Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x03 - "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"

[Sci]

I see it this way;

Enterprise-TOS-TNG (and movies 1-10)-DS9-VOY-Picard = OG Trek Timeline

Discovery-SNW-Lower Decks = Nu Trek Timeline

Star Trek 2009-Beyond = Kelvin Timeline

Alternately, the Prime Timeline encompasses ENT, DIS S1-2, SNW, TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, LD, PRO, and PIC -- and it's just been slightly re-written.

Basically the writers made the time-travel mechanism vague enough that it can mean whatever you want it to me when you watch it. If you want it to be the same timeline as TOS et al, then for all we know La'an left a closed loop alternate timeline and reverted back to her own where Khan always reigned from 1992 to 1996. If you want it to be the same timeline as TOS et al but with it slightly re-written, then La'an has returned to the same timeline as TOS but from now on Khan will have reigned some time between the 2030s and 2050s. If you want it to be a completely different timeline from TOS et al, then you now have an episode that could be interpreted to support that hypothesis.

Everyone now gets to have their continuity cake and eat it too.

 

[thribs]

Doesn’t the Romulan lady mean 1972 and not 1992 since Khan would have been a kid then?

 

[Gepard]

That was excellent, easily the best episode so far this season and one of the best of nuTrek. I was not sold on Wesley as Kirk last season, but he won me over here.

I know I've harped plenty on how nuTrek characters so easily weep, but it really worked here, in large part because it didn't come easily. The writers earned it by putting La'an through the wringer, taking away any hope of talking about or reaching out to anyone else about what happened, and leaving her to cry alone in her quarters. It's heartbreaking.

 

[cooleddie74]

Unless she was supposed to assassinate him as a young adult or rising ruler and when history changed she was forced to hunt down where a later child version of Khan was being created and raised, taking 30 years? Khan would have been a grown adult in 1992.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Doesn’t the Romulan lady mean 1972 and not 1992 since Khan would have been a kid then?

Someone else did 1972.

 

[fireproof78]

The writers earned it by putting La'an through the wringer, taking away any hope of talking about or reaching out to anyone else about what happened, and leaving her to cry alone in her quarters. It's heartbreaking.

That's tragic.

 

[eschaton]

Late to the party this week. Couldn't watch early in the AM like morning, and it was a busy day, so I just finished it. I was pleasantly surprised, given I really wasn't looking forward to either a time travel adventure or a return of James T. Kirk.

I can't help but compare this episode to Season 2 of Picard because it used so many of the same elements. In both cases, a character has to travel back in time to the present (more or less) to fix something that would otherwise turn their own period into a dystopian nightmare. In both cases, the thing they need to stop is the killing of their own ancestor! In both cases, there's a love interest who looks like someone from their own timeline, a Romulan agent, and a near-immortal member of an alien race slumming it on Earth. There was even a car-chase!

Yet, it all works so, so much better here, probably because they realize this is an episode's worth of story, not a whole season. Wesley's Kirk and Chong's La'an have great chemistry, and Chong continues to prove herself one of the heavy hitters among the regular cast with some weighty material here. Pulling off a "romance of a week" is something very hard - something most Trek attempts fail at, but it works here, in part because the kiss itself isn't really the point, it's that La'an finally felt herself opening up to someone, only to have it wrenched away. Plus the message of the episode was not as pat as Season 2 of Picard. It may not fit on a cereal box, but sometimes we do need bad things to happen for good things to occur, and sometimes innocent little boys grow up into monsters.

Did I think it was perfect? Absolutely not. I thought the final scene with the Romulan agent from the future didn't quite work - there was too much telling and not enough showing. I also felt the direction was frankly mediocre here. The setting of most of the episode was mundane, but the characters we followed were fish out of water, and I feel like it would have worked better in places to have shots that really got across the alienness of the experience for them rather than the banality of walking down city streets and eating hot dogs.

That said, it exceeded my expectations for a story structure that had been done to death before by Trek, executing a fundamentally uncreative idea quite well by rooting itself in excellent character chemistry.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Doesn’t the Romulan lady mean 1972 and not 1992 since Khan would have been a kid then?

He flees earth in 1996.

1992 is when the war started, we suspect.

It may have taken them them 30 years to grow a 30 year old man, or it could have taken then 10 years to grow a 30 year old man in a maturation tank.

In the into Darkness comics, Khan was a 12 (?) Year old homeless kid that they abducted to experiment on.

 

[Citiprime]

Strange New Worlds itself basically confirmed this is NOT the same timeline as TOS or Prime with this episode.

Sarah the Romulan says all of the Eugenics Wars and Khan's existence was "supposed to happen in 1992" but all the temporal alterations have nudged the events forward. She has been stuck on Earth for 30 years because Khan's existence is a sort of fixed point in time (to borrow a Doctor Who plot device) that resists being altered.

However, the implication of the episode is that all of the changes in Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and possibly even Picard can be explained by saying this is a branched-off, altered timeline created from the Temporal (Cold) Wars.

 

[Yistaan]

Her time tricorder wasnt going to turn green, until she had a home to go back to.

You're missing the point. If La'an's descent hinges on Khan living in the 1990s instead of the 2020s, then she'd have no home to go back to as there's no timeline where she'd actually exist! The time gizmo would just turn green to dump her back to the nearest "close enough" timeline, where no one would recognize her.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Strange New Worlds itself basically confirmed this is NOT the same timeline as TOS or Prime with this episode.

Sarah the Romulan says all of the Eugenics Wars and Khan's existence was "supposed to happen in 1992" but all the temporal alterations have nudged the events forward. She has been stuck on Earth for 30 years because Khan's existence is a sort of fixed point in time (to borrow a Doctor Who plot device) that resists being altered.

