Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Recap: Back From the Future

It would be hard to guess where “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” is headed from its opening scenes, which play a bit like the Star Trek equivalent of the classic Richard Scarry children’s book What Do People Do All Day? By the episode’s end, we’ve had time travel, scenes of a budding romance (albeit one nipped before it can really blossom), and a variation on a classic moral dilemma. But first, the episode offers a glimpse of La’an Noonien-Singh’s everyday duties as chief of security.

It’s not a boring job. La’an has dealt with squabbling officers, a noise complaint against Spock, and a visit to Pelia’s quarters that suggest she has a felonious habit of appropriating precious artifacts for her personal collection, including at least one painting wanted by the Louvre despite her claims of it being a fake. (Did no one notice she was bringing all that aboard?)

That glimpse of Pelia’s quarters is a funny gag that will later (or, more accurately, earlier) play a crucial part in the time-twisting outing. So will the sense established by these scenes that La’an is (a) quite good at her job and (b) pretty stressed out. Dr. M’Benga says as much during their sparring session, but any self-care will have to wait after La’an encounters a stranger in the hallway: a man in 21st-century garb who’s been grievously wounded by a bullet. This is not an ordinary occurrence, even on the Enterprise. Nor is what happens next: As he dies, the stranger gives La’an an unusual device and tells her she has to “get to the bridge.” She follows what she believes to be his advice by going to the bridge of the Enterprise only to find it helmed by … Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley)?

Something is clearly off, and we see just how off after the credits roll. Kirk meets Spock, here a Vulcan captain who unsuccessfully pleads for Earth’s help in fighting the Romulans. Ortegas and Uhura are there but don’t recognize their friend. La’an immediately susses out she’s been transported to an alternate timeline, her own having been wiped out by some event she now has to prevent. To his credit, Kirk treats her theory as plausible. (Unless, of course, she’s crazy, which he does not rule out.) But when La’an presses the button on the odd device, theory becomes practice. In a blink, she and Kirk are transported to 21st-century Toronto.

Episodes that draw Star Trek characters back to our present (or thereabouts) are a tradition (and a budget-friendly one at that), and Strange New Worlds finds some fun twists on the device. Kirk has never been to Earth at all (it’s pretty unpleasant in his timeline), so it’s more than just time travel that throws him off. But he’s pretty good at shoplifting (thanks to La’an’s trick) and he’s really good at (“old-fashioned, two-dimensional”) chess, which allows them to pick up enough pocket money to keep the hot dogs flowing and pay for a nice hotel room. Their mission might be urgent, but they need their rest.

It’s there that it becomes obvious to both that the contentious chemistry they’ve had since meeting might be more than just a flirtation. That, however, will have to wait. They have a timeline to save even if, as Kirk quickly realizes, saving it will mean wiping out the timeline he knows as reality. La’an’s counterargument is, in short, that his timeline sucks. He’s supposed to be an explorer, not a soldier. When Kirk learns that his brother, Sam, is still alive in La’an’s timeline, he seems on the verge of being persuaded. Then the newly constructed bridge outside their window blows up. So that’s what “Get to the bridge” meant!

They weren’t, however, supposed to save the bridge, which was fated to be destroyed in both their timelines. So what were they supposed to do? Photos taken by a photographer at the scene — we’ll later learn her name is Vanessa (Adelaide Kane) — offer a clue in the form of some distinctive charring that La’an knows is from the future. After discovering that Kirk’s skills include mastery of the Vulcan nerve pinch and good-enough driving skills to allow them to trail the van carrying the bridge wreckage, La’an also discovers that Kirk has never heard her infamous last name. Whatever happens in the diverging future, Khan’s life assuredly takes a different course.

Pulled over by the Toronto police while still in pursuit, Kirk and La’an only avoid arrest because Vanessa shows up on the scene to film the arrest and threaten a scandal. It’s enough to scare off the cops and for them to start to trust Vanessa, who’s also quite interested in what’s in the van — and who has some thoughts about meddling aliens, international cabals, and other conspiracy-theory staples. When Kirk tells her that his “wife” was once abducted by aliens, they form an alliance. (Or so Kirk and La’an believe.)

La’an suggests their new friend is “unhinged,” but then she shows them what appears to be a legit picture of an alien spacecraft that Kirk recognizes as Romulan. And it’s this detail that allows them to figure out what they have to change. In Kirk’s timeline, Romulans destroy an experimental cold-fusion reactor, wiping out Toronto. In La’an’s, none of this happens. Time to save the reactor!

