"Tomorrow Is Yesterday"

Time travel. Black stars. Chicken soup. Poor photography. Another problem. Computed dear.

Captain John Christopher gets a look at the future, and it doesn't involve Tripods taking over the Earth. An act of mercy from the Enterprise crew lands the interceptor pilot in hot temporal waters as he resists adapting to his new home aboard the United Earth Space Probe Agency vessel currently orbiting a world which would happily blow it out of the sky with missiles, possibly nuclear. We know what atomic devices can do the the Enterprise, and it ain't pretty. Spock clearly remembers.

It's not that the good Captain is ungrateful for the rescue. He is ungrateful, actually. He can't stand these people who insist they're from his future, whose Captain has a grudge against Google Assistant's voice, and want to keep him with them for the rest of his life. He doesn't know about timelines and temporal integrity, and really can't be bothered to learn. He's just this pilot who wants to get back on the ground and report what he's seen and heard. Yeah. That'll go over well. Especially when corroborated by his wing camera evidence. Hmm. So tractor beams don't fog film. That's useful to know...

He also wants to get back because he's going to plant a space seed which will grown into a son who helps explore Saturn. Gee, I hope he isn't assigned to the Valley Forge.

Captain Christopher, grinning like a loon, relaxes a little when he learns he's to be released, somehow. Either that or he's high from the dope McCoy gave him to relieve the pain from Captain Kirk's duranium fist.

A mission to retrieve evidence is mounted and goes predictably sideways. Honestly, why do they think the airbase has regular office hours? Did Captain Christopher provide them with crappy intelligence? Of course they're compromised by blue uniforms, and Kirk gets left behind.

A bewildered security officer is accidentally beamed to the ship and treated with kind hospitality by the reliable Lieutenant Kyle. A food dispenser has been installed in the transporter room, replacing the vending machine out of shot that dispensed Cokes and Marlboros.

The evidence is examined by Spock, who observes "poor photography" before McCoy bitches at him to show his usual genius self and save the Captain. I can't agree with Spock on this one. The film of the Enterprise in the atmosphere rising slowly to return to her usual black velvet jewel case among the stars is freaking gorgeous. Academy Award nominee for Best Cinematography goes to...THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE!

An expedition to retrieve Captain Kirk is successful, largely in part to the Vulcan Neck Pinch. Perhaps Captain Christopher should have spent less time executing his escape, and more time learning about Vulcans and how you just can't turn your back on them.

Back in the briefing room a plan is hatched to return the Captain and the guard as the crew themselves get back to their own time. It involves another crazy fast trip around the sun and some slingshot stuff. Good thing this happened in the Sixties. Another twenty years on and they might collide with a borrowed Klingon Bird of Prey with H.M.S. Bounty markings.

The engines are engaged and the Captain and guard are dropped off before their initial encounters with the crew. No mention is given if the computer tape and photographic evidence are also returned. Wouldn't they also have to be reinserted in the timeline to prevent contamination or reset? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how the plan works. I can sort of see the sense of it. But I'm with Janeway on this one. Temporal mechanics is headache inducing.

The Enterprise returns to Earth in her present day. Starfleet Commodores are probably asking what the ship's doing here when it's supposed to be in deep space. And do tell us all about this time warp travel capability you just experienced...

Meanwhile, Spock is fascinated at how the computer doesn't giggle anymore.

"Tomorrow Is Yesterday" is a story I can watch any day. Original or Remastered.

 

That was a fantastic episode, the first season of Star Trek was hitting on all cylinders, and this episode was a Gold Standard. No treknobabble, and no Temporal nonsense from the lesser TNG spinoffs, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" told its story and left it as that.

 

And unlike later Treks you really did think they'd gone back into the past and had to correct the possibility of a damaged timeline by destroying the evidence!!!
JB

 

You should check out DC Comics Star Trek #33 (first run).

 

Yes this episode has some pretty good lines, characterisation and a few great capers. McCoys and Spock's interchanges are great without unnecessary venom. You know Kirk's missing and for once McCoy isn't tearing strips off Spock.
I think this is a great episode for Spock's character, making a mistake (for once), anticipating Christopher's moves, his deadpan clashes with McCoy.
Shatner demonstrates why he's playing the best captain ever with his fight scenes, badassery.