However, the implication of the episode is that all of the changes in Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and possibly even Picard can be explained by saying this is a branched-off, altered timeline created from the Temporal (Cold) Wars.

Its a sliding point.

 

[Sci]

I can't help but compare this episode to Season 2 of Picard because it used so many of the same elements. In both cases, a character has to travel back in time to the present (more or less) to fix something that would otherwise turn their own period into a dystopian nightmare. In both cases, the thing they need to stop is the killing of their own ancestor! In both cases, there's a love interest who looks like someone from their own timeline, a Romulan agent, and a near-immortal member of an alien race slumming it on Earth. There was even a car-chase!

Of course, the fundamental difference is the thematic purpose of these two instances of similar plot structures.

The events of PIC S2 were engineered by Q (or, rather, designed by the writers [as best they could trying to write and shoot S2 around COVID pre-vaccine]) in order to get Jean-Luc to confront the lingering trauma of having lost his mother, leading him to spend most of his life being unable to establish and maintain long-term committed relationships as a result of his fear of loss.

The events of "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," on the other hand, caused La'an to suffer the kind of traumatic grief that Jean-Luc had already experienced before time-travelling -- and the future Department of Temporal Investigations even made her trauma worse by preventing her from obtaining the counsel of mental health care professionals or even trusted friends when seeking to process it.

In other words, they're almost an inverse of one-another, thematically. The time travel of PIC S2 allows Jean-Luc to overcome his trauma; the time travel of "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" actively inflicted the same such trauma onto La'an.

* * *

Side-note:

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is the first Star Trek episode to canonically identify Earth and the Federation as a socialist society.

 

[Citiprime]

Unless she was supposed to assassinate him as a young adult or rising ruler and when history changed she was forced to hunt down where a later child version of Khan was being created and raised, taking 30 years? Khan would have been a grown adult in 1992.

The funding report file folder for "Project Khan" seen in Picard season 2 has a June 7, 1996 date on it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You're missing the point. If La'an's descent hinges on Khan living in the 1990s instead of the 2020s, then she'd have no home to go back to as there's no timeline where she'd actually exist! The time gizmo would just turn green to dump her back to the nearest "close enough" timeline, where no one would recognize her.

Its Red when Sarah kills Khan, or nukes Toronto.

Its green in 2022 when 13 year old Khan lives, and the town is free of mushroom clouds.

Travelling back to 1992 to fight young Sarah and bring back the TOS timeline was never on the table.

 

[cooleddie74]

The funding report file folder for "Project Khan" seen in Picard season 2 has a June 7, 1996 date on it.

Although that could be the result of temporal shenanigans.

 

[Sci]

Strange New Worlds itself basically confirmed this is NOT the same timeline as TOS or Prime with this episode.

No. It was entirely too vague to establish any such thing. That's a legitimate interpretation, but it would be just as legitimate to interpret it as establishing that it's still the Prime Timeline but slightly re-written, or to interpret it as taking place in a closed alternate timeline loop that had no impact on the Prime Timeline to which La'an returned.

Basically you get to interpret it however you want. You can have your continuity cake and eat it too. But the catch is that no one's interpretation is more legitimate than anyone else's.

 

[XCV330]

Strange New Worlds itself basically confirmed this is NOT the same timeline as TOS or Prime with this episode..

why can star trek fans not just enjoy a thing for what it is instead of getting a mental wedgie about timelines and minutiae all the fucking time?

 

[Charles Phipps]

Unless she was supposed to assassinate him as a young adult or rising ruler and when history changed she was forced to hunt down where a later child version of Khan was being created and raised, taking 30 years? Khan would have been a grown adult in 1992.

Given a computer is telling her what to do, she doesn't necessarily have to have known about any of this. However, inconsistencies like this can all be explained by Romulan intervention. In this timeline, for example, Evil Brent Spiner might have had his Khan project delayed by a Romulan spy getting laws passed against genetic engineering.

So Khan was not born for 30 years.

Strange New Worlds itself basically confirmed this is NOT the same timeline as TOS or Prime with this episode.

Sarah the Romulan says all of the Eugenics Wars and Khan's existence was "supposed to happen in 1992" but all the temporal alterations have nudged the events forward. She has been stuck on Earth for 30 years because Khan's existence is a sort of fixed point in time (to borrow a Doctor Who plot device) that resists being altered.

However, the implication of the episode is that all of the changes in Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and possibly even Picard can be explained by saying this is a branched-off, altered timeline created from the Temporal (Cold) Wars.

It's an ALTERED timeline but not a branch timeline.

Which is to say that George McFly is now a successful author. Not that it's a different reality.

Remember "City on the Edge of Forever", Kirk and Spock need to fix the timeline, not ask the Guardian to send them back to their reality two dimensional coordinates over.

 

[ichab]

So now we'll just have to imagine that Kahn says a later year, twenty-twenty-something.
I'm not ever going to be so pigheaded about my favorite TV show that I can't adjust with the times.

It's not about adjusting with the times. Star Trek is pure fiction, not real life. Just because we didn't experience a Eugenics War in reality doesn't mean that a fictional T.V show should keep changing its established universe. When we get to the new established date and the third world war still doesn't happen, should Trek move it forward again "to keep with the times"? That to me is silly.

 

[Charles Phipps]

It's not about adjusting with the times. Star Trek is pure fiction, not real life. Just because we didn't experience a Eugenics War in reality doesn't mean that a fictional T.V show should keep changing its established universe. When we get to the new established date and the third world war still doesn't happen, should Trek move it forward again "to keep with the times"? That to me is silly.

Can you name me one single franchise that has not been changed in the history of ongoing ones?