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

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I mean, honestly, the Eugenics Wars being moved out of the 90s makes the Berman shows fit more neatly in the timeline, too. Tom Paris was making out with Sarah Silverman while Ricardo Montalbán ruled over a chunk of the earth? It's always strained credulity. Now we have a reason why TOS is constantly contradicted by its sequels and even itself; Romulans did it.

I propose from here on, when you notice an inconsistency or a plot hole in Star Trek, you refer to it as a "time traveling Romulan". :rommie:
 
Are you seriously telling me that your plan to save the universe is based on Back to the Future?
There's a great clip from 2015 with Chris Lloyd called "Doc Brown saves the future" :D

the money I can accept, checkin in without ID, crossing the border twice without ID? not so much
They probably used the Doc Brown sensitive weather equipment permit trick ;)

Okay, I'm sorry for her and everything she went through because of her last name, but couldn't she just, well, change it? If someone had their surname "Hitler" I certainly wouldn't blame them if they changed it to Smith, Jones, or whatever.
Paula changed it to Wolff, Alois to Hiller, William Patrick to Stuart-Houston...

And you have to consider that in the Star Trek universe Khan is considered literally worse than Hitler (now that I think about it, wasn't Kirk being a bit too friendly with him..?)
No, they said there were no massacers under his rule.

Yep. As I've written before, continuity is a virtue, but it's not the only virtue nor even the most important one. The modern obsession with "canon" often seems to be a case of putting the cart before the horse, in that preserving the sacred "canon" and making sure all the encyclopedia entries are 100% consistent has somehow become Job One, as though the world-building and timelines and "canon" are more important than all the other factors that go into presenting an engaging hour of TV: the acting, the dialogue, the music, the morality plays and messages, even the actual story and characters.

It's as though the backdrop is more important than the story being presented in the foreground. Like watching a new production of "Carmen" and fretting because the sets and costumes aren't what you're used to.

Bottom line: STAR TREK is theater, not an encyclopedia. So why not grant it a little artistic license when it comes to putting on a good show every week?
When people say Titanic has the wrong night sky, they probably don't have any other complaints about an otherwise pretty perfect film.
And Trek is not theater, or a radio show, or just text. That's why visual and factual continuity are important for people who like a consistent universe, because it makes it more believable and connectable the them.
 
TNG says the wrong number of Enterprises? Time Traveling Romulan.
Scotty thinks Kirk is still alive after seeing him die? Time Traveling Romulan.
Klingons look all wrong? Time Traveling Romulan.
And the Time Traveling Romulan is Adelaide Kane . . . screwing up her intended mission . . . every time.
 
First Contact didn't alter the timeline, it was a paradox. It always happened, or at the very least lead to the exact same events still happening.
Pre-destination paradox. Temporal Investigations hates those, but First Contact implies it heavily, since meeting the crew pushes both Cochrane and Lilly towards seeing warp drive as an opportunity to rebuild Earth into a better world. Especially since Cochrane doesn’t really become the figure he is in the history books until after the incident.

There’s a subtle indication that the time travel in “Trials and Tribbleations” (where the Department of Temporal Investigations was introduced) was always meant to happen, since at the end they imply that the reason the Tribbles are hitting Kirk on the head in “The Trouble with Tribbles” is because Sisko and Dax were tossing them out of the storage bin searching for the bomb.
the money I can accept, checkin in without ID, crossing the border twice without ID? not so much
Beyond just that, it must really be an alternate 2022 because try getting a hotel room without a credit card, let alone ID.

Also, don’t know about how cops in Canada operate, but I’m guessing there’s no amount of bystander shaming in the world where someone just gets let go after being involved in a police chase, especially without at least establishing their identity.
 
And you have to consider that in the Star Trek universe Khan is considered literally worse than Hitler (now that I think about it, wasn't Kirk being a bit too friendly with him..?)

Well, no. In "Space Seed," Kirk and Scotty specifically talk about how under Khan's rule, there were no large-scale massacres. Augments in general are seen by 23rd Century Humans as evil on a scale that's hard to contemplate because the Eugenics Wars/World War III led to the death of a third of the world's population according to the SNW pilot, but Khan in particular is not said to be worse than Hitler.

If a lot of the audience is more concerned about the canon than the story, it *might* have something to say about the quality and entertainment value of the story being told.

Maybe, but "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" was a great episode, so it says more about fandom myopia in this instance.

When LOTR was released, it was not in continuity with the Hobbit, the Hobbit originally having Gollum willingly give Bilbo the Ring. LOTR was so good that readers let it slide, otherwise if it were terrible Tolkien probably would've gotten angry letters complaining about the lack of continuity with the Hobbit.

Tolkien published a revised version of The Hobbit to keep it consistent with The Lord of the Rings, actually.

Basically, La'an's and Kirk's romance just wasn't believable.

I mean, ultimately this is a question of your subjective feelings about Chong's and Wesley's chemistry together. I think it's there and so the episode worked for me.

