms blare, it’s clear he wasn’t bluffing. La’an tearfully holds the dying man, whose final words are for his brother Sam. Sera gloats over killing the famous captain as she overpowers La’an and pushes through into the facility. F-ing Romulans! Am I right?
With guards alerted, Sera gives up on reactor explosion “plan A,” ominously diverting to the “genetic laboratories” and a hallway full of kids’ drawings and a door with a written-in name… “Khan.” Holy eugenics, Batman! Sera demands La’an use her hand scan thing again to go in because a computer simulation assumes killing kid Khan will stop the needed dark age that precedes the enlightenment that sets humanity on course to forming the Federation and becoming the biggest pain in future Romulan butts. Apparently, Khan is a kind of temporal focal point and even after something changed and stopped him from rising to power in the ‘90s, here he is again. Learning La’an is a Khan descendent, Sera argues the time device will protect her from being erased, so she can kill the kid and live out her life knowing she ended his brutal legacy. Seemingly tempted, La’an then whips around and uses her M’Benga jiu-jitsu moves to disarm Sera. After a struggle which includes the door being opened, she kills the Romulan infiltrator with her own gun. As the time device indicator goes from red to green, La’an has a moment to meet the young and surprisingly sweet Khan Noonien Singh. She assures the frightened child that he is right where he needs to be before activating the device and returning to her Enterprise. Just to make sure, she checks in on the bridge to find Pike and Una dealing with a bulletin over Pelia’s plundered antiquities. La’an suggests they cut the Lanthanite some slack before making a quick exit, not fully explaining why she is very much out of uniform.
Have you considered a future in gardening?
The exhausted security officer returns to her quarters only to find a stranger waiting for her, introduced as an agent from the Department of Temporal Investigations named Emily (actually spelled Ymalay, because she is from the future). La’an has no idea what DTI is because it “doesn’t exist yet,” but sorts out that the dying guy who set her on this whole mission was also an agent. Ymalay is sympathetic over the “harrowing” time La’an has had and thankful she completed the mission, but warns her not to talk to anyone about it before taking the time device back and blipping away, leaving La’an alone, again. Overwhelmed by the emotion of her experience, La’an decides to reach out to Lieutenant James T. Kirk just to see his face alive again, even though she had to make up a story about updating Sam Kirk’s security file. After Jim lays on some charm (including an invite to drinks), she is alone again, with only memories of her Kirk and that wristwatch to remember him by. Brutal.
Finders keepers?
ANALYSIS
Welcome to Canada
Another week brings another classic Trek sub-genre as Strange New Worlds delves into time travel. A plot about fixing a broken timeline may be familiar; however, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” was still a “big swing” for the show as it used this setup to tell an impactful and emotional story with the focus almost entirely on La’an. It was a risk to hand the bulk of an episode over to just one member of the cast, with help from a recurring guest star, especially as Paul Wesley’s debut as Kirk had mixed reviews. Christina Chong rose to the occasion, even without the comfort zone of the ship sets and shooting on location without any of her regular co-stars. Wesley also was a delight in his second shot at James T. Kirk, creating a relatable and believable alternate version of the iconic character. The script also helped Wesley sell this bit of a mix between William Shatner’s classic Kirk and Chris Pine’s Kelvin Kirk, such as struggling with the car like “A Piece of the Action,” segueing into a Star Trek 2009-style car chase. Like last week’s courtroom episode, the show used a familiar setup to emphasize key Star Trek themes, in this case making the case for cooperation, not just within the infinite diversity of the Federation, but on a personal level as La’an finds a way to lower her guard and let someone in. There also seems to be a welcome and relevant theme emerging for this season of fighting against those who try to sow division in society.
To be sure, the tragic romantic plot combined with time travel rhymes with a Star Trek classic, “City on the Edge of Forever.” Once again, this second season is swinging for the fences with what should be favorable comparisons to one of the franchise’s greatest episodes. The quick relationship between Kirk and La’an was believable as the pair showed fun chemistry, and the choices La’an faced to restore the timeline were brutal, all adding up to a whole lot more depth for the character. Meeting young Khan may have been a bit on the nose for facing her past, but Strange New Worlds earned this moment well, something it couldn’t have done earlier in the series. La’an was faced with the old “Would you go back in time and kill baby Hitler?” moral quandary, but here it was personal, and we can believe she was just a little tempted before she did her duty to save the timeline. Thankfully it wasn’t all galactic stakes and heartbreak, upholding the time-honored tradition of traveling back to contemporary times for some fun fish-out-of-water (“What’s a meme?”) moments, bringing a bit of Star Trek IV-style levity to the proceedings that balanced the episode, along with helping sell the growing bond between Kirk and La’an.
Do you have any old reading glasses?
With the exception of a key arc setup scene with Dr. M’Benga, the rest of the main cast was mostly absent, leaving a lot of heavy lifting to guest stars. Adelaide Kane, perhaps best known for playing an empathetic doctor on Grey’s Anatomy, delivered a solid performance as the Romulan spy Sera, who has gone a bit loopy after being trapped on Earth for decades, with some hints of the crazy version of Captain Braxton from Voyager’s “Future’s End.” And Carol Kane was back, fleshing out her kooky Pelia, playing her in two different centuries, delightful in both. The city of Toronto also played a bit of a guest star role here, marking this as the first episode in the franchise set in Canada. Kirk mistaking it for New York City may have been a nod to how often Toronto is used to stand in for American cities and maybe another nod to “City on the Edge of Forever.” Strange New Worlds celebrated the city where it (and Discovery) are filmed with visits to local landmarks, and of course, a taste of poutine.
You can let go now, Captain.
What time is it?
As a vehicle to tell an important character story, the episode didn’t overdo it when it came to temporal mechanics, but the story still fits well into Trek canon, with plenty of nods to Trek’s long history of time travel. The means of time travel was handled simply by future gizmo. In a nice nod to future Trek continuity, the display the gizmo used was borrowed from a TCARS timeline analysis screen used on the 29th-century USS Relativity from Voyager. La’an being recruited by a temporal agent also echoes Seven of Nine in that same “Relativity” episode, as well as Archer’s work with Daniels in Enterprise. Here, the temporal agents worked for the Department of Temporal Investigation, first seen on DS9 in the 24th century, but exactly when these agents came from was left vague, which is fine. Things do get a bit more complicated when it comes to Sera the Romulan time traveler and the others disrupting humanity’s progress: It was also unclear when she came from and exactly how she related to the others who ran the Institute and blew up the bridge. While she was an interesting character and her motivation seemed pretty clear, a bit more exploration of her time travel history and Earth disruption plot would have been welcome.
The episode also skirted right on the edge of canon with La’an being the first to accuse Sera of being a Romulan, when she would have no idea what a Romulan looked like, but aliens disguised as humans aren’t a new thing to her. Kirk knowing the connection to Vulcans and pointy ears makes sense due to the war and him coming from a different timeline, but does La’an now know and will keep that secret per the warning from Agent Ymalay? Strange New Worlds also took the opportunity to square the circle when it comes to the Eugenics Wars, making an effort to explain away why the rise of Khan Noonien Singh didn’t happen in the 1990s (as established in 1967’s “Space Seed”). Sera invoking the Temporal Cold War from Enterprise was another nice nod and helped make the case. So does this episode rewrite all of Trek history? Also, did La’an using the time travel device in front of Khan or (rather sloppily) leaving her gun behind in his room, have any kind of impact on little Khan? Could this have been another predestination paradox inspiration on her part? These are the fun questions that arise from good time-travel episodes.
All the squiggly lines look right, so bye.
Final thoughts
While perhaps not as great as last week’s entry, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” was entertaining, emotionally engaging, and thought-provoking. What else could you ask for? Three episodes in, and Strange New Worlds season 2 is going well.
You don’t look a day over 150.
Bits
- The episode title comes from a speech from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
- The phrase has been referred to in pop culture including the play Hamilton, and it was also the title of a time-travel episode of The Orville (“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”).
- Opens with Security Officer’s Log, Stardate 1581.2
- The Enterprise has a Denobulan Cadet (played by Sean Meldrum).
- The car Kirk steals appears to be a 2022 Dodge Challenger.
- Episode officially established Riverside, Iowa as the birthplace of James T. Kirk. Riverside has proclaimed itself (with Gene Roddenberry’s blessing) as Kirk’s birthplace, along with an annual “Trekfest.”
- The song playing during Kirk’s chess playing was “This Is It” by The Home of Happy, and the car chase song was “Modern Art” by The Black Lips.
- La’an correcting Kirk on how no one calls his brother George helps clarify a bit of canon on why everyone on the Enterprise calls his brother Sam, even though on TOS Kirk says he was the only one who did.
- The conspiracy theory Sera crafted included the Chornobyl Disaster, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Tunguska Event… all of which were featured conspiracies on The X-Files, so maybe she was a fan stuck on Earth in the 1990s.
- Watches using tritium were a real thing, and some watches still have it.
- Pelia quipped that she learned math from Pythagoras, the 6th century BC Greek mathematization, so just how old is she?
- The episode was filmed in March 2022. After Wesley and Chong were spotted in downtown Toronto, Paramount officially announced he was playing Kirk.
You are not in Iowa anymore.
More to come
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Season 2 episodes drop weekly on Thursdays on Paramount+ in the U.S, the U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Season 2 is also available on SkyShowtime elsewhere in Europe. The second season will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in South Korea, with premiere dates to be announced at a later date.
Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
I really liked this one and Pelia’s backstory cemented a bit more.
It would be cool if McCoy got Kirk’s glasses from her, but I suppose that would be small universe syndrome.
It’s interesting that Khan’s backstory is somewhat officially moved time wise (I know SNW previously mentioned this). I wonder how this will go over with some.
This is how you “soft reboot” TOS. It has to be with the changes we know there are with TOS.
Except that the events in this episode are completely out of sync with Picard Season 2.
How so?
This may be intentional for a story to be revealed later, but when Picard resolves the 2024 issue after season 2, First Contact is just 39 years away. In that time Khan will rise to power, the Eugenics Wars will break out for four years and World War III will follow, lasting over 25 years. That all works with what’s established in Picard Season 2 but doesn’t quite work with the latest episode of SNW which features what appears to be a 10 year old Khan in 2022 who would be just 14 in 2024.
RE: Khan’s backstory. Oh, I imagine a few with loathe this with a passion.
I absolutely love the time move for Khan…
Lot less loathsesome to have the Eugenics War be World War III in the near future than to have Khan kill millions back in the 90s but not of us know about it somehow.
I assume a lot of records were lost in WWIII and it created confusion over when Khan was active. In a few centuries I wouldn’t be surprised if there was debate as to exactly when WWII took place.
True. Khan does, however, say he’s from 1996 in TWOK.
Exactly. You really can’t get away from this tiny, but very important reality lol.
Doesn’t the episode mentions that the Khan etc. timeline has shifted from the 1990s due to previous temporal shenanigans? The (terrible actor playing the) Romulan said she’s been waiting for 30+ years.
Exactly. I don’t really understand why people keep saying it’s shoddy record keeping to explain Khan in this period when they had Sera monologue it was specifically a time altercation that did it. And yet, people keep bringing it up lol.
It’s one of these weird disconnects you see on the internet. The character explained it on screen. She didn’t say or implied she ended up in 1992 because they were following Earth history books that apparently really stupid humans wrote by getting entire dates of crucial history wrong by decades and got screwed in the process.
She made it clear she time traveled to the past to alter history only to realize someone else already altered it before she got there. That’s it. That’s the explanation.
Did he say he was from 1996? As I recall, he said his ship was from 1996, carrying him and his crew in cryogenic freeze.
Maybe the ship was built in 1996, but it wasn’t launched until circa 2050 or whenever. There are other questions that need asked—like, it’s clear that Sera thought the Eugenics Wars started in 1992, but if she was from an alternate future and all of that stuff was changed, why does Spock still refer to it as a ‘90s conflict. Furthermore, he does refer to it as the last world war, which seems to be more in line with the SNW timeline.
I considered the same. I did look up the script and this is what he says in the script:
Never told you how the Enterprise picked up the Botany Bay, lost in space in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-six, myself and the ship’s company in cryogenic freeze?
Ok—so if the dialogue of the script is the exact same as the dialogue from the actual movie, then it would seem to suggest that the ship was indeed launched or at least lost in 1996, not later. Little room for error there. Ugh. They tell us it’s the prime timeline then they do stuff like this. Jeez.
Akiva Goldsman admitted in an interview on another site that they officially changed the dates in Trek canon.
The quote:
This is a correction. Because otherwise, it’s silly, or Star Trek ceases to be in our universe… By the way, this happened in Season 1, so this is not a Season 2 [issue]. It’s a pilot issue. We want Star Trek to be an aspirational future. We want to be able to dream our way into the Federation as a Starfleet. I think that is the fun of it, in part. And so, in order to keep Star Trek in our timeline, we continue to push dates forward. At a certain point, we won’t be able to. But obviously, if you start saying that the Eugenics Wars were in the 90s, you’re kind of f*cked for aspirational in terms of the real world.
To me this just shows that this guy shouldn’t be writing Trek. Let alone running an entire Trek show.
But dude, you have to admit, this change does explain in a very logical way WHY there are so many differences in the timeline and things people like you been complaining about like running into the Gorn so soon.
Again, I have to stress I still think they should’ve avoided the Gorn just as much as much I think they should’ve avoided the whole Khan stuff, but sadly here we are anyway. But they never given everyone not only an explanation but also a way for the hardcore canonistas to just enjoy the show more.
It’s not a reboot, but it’s probably the closest we’re going to get to one and it does solve a lot of their problems. Again, NOT everything. It doesn’t explain why Chapel is basically a totally different character for example, but it covers the bigger issues IMO.