You know I don't blame Christopher that much - what does he care about Kirk and co's future. He can't think past 1966. I would think the same. Its not like a future where if he reports what he sees it will cause you know planet-wide devastation like it would with Edith as far as we know.

The thing that spoils the episode is the beaming in to someone else solution for the timeline paradox. It doesn't make sense under any circumstances to me. But thats time travel for you I suppose.

 

Great episode.

As cold as it sounds one wonders if Christopher and the Sergeant were actually returned.

 

I love this episode and I have the model kit! Wait, 2 of them, actually.

 

Cool!

 

The one thing of this episode that doesn't work for me is the teleportation of Captain Christopher back into himself in the F-104, or the transportation of the sergeant on patrol who caught Kirk and Sulu snooping in the base.

Aside from the fact that such a transport should effectively double the mass of the people involved, Even with the way the transporter worked, transporting Captain Christopher back into himself means he would retain the memory of everything he'd been through over the past 2 days.

I realize it's less exciting but they should have just done the gone back in time bit at the end, but effectively have Captain Christopher wink out once they pass the point where they'd beamed him aboard as now they didn't put a tractor being on the F-104 and didn't destroy it. Same thing with the sergeant.

So yeah if anything using the transporter in the manner they did should have complicated the situation because they were beaming back people with full memories of what they'd experienced.

 

I think you're overthinking it a little. The writer(s) put these beaming in scenes in it for the effect but give very little thought to the consequences. Just like in "Parallels" where we see Worf in different positions and uniforms in the end. It makes just as little sense but it's a nice effect.

It reminds me of a scene with Spencer Tracy playing Thomas Edison where he's walking while all around him we see newspaper clippings with articles about his inventions. It's obviously not a "real" scene but a symbolic one.

 

I've always worked under the assumption that the refusion didn't exactly erase the memories of the guard and Captain Christopher, but buried the memories of what happened to them deep in their subconscious. They likely had some terrifying memories of being abducted and, in the guard's case, magical chicken soup that came out of the wall.

As far as doubling of mass goes, I believe that the point the two are beamed in was supposed to represent the point they were originally beamed out.

 

I don't think it matters either way. When they took Gillian Taylor from her time. Kirk didn't agonize over the fact that removing her could cause a whole dynasty (her descendants) to disappear and radically change the future. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't. I think this is a case where it doesn't matter in the least. The pilot and guard went back to their time and the timeline was preserved. End of story.

 

Overthinking things is what we do here. Plus, what kind of amazing show was the original Star Trek that we're here discussing story points 55 years after the episode aired.

 

I think this is one of the episodes that like TVH was played for laughs. Unlike say "TCOTEOF".

 

Either way, it is still an interesting exercise to try to make sense of what the writers gave us.

 

There are sites where people discuss the particulars of less popular shows like Lost In Space with the same vigor as some do here. Star Trek’s fandom in not unique in kind and chatacter, it’s just much larger than those of many other shows.

 

I just view the beam-ins as a physical manifestation of the divergent timelines being 'zipped' back together.

 

Missed it

In fact I probably changed the channel (knobs back then) a time or two because it doesn’t start off as a Trekisode. I thought it was some military show and may have walked away at least once.

 

Like most people who enjoyed the episode saw it as is without a dispute, but they are a few who have to complicate something which was never devised to be complicated. Not once while enjoying the story where any of the characters indicated the transporter would become an obstacle???

 

My "Tomorrow is Yesterday" transporter theory, as I've stated it in the past:

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.

The Enterprise disappears from the prior timeline (to which we return to ditch the two guys), because that earlier version of the Enterprise is the one that departed to fly around the sun, and is thus one and the same as the returning Enterprise.

Put another way, the ship was not duplicated the way Christopher was, because it did not exist here prior to its arrival at the beginning of the episode.

Christopher and the Police Sergeant 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 (we see fx sparkles at this step) 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 matter stream by spewing it into space. This is like a steam valve, because everything has to go somewhere.

Thus the copy who knew too much is gone. Obviously Kirk wasn't going to explain all this to the Christopher who had to be eradicated, and anyway the original version of Christopher is still alive.