It may be due to the changing social atmosphere in the 2020s than say, 1960s "City on the Edge of Forever" but these types of romances are becoming increasingly unrealistic for a lot of the audience (we're lucky if we can even get a date, much less have a relationship progress so quickly) and thus it falls flat.

.... I have no idea what you're talking about. "Changing social atmosphere?" "We're lucky if we can even get a date?" People still go on dates. They go on dates all the time. This is not some dying practice.

And I think it's pretty obvious that part of the reason La'an and Jim developed such strong feelings in a relatively short amount of time is that they were trauma-bonding. They were in a really extreme situation, they were both trapped far from home in a foreign culture, they had to spend 24/7 together for several days, and they had to rely on one-another for survival. In another circumstance, they probably would not have developed such intense feelings so quickly -- and it's also an open question whether their feelings would have endured if they had been restored to normal life.

EDIT: In regards to "City", from a modern viewpoint Edith doesn't show any indication of romantic intentions from her side towards Kirk, and Kirk's claim of being "in love" with her today comes off as creepy, stalker-ish, and everyone would point out he "doesn't even really know her".

I've shown "The City on the Edge of Forever" to plenty of people steeped in modern values. No one has ever said to me that Edith has no interest in Jim -- she makes her romantic interest in him very clear several times. They have said to me that he comes on a bit strong, but I've never heard anyone call it "creepy" or "stalker-ish."

Apparently she's never been to Nebraska. We don't have accents there.

Everyone has an accent. There's no such thing as talking without an accent. An accent is just the way you pronounce something -- it's not "pronouncing things differently from how I pronounce things."

This was almost entirely a condensed version of PICARD season 2, but done much better. (This is kind of damning with faint praise because that season was awful.)

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" contains...

1. Sera, a Romulan disguised as a human.
2. A lengthy car chase.
3. Story dealt with a lead character's ancestor, in this case La'an.
4. Took place in the 2020s.
5. Timeline watchers/fixers, in this case the Department of Temporal Investigations.
6. Got help from a very long lived ally, Pelia.
7. Altered Earth has massive environmental damage.
8. Federation is completely gone, replaced by an organization currently at war.
9. Stop a fork in the road event.
10. Khan.


PICARD season 2 contains...

1. Tallin, a Romulan disguised as a human.
2. A lengthy car chase.
3. Story dealt with a lead character's ancestor, in this case Picard.
4. Took place in the 2020s.
5. Timeline watchers/fixers, in this case the Tallin and Wesley at the end.
6. Got help from a very long lived ally, Guinan.
7. Altered Earth has massive environmental damage.
8. Federation is completely gone, replaced by an organization currently at war.
9. Stop a fork in the road event.
10. Khan reference with Soong getting the file on him.


The amount of parallels and items being aped from that season are far too many to just be a 'passing similarity' to other time travel stories used.

Like I said, this episode essentially proved PICARD season 2 was far, far too long because while this is the least favorite episode of SNW for me, it's still much better than that season was.


I've said it before and I'll say it again:

PIC S2 and "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" are mirror opposites of each other. In PIC S2, Jean-Luc must travel to the past in order to finally start processing the trauma he has carried his entire life and become self-actualized. In "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," La'an travels to the past to experience profound trauma which she will carry for the rest of her life and is not allowed to process by the DTI.

PIC S2 and "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" are textbook examples of how a similar plot can be used to tell completely different stories.

4. So what year did this Romulan arrive from? We see a TOS version of the Romulan ship, so it's implied to be sometime in the 23rd century. But Romulans were never shown to have this capability during that time.

If the Federation was able to time-travel from 2268 to 1969 in "Assignment: Earth," I see no reason to imagine the Romulans couldn't have time-traveled from the 2260s to the 2020s.

5. Multiple unrealistic things took me out of the episode... the cops just letting them go like they did, earning that much money from playing chess on the street, taking buses and crossing the border from Toronto to Vermont... and back again in such a short time.

Yeah, those bits stretched verisimilitude.

One thing I feel I probably should point out...

My wife really loved this episode... said it's her favorite one of SNW currently. She has only very little knowledge of TOS (she has not watched any episodes).

Someone in the thread mentioned something about this episode (and the season premiere) being more for the casual viewer. Given the stark difference between my wife's reaction to the episode and mine, there may be merit to that statement.

Yeah, I think we Trekkies sometimes get so bogged down in our expectations about what Star Trek "ought" to be that we lose the ability to appreciate the work of art for what it is. I was initially so annoyed by the Klingon makeup redesign in DIS S1 that it made it hard for me to engage in the material -- but when I stepped back and let go of my expectation of what it "ought" to be, I found myself really enjoying DIS's version of the Klingons.

L'aan makes an offhand remark as Kirk moves to steal a car. "This is private property." Now, the implication is that Kirk does not understand this coming from a more advanced society where perhaps an AI computer controls all transportation?

What she actually says is, "The majority of vehicles are privately-owned." Your hypothesis about A.I. controlling transportation is possible, but it's just something you made up and has no canonical support. The most we can reasonably infer from La'an's words is that private ownership of vehicles is less common in the 23rd Century.

