Tomorrow Is Yesterday Question.

[Gingerbread Demon]

I know this has probably been discussed ad nausseum on here so apologies if I bring up a topic no one wants to see but this is one of my favourite TOS episodes. Always watch it when its on reruns.

Near the end of the episode they beam back the two men to a moment or two before they either saw or knew about the Enterprise, but in that beaming don't they beam back into their own bodies killing them off at that point in time? I mean killing their original selves?

I am always left thinking this after this particular episode.

 

[Timo]

The two pertinent points of this would appear to be that the writers had no idea and that yes, it amounts to euthanasia in practice.

That our heroes would be thinking that it would somehow "work out" or "be helpful" is one interpretation, but there is little in the dialogue to support this. Rather, it's easy to see them plot for the murder of the two "extraneous" people right under their very noses, using chaste turns of phrase to hide the fact of their planned deaths from them.

This also rather logically follows from the preceding dialogue, where our heroes discuss the problem of keeping Christopher in the future where he does not belong and can find no solution - and where Christopher outright says that the only way for Kirk to stop him from returning is "over my dead body"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

It does seem like killing their current selves. No it doesn't make any sense.

Are their any script notes explaining what the idea was? I'm guessing the writer had a pretty unique idea of how time travel worked.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

It does seem like killing their current selves. No it doesn't make any sense.

Are their any script notes explaining what the idea was? I'm guessing the writer had a pretty unique idea of how time travel worked.

I'd be curious to read any such notes. I wonder if any of that has survived over the years.

It just seems that they murdered their "current" selves and are replaced by the ones beamed in. Yet wouldn't they retain all that knowledge they had? Did McCoy wipe their memories?

I haven't seen this one in ages but yeah.

 

[UnknownSample]

We may think we know how time travel is supposed to work after decades of SF TV and films, but they were just feeling their way along, trying to deal with a mysterious phenomenon as best they could. One thing I like about TOS compared to the other Treks is that time travel was an unknown. Who was to say how it worked?
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All the paradoxes make any sort of time travel full of contradictions, so no method makes sense. They killed Christopher by beaming him into himself? That never occurred to me. They are replacing him with himself. The inconsistent bit is that he (plus all aboard the Enterprise) retain their memories as they pass backward in time after the slingshot. The backwards time travel is what's supposed to undo memories of experiences they are now preventing from ever having happened... yet after the slingshot and before the beaming back into his plane, he still knows everything he went through. It seems to be the beaming that undoes his memories, yet it's supposed to be the backwards time travel. Or... just the very act of placing him *back* at a time and position before he saw the Enterprise.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

We may think we know how time travel is supposed to work after decades of SF TV and films, but they were just feeling their way along, trying to deal with a mysterious phenomenon as best they could. One thing I like about TOS compared to the other Treks is that time travel was an unknown. Who was to say how it worked?
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All the paradoxes make any sort of time travel full of contradictions, so no method makes sense. They killed Christopher by beaming him into himself? That never occurred to me. They are replacing him with himself. The inconsistent bit is that he (plus all aboard the Enterprise) retain their memories as they pass backward in time after the slingshot. The backwards time travel is what's supposed to undo memories of experiences they are now preventing from ever having happened... yet after the slingshot and before the beaming back into his plane, he still knows everything he went through. It seems to be the beaming that undoes his memories, yet it's supposed to be the backwards time travel. Or... just the very act of placing him *back* at a time and position before he saw the Enterprise.

Yes but is it the "new him" that replaces the "present day, or past day him" when he beams back into the plane intact with new memories or such we just don't know. At least that's what this episode always had me wondering at the end, same for that other guy in the computer room or such. I feel a bit iffy about the beaming undoing their memories.

BTW your first paragraph was brilliant in that any fictional story will never know exactly how time travel works because it is a true unknown. We can make guesses at what might happen but we just will never know, perhaps never ever know.

 

[UnknownSample]

Well, thanks. It's disappointing in later Treks when we've seen time travel SO much that we know how it works. And all you have to do is sneeze, practically, to travel in time... The mystery and strangeness is gone.

 

[Ovation]

No time travel story withstands scrutiny. Especially Trek time travel as there are so many (at times conflicting) variants. Long ago, I decided to simply accept whatever rules the story teller applies and go with it. Better for one's blood pressure.

 

[UssGlenn]

What I don't get is how the time warp and beaming just makes the earlier Enterprise dissapear from the sky, and Kirk never be in the records room to find.