Just as Star Trek ’09 explained themselves away, too. This is the same thing. I saw that as essentially a decent way to reboot Trek their way while still attempting to appease the few fans who would refuse to accept a reboot. And the producers all but said as much. The way I see it this episode has cemented all nu-Trek as reboots. Their own thing. Which is odd because they have constantly been telling us “this is Prime!” What we are seeing conflicts with what the makers tell us. They really do need to come out and confirm what their intent is. I mean, if they said nothing about where this show is set I strongly suspect nearly everyone from day one of Star Trek Discovery would conclude Secret Hideout shows are all reboots. And rightly so. Honestly they should have kept their mouths shut about it or just flat out admit what they were doing. All of this leads me to the conclusion that Kurtzman & Co really don’t know what they are doing. They are changing things on the fly if you will. With no real plan of any kind.
And even if they flat out admit to all that, that won’t suddenly make the show good. It will only eliminate their canon issues. The other problems remain.
Or perhaps the producers of a fictional show just updated the timeline from a previous fictional show that was done over 60 years ago so that the future could remain possible within the science fiction premise?
Yeah… It feels like it could have been their excuse to “Star Trek ’09” this show into essentially a reboot.
Someone theorized a year ago that this would lead into their own version of TOS and I’m not thinking that poster could be proved correct.
They probably should’ve done this with Discovery and saved them the headaches from the start (but yes DIS had many more problems than just canon issues). But I don’t have a problem how they explained it and it’s not so dramatic as being in a new universe like the Kelvin movies are. It’s more of a middle ground.
Yeah, the timeline change is not that big of a deal, at least for me. Ever since I was a kid watching Assignment Earth and seeing a Saturn V used for a military launch of a nuclear weapons platform, I took the TOS universe and canon timeline with a grain of salt. Obviously, 1996 has come and gone in our universe so IMHO moving the Khan launch sometime into the 21st century doesnt bother me, but I am sure some may disagree. It’s all good!
My feelings on that is that our reality is not the same as the fictitious Trek timeline. There was no Khan for us but there was for them. I find it ridiculous to alter the show’s history to match ours. What are they going to do in 2063 when no Vulcans come? Change that too?
i think for many fans who grew up in the 1960s, we loved watching TOS because in some ways, it represented a possible future for our planet. We conveniently put aside episodes like Assignment Earth as irrelevant, and fantasized that our future in 300 yrs might look like Star Trek.
Of course as an adult, that ideal still exists but we cant stick to the notion that the Star Trek universe is our universe’s future at least not specificallly.
Conbine that with the countless canon violations we have seen in nearly six decades of Trek that is why I pick and choose what parts of canon I think are important and what parts are not .
All the while, whole-heartedly knowing and respecriong those who disagree and want to be more or even less strict when it comes to canon.
I think we all have a personal code for what parts of canon are important and what is less so. Personally, I feel like if a date in Trek history is dished out, that date is set in stone. If a new alien is introduced in a specific episode, that is set in stone as well. The Eugenics wars had a specific date. So for me at least, that date is set. Unless you are a reboot, that date stays put.
Yes, there have been a lot of in show violations. But I would argue that nearly all of them are very very small and not enough to ruin the fantasy.
As a youngster watching TOS reruns in the 70’s I very much liked the positive view of humanity’s future ST showed. This was at a time when the bulk of sci-fi centered on apocalyptical/nuclear horrors in our future. Back then, the fact that there was a future show where there was no nuclear war was a welcome and positive respite from that. Even when they brought up the Eugenics Wars it seemed likely it wasn’t nuclear. And although they didn’t say, I figured when they mentioned WWIII that was the Eugenics wars. So there was one last conflict. It wasn’t about political ideology. It was about the last tyrant. And it wasn’t nuclear as far as we could tell. At least, not on the world destroying level other sci-fi was doing.
Then the TNG pilot was aired. And they brought up some sort of “post apocalyptical horror.” I remember thinking, “where the hell did THAT come from?” GR just ruined the hopeful non-nuclear future of humanity Trek hinted at. I was super disappointed and just thought, “well, if they never mention it again, that’s fine.” And if I recall they didn’t until the feature film “First Contat”.
Sorry if that went off topic some. It’s just that your post made me feel like I ought to respond with that.
Exactly, like how Blade Runner 2049 was the future of the 2019 from Blade Runner and not the real 2019.
This means First Contact will happen later and changes Enterprise also.
For those who had been grasping at straws every time Akiva Goldsman said how he was toying with the canon, this episode has resolved more canon inconsistencies and mysteries than any nuTrek episodes ever did, like an episode straight out of ENT S4. It is also apparent that writers in SNW and PIC S2 discussed the Eugenics Wars. You can all breathe now.
I’ve been treating this as a reboot for awhile now. The problem remains… Akiva is still claiming this fits within canon. Why keep claiming that? Why make your job harder?
Because it’s not a reboot. And no amount of saying that it is a reboot will make it one
Unless someone in an official capacity says that it is. Picard Season 3 dropped breadcrumbs (and the U.S.S. New Jersey was practically a loaf of bread).
My point is, they could totally retcon this series as a reboot… if that makes sense.
Maybe he means how they resolved it fits in within the time travel canon stuff and that you can see how the alternate timeline flows from it? It’s probably best not to overthink it too much but I know that’s very naive of me to say. ;)
At this point I can only think the only reason they are saying their show is Prime is just selfishness or arrogance. Perhaps they think their show is better than what came before and therefore it’s their ‘superior’ version that should be prime. So they just keep saying it is.
I’m just trying to come up with reasons they keep saying it’s prime when it so obviously isn’t.
“ At this point I can only think the only reason they are saying their show is Prime is just selfishness or arrogance.”
No shortage of irony here!
Couldn’t possibly be because it’s their intent that it takes place in the Prime timeline, no siree Bob.
There is actually a great shortage of irony in the comment. I’m not out there saying what I produce is 100% in line with what others have done without their established boundaries. They are.
Could their intent be that it takes place in the Prime? Sure. But that’s not what we are seeing. No siree bob. So what is the logical conclusion when someone says the car they made has a 6 cylinder engine but when we open the hood and look it is only 4? Are they incompetent? Are they lying? What?
It’s mentioned in this episode that myriad temporal attacks have shifted the timeline, but certain key events keep happening. So, this is a tweaked version of what we know (of an entirely fictional universe rife with years of inconsistencies). I think it’s a fairly elegant solution.
The prime timeline has been subject to temporal alterations. Have you not seen the TOS episode the “Naked Time”. The Enterprise episode “Regeneration” DS9 Past Tense Parts I and II and the list goes on.
Respectfully, are you serious? It is the Prime Timeline. 900 years in the future Burnham watched the historical record of an older Spock and Picard.
In the finale from season One Spock used the term “Prime”. Emperor Georgiou used the term “Prime”.
Why are so many fans having a hard time accepting the changes? JJ to his credit created an entirely new universe and fans were still upset. Come on. That episode pretty much answered all of the canon shifts and alterations in every series and I appreciate it.
With due respect, the concept that there are so many temporal alterations essentially means that nothing means anything and show runners are fee to do what they want. It also questions the existence of the temporal investigations division. If they are fine with time line changes of this magnitude then what are they there for? I see it as merely an excuse to get away with not being handcuffed to the rules of the show. It means the writers aren’t up to the task of operating within the existing parameters of the show. Which means they shouldn’t be working on the show to begin with.
The Naked Time didn’t change anything. Neither did Regeneration. I wouldn’t rely on anything said or done in nu-Trek as evidence either. Too much of what they do ignores the rules for anything they do to be considered valid. The KU films were essentially reboots. They came up with a nice explanation for it but quite frankly it wasn’t needed. It was a reboot. Period. I have no issues with anything that they did in those films as they were their own new thing. If some fans had issues with it that is their own issue for not liking the concept of rebooting Trek to begin with. This episode didn’t answer for anything except provide an explanation for why they aren’t following the rules. Their solution is to copy Trek 09. Make their own thing. Everything Secret Hideout has made has had the earmarks of reboot written all over it in every single way but one. The producers have yet to say so.
Well said. I could not agree more.
The timelines presented in Picard don’t line up with this episode. It’s another example of how the writers are not actually communicating with each other. TrekCulture actually addresses this in this weeks Ups and Downs.
Resolved? THE CHASE resolved longstanding Trek stuff, an in a clever fashion. This one just steamrollered over things temporal, though I do give credit to the actress having to spout all that chrono-babble for bringing her A-game (and second week in a row, guest cast is having to do awfully heavy lifting, even though ‘kirk’ doesn’t have the muscle for it.)
This is the first time I wasn’t totally satisfied with the security chief’s acting, though some of that may just be due to the writing, which as usual I found far from compelling. When watching AkivaTrek, I often find myself paraphrasing Pike’s line from the end of THE CAGE,”What are we running here, a cadet writer’s room?’ The utterly empathy-free Kirk evinced here when he blows off that Vulcan commander’s request for help is alien to me.
In the main I just found the episode to be a genuine bore, squandering a lot of screen time on ‘banter’ that was flat as a plate of piss (though the VFX folk must be happy with all the unnecessary screen time accrued since editorial kept going back to views of the destroyed bridge in a manner I would describe as ‘time and again.’ (noticed a couple of shots in the early going where editing didn’t perform match-cuts and was distracted by that as well, since it wasn’t for any apparent effect, just sloppy work.)
The fight scene between the sec chief and the rom was perhaps the lousiest I’ve ever seen on Star Trek, and that covers a LOT of painful territory. Couldn’t tell one character from the other and the frequent changes in perspective only worsened that.
Cosmetically, the fact that the altered timeline ship looked the same seems utterly absurd. Even as a matter of money, it doesn’t track, because so much of the thing is LED driven, so they should have been able to play with a DMG lighting board like a jazz piano and create a much different look for the bridge. And they could have shrunk the ridiculous corridors down to human dimension as well, since that ‘verse’s ENT apparently doesn’t include 8 ft tall critters.
The show did maintain continuity with one decades’-old Trek tradition: Kirk got yet another lousy death. Though in this case I wish it had happened sooner.
One last observation: Anson Mount can’t save an episode unless he actually has a substantial appearance in it. That is becoming nearly as true here as it was with DISS.
2nd episode in a row where I can say I don’t think you are wrong.
This episode has helped me decide the Kurtzman era is not canon
I think it is impossible to see these current shows as prime. I’ve been thinking that for years but this episode pretty much cements it. My main beef is that the producers just come out and admit it. Either admit they lied from the start and knew it was reboot when they said it wasn’t, or admit they originally intended it to be prime but soon realized they didn’t have the talent or creativity to make Trek under the Trek universe rules so they shifted gears and decided “this is why it’s all reboot”.
Not terrible.
The good: 1) good character work, 2) a twist on elements from City on the Edge of Forever (Kirk has to die) + Future’s End (the Sarah Silverman character is the villain), 3) Kirk’s a good driver in this timeline, 4) Carol Kane got to play Miracle Max, 5) attempt at a canonical explanation for why the Eugenics Wars didn’t take place in the 1990s (although not really since the later date would have been in the Space Seed history tapes and First Contact etc. unless you head canon more timey-wimey shenanigans that reset it).
The bad: 1) another alt timeline episode and alt Kirk so close to the S1 finale? and 2) ripoff of the Enterprise episode Carpenter Street and the Xindi scheme, which it at least acknowledges.
The truly messed up: the argument that humanity needs its genocidal monsters to make progress.
Yeah, the “genocide has its upsides” argument (or, as I call it, the “even mushroom clouds have silver linings” philosophy) was problematic to say the least. At least it was a villainous Romulan computer that came to that conclusion, so if you’d like you can headcanon some butterfly effect where killing Khan makes some other worse thing happen from which humanity doesn’t recover.
Germany has prospered post ww2. The idea is sound,at least in most western cultures that after a massive conflict society typically prospers and makes progress
Agreed!
i for one welcome our genetically engineered over lords XD
LOLOLOL!!! The Simpsons, right? :D
lol Kent Brockman, classic. Should have made the aliens Kudos and Kang :p
kang and kodos in the simpson were already named after star trek characters.
This episode was good (SNW is still my least favorite of the current shows) i enjoyed having an episode with La’an as the lead in the story as she is my favorite character in the show but i still don’t like Paul Wesley as Kirk.
Maybe if we actually see Kirk and not an alternate timeline version of him it might change my opinion of him.
Not much to say really about the episode other then that i again enjoyed it but i wished we got more with what the Romulan’s were doing in the past.
I’m sure some people will be going back and forth with the ‘retconning’ of the Eugenics wars happening later then claimed in TOS (In Space Seed it was mentioned it started in the 90’s) but to be honest it doesn’t bother me as there was some stuff in past shows that contraindicated the date anyway. So if the SNW show-runners want to give a concrete date that future shows can use then that is fine by me.
Spock does say that he thought it was that time, but the records were fragmentary. and we also dont know if the Temporal Cold War changed any of this, but it certainly seems so since this Romulan agent had been on Earth “since 1992”. so maybe someone did in fact change the timeline, which is certainly possible.
That doesn’t, for what it’s worth, explain Khan mentioning 1996 on CA5 (now, he also recognized Chekov…)
This.
You’re reading it wrong. Space Seed was before the temporal wars. After the Romulan agents messed with the timeline, things shifted.
This episode basically is saying that all are the same timeline and any inconsistencies are due to the temporal wars. Smart move.
Except that they haven’t said that. It’s just made up fan canon. Not saying it doesn’t or can’t work as an explanation.. but that hasn’t been established at all outside of fan circles.
They said it through the dialogue of the episode. Come on… If it applies to Khan, then it applies to everything. There is no the Temporal Wars did not impact the timelines in the past and the future.
The Red Angel story? Come on.
There’s some assumption of facts not in evidence.
I’m not reading anything wrong, I’m simply pointing out that the historical records thing doesn’t hold up because Khan himself is fairly specific.
That whole “assumes facts not in evidence” thing? I got not problem with the TCW explanation.
“This episode basically is saying that all are the same timeline and any inconsistencies are due to the temporal wars. Smart move.”
I don’t think it works that way. You can’t be in the same timeline if one person are in fact born in different time periods as these two Khans were. What the Romulan was saying was the past she jumped into was inherently a different past altogether. Yes it was caused by the Temporal War but it’s now a separate timeline from TOS and the others due to it.
