Tomorrow is Yesterday

[Vger23]

I've read a lot of positive reviews on this episode, and while I admit it's very entertaining on the surface, I have to say that it also seems quite horrendous and sloppy to me.

• Breakaway warp drive effect to produce time travel (foolishness)
• Going around the sun and through the solar system at high warp speeds and having minutes upon minutes of time to do things.
• The inept actions of the crew (Kirk deciding to tractor the plane, and then beam the pilot aboard rather than just beaming him safely to Earth... prime example)
• Beaming the unwelcome passengers back into their bodies...or whatever
• Kirk's treatment at the Air Base (this was a joke)
• Foolish computer saying "dear...."
• The number of times they mention "Mr. Scott still with us"
• The Enterprise was headed to a Starbase and ended up in low Earth Orbit??? Because they were "headed in this general direction???" Wow.

I don't know...the whole thing seems a lot worse than The Alternative Factor in terms of being horrifically hokey and nonsensical.

Thoughts?

 

[Greg Cox]

Like you said, it's a lot more entertaining than "The Alternative Factor"--and, remember, this was the very first time we ever got to see the Enterprise crew running around in the 20th century, before this became a cliche, and you had the irresistible wish-fulfillment of imagining a person from "our time" visiting the Enterprise. You get two fish-out-of-water scenarios in one ep: Kirk and Co. in our time, and one of us getting a sneak peak at the 23rd century.

It's a fun, fast-paced lark with lots of smart, snappy dialogue and comedy bits, plus a fair amount of genuine heart. (I love the moment when Captain Christopher, who was rejected when he applied to NASA, finally makes it out into space before everybody else.) Think of it as the great-grandfather of the whale movie.

Yeah, the time-travel logic where they end up in their own bodies doesn't make any sense whatsoever (which is probably why TREK never used that gimmick again), but before then a good time is had by all. I always loved this ep as a kid, which is probably one reason I finally felt compelled to write a sequel to it.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Foolish computer saying "dear...."

It's a rare bit of comedy that has nothing to do with the overall story. TOS didn't do that very much, did they? Though later serieses did.

What inspired them to put that in? It seems like the kind of thing which would have been cut for time, if anything was...

 

[Push The Button]

Like you said, it's a lot more entertaining than "The Alternative Factor"--and, remember, this was the very first time we ever got to see the Enterprise crew running around in the 20th century, before this became a cliche, and you had the irresistible wish-fulfillment of imagining a person from "our time" visiting the Enterprise. You get two fish-out-of-water scenarios in one ep: Kirk and Co. in our time, and one of us getting a sneak peak at the 23rd century.

It's a fun, fast-paced lark with lots of smart, snappy dialogue and comedy bits, plus a fair amount of genuine heart. (I love the moment when Captain Christopher, who was rejected when he applied to NASA, finally makes it out into space before everybody else.) Think of it as the great-grandfather of the whale movie.

Yeah, the time-travel logic where they end up in their own bodies doesn't make any sense whatsoever (which is probably why TREK never used that gimmick again), but before then a good time is had by all. I always loved this ep as a kid, which is probably one reason I finally felt compelled to write a sequel to it.

Best part of the episode, this exchange that connects The Right Stuff to the 23rd century:

CHRISTOPHER: I never thought I'd make it into space. I was in line to be chosen for the space program, but I didn't qualify.
KIRK: Take a good look around, Captain. You made it here ahead of all of them.

One of the things about Enterprise that I always loved was the montage from the intro, where we get to see the progression from sailing ships to airplanes to NASA, and ultimately to warp drive and starships.

 

[Phoenix219]

It was supposed to be a two parter sparked by the cold engine fusion start or whatever it was that happened at the end of the Naked Time, so the time travel issue isn't as bad under that narrative.

I'd love someone to fanedit the two episodes into a true continuation.

 

[Methuselah Flint]

It was supposed to be a two parter sparked by the cold engine fusion start or whatever it was that happened at the end of the Naked Time, so the time travel issue isn't as bad under that narrative.

I'd love someone to fanedit the two episodes into a true continuation.

I have!

 

[ZapBrannigan]

It was supposed to be a two parter sparked by the cold engine fusion start or whatever it was that happened at the end of the Naked Time, so the time travel issue isn't as bad under that narrative.

According to Robert Justman, there was never any chance of making a two-parter, because they never knew how long a given episode's fx sequences would take to be created. "The Menagerie" doesn't count because it was really a single new episode (S1E16) plus pre-existing footage. Apart from that one, every episode had to be made as a stand-alone story that could be aired in any order.