But first, they’ll require a tricorder, a piece of future tech they’ll need an engineer to create. Fortunately, La’an remembers that Pelia lived in Vermont years ago and, as a skilled engineer, she should be able to help. The catch: Pelia’s no engineer, at least not yet. In the 21st century, the Lanthanite runs a (somewhat suspect) antiques shop. Over beers, they concoct a plan to create a makeshift tricorder, or at least a doodad capable of finding a hidden reactor made from an ’80s watch.

Doing so involves taking a romantic nighttime walk through the streets of Toronto where Kirk reveals he’s now fully onboard with saving La’an’s timeline at the expense of his own; La’an suggests maybe he could join her in her timeline, and both realize they can’t hide that they’re into each other anymore, a realization sealed with a kiss. When the watch begins glowing, however, the moment is cut short.

Putting duty first, they sneak into the building housing the reactor. There they discover the headquarters of the Noonien-Singh Institute. But before they can step inside, they’re confronted by Veronica, who’s not, it turns out, a paranoid conspiracy theorist but a Romulan from the future sent to keep them from altering the timeline. She means business. When Kirk tells “Veronica” to call his bluff after saying that shooting them would alert security and foil her plan, she shoots him in the chest, wounding him fatally.

Kirk wasn’t bluffing, though. Veronica’s assault alerts security, but she remains undeterred, forcing La’an to help her at gunpoint by pushing her down to the building’s genetics lab, which is also home to young Khan Noonien-Singh. As it turns out, killing Khan will also prevent the Federation from forming, thus making the future far more Romulan-friendly. Veronica tempts La’an with the pleasures of killing the ancestor whose bad reputation has haunted her her entire life, but it’s a no-go.

They fight, and La’an wins, saving the future in the process. Still, La’an is drawn to visit young Khan, but if the moment echoes the classic theoretical question “Would you kill baby Hitler?” La’an never even considers it, telling the frightened future tyrant, “You are right where you need to be.” Then, with some regret, she zaps herself back to the Enterprise, which is now the Enterprise she remembers — and where Pelia is still arguing that she has every right to her cache of treasures.

In her quarters, she’s visited by Agent Ymalay (Allison Wilson-Forbes), an agent from the Department of Temporal Investigations. (“You haven’t heard of us because we don’t exist yet.”) Ymalay swears La’an to secrecy, retrieves her device, and disappears, leaving a shaken La’an behind and still wearing her ’80s watch. This inspires her to reach out to Kirk with the flimsy excuse of needing to know Sam’s place of birth. After a brief conversation, La’an breaks down. What she just experienced never happened, but it still left its mark.

Another strong episode in a so-far terrific season, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” mixes a neat time-travel story mixed with fish-out-of-water comedy, gives La’an a spotlight episode, and introduces a potential romance that could play out alongside Spock and Nurse Chapel’s ongoing pas de deux (unless it’s limited to this episode).

Christina Chong certainly rises to the occasion. La’an’s default mode is all business, but she leaves the episode looking like a much more complex character than we’d previously seen. She’s well matched by Wesley, whose Kirk gets more screen time than ever before. He’s deftly comic without losing Kirk’s essential gravity. His Kirk doesn’t always closely resemble the Kirk we first met in the original series, but he definitely feels like Captain Kirk. Will we see more of him? Will La’an? The episode lets those questions linger.

Hit It!

• “I’m from space” is actually a pretty good excuse for not being able to use a revolving door.

• The Department of Temporal Investigations was first introduced in the fun Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations.” (It was also the focus of some Star Trek novels.) It’s put to a more serious purpose here and in a way that suggests we haven’t seen the last of the DTI.

• The DTI agents in that DS9 episode had names that were rough anagrams of “Mulder” and “Scully.” Is “Ymalay” similarly an anagram? I keep staring at it without coming up with one.

• This episode was directed by Amanda Row, who helmed last season’s “The Elysian Kingdom,” and written by David Reed.

VULTURE NEWSLETTER

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t8HLrayrnV6YvK57wKuropucmny0wMCrZK2qlaB6tMDRmqWgnV2jsrh51qippZyjYr%2Bmr8CpZKydkai8r3mRZpypoaOksaZ5kmarqKWfp7%2Bww4yapZ1lpKS6sL7RqK5mmZ6ZerW7zKipq6enY7W1ucs%3D