RalphDataLore is correct.
Sera says “time is like a black box. It’s too complicated to leave to intuition, so, we built computers that will tell us the results of, uh, certain changes. […] Khan becomes a brutal tyrant. I mean, maybe humanity needs the brutal dark age that he brings in to usher in their age of enlightenment… or maybe it’s just random. Doesn’t really matter though, because if I kill him, the Federation never forms and the Romulans lose their greatest adversary. But yeah, so many people have tried to influence these events, you know, to delay them or stop them. I mean, whole temporal wars have been fought over them. And it’s almost as if time itself is pushing back, and events reinsert themselves. And all this was supposed to happen back in 1992, and I have been trapped here for 30 years trying to get my shot at him. I’m not gonna stop now. So open the door.”
TOS’s version of the 1990s happens… then there’s a time war with people fixating on the Khan moment, which somehow pushes his birth 40 years (she says 32 but the kid looks to be 8-10), but Khan still emerges in Earth history because “time itself is pushing back.”
But I’m still having the issue when Kirk finds the Botany Bay in TOS, is he talking to Khan who ruled until 1996 or is he talking about this new alternate version a-hole that will apparently rule sometime post-2020s or when he becomes a full adult? Or are we suppose to now believe the events will still exactly fall like they did in Space Seed, just with a different year attached? And if things are pushed 50 years farther ahead for Khan, wouldn’t that (technically) just push all the other events decades out as well if not change a lot of those events completely?
That’s what I don’t understand? Are you suggesting SNW is just overwriting everything that happened in TOS? I just don’t think they want to go down that road lol.
Now I understand things can get course corrected, but I don’t think to the level that nothing feels out of place either. The Kelvin movies made that explicitly clear. Sure Kirk still ended up as Captain of the Enterprise, but did it 10 years earlier while changing Pike’s fate completely along with the loss of his father and apparently sans a brother. But yeah, he and Spock still get to be besties though.
Wouldn’t that be the same issue here? I just don’t understand how it keeps canon to everything in TOS if nothing still aligns with TOS? This is why I just think it’s better to leave some things alone, it’s only going to confuse people when you try to tell them history has changed but the far future somehow stays static which is obviously never the case in Star Trek.
When Kirk finds the Botany Bay in TOS, he is talking to Khan who ruled in 1996.
I’m not suggesting that Strange New Worlds is just overwriting everything that happened in TOS. The show is saying that the Temporal War is doing that.
For our purposes (as in, geeks who’ve watched every iteration and every episode of Star Trek), that means events first presented in Enterprise are rewriting everything that happened in TOS.
The big step back and deep breath everyone needs to take is that Star Trek history has been and is being rewritten all the time, whether we like it or not and in defiance of however we try to rationalize it. Personally, I’m okay with it because of the Temporal Cold War explanation. I never dug the Temporal Cold War idea, but I think it’s okay to use it to drive a hole through canon. Long-time Trek fans know what has been “changed” by the future and Enterprise and Sera’s monologuing gives geezer fans like me that justification/excuse to do that. It’s an out that serves old fans and new, bigots and IDICs: Trek’s fake history can all be canon, none of it be canon, some of it be canon, whatever, take it or leave it.
As a general note, the implication is that history — or, at least, Star Trek’s history — is being rewritten all the time. We don’t have to like it, but that’s what a plain read of the show’s text indicates.
I don’t mind it being rewritten, I’m only saying unless there is a reset button of some kind (which fans love…not) then it implies that what originally happened obviously doesn’t happen if people have been going back in time and messing with those events like in the TCW.
Maybe you didn’t read my review post, but I’m all for the idea temporal incursions have changed things up; but I strongly believe we’re just getting an alternate timeline to these events. Not quite at the level of the Kelvin movies, but different. I’m only saying it just doesn’t make sense that the events in TOS (and the other shows) happen as we saw them if we know specific events were changed like with Khan. But yes if it explains things and make canon a little smoother I’m fine with it.
And although I never cared that they moved the events of the Eugenics wars, it does make episodes like Voyager’s Future Ends actually fit now since they arrived in 1996 in that story and no one even mentioned the name Khan in it. To this day I’m still angry about it lol. Again I understand why but it’s like they are afraid to just admit that this is all actually fiction lol. But it makes that episode feels much more believable now at least.
I still liked that time travel story more than this one though.
I actually do think they want to go down that road.
Well I’m sure some would but maybe I should say Paramount themselves don’t want them to go down that road. And especially after all the moaning the Kelvin movies got over it when people literally thought that’s what those films were doing at the time.
Khan being genetically engineered makes it seem entirely plausible to me his embryo was stored prior to being implanted, and so perhaps he was simply implanted later in the revised timeline. Same Khan born 30 years later. I noticed they didn’t nail down the exact year so I would say this episode could pass for any time in the 2010s or 2020s either side of the pandemic restrictions.
yeah it (TCW) did. without siliks intervention, the nx01 would have exploded early.
The date is not so concrete now. The Romulan agent did say there had been a lot of tampering with the timeline going on and that time itself seemed to push back and reinsert the events that had been delayed or stopped. Plus, with all the temporal tampering that has occurred throughout all of the shows, it is reasonable to assume there could be changes to what we consider the Prime timeline. It doesn’t bother me at all either.
Maybe the hand scanner wouldn’t work if it didn’t detect blood flow (at least in the absence of an official in-universe explanation, this works for me).
I’m assuming your post was meant as a reply to Tiberius Mudd. Your explanation as to why the Romulan agent didn’t shoot La’an makes sense though. :)
Does blood immediately stop flowing if someone is shot? I mean, Sera could’ve shot La’an once they got to the second door. I don’t actually question your explanation, I question the integrity of the dramatic situation presented. Pointing a gun at someone is pretty boring. Since we can’t use the “h” word when describing the writing, I’ll just point out that it was AI quality.
Why didn’t the Romulan agent just shoot La’an, too, and use her hand print? It couldn’t have been that she’d have to drag her dead body down the tunnel as the show went out of its way to show she had super strength.
It’s called dramatic license.
Usually that’s invoked when something mundane is made exciting. This sequence was no more dramatically exciting than a mugging.
I loved this episode- a great arc for La’an, who benefits greatly from a fantastic performance by Christina Chong.
I like Paul Wesley’s take on yet another alternate timeline James Kirk. I loved his line: “That old-fashioned two-dimensional version? That’s basically idiot’s chess.”
I think this episode played like a mini-movie in terms of scope, emotions, action and concepts. And I like how the disparities in canon get a basis here, the Temporal Cold War and other alterations to the timeline make sense. And a delayed start to Khan’s reign of terror is a nifty update to the timeline. This is near or at the top of my favorite episodes of SNW.
You brought up the Temporal agency. Seems to me they didn’t do their job. Khan was supposed to happen in the 1990’s. Yet they were happy it would be delayed perhaps 50 years?
Here’s another thought… Before TNG it was assumed that the Eugenics Wars were the WWIII that was mentioned on TOS. Yet TNG said there was indeed some sort of “post atomic horror”. For some time I just figured it was their own, albeit disappointing, take on the Eugenics wars. Making them nuclear. But then they suddenly shifted to moving it to the mid 21st century for some goofball reason. I always found this a bit contradicting. But delaying Khan’s attempt to take over by at least 50 years could be a way to merge the two together again.
Seems we now have two versions of pre 2063 timeline now. Ugh. I just wish they would tell us up front this is all a big reboot to avoid all this.
shhh… those are details that get in the way of good storytelling, don’t you know! lol
“You brought up the Temporal agency. Seems to me they didn’t do their job. Khan was supposed to happen in the 1990’s. Yet they were happy it would be delayed perhaps 50 years?”
Yeah I admit, that is really confusing. The DTI agent seems happy that the Romulan didn’t wipe out the Federation (whew), but she’s not concerned that history has been alternately changed in a huge way? But that’s also problem with time travel. How do you really know you’re not just living in an alternate timeline which was a joke in Trials and Tribble-lations. But as we saw in this episode and ‘Relativity’ Starfleet has developed technology that can detect these changes and literally live outside of them, so it is a plothole. And a pretty big one IMO.
But this is probably the best they can explain it without going down a rabbit hole of temporal mechanics insanity lol.
True that. But I still think it is their way of legitimizing their own mistakes. Which is fine but it sure would be nice and bring closure to a ton of fans if they come out and say that is exactly what they were doing. ST09-ing SNW.
In time they may just come out and say that. I’m guessing this isn’t going to be the last time travel episode they do obviously.
And I think they knew they were only making bigger problems for themselves and why this came so early in the season. They wanted to establish it as soon as they could….and give us a cameo of kid Hitler in the process. (sigh)
But this will make a lot of the people who hate this show and other modern shows a little happier…I think. ;)
I kinda think it would save them a ton of grief if they just came out right now and confirmed what we are all seeing.
But I have to tell you this show is a little like Star Trek Discovery to me. Even if it was officially stated to be 100% reboot then even though all the canon problems disappear all the quality of the show problems remain. Granted it’s still better than Star Trek Discovery. No denying that. I don’t expect the writing to be on par with TOS. They had real Sci-fi writers and I think that bar is high enough that its an unfair comparison. But the quality of the writing just isn’t up to par with even Berman Trek. And it’s not even close. I feel like the episodes are talking down to me. Sorry but that’s how I’m seeing it. I’m not a professional writer so I can’t explain what it needs. It’s just the vibe I’m getting from them as a viewer.
Man you really don’t like this show lol. But I know you like it more than Lower Decks, so that’s a positive. ;D
I do like it as you know but I agree with people who says it could be a lot stronger as well. I like that it’s light on one hand but I wish the writing went a bit deeper at times too. It doesn’t harness the sci fi stuff on the level the older shows do. And for a show called Strange New Worlds, we’ve seen very very little of that so far.
It’s a fun show but it’s not really doing anything innovative or new either. It just feels like its copying so much of what the classic shows did but not trying to stand out in any meaningful way. But this episode was the first to do something big and regardless how you feel about it, it’s finally taking real chances. We also know this is the season of ‘big swings’ they said over and over again and this was a good example of one. So this season may change my mind on that, especially with episode 9.
But overall I like SNW because it is comfort food in so many ways and does feel like TOS and the Berman era shows. I still don’t like it more than any of those either, but it’s still very early of course. It is the first live action show since Voyager I really liked its first season. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s doing more things right than wrong but we can agree to disagree on that.
I think we can agree it’s light years better than Discovery at least. ;)
We can agree on that. :)
And just a reminder… I was impressed with Prodigy. The front half, at least. I found the back half to be a bit of a quality drop. Was a bit bummed it got the axe. But it wasn’t totally unexpected.
I agree. Mine too. Still like the debut episode best though. A mini-movie it certainly was and for a Toronto (nearby) resident it was great seeing all the location stuff actually being situated in Toronto. We’re always New York or London or Moscow – lots of films shot here.
I liked the fact that the two-hander between La’an and Kirk through most of the episode reminded me a bit of a romantic drama like Before Sunshine. Mixing up the genres again.
I’m a bit mixed on this one overall. However the Khan-troversy (forgive me) seems much ado about nothing. Yes, Space Seed cites the year 1996. SNW writers have said something to the effect of records from The Eugenics Wars were unreliable due to the chaos and turmoil of that period in human history. I’ve it alleged in other threads that this is an f*** you to the fans and just another example of the powers that be not giving a crap about canon a la the Gorn and Nurse Chapel issues. I’m not a big fan of those two examples but don’t think the Khan bit is the same. It would make sense after a cataclysmic event, such as the way WW3 is depicted in Trek, that there would be gaps and errors in the recorded history immediately preceding it. More importantly, Khan’s own words in TWOK seem to back up the assertion that his rule was actually in the 21st century. Simply put, TWOK opens with the famous IN THE 23rd CENTURY. Later in the film Khan says “On Earth, two hundred years ago, I was a prince with power over millions”. I’m gonna say the genetically engineered man of superior intellect and the subject of the debate is the most reliable source here.
He also said in WoK that his sleeper ship was from 1996. I’d say that was pretty definitive and even if records are “spotty” they wouldn’t be so spotty they would be off by FIFTY YEARS!
But ML31 is right, Khan himself literally says 1996 in TWOK. That’s why the answer that Matalas tried to give that Spock was just ‘confused’ on the dates or that the war misplaced things when he was discussing Picard season 2 was total BS. I’m pretty sure Khan himself wasn’t confused on what year he left Earth in and which as you said is the most reliable source. But I guess they forgot that line in the movie. Sigh.
But yes oddly enough Khan also says it happened 200 years ago and not 300 years ago but I guess you can say he was just speaking in general (or just really horrible at math lol). But the fact is he establishes himself he was from 1996.
I think it’s just better to go on what the evil time traveling Romulan said and that history was altered due to things like the Temporal Cold War. Because even the Romulans expected to find Khan in the 90s and why she had been on Earth for 30 years (but man Romulans apparently age pretty good lol).
But that’s why this makes sense this is just an alternate timeline because now you have Khan born in literally two different time periods. What else could it be BUT that?
You could bomb mankind back to the Stone Age today and there would still be people who know when the Second World War took place. Children have learned about it in school, there are books, monuments, eyewitnesses or at least children and grandchildren who have heard stories. It’s just a poorly thought out excuse for a rather unnecessary change to have Khan in the series. The people who make Star Trek have been obsessed with Khan for ages, and I wish they would finally let him go.
This. This. And more this.
What is so asinine about this (and I’m not talking about Bill Murray but the writers who came up with this idiocy) even if you can believe ONE country can’t keep their records straight, it’s ridiculous to believe all the others wouldn’t have better historical accounts.
Khan didn’t rule over just one country. He ruled over forty. 4-0! And you mean to tell me out of all of those none of them could get the keep record straight with one of the biggest invasions in world history since WW 2? The irony about this is it’s usually the world events like a war that is the most documented. And something that big would be studied over and written about for decades, regardless if an even bigger war overshadowed it.