 

[Timo]

That part makes reasonably good sense. Kirk originally loiters in the atmosphere for so long only because he notices Christopher spying on him (perhaps aiming nukes at him, too), and decides to do something about that, with disastrous results. With the second sortie into the past, the threat is gone: the "second" Enterprise confuses Christopher in the cockpit long enough that the "first" Kirk gets his opening to fly away, and there's never a chance for the pilot to make visual identification or alter pursuit course or anything like that (even though an "objective" camera not distracted by transporter trickery might still show the "first" ship up there).

Mind you, the "first" ship being spotted was only due to everybody being unconscious and thus incapable of hiding the ship (through maneuvers or the shield trick they later quote for "Assignment: Earth"); the performance of a starship ought to allow her to quickly vacate the spot indicated by ground radars, making it impossible for Christopher to establish visual contact or even contact with the radar of his F-104. The "second" Enterprise would never have been at risk of being spotted.

(Now, what I wonder about in the quiet of the night is the onboard chronometers. What sort of "objective" timebase do they lock on so that they can roll backward when the ship goes to the past? And if they can do that, why did they fail to do that in the first place, leaving our heroes in the teaser wondering about when they had ended up?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[UssGlenn]

OK so the transporter freeze keeps Christopher from IDing the "first" Enterprise but doesn't that create a time paradox? Also, they beam back the guard first, before the timeline in changed by the Enterprise escaping so why isn't Kirk there?

 

[johnnybear]

Considering they were travelling at the speed of light when they energized both men back into their original selves it could be that they killed the original characters or they just altered the moment by erasing their futures?
JB

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I stated my "TiY" transporter theory in a past thread, and here is a re-post:

When the Enterprise came back from its trip around the sun, there were two copies each of Captain Christopher and the Air Police Sergeant. I think the copies who knew too much were beamed into oblivion.

They don't really get beamed into their own bodies. Their mass and density would instantly double, and they would die. What happens is,

1. The Transporter de-materializes the man on the pad.

2. The Transporter scans the destination and finds that "he" is already there. The machine doesn't know there are two of him.

3. Having found that transport appears to be complete (even though it never got started), the Transporter disposes of the disassembled matter stream by spewing it into space (this is like a steam valve, because everything has to go somewhere), and it wipes the pattern buffer that held his re-assembly instructions.

Thus the copy who knew too much is gone.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I stated my "TiY" transporter theory in a past thread, and here is a re-post:

When the Enterprise came back from its trip around the sun, there were two copies each of Captain Christopher and the Air Police Sergeant. I think the copies who knew too much were beamed into oblivion.

They don't really get beamed into their own bodies. Their mass and density would instantly double, and they would die. What happens is,

1. The Transporter de-materializes the man on the pad.

2. The Transporter scans the destination and finds that "he" is already there. The machine doesn't know there are two of him.

3. Having found that transport appears to be complete (even though it never got started), the Transporter disposes of the disassembled matter stream by spewing it into space (this is like a steam valve, because everything has to go somewhere), and it wipes the pattern buffer that held his re-assembly instructions.

Thus the copy who knew too much is gone.

That sounds plausible.

You know thinking about this that would make for the ideal murder if one wanted to do such a thing.

 

[Kor]

They don't really get beamed into their own bodies. Their mass and density would instantly double, and they would die.

Per "The Enemy Within," it's possible for the transporter to split one person into two separate individuals who apparently don't weigh only half as much as the original. So, conversely, it's plausible that the transporter could combine two individuals into one that doesn't weigh twice as much.

The science behind this would be quite wonky, but the whole idea of the transporter is mumbo jumbo anyway.

Kor

 

[johnnybear]

One minute people are saying the second Christopher and the chicken soup eating guard were killed when their other selves were beamed into them! Now we're theorizing that the Christopher and chicken soup eating guard who came to the Enterprise died when they were either beamed into their younger selves or disintegrated their molecules into the time/space continuum!
JB

 

[johnnybear]

Just how did The Enterprise erase it's earlier venturing into the skies above twentieth century earth?
JB

 

[retroenzo]

OP, I completely agree with you. This one twisted my brain when I first saw it and yes this is an episode I enjoy watching too. I suppose what didn't help is that by the time I first saw this episode I was already a 'veteran' of three seasons of TNG and had definitely seen Star Trek IV and was a fan of other time travel films and TV series so I thought I knew what the rules of time travel were.

And then I saw 'Tomorrow is Yesterday' and it completely confused me. Looking back on it now it 'feels' like Quantum Leap, even down to a hint of having the swiss cheesed memory.

However, I like @ZapBrannigan 's explanation. It makes so much sense, if a bit *squick*.

 

[-SS-]

I think the Enterprise actually discovered temporal reintegration as explained in Voyager - Relativity. No one was killed or erased, they were merged into their correct, non- paradoxical selves.

 

[psCargile]

Superposition of states.