Which makes sense. While there are plenty of people who think of cars as liberating, there are many people (myself among them) who find car ownership and driving to be stressful, dangerous, cumbersome in terms of usage of space, and overall a negative experience. I own and drive a car but I would not do so if the public transportation system where I live were more extensive and reliable.

In the paradisaical United Earth, it is literally possible to teleport anywhere you want instantly. It's extremely plausible that most people would not want the stress of owning a vehicle if you can simply arrange to be beamed where you need to go.

Picard tells us "there is no money" so he is growing grapes and making wine at the government's behest

Weird binary. Even if there's literally no money, that doesn't mean that economic activity must only occur at the command of the state.

and then it is distributed probably via a social credit system. So is Sisko's dad. No wonder there is no crime. No one would dare would they? One false move, and the nanny state cuts your access to your social credits which they control. The AI no doubt reads all communications like Google's AI "reads" all your emails.

There is no canonical evidence for this.

This is fascism with a velvet glove.

No. Fascism is a very particular type of authoritarianism characterized by the belief in the superiority of an In-Group over an Out-Group, the use of the Out-Group as a scapegoat for social problems, a fixation on an imagined idyllic past in which the In-Group had no real problems, a belief in national regeneration through violence, and the veneration of a supreme leader figure as infallible.

What you are describing would indeed be a form of oppression, but it would not be the particular kind of authoritarianism that is fascism.

Freedom is an illusion they create as they control every aspect of your life.

Freedom is an illusion because powerful people can force you into poverty if they don't like you? Congratulations, you've just described capitalism!

Any direct or indirect references to PICARD season 2 in the episode (Adam Soong, the Shenzhen Convention banning human genetic engineering, or even human spaceflight within the solar system)?

(Disclaimer: for those that might say I should just watch the episode, I won't be in a country where SNW is legally available until September...)

None, but no contradictions either. Akiva Goldsman worked on both, so presumably he's given some thought as to how these two shows' backstories fit together.

I liked the inclusion of the Department of Temporal Investigations at the end, as telegraphed as it was, and got a little bit of Section 31 vibes from the final scene.

If you mean, "government agency doing classified things" vibes, sure. But Section 31 and DTI are very different -- DTI is a legitimate government agency, answerable to the democratically-elected President and Council, charged with enforcing laws passed by constitutional process; Section 31 is a rogue conspiracy within the government that answers to no one, has no legitimate basis in the constitution, and does whatever it wants.

I'm not sold on Carol Kane's character, kind of reminds me of the Pulaski gambit in Next Gen...

I don't really see how she resembles Pulaski? She's far more playful and cheerful.

I watched it yesterday. Liked the chemistry between Chong and Wesley, disliked the contemporary song choices on the soundtrack. Overall, I felt it was a pale imitation of City on the Edge of Forever, much like the previous ep's (failed) attempt to recall TNG's The Measure of a Man. Still waiting for season two to soar.

I don't think it's an imitation of "The City on the Edge of Forever." Alt-Jim does not have to die to save the future the way Edith had to die to save the future. "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is clearly playing with some Star Trek tropes, but that's far from "imitating."

Pre-destination paradox. Temporal Investigations hates those, but First Contact implies it heavily, since meeting the crew pushes both Cochrane and Lilly towards seeing warp drive as an opportunity to rebuild Earth into a better world. Especially since Cochrane doesn’t really become the figure he is in the history books until after the incident.

It was VOY that established First Contact as a predestination paradox. First Contact strongly implied that it was meeting the Vulcans that caused Cochrane to become more altruistic.

There’s a subtle indication that the time travel in “Trials and Tribbleations” (where the Department of Temporal Investigations was introduced) was always meant to happen, since at the end they imply that the reason the Tribbles are hitting Kirk on the head in “The Trouble with Tribbles” is because Sisko and Dax were tossing them out of the storage bin searching for the bomb.

But of course, if that's the case, how come we didn't see Miles and Julian in the lineup after the bar fight in "The Trouble with Tribbles?"
 
Yeah, I think we Trekkies sometimes get so bogged down in our expectations about what Star Trek "ought" to be that we lose the ability to appreciate the work of art for what it is. I was initially so annoyed by the Klingon makeup redesign in DIS S1 that it made it hard for me to engage in the material -- but when I stepped back and let go of my expectation of what it "ought" to be, I found myself really enjoying DIS's version of the Klingons.
This is what I am noticing in fandom a lot. The box and brand is more important than the story.
 
--She's far more playful and cheerful--

YMMV, but I found both Pulaski and her a bit on the grating side... especially with a full ensemble already in place.
 
TNG says the wrong number of Enterprises? Time Traveling Romulan.
Scotty thinks Kirk is still alive after seeing him die? Time Traveling Romulan.
Klingons look all wrong? Time Traveling Romulan.

To be fair, I actually think this one makes sense in the most Shatner-esque way possible.

"Scotty fully believed, until the day he died, Kirk WOULD COME BACK FROM THE DEAD."
 
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