Just ridiculous and silly.
This episode does not re-write Star Trek history. It nearly establishes that the show takes place in a different universe. Khan existed in the 1990s. That is the timeline for classic Star Trek, and all the 24th century shows in the Berman era.
The season two finally of Picard implies that Soong didn’t start working on Khan’s genetics until 2024.
The event of the Europa mission is what caused the deviation in the timeline for Picard.
So either Picard being a follow-up to TNG, which has the Eugenics war take place in the 21st century is the prime timeline.
Thus TOS is the alternate timeline, or vice versa.
I think the only thing that can be safely concluded is that everything made by Secret Hideout, including all seasons of Picard, are the reboot. Or alternate, if you will.
i prefer to think that TOS is the alternate timeline, or the historians got the date wrong.
the war being in the 1990’s is only stated once in TOS
It’s mentioned in Wrath of Khan too. I doubt with all the way to record events that the decade of a war that decimated 1/4 of the planet would be wrong. We know the years when wars from 500 years ago took place. Sorry. I don’t buy that.
It’s fair that you don’t buy that, it’s just easier to change a date in a fictional show that doesn’t really affect the canon. At least this time the casting department got Khan’s ethnicity correct.
It’s actually easiest to just say it’s a reboot. Then they don’t have to follow any of the rules that came before.
And I really don’t care about the ethnicity of the actor playing Khan. I don’t have a problem changing such things in reboots. Be it mermaids or power mad augments. That’s a very very small issue compared to the larger fictional universe rules.
it’s also easier to accept a new four digit number than it is to accept a universe.
I’d wager that more people would find it easier to accept reboot than would accept “The Eugenics wars never happened in our reality so we are just going to move further down the road 50-60 years” because… Um…. Time travel technobabble.
To this day, I am still flabbergasted that nobody at Bad Robot thought “hang on, Khan is supposed to be from the Indian subcontinent, why have we cast a pasty white guy from Britain?”
They literally whitewashed the character and nobody said anything.
Noonien-Singh did say “we” so he himself implied that there was more than one person that took the world. So who says that the guy played by Benedict Cumberbatch wasn’t in fact a different person.
“nah, we’ll say it was plastic surgery in the comic book, we’ll Michael Jackson him!”
My head cannon is Cucumberpatch was Joachim. They kinda look similar other than being white.
“i prefer to think that TOS is the alternate timeline, or the historians got the date wrong.”
So are you suggesting Khan himself got the date wrong too?? I mean even if historians got it wrong centuries later, I’m guessing the guy who was actually from that century and those events remembers.
And because I know this is going to be the new talking point, here is the clip from TWOK that makes it plainly obvious Khan is from 1996.
https://youtu.be/d7bExIrjxRc?t=130
I’ve seen this movie more times than I can count at this point but not everyone will remember every line; but it can’t be any clearer. Seriously.
But this is feeling like STID again when fans defending the movie was saying Khan didn’t really know what country he came from. Now apparently he can’t remember what year he tried to take over the world either. This is another reason why I hate prequels. ;)
And now Star Trek had given us THREE prequels.
Don’t remind me, sigh. We wouldn’t haven’t any of these arguments if they just continued going forward.
Agreed, 100%.
i was thinking about this this morning, Star trek fans wouldn’t be arguing about this if Harve Bennet chose a different original series episode for Wrath of Khan.
The Wrath of Mudd, The Wrath of Garth is my personal favorite.
Very good! But specifically I would like to see the Wrath of STELLA Mudd! …the android version of her, of course.
the Wrath of Baris, or The Wrath of Cyrano Jones could be fun
There is no Lake Ontario Bridge in Toronto in 2023. This means that the SNW timeline is different from ours. So you have a point, I think.
Yeah, but there’s multiple references from other time travel episodes and movies that don’t correspond with our reality. Star Trek is an extension of our history, so I’ve always forgiven the creative liberties taken – either due to copyright or just because they didn’t want to get too specific.
On La’an outing Sera as a Romulan spy, I think it was simply a matter of her putting two and two together. She knows the Romulans were warring with Humans and Vulcans in the altered timeline, so she didn’t really need to know what they looked like to make the connection.
Goood episode, but I really disliked the Sara actress. She came off like a crazy ex girlfriend and not like a Romulan spy. I’d give it 7/10 total.
C’mon, she knew just how to fit in.
Athough if she was a little less crazy, it could have been interesting to see a Romulan on the make for Kirk, and Kirk having to make up his mind how far to take it, and thereby challenge or reinforce our stereotypes of him. ((The marriage line was a sure thing the writers must have contemplated this whole thing.))
I’m just criticizing the acting, I think she was OK at the beginning but absolutely horrible when she revealed her hammy evil real persona at the end of the episode. Some C level acting at best, especially compared to Christina Chong and Paul Wesley who were both great this episode.
She has a pretty good resume, and I bet she could have played it any way. I am sure it was the direction. I mean, this episode also featured a car chase out of the A Team.
I saw it as she had to play up the kooky persona as cover to believably win over La’an and Kirk, and suppress her true wily, snarky Romulan spy self. I was genuinely surprised when she revealed her true identity.
Yes, even after she was exposed there was NOTHING Romulan about her. That was just a bad choice.
I agree, but if she really had been on Earth for centuries (which is apparently possible somehow), she may have just really blended into the culture. Maybe a stretch of an explanation, but there are people in our own world who either forget where they came from or just choose to adapt to a new country/state/city.
The really big mistake in this episode was not showing that Khan, as a child, is manipulative and smart as he is as an adult. Like, what if La’an wants to kill him just because he is an annoying brat? And what if it was played for comedy — then the episode could be called, “Bad Babysitter.”
That kind of fits with how La’an, Una and Bashir from DS9 are portrayed though. It seems that the popular conception among people in the Star Trek universe that genetic engineering turns people bad may be a prejudicial myth, and in reality Khan and other evil augments were a product of multiple factors. I’m not sure if one could go back and meet Hitler, Stalin or Putin as children one would necessarily find any different.
Interesting! Although I was mostly joking, I also was thinking that if she found child Khan’s behavior beyond her patience, it might show some unexpected emotions of her own that she had to overcome to deal with him.
I thought it was absolutely brilliant of the writer to have La’an meet Khan as a child and have him be a scared little kid, just like other little kids. Here’s the evil person who’s helped to make her life hell … and he turns out to be an actual person, not a monster. That’s a classically Trekkian message!
Inert drama in a show that continues to reduce its adult characters to children.
The canon stuff was the most interesting part of it, but those were just details tossed out to fill time. They couldn’t start the story with La’an grappling with her Noonien-Singh-ness (an anniversary, some reminder of her family’s legacy, etc.) because that would’ve stepped on the final act reveal, but that also works against the story because then it’s not really *about* anything. The new shows frequently do this because they don’t want to mess with their big twist(s); this leads to (frequently) emotionally muddy arcs for whoever the episode is about. I’m not someone who thinks “actor screen time” = “character development,” but I admit that I’m alone in this opinion.
They did the same thing with Sera that they did with Angel, with the villain reveal suddenly making the character this mustache-twirling monologuer. Glad people love writing like that. I don’t.
Sadly, I suspect that the “Eugenics Wars – 1990s or Not?” canon arguments will prove to be every bit as tiresome as the episode itself. (That is, apart from Carol Kane, as always an absolute delight.). Too fluffy and insubstantial to be a modern “City on the Edge of Forever;” too somber to be a romp; and too wrapped up in its canon-jiggering to have much of anything else to say, I have no idea who this episode was made for. It definitely wasn’t for movie audiences who heard Ricardo Mantalban in 1982 talk about being lost in space in 1996, laughed, and moved on.
That’s 1-3 you’re batting at this point, SNW. Not where I was hoping to be.
For me SNW is batting 1 for 13.
*Yawn* Yeah, as if anyone could have failed to notice. Which would be okay, if you had any fresh and interesting criticisms to make.
Every episode seems to make for fresh criticisms. Whether they are interesting or not probably depends on how one views the show to begin with.
Also, what makes you think yours are more interesting than anyone else’s?
If every episode makes for fresh criticisms, then why don’t you make them?
As for “interesting” — well, that is of course up to the reader. Endless complaints about canonicity and the Gorn, et cetera, endlessly repeated, may indeed be of interest to some.
With every new episode seems to come with a new batch of issues. If you don’t see that it’s only because you don’t want to because it undermines your false belief.
Regarding the prevailing issues that keep coming up, sure. I repeat the Gorn and other such issues. When relevant to do so. Further, there are others who repeat ad nauseum their same opinions far more often than I do. People who appear in every thread saying essentially the same thing. Yet you decide to single me out. Which tells me it is not about repeating a few issues. It’s obviously something else. Only you know what. But that’s your problem. Not mine.
And yet, for all those “new issues” that crop up with every episode, you seem to repeat the same complaints on an endless loop. Strange, that. As for me denying their obvious reality — really?! What “false belief” would that be? Seems to me that I’m pretty tough on this show (and all Trek series) when I think it’s called for, including on this very thread.
And yes, there are a number of people here who, on the whole, don’t much care for SNW. Sometimes (as with you) I agree with their criticisms; oftentimes I don’t. But they don’t continue to make those same criticisms over and over and over again, which is really just trolling.
Except I’m not. With each new episode they create more issues. If you don’t see that, again, that’s your issue. You WANT something to be true so you decide to believe it is. Again, that’s your issue. Not mine. Sure some get repeated when necessary but to say I do that more than anyone else is a bit of a fixation. It happens all the time with the regulars. It’s not even about opinions of SNW. It’s about opinions that are constantly getting repeated in general. Over and over again. Yet you choose to pick on me for it. I see others do it but I don’t cry and moan about it as you are. If you hate is so much just ignore it. It’s very easy. In this case, I just said SNW’s batting average was .077. I’ve never said that before. Yet that was the comment that triggered you to get all huffy.
Whatever, Sparky. Get your last word in. I’m ignoring you in this thread now.
He doesn’t. ML31 is just here to troll and stir the pot with contrarianism.
That’s right. Anyone who says something you don’t like is a troll and a “contrarian”.
LOLOLOL!!!!
That is an inaccurate distortion of what I said.
No. It’s an exact definition of what you said.
Nope.
If that wasn’t your intent then rephrase your comment to reflect your intent.
Did the time travel device not remind some of us of the Omni from “Voyagers,” circa 1982? “When the Omni’s red, it means history is wrong ….” Hmmm ….
Perhaps the most seismic shock to Star Trek cannon is the revelation that Khan was Canadian. Eh! And it’s interesting that Canada doesn’t seem to exist in even the utopian 23rd century…
Yeah.. What is it called in the 23rd Century? I’m not a fan of that. It’s obviously done for the audience but it makes no sense for the characters to say it. The dumbest line in TMP was “…disappeared into what they used to call a black hole.” Why would they say that? Yes, for the audience but it makes no sense to the characters. My first thought when it’s done is always “what do they call it now?”
I was implying a connection between Khan’s country of origin and the possible reason why that country ceased to exist…
That, or all their forests burned down and they just gave up.
Michael Eddington was Canadian though
Don’t look at me. I’m not the one who wrote La’an’s line about Toronto being the largest city “in what used to be called Canada.”
And I was reacting to you bringing up that Canada is now called something else in the Strange New Worlds world. I brought up a similar thing Trek did before.
The TMP line makes no sense in-universe, but at least the line about Canada makes more sense given that the characters are in the correct time to call it Canada.
Actually neither make sense even if characters decades down the line still refer to it as Canada. Admittedly it’s a small thing. Just something I’ve noticed and this line brought it up for air briefly. It’s really not that big a deal to me.
Of course he was Khan-adian…
I khan’t take these puns any longer…
I don’t know if he was from Canada, he could’ve just been relocated there. But I’m fine that he is since there are plenty of Indians from there either way.
And remember America no longer exist in the 23rd century either. Pike said it to Spock in the premiere episode: “Are you familiar with the United States of America Spock?”
We know Earth becomes a one world government in the 22nd century but I still don’t understand why some countries like France and Nigeria seem to still exist (or be called that) in the 23rd century but apparently others no longer do although all the cities are still named as before. My only guess is maybe North America gave itself one united name or something.
Yeah exactly. He was probably just relocated there when he was brought in for the experiments.
I mean he wasn’t exactly living in a house with a family. It was a sinister lab so yeah he could’ve came from anywhere.
“warns her not to talk to anyone about it”
Why doesn’t this series just stop pretending that it exists in the prime timeline and commit to being in it’s own? It’s getting irksome when the writers keep changing so many established events and characters while also resorting to the “keep it a secret” schtick over and over again like that makes it still set in the prime timeline? I never bought into it before and I’m certainly not buying into it now. If this show didn’t keep resorting to “in hindsight” story telling it’d be so much better.
Is that supposed to be their “big twist” for later? Like the resolution to Bobby Ewing in the shower? (reference for all the old fans out there)
TI no doubt has the ability to erase memories, but the writers of this one couldn’t do that because it would negate whatever inscrutable emotional point they were trying to make.
I very much ENJOYED this episode and its clever twists and turns. Looking forward to how the seeds planted here develop.
Hey, I didn’t love this one, but I’m glad it exists.
I didn’t quite connect with the La’an-Kirk romance. It just didn’t quite add up to me. I know that it’s classic Trek to have someone fall madly in love with someone over the span of a single episode, but it just didn’t click with me. I think if the two of them had to overcome an interpersonal challenge between the two of them, I’d buy into it more. It seemed that Kirk was willing to give up his future really quickly, and if that had been delayed by an act it would have landed better. More tension between the two beforehand would have led to a better payoff.
That said, I enjoyed this. I like that we’re getting episodes focused on different core characters. To me, that’s the greatest strength of SNW. You can’t do an episode of Picard without Picard, or Discovery without Michael, but (small appearances aside) this one demonstrates you can make an episode of SNW without most of the main cast. Sure, I’d love it if there were a B-plot with another character, but it’s not essential.