 

[Phoenix219]

According to Robert Justman, there was never any chance of making a two-parter, because they never knew how long a given episode's fx sequences would take to be created. "The Menagerie" doesn't count because it was really a single new episode (S1E16) plus pre-existing footage. Apart from that one, every episode had to be made as a stand-alone story that could be aired in any order.

Doesn't change the fact that the stories were designed to go together that way, even if the chance of making it to the screen like that never happened due to budget and timing issues.

I have!

And if I ask realllly really nicely?

 

[somebuddyX]

In regards to Christopher being beamed into himself, we hear about different versions of people being combined together in "Relativity" so maybe something like that happened here. I've always assumed it was just Christopher being beamed in a nanosecond after he'd been beamed out and somehow the effects of being at that point in the timeline erased his memories of being on the Enterprise or maybe erased him being on the Enterprise entirely, but the Enterprise was out of temporal sync so was unaffected.
And the slingshot around the sun makes no sense but I still love it. we can just make something up, like maybe it generates some chronitons or red matter or a timehole like "Yesterday's Enterprise" or a timehole like "E2" or a timehole like "Time Squared" or a time barrier like "children of time".

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I really like the cold open of this one with the Air Force. It fooled me as a kid the first time I watched it. I almost changed the channel. "This was supposed to be Star Trek!"

As far as beaming the people back into their bodies, yes that's badly implausible, but the problem is even worse than that. They're actually somehow changing the history of their own previous events. Christopher's Starfighter isn't destroyed by the tractor beam, apparently in the end Kirk isn't taken prisoner, and with Christopher beamed into himself just before making visual contact, I guess they didn't have to worry about the wing camera pictures after all!

 

[Poltargyst]

• Beaming the unwelcome passengers back into their bodies...or whatever

This never made any sense to me. How you beam someone back into their body in the first place and then how it makes them forget....

I've said before, so Christopher sees the Enterprise...so what? Who's going to believe him? And even if they do...because they have camera footage or whatever...so what?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

^ It's not like that at all.

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.

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 left 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.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Maybe it's somehow meant to be a reversal of "The Enemy Within," and we can retcon it to represent, somehow, a reversal of the "The Riker Within" as well?


I'm sorry, I meant "Second Chances."

 

[Phoenix219]

In regards to Christopher being beamed into himself, we hear about different versions of people being combined together in "Relativity" so maybe something like that happened here. I've always assumed it was just Christopher being beamed in a nanosecond after he'd been beamed out and somehow the effects of being at that point in the timeline erased his memories of being on the Enterprise or maybe erased him being on the Enterprise entirely, but the Enterprise was out of temporal sync so was unaffected.
And the slingshot around the sun makes no sense but I still love it. we can just make something up, like maybe it generates some chronitons or red matter or a timehole like "Yesterday's Enterprise" or a timehole like "E2" or a timehole like "Time Squared" or a time barrier like "children of time".

Right, if he was beamed in immediately after he beamed out, and in the process the timeline is being changed so that he was never taken, then the memories may just vanish from his head, as they never actually happened anymore, and the whole thing is avoided. The Enterprise, being the instrument of change, and in a warp field, in the process of time traveling, are protected from the changes.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

But that's not what was happened. Originally, Christopher was beamed out after his Starfighter was getting crushed. In the end, he is beamed in before his gun cameras even have a target to take pictures of. Christopher is beamed into an earlier point in time than the one he was beamed out of originally.

And it was the same for the guard, too. He was beamed into an earlier point than he was beamed out of originally.

 

[Phoenix219]

Well the time travel mechanics still apply, but unknown how the transporter merged the two together. Ugh. Lol.

 

[Warped9]

The time travel aspects are messily handled, but it could be cleared up. And you might not need warp drive to do it.

If the ship could go FTL in normal space (briefly) rather than in subspace (as under usual use) then perhaps it could go backward in time. Going forward in tine quickly could be done as relativistic travel by going really close to the speed of light, but not surpassing it. Years could pass in minutes.

 

[Tenacity]

Doesn't change the fact that the stories were designed to go together that way

Designed that way, or it was a vague idea that never went beyond just that?

 

[FormerLurker]

The time travel aspects are messily handled, but it could be cleared up. And you might not need warp drive to do it.

If the ship could go FTL in normal space (briefly) rather than in subspace (as under usual use) then perhaps it could go backward in time. Going forward in tine quickly could be done as relativistic travel by going really close to the speed of light, but not surpassing it. Years could pass in minutes.

That may well be the kind of computations that Spock was doing. Both here and in STIV.

 

[Phoenix219]

Designed that way, or it was a vague idea that never went beyond just that?

Designed enough for the first "part" to have a time travel ending with counters going backwards and all.