I’m on the fence about Kirk. During most of the episode, “this guy isn’t Kirk” was going through my head, but then again, he’s not Kirk. At least not the one we know. But when she called him at the end, and we got young Kirk Prime, I kind of thought “oh! This guy IS Kirk” and the performance landed. It’s a really tough ask for an actor no matter what. I still would like a little more 60s-thespian out of him, but that’s just my taste.
The timey-wimey handwaving about Khan and the dates of WW3 / Khan / the Eugenics Wars (which I’ll just call the “Great Conflict”) was really deft writing. Honestly, that “it was supposed to happen in 1992” line from a time travelling agent did SO MUCH heavy lifting in a clever way.
Writing in the 60s, warning about potential great wars coming soon, made so much sense. It seemed reasonable that maybe there’d be a big dustup in 30 years (after all, WW2 had ended within living memory). There was a real sense we’d be on Mars by the end of the 70s, and with the breakneck speed of advances at the time, sure we could send out sleeper ships.
But now that we’re living in that time, to keep Trek relevant (and to let it speak to issues of now) we’ve got to make sure that the future we’re imagining remembers the present that we currently live in. Handwaving canon with more canon isn’t just alright, it’s essential. (If we don’t meet Vulcans in 40 years, I may reassess this stance).
The timey-wimey handwaving about Khan and the dates of WW3 / Khan / the Eugenics Wars (which I’ll just call the “Great Conflict”) was really deft writing. Honestly, that “it was supposed to happen in 1992” line from a time travelling agent did SO MUCH heavy lifting in a clever way.
Well put, I agree. This takes care of the issue for me, I’m not obsessing over it. The analogy I I like to utilize, in my own mind at least, is that original Trek from 60 years ago is like a very old low-res photo, where many of the details are grainy and fuzzy, and as technology improves over time the resolution becomes sharper, and details become more delineated, so that smooth-surface starships now have more details visible, so that Klingons’ forehead ridges are now visible, so that Gorns look less like a rubber suit, etc. In my mind these things were always there, it’s the same Trek as before, except that now we have a sharper, fuller image. To me this applies to dates, uniforms and character details as well. It was a bad cassette recording before, and now we finally have clear sound. So that’s why all the stuff that others get upset about (as is their prerogative) doesn’t really bother me.
Personally, I feel that simply calling this or that series a reboot would divorce the show from any sense of emotional resonance or consequence. By and large fans care about these shows because they lead into or arise from the Trek universe that we’ve previously enjoyed, they’re about the characters we know. They all validate each other. If one is labeled a reboot so that the writers can do anything they want that week without it needing to relate to anything in any previous series or film, then why should we care about it? A character dies? No problem, he lives in a different time line. Nothing really matters, it’s all ephemeral and transactional … I care about SNW because I know that somehow its supposed to lead into the TOS that I know. And TOS leads into TNG. If they suddenly say, oh this isn’t that Star Trek, its a different Star Trek, then I’m less invested.
So while some canon is certainly being bent, I think that the producers are wise not to label this a reboot.
Not that some deviations in Trekdom aren’t so extreme that even I think they go too far. But I’m not encountering any of those in SNW. Just my two cents…
I’ve read comments from some people here and on different websites/social media platforms and they bring up how this episode proves that SNW is not set in the Prime timeline even though it is.
I would like to say this remember that TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, DSC, PIC and PRO which are all set in the prime timeline/all canon and all have done time travel stories.
Prodigy is/was deep in a time travel story arc which involved Chakotay being stuck in the future and even some of the movies with The Voyage Home & First Contact also had time travel stories too.
Every time characters from these shows/movies time traveled they must of changed history/timeline in some fashion even though we never really actually got to see these changes.
One point I’m trying to make is SNW retconned the date of the Eugenics wars/rise of Khan and some people consider this proof of SNW not being Prime/Canon. Then surely all Trek shows with their time travel events can also be seen in the same light and these events can be used to decanonize them all as well right?
I hope people can see where I’m going with this if not then my main point is some people in the fandom try and dig really deep into shows to try and de-canonize certain Trek shows they don’t like because of visual/canon differences.
Yet what they are doing could also be used against the older Trek shows and show they aren’t in the same timeline/canon as others even if we don’t see any changes to history/the timeline. So it’s silly imo making arguments about what is and isn’t prime/canon to past shows because they all have altered history as some point so the whole prime/not prime argument is pointless at this stage.
Agreed. When Archer and T’Pol went back in time, did they return to something other than the Prime timeline? The same with Janeway and crew, and also Sisko. Sisko’s image was in the historical record for the Bell riots. Sisko and crew were also involved with the events of the TOS Tribble episode. Did they return to the Prime timeline after that? I would like to think so, even though they are not seen in the original Trouble with Tribbles episode.
No commenter is ever wrong for pointing out that Star Trek fans are terrible, but your very valid comment about how awful fans are for wanting to “de-canonize” the shows they don’t like still elides the very real, factually correct data point that the people making Strange New Worlds are wanting to “de-canonize” the shows they don’t like. Now, the makers’ reasons for not liking the other shows is different from why certain fans don’t like certain shows, but it’s true that there’s a lot of desire to de-canonize on either end of the Trek spectrum.
The irony to me is that there are a lot of Trek fans who are really enjoying SNW. But the whole Kahn timeline it messing it up for a lot of us who can’t just forget that TOS and TWOK happened. The truth is that, in my mind, I’ve already “de-canonized” SNW just so that I can enjoy it! I’ve already removed it from the “Prime” timeline in my head, and I think if that was made official by the power that be, a lot more people would feel better about the series. But, for now, as long as they continue to claim that this is the direct lead-in to TOS, I just think the criticism will just get worse.
And, for what it’s worth, even with the other time travel episodes, pretty much none of those changed canon on the level of what is happening in SNW. Archer and T’Pol didn’t time travel and interact with other characters from a different version of Star Trek. Sisko and company may have interacted with TOS characters, but they didn’t do anything to change what actually happened before – even if they displaced a few people who originally took on similar roles (like fighting in a brawl or standing in a line-up for Kirk). And even Discovery’s interaction with Pike was plausible, but we can just agree to disagree that Spock ever had an adopted sister.
But “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “Trials and Tribble-ations” can’t both exist at the same time on the same timeline. Tribble-ations replaced Trouble on the timeline. For both to exist, that would have to mean that Tribble-ations caused a branching off from the Prime timeline since Sisko and crew did in fact interact with Kirk and crew when they originally didn’t. It may not have had any universe altering butterfly effects, (not until a writer or showrunner decides if it did or not) but it did change the Prime timeline and did replace the original episode. Sisko, Dax, Bashir and O’brien should all be edited into “Trouble” if that episode is still in the Prime timeline.
Spock never told Kirk he had a brother until it was necessary to do so. Why is it difficult to believe he would also fail to mention an adopted sister? Why was the introduction of Sybok accepted but not Michael as well?
My interest is also whether any of these timelines are supposed to be OUR timeline. If Lake Ontario Bridge doesn’t exist in 2023 let alone 2022, then the SNW timeline isn’t ours.
Well, the good news is it wasn’t as destructive as some eluded it would be. The bad news is, while there was a decent idea embedded there overall it was extremely poorly executed. Too many weak plot contrivances and ridiculous comments. But in the end I really saw zero need for a story like this. Did they have trouble coming up with 10 story ideas? Are they really that creatively bankrupt?
PS… I wonder what Canada is called in the 23rd century? And why when it seems every other place retained their names was Canada the weird hold out? That’s a small one but it’s on a very long list of oddball decisions.
I wonder what Canada is called in the 23rd century?
A Few Acres of Snow.
That would be “Quelques arpents de neige” as Voltaire was French…
But I’m not French and my universal translator is malfunctioning. Ain’t that just the way?
Sure np. It’s just that I’m French (Canadian) and I’ve heard this famous expression in French all my life to describe our wonderful country, the Great White North!
Interesting. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I took it that Voltaire was being snarky about Canada. So has it eventually turned into an expression of pride among Canadians?
I believe you’re right about Voltaire’s snark (but you know, those French…). He was referring to Quebec’s (then known as Nouvelle-France) limited economic value as a colony. I don’t know about pride, but with time this expression has been ingrained to represent the Quebec frontier. Similar to the Wild West is an expression representing the American West in the 1860s. This particular expression was referring particularly to Quebec, as Canada had not been founded yet.
Ah, I see. Thank you.
It’s still called Canada. Michael Eddington was Canadian.
That’s true. Unfortunately he never found his Loonie…
If SNW is prime, and find it difficult to believe it is, the only explanation would be it changed name to something else. Then at some point changed it back.
Full disclosure… This sort of thing in the grand scheme of things doesn’t really bother me much at all. It just stands out more when it is yet another on top of a bunch of other really big screw ups.
Didn’t the ensign in “Lower Decks” (the TNG episode, not the series) ask Riker if he was from Canada?
Yes
Maybe. I don’t recall.
Regardless of this episode (because I don’t think it’s the only one), I TOTALLY agree with the argument about 10 story ideas/10 episodes. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: With ONLY 10 episodes to fill, this is the best you can offer?
And even more than that, we’re three episodes in with Pike having almost no screen time and little to no influence on the storylines – other than hiring a lawyer. This is the first Trek in history to sideline the captain/commanding officer for a THIRD of the season!
From Toronto (nearby actually – Mississauga). Great to see our city so beautifully on display. The “Archeology Department” is about 3/4 of a km. from where we live. I pass it almost daily and we saw the assemblage of trucks, crew etc. when they filmed the exterior of the location! It really is filled with a lot of old crap… er antiques. I like they way they inserted Vermonty mountains into the deep background. Actually down the street is a Dairy Queen and across the street is a bank and a hardware store! Well done SNW’s. Mt favourite by far of all the ST iterations. One last comment, I was wondering if Pelia suddenly “remembered” La’an when she saw her on the Pike Enterprise bridge
This was an amazing episode. I loved it. I also loved that they have finally addressed the proverbial elephant in the room. That line of dialogue about the “Temporal Wars” changes everything. They have untied their hands a little more. They are honoring the past but “adjusting” the future. I Love Strange New Worlds.
They are creating an alternate timeline, not “adjusting” the future. The changes they are making are no less history altering that Kirk’s Dad dying at the hand of a Romulan from the future. Except this time, Kirk himself died at the hands of a Romulan who came from the future to basically get revenge on a species they don’t like. Oh wait, even that part is pretty much the same….
for me this episodes firmly places tos in a alternate verse timeline while ent,dsc seasons 1-2,snw,tas,tmp films,tng,ds9,voy,tng films,lds,pro,pic,dsc seasons 3-5 are all prime verse timeline which works for me as tos has always been the one that does not fit visually or continuity wise for me and as such is number 10 on my favorite to least favorite trek series list
TAS takes all of its visual cues from TOS and directly follows the original series.
TNG features schematics of both the original series Enterprise and the refit as well referencing events from TOS.
Scotty recreates the bridge from the Enterprise in “Relics” with Picard saying. “Constitution class. There’s one in the fleet museum.” He immediately recognizes what Scotty has recreated.
DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations” which throws the Defiant back in time, placing Sisko and his crew on Kirk’s Enterprise in an original series episode.
“Star Trek: Enterprise” reveals the fate of the Defiant and how a vessel from the Prime timeline was responsible for the Empires dominance in the decades that would follow.
“Lower Decks” has numerous visual callbacks and references to TOS.
Picard S3 also seems to go out of its way to prominently feature the U.S.S. New Jersey but not a single vessel from Star Trek Discovery or SNW.
TOS is the beginning of the Prime timeline and TNG and DS9 further cemented its influence and place in Star Trek canon, with Picard S3 bookending it all.
For Star Trek, writers can make adjustments to canon that viewers will accept and run with. They also know that viewers would accept that Discovery and SNW are placed in different timelines.
Sorry the New Jersey design was a tos Easter egg reference nothing more terry said as much he knows the constitution class ships did not actually look like that in the prime verse
tos is cheep cheesy dated and unfuturistic visually and does not fit between visual look of enterprise and tmp era also the names of races and other info in tos episodes do not ever get used or heard again also it is good to make that series a alternate timeline it means they can remake tos in the new ascetic that looks futuristic and fits better between ent and tmp era and as for tas it is a cartoon a cheaply made one at that that used tracings of stills from the show for the ship and reused sounds and artwork both for secondary human characters from other shows that animation company made
As for the enterprise episodes that was all in the mirror universe non of it from the prime so that defiant came from the alternate timeline tos is all alone in
No images of the tos designed 1701 was seen in tng only the tmp refit was seen in computer entries from the naked now episode and I do not accept the wall of ships named enterprise in the ent-d’s conference room canon to the ships designs as the ent-c design was wrong from how it looked when it appeared and the ent-b design was also wrong as it is depicted as a standard excelsior class when it was a excelsior refit
and most of the lds references are for tas not tos only one episode even referenced a tos episodes events
Only a small percent of the fanbase mainly self entitled crybabies who are mad that the new shows aren’t made the way they want them to be made and egged on by the even smaller loud vocal toxic minority of all fanbases know as the fandom menace made up of the racist sexist homophobic and transphobic people who have YouTube channels or big Twitter pages are the only ones who think that the new shows are a alternate timeline when the the majority of the fanbase either does not care or sees tos as being the outlier of all the series cause it does not work with any of the other shows or even the first 6 films
Wow, just wow. Without TOS, your post wouldn’t exist. And without all the self entitled crybabies who were around to keep Star Trek alive in the 70’s and 80’s none of the shows that followed would exist. If you have no respect for the original than you don’t understand the underlying meaning of Star Trek. Good science fiction is not about how things look, sorry to see you are fixated on that.
Sometimes this site really needs a block or mute function, if it does already I apologize for not knowing.
so what the past is the past
let the past die kill it if you have to
i love alot of sci-fi star trek,star wars,b5,the 3 stargate series ,warehouse 13/eureka,12 monkeys series, andromeda,modern doctor who,modern lost in space
Your response saved me a lot of time. For that, I thank you.
“Sometimes this site really needs a block or mute function.”
Get in line…get in line.
First contact and Enterprise is the start of the prime timeline followed by dsc seasons 1 and 2 snw and tas then tmp films then tng,ds9 voy and the tng films then lower decks then prodigy then picard and bookendin for now with dsc seasons 3-5 and the soon to be made Starfleet academy series
Temporal Cold War also the reason tos as it was is no longer part of the prime timeline which is good thing which is even better then my idea which was tos was a alternate timeline we’re computer tech did not evolve past mid to late 60’s level or have tos have bookends added to the start of each season with jake and quark jake goes to quark to have a holo recreation of kirks time as the captain of the enterprise made and quark cut corners to save on the gold pressed latinum each season he cuts even more corners to save more latinum and jake and him get into it about how none of it looks like how it actually looked from the uniforms to the tech to the bridge to the exterior of the ships look to even how the crew of the enterprise looked being not right and quark said it was the best he could do
Temporal Cold War was a cheap, cheesy (your favorite words) way of writing. Proved the writers couldn’t come up with new, exciting, compelling stories.
temporal cold war story as well as time travel is a great writing tool to do retcons and explain changes
I tend to agree. Also, the only reason it exists is because UPN wanted something more futuristic on Enterprise. So they brought that in ONLY because they were forced to. They didn’t WANT to.
In fact, the original concept was for a potential show Braga (I think) had dreamed up that sounded like a fun series concept the way it was described. So they altered it and incorporated it on Enterprise. They really weren’t that into it. There weren’t many episodes that focused on it. And Coto killed the story immediately upon taking over.
They had no idea what that wrought down the line.
Agreed. TOS-VOY belong in a bin timeline (because it’s not possible to detach TOS from TNG, DS9, and VOY for very obvious reasons) and only ENT through now is Prime Timeline.
I don’t have a huge problem with this idea but wouldn’t TOS-VOY be the prime timeline? And ENT-DIS-SNW, etc be the alternate one?
I’m just following michelle’s salient point that everything new is good and everything old is bad. Since so much of the old is tied to TOS, better just to chuck it all.
LOL, I gotcha now! ;)
yeah tos is easily detatchable if you idgnore two episodes one of tng and one of ds9 there was no episodes with any tos stuff in voy only a tmp era one
How are you able to detach the actors from the visuals? Why would you? Also, isn’t picking and choosing eras just personal preference no different than people who discard Disco? I thought you were making a point about trying to approach objectivity.
cause i have attactment to the orginal show my first trek series was enterprise i was 7 when it came out i did not even know about any other trek series or films till 09 when my local walmart had dvd complete series box sets of tng,ds9,voy in the clearance section for 30 dollars a for each complete series and all 4 tng films on dvd in the 5 dollar movie bin i found out about tos and tas and the 6 tmp films in late 2014 when cbs all access came out but did not watch till 2016 that same local walmart had a dvd complete series box set of tos and of tas in the clearance section tos was 25 and tas was 15 ans they had each of the 6 tmp films on dvd in the 5 dollar movie bin then i watched them and it is not hard for me to to detach the actors from character and only see the character not the actor otherwise i would have a hard time watching andromeda and fast and furious films from 5 onward and the mandalorian due to the fact i do not like sorbo, gina cause of their political views and the rock cause of his his horrible acting and line delivery he is only good at physical acting and chessy one liners i can’t get into a scifi show unless it looks visually good which tos, original lost in space and old doctor who does not and if it is set in the future it has to look futuristic which tos does not and if it is part of a multi series franchise like trek it has to visually fit together which tos dos not visually fit between enterprise and tmp era while dsc and snw do
I hadn’t thought of it that way. In any case, you’re right!
As someone MUCH older than you and don’t agree with your position on TOS at all, I don’t disagree with your overall point too much. In fact this is probably why it would’ve made sense just to reboot the franchise completely with Discovery if they were actually serious about getting new and younger subscribers to watch Star Trek.
But the fact that all these new shows is just following canon of 30+ year old shows really does prove these new shows are geared to older fans first and foremost, and I mean people who started watching Trek in the 80s or 90s at the latest.
If they wanted, they could’ve rebooted it and then the Eugenic wars could’ve happened in 2100 and no one would blink. Khan could also be British, Japanese, Nigerian, it wouldn’t matter. It honestly frustrates me in a way because while I know they are appealing to people like me and why they keep 55 year old canon around, they seem to fear that too many people like me would also reject anything really new and innovative and they don’t give us enough credit like we’re too old and stuck in our ways. Maybe some of us lol, but I think most would love a completely new direction if they tried it.
It wouldn’t just be a handful of episodes. There are too many intertwined threads with references that touch almost every corner of Star Trek, including Lower Decks (which is littered with a ton of TOS references) and Prodigy (“All the World’s a Stage” is practically a valentine to TOS).
lower decks only has one direst tos episode connection and that is with landru it has far more tas references and ent and tmp and tng ds9 and voy references then tos
and that prodigy episode was showing making fun of how cheap and silly tos was
there is only one episode of tng with the tos bridge in it that and one early episode it connects via a similar issue to what happened in a tos episode other than those two instances there was no other tos in it and there was only one ds9 episode was a pointless tos easter egg episode and that is trials and tribble-ations it did not add anything major to the ds9 story arcs or trek in general i do not get nostalgic over tv shows or movies or music or the way things were as none of it i have any control over or direct involvement with in my life i only get nostalgic over certain things food dishes i loved and wish i could still have made by family members that are no longer on this mortal coil
First, Christina Chong. Wow. Best performance yet as this character. She’s amazing, and I’m crushing hard on her as L’aan now. I honestly got some Kirk / Edith Keeler vibes, but from her perspective toward Kirk. Wesley’s Kirk still does zero for me, but once again, it’s ok that he’s not the Kirk we know. But I buy the attraction between the two, for sure, and it makes the forthcoming ‘You guys have an energy’ comment make sense. Yeah, it’s cheesy, but at least I buy that there is some lasting effect of this episode. There is some good stuff here. Unfortunately, what I don’t like about the episode, I despise. Yep.. it’s the absolutely blatant canonical stuff related to Khan that is completely removed from the show’s history. But like Akira said, they’re just “body checking” it. I even like the interaction the two had. I guess we now see why they had to have a descendent of Khan on the show. I thought it’d hate this episode completely, so I was pleasantly surprised at what works. Like STID, if you take the fan service stuff out, this could have been something much more compelling.
On Khan Noonien Singh:
TOS: From the Northern India area, I’d guess.
SNW: Nope. He’s Canadian.
TWOK: I was a Prince, with power over millions.
SNW: Nope. Canada already has a King.
ENT: Khan was a great leader, but he made one mistake, he ran from his enemies instead of face them.
SNW: Because he didn’t have a gun. He has a gun now. An adult left it in his childhood room.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold. Eh? Go Maple Leafs!”
Thinking that Khan will be a Leafs fan… The Nucks are right there
to answer these:
1) they could have been going off of his general ethnicity, back when it was written the population wasn’t as diverse (factoring immigration)
2) he was a Conqueror/Khan-queror he can give himself what ever title he so chooses
3) when there is a revolution after a point the leaders either die or give up and run.
4) Khannys got a gun
The whole world’s come undone
From lookin’ straight at the Son (camera zooms into the barrel of the gun in a james bong opening like manner)
A. He could be from Canada or could’ve just been relocated from India and carry on the project there. It’s clearly a global one since we see Soong a part of it in America in 2024.
B. The point is they invaded the world. Khan didn’t become a Prince through the usual channels, the literally conquered countries and made himself one.
C. I’m guessing someone found the gun later and took it. I don’t know how this is relevant to that quote?
Yeah, because we all know that people from India would never immigrate to Canada.
A touch of car nerdery.
The car they take isn’t just any Dodge Challenger. It’s a 2022 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody. A monster with 707 horsepower and a banshee wail from its supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V8.
It is also Canadian. Assembled in a plant in Bramlea, Ontario. So it’s a local product for Toronto.
Such a Canada episode.
Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody, supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V8…
I’m not even a “car guy” but just that description is giving me goosebumps.
It’s the sovereign class ship of Dodges
The only piece of Canadiana missing from this episode was Kirk blasting The Tragically Hip on the Challenger’s stereo.
It is a rule that every Trek go back in time to the time and place where the show is made. It usually results in a light and fun episode or two, and “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” is no different…in the first half. The show then suddenly switches gears into a heartfelt, soul-examining drama. The transition isn’t perfect, but it largely works.
La’An is first sent to an altered version of the timeline where the Federation never formed, Earth destroyed, Vulcans on the verge of extinction, and Kirk head of United Earth’s Enterprise. Then they’re sent to 21st century Toronto, and the next 20 minutes are reminiscent of Star Trek IV. It’s delightful, and here are a few of my favorite quotes:
“I am your superior officer and I am ordering you to have a hot dog”
“I’m going back to get one more”
*whispered*”What’s a meme?”
“I guarantee you this is going to be insane”
Then suddenly the episode switches gears into a thrilling spy drama with lots of emotion. It ends with a twist that should’ve come earlier, but works well nonetheless. La’An has to save Khan Noonien Singh, murderer of millions, as a boy.
Some thoughts: I have a feeling this episode will be divisive, but it really worked for me. The running gag that Pelia stole art was hilarious, seeing Kirk struggle in a revolving door and chase the bad guys in the conspicuous car ever was definitely worth it. The explanation that the temporal war moved Khan to the mid-21st century as a way to explain the 90s worked for me.
In all, I really liked this episode. 8/10, with two taken off because of the abrupt transition and the twist should’ve come earlier.
“So does this episode rewrite all of Trek history?”
No, that happened two decades ago on ENTERPRISE. After the Sulliban and other groups kept messing around with time, the resulting timeline was never the original one again. That would have been impossible after all the changes. This episode just pointed it out.
Exactly. But I will say the difference is we didn’t know anything about the 22nd century, Archer or anything that took place leading up to the Federation other than the Romulan war of course. But we have to assume the TCW had changed things in a major way even if it all still stayed on course enough to the Federation forming. But the entire Xindi story line was never suppose to happen. It’s not like the Romulan war, it was manipulated through temporal agents and TCW, so that was a pretty big red flag time was altered. And the other thing is they never resetted it. It wasn’t like a Year in Hell, it has now become part of history and the effects of that has been flowing ever since JUST like when Nero showed up from the 24th century in the Kelvin universe destroying Vulcan. The irony is it’s the same thing. We just look at the Xindi conflict differently because it happened in a time period we knew zip about and didn’t know what were suppose to happen to those characters. But Trip would still have his sister in an unaltered universe. He may have even lived to 100 himself. We just don’t know.
But the problem is when we get to the TOS timeline and beyond, we already know everything that is suppose to happen. So when it DOESN’T happen as we saw originally it obviously just feels out of place. But yes, you can certainly argue history was being rewritten in the 22nd century which had an effect on the 23rd century. That lines up fine IMO. And I watched another YouTube video discussing this episode that made an interesting point that while TCW changed things in the TOS timeline for SNW, but by the time we get to the 24th century and TNG era, time has corrected itself enough for those events to follow basically what we saw during that era.
It really does work, but sadly we had to wait all this time to actually incorporate what started in Enterprise in these new shows.
Butt the events of Enterprise, including those of the Temporal Cold War, occur and are resolved decades before the events of TOS so that doesn’t quite line up.
I’m going to push back on this one because we have seen things established for literally centuries like the Federation itself. I think the TCW story line works because as I said, we didn’t know anything about the 22nd century and that probably shaped things that was suppose to happen in Starfleet’s original history but never knew about it. I would probably argue the Xindi attack along with the Romulus war would probably make the Federation and Starfleet more militaristic than what we got in TOS for example and not less by the time the Federation rolled around. But that’s when reality collide with Roddenberry’s hippie values and couldn’t go that far as Beyond made clear.
Let me put this another way, if America wasn’t attacked on Pearl Harbor and we never entered WW 2, how different do you think the country would be today? It might be pretty much the same today but it wouldn’t be exactly the same either. Now imagine if it was done through some time traveling Romulan who knew America not entering WW 2 or another big event like slowing down the Russian and U.S. space race would have some profound effect in the future. It could change things for decades. Maybe nothing dramatic, but different.
As Janeway said about time travel, it all gives me a headache. SNW adjusted events by decades with this episode which doesn’t even line up with the loose rules of time travel established in Star Trek.
It’s just getting a bit sloppy. “Enterprise” and the temporal cold war storyline made a further mess of things and it worked against a series that didn’t hit its stride until after they abruptly put said storyline to rest.
I love a good time travel story and some have worked beautifully over the years but many have inadvertently unraveled threads that they hadn’t intended to and created even more questions without providing any real answers..
OK, fair enough. And yeah we’ll have to see how all of it is handled on this show. I love time travel stories but I certainly can’t argue they can make things a complete mess lol.
If true then the Temporal Affairs Division is utterly incompetent at their jobs. Makes one question why they even exist. They don’t ever “fix” anything.
DS9 pretty much handled Temporal Affairs as a joke – obviously a continuation of the very light and fun mood of the episode “Trials and Tribble-ations”. It’s obvious that Sisko and his crew weren’t just hiding during their jump into the TOS timeline and CLEARLY had some level of effect given that they interacted directly with members of that timeline. Sisko’s retelling of the story doesn’t seem to cover that up at all. A true “Temporal Agent” would know that any interaction can mess things up (a.k.a. the butterfly effect), but they finish up giving Sisko a stern look but also acknowledge a bit of jealousy from getting to see that period of history.
From that point on, no matter what show Temporal Affairs appears on, it’s pretty clear they are pointless. Maybe they can’t change anything, but you would think they would at least try to do something to prevent the same thing from happening again. Maybe some better training of Starfleet personnel?
That makes sense. But they kept coming back. Which sort of legitimizes their existence as more than a mere joke. That agent in this episode was as serious as a heart attack.
I loved this episode, although I am not a big fan of the choice of actor for Kirk. Still, I’d rank this as one of the top episodes of Trek. Seriously.
On a show full of characters that I love, La’an may be my favorite. She has a very spiky outer shell of self-protection and a gentle inner core of caring for others, and Christina Chong rides that equilibrium very elegantly.
Strange New Worlds has a good balance of humor and action, like TOS and DS9 did.
Better episode than the last 2..
My wife noticed that Kirk says in the episode “My God, what have you done”. A nod to Kirk’s quote in ST3, “My God, Bones…what have I done”? – when the Enterprise goes down in flames?
I think this is the best episode of the show so far. And compared to last week’s it is an enormous improvement in writing and story.
There’s a quote, something to the effect that, “After an excellent performance, the audience applauds enthusiastically, but after a SUPERB performance, the audience sits in silence, because they are stunned.”
I’m stunned.
And you know me — I have something to say about everything. :-) But I feel as if I have no words equal to what we just saw.
Christina Chong was excellent, and the writing was so affecting. Before the episode, I thought I’d be grinning after a fun little time-travel romp. Instead I am crying, because La’an went through so much and can’t even TELL anyone about it, and she has so very much buried trauma already. I so wanted to hold her while she was crying.
Stunning.
OK, not a shock what everyone is talking about! ;D
I suspected the ending was going to be a big deal based on what a few YouTubers who saw it in advance basically suggested it creates an alternative timeline and boy did it. And overall I’m fine with it. People have been suggesting for literally decades now that you can blame any major canon changes on stuff like the Temporal Cold War, the events in First Contact and so on and someone just finally said that. It was a very deliberate choice because they obviously want to just tell their stories without 50 years of canon butting in everything and this is probably the closest they will get to a reboot without it being a being a reboot. So, yeah, whatever. It’s still all fiction end of the day.
But my review of the overall episode was that it was good, but not great. This was the second episode I was most excited about outside of the LDS crossover and that was before I knew about any of the crazy changes we got, I would’ve been happy with just a fun trippy time travel story since I love time travel stories so much, especially in Star Trek. Overall it was fun but it dragged in some places. When I saw it was literally an hour long, I really got excited but halfway through I thought they could cut down a few scenes. I get it was to build on La’An and Kirk’s relationship and that stuff was fine, but I’m still having trouble with this guy being Kirk. I did like him a little better in this episode but he still just feels off to me. But I saw the Ready Room episode and the actor said as it progress we will see Kirk come out more, so I’ll have to take his word for it and hope that’s the case.
But I LOVED Pelia in this episode. THAT’s how you subvert expectations lol. We were all waiting for the big scene where the find her living there knowing she was an engineer and was going to solve their problem and be part of the team just to find out she didn’t know crap. I laughed so hard. This is something that happens in Lower Decks but a fun scene overall. I also love she’s pulling a Quark and basically stealing antiques. Oh and I’m happy someone finally just came out and said Star Trek is socialist lol. Again, finally! I think I’m going to really love Pelia, but that seems to be a divisive view. ;)
Also I was a little confused why the time agents ended up being the Department of Temporal Investigations from DS9 and not the time cops from the 29th century? They were more like bureaucrats and not the field agents like we saw the other organization in Future’s End and Relativity in Voyager, but not a huge deal.
Overall it was fun but could’ve been more interesting but it was clear it was really about showing kid Khan and while the whole thing is still eye rolling to me, they got Khan in some way, so whatever. And I don’t think it’ll be the last we see of him either. But this show is basically operating in an alternate timeline now and they were already setting it up at the end of Picard season 2 so can’t be too surprised.
As a confirmed lefty I don’t at all know for a fact that it would be accurate to describe the 23rd century earth economy as being ‘socialist,’ though I took real pleasure in Carol Kane’s Pelia offhandedly calling it that while standing in front of her stolen booty. Given the available evidence going back to 1966 you could just as easily call it ‘anarcho-capitalist,’ though I’d argue that the most relevant term would be ‘post-scarcity.’ Capitalism is still alive and well in TOS episodes like “Mudd’s Women” and “The Trouble With Tribbles,” but it’s obviously been moved to the margins as a means of allocating resources, either due to social reform, better technology, or both. Which, frankly, strikes me as a good idea we don’t need to wait 300 years to implement.
As to canon, if this handwave of an explanation makes it easier for some fans to enjoy the show, then by all means have at it.
No, I don’t think it’s truly socialist since last time I checked, they still use money in that system too. ;)
But it’s probably the closest that can be described in Star Trek. It’s a new form of government and economics. Yes I’ve heard people define it as a post scarcity system in the past and that seems to work too.
And for the record, I’m also a liberal lefty but I don’t think capitalism is evil. And in Star Trek if everyone still used money and had to work for a paycheck like us primitive 21st century knuckle draggers do, that’s fine too. I don’t care either way because I think as I told you I never watched Star Trek for how ‘utopic’ it is. I LIKE it, but I never watched specifically for that either. Especially when I started watching it at 6 years old and I assumed Kirk and the crew got weekly pay checks like everyone else in my time did. But they say Earth is no longer a society without money, then it’s a society without money. Fine. It’s fiction, whatever.
Of course I would love to live in the 23rd or 24th century where everyone is just apparently given free houses and rely on replicators to cook or make anything they need to live. But the Borg is still around too so I’ll pass. ;)
I don’t consider capitalism to either sacred or evil. It’s very good at promoting technical progress, but not so good at fostering healthy communities or social cohesion. It’s an economic system, with its virtues and weaknesses, and one that will ultimately be supplanted sooner or later, like anything else created by the hand of Man.
We definitely agree on capitalism, unfortunately it’s just the best system we have for now or at least one that can benefit most of society as most of us here are probably typing our points on thousand dollar phones or computers. But yes I would like to think in the future (not necessarily Star Trek’s future) something better will replace it. But my guess is there would have to be a global paradigm shift for that to ever happen. It literally took world war 3 in Star Trek to do that lol.
I never considered capitalism to be evil. I’m not a fan of it really but it’s not evil. I’m not able to work and as such I’m not able to transition because it costs a shitton of money to do that even if you can afford to jump through all the hoops you have to jump through to even be able to start the process. I can’t work so I can’t have my name legally changed. I can’t even get the medications I need. Even if I could work I would never earn enough to get those things.
I’m sorry for your troubles, and wish you every happiness. Whatever its underlying economics, for my money any civilization worth its salt has an interest in helping its members to become their best selves. I’m sorry that’s not true in your case, but we’re going through a rough period of transition right now where, as Bradbury once noted, the gargoyles are running the cathedral. We can hope for better times to come, while doing what we can. Peace.
I feel for you, my friend!
Agreed! Much good, but much bad too and like Tiger2 says, it is the best system we’ve got… at least for now. I won’t be around when a new and better system comes along, but let’s hope the catalyst isn’t WWIII. Maybe it will come from the stars.
Regarding Pelia… I admit it was something I did not see coming. Not her appearance in the episode. But her not knowing any engineering stuff at that point in her very long life. I do like it when I get tripped up like that.
Still don’t know why the Temporal affairs department would be OK delaying the Eugenics wars by 50+ years. But, c’est la vie.
Yeah I really loved that. And it’s also why I see SNW as a more light hearted and comedic show. I can’t really imagine a scene like that happening in TOS or TNG for example. It can just have fun with itself a lot.
I fully agree with you about Department of Temporal Investigations and actually responded to you about it. It’s very odd they don’t care OR maybe they decided since the events didn’t wipe out Starfleet or the Federation they can live with it. But it’s funny how much crap they gave Sisko when he traveled back in time during the Tribble incident to save Kirk and they actually kept the timeline completely on track. But I guess it still has to be recorded.
Because there may not actually be a delay of 50 years and that the timeline still has some course corrections to make. Only Temporal Affairs knows what it to come.
But if it was SUPPOSED to happen in ’92 then why didn’t they fix it? Is this something that takes place before it was fixed then a decade later it does? That would invalidate their own show.
I seem to remember Bob Orci saying that in the Kelvin timeline, the timeline would eventually repair itself and that may be what we’re seeing playing out here. The timeline in this episode is out of synch with Picard season 2 BUT the events of Picard season two don’t occur until 2024 whereas this episode takes place in 2022.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that this child is not really Khan at all and that he was an intentional misdirect. We saw present day Toronto (2022) in this episode but there is no indication of what is happening elsewhere in the world at this time. In Picard Season 2, Project Khan is indicated as 1996 but was that the literal birth of the project or a point in time of the project? Khan could be 26. He could be a bit older but we know that by the end of the decade things will take a turn for the worse and that by the time of First Contact, the Eugenics Wars and third world war have already played out. The timelines have shifted but it still fits.
Yeah Orci talked a lot about ‘course correcting’ in the first Kelvin movie and that helped explain how all the original characters still ended up together on the Enterprise. He used that term a lot in interviews and exactly what is supposedly happening here. Sera made it very clear, time HAS changed, but never enough for them to get rid of the Federation. But then of course it’s funny because episodes like City on the Edge of Forever and Past Tense wiped the Federation out without even trying based on micro events from the past like Edith Keeler living or Gabriel Bell being killed too early. So the butterfly effect can go to from mild to the extremes.
But you’re also right, the events from this timeline is a bit out of sync with Picard season 2. And I noticed you watched TrekCulture and I did too where they made the OBVIOUS example that you had a Watcher on Earth for decades and a Romulan at that and she doesn’t know other Romulans also there for decades are operating there trying to take the Federation down? That was a big miss, especially because Goldsman were running both shows. How do these things happen? The host in the video said this what happens when shows don’t talk to each other. Um, no, in this case this what happens when the guy running both shows don’t talk to himself lol. Yes its a lot going on canon wise and all of that, but no one told you to make multiple time travel stories homeboy and stick them literally two years apart from each other on the same continent.
And it could be a misdirect, but I really hope not because I just want to mooooove on, but my guess is season 3 will probably have a 3 part episode running into a grown up Khan and even more time travel shenanigans so your theory could happen.
Ha! Doesn’t talk to himself. “I wrote that? Oops. We need that guy at Lucasfilm who keeps track of all of the Star Wars stuff. My bad.”
Everything Khan related just keeps making everything a mess.
Dear showrunners: “TWOK” is “The Empire Strikes Back” of this franchise. Stop trying to top it. It’s never going to happen.
Really good episode. He’s no Bill Shatner, but I’m ok with this guy. Just not as the lead. Christina looks amazing. Love the romance. I love cheap Trek when done right.
Good stuff
I had a ball with this one. The preview made me think the initial time-traveler in the suit was one of the Gary Seven/Wesley “watchers.” Temporal Investigations works just fine, though.
Thinking about it. North America probably also got the Africa treatment. It all became one unified county in the future.
Country…
People may have still kept the nationalities as part of their sense of identity and the cultures and cuisines of the nations also still exist as well as the languages.
As a Canadian I’m deeply offended by this theory. Just kidding. I agree and I think this would be the case for every country on the planet. They would keep their cultural identities (I dearly hope so) but the political divisions, meaning country borders, would no longer exist.
Scotty, the character, certainly illustrates that.
I’m increasingly aware of just how poorly thought-out the scenario of this episode was. Alt-Kirk’s reality has the earth in ruins and on a war footing with aliens, yet the corridors and bridge of his Enterprise look exactly the same outside of a dedication plaque? “Yesterday’s Enterprise” managed to totally sell its alternate version of the ship, and on a much smaller budget.
I’m just being honest here (and I like SNW) but TNG just had muuuuch better writers, especially by season 3. So I agree, it doesn’t make sense. Kirk sounds like his life was hell and that it was a struggle in a centuries old war and yet the Enterprise still looks like an immaculate cruise ship. That said, not a big deal either.
And maybe it was just me, but did you get the sense that Kirk was actually living through a Eugenics war history if Khan and others actually won? I really thought that’s where they were going and we were going to hear how that timeline played out and THAT was going to be what they needed to stop before we realized Kirk never even heard of Khan.
I think it would’ve been more interesting if the twist was that humans attacked Romulus first following Khan’s philosophies but I guess it would’ve felt too much like the MU. And I guess Kirk would have to be evil in that universe if they are the ones attacking first, even the asshole aliens, so OK, I take everything I said back lol.
To each his own, I think Yesterday’s Enterprise is one of the most overrated eps in TNG. Denise Crosby is truly awful in it, and I laugh every time I see how well a little Bird of Prey fares against the Enterprise D. And there are too many one-liner quips in it for my taste. I think the problem was that they had two many writers in the kitchen for that ep.
Crosby is probably the weakest link in the ep, but that is because the guest cast from the E-C crew is so good by comparison. We have no idea what size the BoPs were there, since they seem to scale up and down even in what I guess we are now supposed to call the prime universe, depending on the century.
I think the show’s success rests on that ‘the federation is losing the war’ revelation from Picard, where Stewart for once really brings something special to the table (I seem to only dig Stewart when he seems to up his game for certain guest stars, or in his pre-TNG roles, all of which I liked.) The whole thing pivots on that for me, so once again, Ron Moore for the win (and more importantly, the salvage of what could have been a ‘miss’ but was not..)
I hear you! It’s not in my Top 10 TNG eps, but I do know a of other fans rate it near the top.
I haven’t seen the episode in a while, and I can still recall the emotion I felt the first time I saw Picard jump to the back of the bridge to take over on weapons. The look on his face in that moment, along with the meeting you’re recalling where he talks about losing the war really sold the premise of the whole thing in a way we rarely saw in Star Trek to that point. It was VERY DARK, and maybe the darkest episode we saw concerning Starfleet and the Federation until DS9 got into its mid-series stride. But it was also a chance for Stewart to span the emotions from hopelessness to something to fight for.
I think hindsight is always 20/20, but I think it’s a questionable argument that it’s overrated based on Crosby or a pretty small detail in regard to the fate of the Bird of Prey. There’s been better Trek since Yesterday’s Enterprise, but in context of TNG, it was a bold episode that really pushed the boundaries of the production design and execution at that point in Star Trek history. Not many other episodes ever did a near full-redress of the bridge, noticeable uniform changes for the main cast along with a whole other set of uniforms for a guest cast, another bridge and starship model to fill-in a missing piece of canon, and the return of a previous lead cast member that many fans never thought they would see again.
Yesterday’s Enterprise is prime 1990’s Trek, and helped set the bar higher for the series. The script might not have been perfect, but I think the story concept and the effect it had on canon and even the last few seasons of the series (e.g. Sela) put it in rare company in terms of Star Trek episodes that hold that much weight in their respective series.
What I think is really amazing when you look at all of this in hindsight is that the classic shows were making episodes 26 times a year with a limited budget and time to make these episodes and we still got amazing stories out of them.
Then we have these new shows which only makes 10 episodes a year, given weeks to make an episode with a bigger budget and yet most of the stories are still not anything amazing. Certainly some solid stories but should still be a little stronger given all the time and money they can devote to a story. There is really no excuse the Enterprise in this episode couldn’t get even a slight redress to make it clear it’s really in a different timeline the way the older shows pulled it off.
So many other things wrong with this show, but yeah, the matter of not even redressing or dimmer-boarding the hell out of the bridge is criminal neglect given the changes in timeline.
WOW! What a fantastic episode! Every Trek series has had an episode like this and they all rank in my top ten. 11:59, Carbon Creek, The City on the Edge of Forever, etc. this one definitely deserves to be placed among them and is one of my favorite episodes of SNW so far. Christina Chong was wonderful and that final shot of her was as cathartic for the audience as the character. Paul Wesley is definitely growing on me as Kirk and I think it’d be cool to see Paramount eventually remake the entire original series with these actors. I continue to wonder what the alternate reality where Star Trek was brought back with SNW from the start might look like. The series just keeps delivering what I want from the franchise and I hope it continues for several more years!
Yeah I always love when we get past Earth episodes too if its time travel or just flashbacks like Carbon Creek and 11:59. I always love seeing what Earth’s history is like from Star Trek’s POV and it’s fun to find out what aliens are secretly living there lol.
Christina Chong has now firmly placed herself at the top of the list of “hottest” women in the Trek franchise for me. I’m not just talking about her very good looks, She has made La’an the perfect blend of action bad ass and vulnerable human being. Unlike Seven of Nine or T’Pol she’s allowed to play with a full range of emotions. Unlike Uhura or Troi, La’an has lots of things to do as part of the crew. A lot of it is of course the writing of the character but kudos to Chong in giving this character so many layers with her performance, I felt her pain at the end of the episode and I suspect we may see more of La’an and Kirk. Speaking of which….
I didn’t think much of Paul Wesley’s first appearance. I found him stiff and lacking the swagger of the familiar James T. Kirk. I felt like I was watching Kirk this time. It wasn’t an imitation of Shatner or even Pine. Wesley found a way to make Kirk the guy we’re familiar with but put his own spin on him. He was the charming, heroic roguish Captain we’ve loved for over 50 years. I realized though that Wesley looks a lot like Rob Delaney which made me laugh thinking about Delaney as Kirk.
Really good episode that Christina Chong and Paul Wesley knocked out of the park. Now then……I love Carol Kane but if Pelia were to fall down a turbo shaft and never be seen again I’d be good with that.
Go back to the Corby episode and watch the scene with the android double again.
First, we know that Kirk intentionally “poisoned” his double’s brain with false opinions on Spock in order to tip off his crew to the double.
Also the quick look exchanged between Kirk and Chapel after the double says only Kirk calls him Sam.
SNW simply made official what was obvious. Kirk used his brother’s name to test that his false thoughts had worked. He is the one who asked the android “Who is Sam?”. Chapel knew it was fake which is why the look between them and why she very clearly stops herself from saying anything.
If the android had said “George Samuel Kirk Jr., everyone calls him Sam” then Jim knows his plan has failed, and try something else, and only Chapel has any clue he even has a plan.
Ok, let’s count up the number of evil asshat aliens so far who traveled to past Earth to do something sinister.
Xindi in 2004 Detroit
Borg in 2063 Bozeman
Devidians in 1893 San Francisco
Na’kuhl in 1944 New York
Romulans in 2023 Toronto
No offense but Starfleet’s future Temporal organizations seriously needs to beef up its staff.
Temporal Cold War
Only one of these had anything to do with TCW, the Na’khul from Storm Front. The others were just being assholes.
The only one known to be connected is the Nah’khul, but I submit we do not know everything about the Temporal Cold Wars or even how they are defined. To someone in the 32nd century all of these and more may be included in what is defined as the “Temporal Wars” that lead to the Temporal Accords banning time travel.
For all we know the Davidians were there for much more than just feeding. Same with the others, aside from the Borg, and even the Queen’s entirely independant actions may be viewed as part of the whole from a future perspective.
True, but do you think the Borg gives a damn about the Temporal Cold War? They don’t exactly play well with others.
But yes I guess you can argue the others were a part of it and each played a motive in it even if it’s not that obvious. Actually the Xindi WERE acting on the pat of the Sphere Builders who were directly part of TCW but just didn’t know it then. So that’s actually a great point now that I’m thinking about it. This is all going deep down the rabbit hole and my headache grows bigger the longer I read this thread lol.
Davidians? Which branch?
LOL
LOL! Nice!
If the show writers read these boards, THIS episode is exactly how you should be doing nuTrek. This episode worked as a fun time travel adventure for newbies, and also worked on a whole other level for the initiated. Not too mention the “City on the Edge of Forever” ending.
This is the best AND most “Trek-like” episode of SNW yet. More of this!
I’m sorry but this was a ‘no’ for me. This was easily the worst episode of the series. The first half was plain boring. The humor didn’t land. Really… a second alternate Kirk?! I really didn’t like it. Last week was a 10, this one a 5.
Apology accepted — thanks!
I liked the episode, but I admit on my second rewatch it slowed down even more.That was already my biggest complaint why I didn’t love as much as I wanted to but the rewatched proved it. But I still think it’s good overall, but yeah reading and watching other reviews on it, there are things that makes it messy for sure.
I am so sick of the moronic whining about Khan and the Eugenics War being moved to the mid-21st century.
Star Trek was always science fiction that represented a possible future for us today — something that showed us what might be our possible future. As such, we know that their was no Eugenics War and no Khan in the mid-1990’s, so of course they needed to update that.
It’s not Akiva’s fault that the originators of the series picked dates that were too soon such that they would get retconned.
Gene L Coon was great for TOS, but he botched the dates he wrote concerning Khan’s origin in Space Seed. It’s his fault, not Akiva’s.
Like, DUH !!!!!
Thanks, Akiva! Always happy when you chime in
Hey Midnight’s Edge — you outed me!
Great journalism and accurate sources once again — congrats!
Akiva, when you scream at your assistants because they got the wrong dressing, do you recycle the same rant or change it up each time?
Andre and Tom, you should report that on your web show as breaking news.
At least we get that we’re YouTubers. You’re an Academy Award winner taking a swipe at a speed freak who died in the 70s and is known only to 50+-year old geeks of a niche North American IP. You’ve gone from Oscars to Transformers to this! What a fall! Next you’ll be competing with us for subscribers.
I’m an acquired taste. If you don’t like me, acquire some taste.
I honestly don’t even have a problem with it. My headmate from Trek (the augment one that’s I guess technically an oc) said earlier “it’s always nice to be getting younger instead of older.” He’s thrilled that his birth year is now 2018 instead of 1970. He’s also thrilled about being moved to Toronto because his home city was Vancouver.
Love it! :-)
It was unnecessary to adjust dates to address events that don’t line up with our history since Star Trek isn’t our actual history. Much like “2001: A Space Odyssey”, which presented technology and a future which seemed very much within the realm of possibility when Arthur C. Clarke wrote it, shifting priorities and actual history got in the way, It was all speculative. When he wrote “2010” in the 1980’s, it was apparent to him that the future he had envisioned wasn’t going to pan out but it was written as if it had.
Yeah it’s not needed, it’s fiction. No one is calling for a remake of Back to the Future 2 since it’s 2015 looks absolutely nothing like the real thing. But NuTrek has gone so far with this stuff and playing with the dates they knew they had to come up with some explanation to stop hate mail from flowing in and this will probably satisfy a lot of people. Not all, but hopefully enough.
But I just don’t get it, we had 40 years of Trek before and Khan and the Eugenics wars was maybe mentioned about 3 times outside of the two stories he was in out of 700 episodes and 10 movies. It was in the 90s, just leave it there like the real 90s. NuTrek shows up and Khan is constantly being brought up and even shown in the most cringe worthy way possible. If you just IGNORE the guy and come up with new stuff and not follow 300 year old canon, no one would care. I just don’t get the weird obsession with this character.
All that and more, my friend.
I really think the way to satisfy the bulk of the nay-sayers is to just admit all nu-Trek is rebooted. Sure, some will still moan but more will be OK with it than opting to overwrite what was done before because of TCW technobabble.
Man you’re a wiener. Time travel changes and reboot aren’t the same thing
Lose the attitude, chief.
I never said all time line changes are reboots. It depends on the context. Time line changes CAN be a reboots. They aren’t inherently reboots.
Same here. What a small universe in this writer’s room. ‘I know, let’s use Khan again!’ Ugh.
Wrong, GR intended it as a possible future history for all of us, meaning THIS TIMELINE WE ARE IN.
That was his intention but it’s not our reality. 2024 is lurking and disconnects once again from where we are today. The events portrayed in Picard Season 2 are just a year off and our reality and the future portrayed will once again diverge.
They can’t keep pushing dates because our present keeps catching up with a fictional future.
Sure they can. If we can have Lower Decks sitcom, juvenile BS as canon, then they can certainly update the future timeline every 40-50 years as new versions of Trek come out. Like you said, it’s fiction.
Lower Decks is awesome, you’re crazy
Everyone is entitled to have a different opinion on shows. You can certainly disagree, but no one is crazy because they don’t like something you do.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Roddenberry couldn’t have intended Trek as a possible future history because he didn’t take the show at all seriously as a possible vision of the future. How do I know this? Because I was there, at his ’70s college lectures, when he plainly said so. A number of times, in fact.
Maybe we saw different takes from Gene then, because I was part of a futurist convention group where several of us hosted Gene in the summer of 1979 for a weekend — and in the speech get gave at the conference, plus in a couple of really cool group/drinks informal talks several of us had with him (and I was in the car that picked him up from Dulles airport!), he was most definitely tying Star Trek to a possible future for mankind.
Or you could try not going out of your way to make a mess out off things just to warm up old ideas over and over again.
Bold to say that when one startet this topic with “I am so sick of the moronic whining”
Boldly going, my friend. :-)
So this essentially canonizes the idea that TOS and SNW are not in the same universe/timeline. And I’m 100% fine with that.
It doesn’t, but it needs to. It would be great if the next episode would explore that even the world that La’an returns to is different, giving us reason to really believe that things have changed. But until the power then be come out and say it, it still doesn’t count. At this point, they just love taking “big swings” in the “prime universe”.
This episode was a huge improvement. Honestly, I could watch a series with just Kirk and La’an.
I loved the time travel device they used. It reminded me of the omni from the time traveling series Voyagers. The omni also turned red when something was wrong with the time stream and turned green and allowed the time travelers to leave when they fixed things.
I also enjoyed watching Adelaide Kane playing the Romulan Sera. Her acting was next level compared to her role on Grey’s Anatomy.
I do not like this move away from the central focus being on Pike. He has been practically iced out of 2 episodes. Also what is up with replacing the main cast members with a guest star? This week Kirk, last week the lawyer.
Anson Mount’s wife had a baby at about the time these episodes were filmed. Crying babies keep new parents up all night, making it difficult for them to DO anything. I think the showrunners wrote small roles for Pike in the beginning of S2 so that Anson Mount would have an easier time of it while his baby was a newborn.
Oh my god, people’s biggest complaints are that modern Star Trek does not have the same character development as it used to. This can’t be…a Star Trek series that is actually focusing on other main characters to build a connection with fans, and people still complain. Oh the irony. Star Trek doesn’t focus on the characters enough….waaa. Star Trek focus too much on a character…waaaa!
I’m waiting for SNW’s Treachery Faith and the Great River. I’ll be waiting forever but at least in the meantime I can watch that episode and enjoy it for the focus on characters that aren’t Sisko, and especially enjoy seeing Weyoun 6.
How can it be doing that when two episodes have excluded the vast majority of the cast for guest stars? Remember there are only 10 episodes, so there is no room to play around.
I’m sorry was the second episode of the season not focused on Una? And this one on La’an?
To the virtual exclusion of the rest of the cast in favour of guest stars. That is very poor treatment of your main cast.
The example from DS9 I mentioned earlier… Rene Auberjoinis and Jeffrey Combs was the A plot and the B plot was Colm Meaney and Aron Eisenberg. The rest weren’t in it much.
That’s fine if you have 26 episodes…
Seriously?
Wah! Wah! Wah! Somebody please change baby’s diapers.
Sheesh, lol
So you have no argument, point or clue. Your response is simply trolling. Oh and it nappies.
Sorry if my humor was over the top. Nothing personal, but your comment was just hard for me to take seriously, that’s all.
Streaming series don’t tend to run long, I’m okay with other cast members getting fleshed out a bit. More so with an episodic format.
He’s really been iced out of all 3. Even Una’s episode doesn’t really count since 90% of his interaction in the episode was watching a view screen.
Baby or not, with only 10 episodes, I don’t see how you just keep him out of a substantial role for a THIRD of the season. Pike/Mount and Spock/Peck are the main reason SNW even exists.
Given all this talk of time travel … has anybody seen the pictures from the Martian surface that show a donut shape on the ground? Very guardian of forever …
(and no, I haven’t seen the ep yet.)
Yeah, I saw that. That’s something some advanced interstellar race wouldn’t want to leave hanging around this solar system….