Episode Title: Tomorrow is Yesterday
Air Date: 1/26/1967
Written by Dorothy C.
Fontana
Directed by Michael
O'Herlihy
Cast: William
Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Lieutenant Commander Spock DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H.
McCoy AKA “Bones” James
Doohan as Lieutenant Commander
Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty” George
Takei as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura John Winston as Lieutenant
Kyle Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant
Leslie Bill Blackburn as Engineer Frank Da Vinci as Lieutenant
Brent Sherri
Townsend as unnamed Crewwoman
Roger Perry as Captain John Christopher Hal Lynch as unnamed Air Police Staff
Sergeant Richard Merrifield as unnamed Technician Ed Peck as Lieutenant Colonel
Fellini Mark Dempsey as Air Force Captain Jim Spencer as Air Force Policeman Majel Barrett as Enterprise Computer
Ships: USS Enterprise
NCC-1701
Planets: Earth
My Spoiler filled
summary and review: At a U.S. Air
Force base a radar technician notices a boogie on their radar screen and
notifies his superior. The officer responds by calling it in so they can send a plane up
there. A plane is dispatched and when
the pilot catches up to the blip in the sky he sees the UFO and it is the USS Enterprise.
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| What is that? |
On the bridge of the Enterprise we see the crew picking
themselves up after what appears to be quite an ordeal. Kirk explains to his Captain's Log that the Enterprise was caught unexpectedly in
the gravity of an uncharted black star. In order to escape from certain death they
had attempted to break away at warp speed.
They were successful but it sent them flying off in an uncontrolled
direction. It appears they are lucky at
first for they quickly discover that they are in the atmosphere of the planet
Earth. However when Lt. Uhura tries to
communicate with Starfleet she discovers that the Starfleet signal is dead but
she is getting a lot of radio traffic. They
tune into the radio and discover that they accidentally traveled back to
Earth’s past. They are now in the late
1960s or as people who were watching this episode when it debuted would have thought: the
crew of the Enterprise has come back
to today.
 |
| It's big! |
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| Two men now both out of time! |
The pilot introduces himself as
Captain John Christopher; Captain Kirk wants to make this pilot feel home and
comfortable. Although the Air Force
Captain finds Kirk story to be somewhat wild he nevertheless has to believe it
seeing as he is actually on the starship that he himself had also seen from the
outside. They give Captain Christopher
something else to wear besides his flight suit.
This an interesting part instead of giving him some civilian garb to wear
they actual give him a Starfleet uniform the rank insignia of a
lieutenant. This makes some sense
because a Starfleet lieutenant and Air Force captain would be equivalent in
rank.
 |
| This image is destined to become a meme of a meme! One of the world's most popular. |
Mr. Spock has decided now is a good
time to drop some bad news, since Captain Christopher now has knowledge of the
future that if such knowledge were to get into the wrong hands it could wipe
out of existence the reality to which they come from. Therefore, Spock concludes, it would be dangerous to allow Captain
Christopher to return to where he came as he could disrupt all of the future
that must come. Spock consulted the
record to make sure that there was no significant contribution from Captain
Christopher therefore removing him from history and taking him with them back
to the 23rd century is least dangerous outcome.
As expected Captain Christopher objects to
this. Christopher
tries to escape only to be taken down but one of the greatest fighters the
galaxy himself: Captain Kirk. While
Captain Christopher is sulking from his defeat at the hands of Kirk in sick bay,
Mr. Spock arrives to let them know he’s made a slight error. Although he found no significant contribution
Captain Christopher it turns out that Captain Christopher’s unborn son Col.
Sean Jeffrey Christopher is destined to lead an expedition to Saturn. So now he has to go back.
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| The Staff Sargent may have beaten off more than he can chew. |
There still some things that needs
to be cleaned up for example the Air Force now had the wreckage of Captain Christopher’s
plane with photos and information taken from it. Captain Christopher asked to go along with
the away team to retrieve the information but is refused on the grounds that they
can’t take the risk of anything happening to him. Disappointed Christopher still draws them a map of the
base. Kirk beams down with Mr. Sulu to
the Air Force Base to get the film. They quickly find what they are looking for
but they themselves are discovered by an Air Force security staff sergeant who
gets the drop on them. When checking out
Captain Kirk’s communicator the Staff Sergeant accidentally arranges for
himself to beamed aboard the Enterprise. While there the military policeman stands
mostly frozen unable to comprehend what is happening to him.
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| See? |
With security guard out of the way
Kirk and Sulu continue to gather the evidence.
Then more security people arrive so Kirk decides to cause a distraction
allowing Lt. Sulu to beam up with the necessary information. Is curious to why it was that way not the
other way around seeing as Kirk is the captain and all. You would think that Sulu should take the
fall for him.
However that discounts Captain Kirk’s adventurous spirit, not to mention
the fact he’s such a peerless fighter that when he engages all three Air Force
personnel he mostly beats them with ease.
It is only after a gun is pulled that Captain Kirk surrenders.
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| Lucky we had the gun or he would have continued to beat us! |
Backup on the Enterprise Mr. Spock is pleased with Mr. Sulu’s success at bringing
up all the evidence. Now they have to mount a successful rescue Captain Kirk and this time Captain Christopher
convinces them take him on the away mission.
Mr. Spock , Sulu, and Christopher all go down to rescue Kirk.
Kirk is presently being
interrogated by the base commander—because Kirk isn’t the only commanding
officer likes to get his hands dirty—this makes for some interesting exchanges
between the two of them. It is
short-lived though when Kirk is quickly rescued. Christopher attempts to escape again but is
stopped with a quick Vulcan nerve pinch.
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| Not so fast! |
As they return to the Enterprise everything gets resolved there relatively quickly. Mr. Scott and Mr. Spock work together to find
way to return the ship to their time. They suggest a highly risky procedure in which
they use our star, Sol, to re-create the time warp. As they loop around our star at warp speed they
will begin traveling through time. First
it will propel them slightly farther backward just a few weeks and then forward
toward their own time period. The danger is
when they pull the stop at the 23rd century, Mr. Scott explains that
it has the potential to fly the ship apart. Despite the risk there is an added bonus they
can return their two guests back to where they belong by beaming them into
themselves. They performed the highly
risky maneuver without anything going wrong and all is restored to normal the
end of the episode.
Additional thoughts: The
crew of the Enterprise gets their
first time travel episode. Yes,
technically speaking they had their first time travel experience way back in
“The Naked Time” and it was mentioned in the previous episode, but this was the
first episode dedicated specifically towards time travel. This was a good fun episode with lots of
interesting character moments. I love
when Dr. McCoy suggested to Captain Kirk that maybe they should try to come up
with some sort plan in case they can’t go back to their own time. That’s Dr. McCoy for you always thinking of
the worst case scenario.
In a TV series that is based
hundreds of years in the future the viewer naturally starts to wonder what
would happen if these amazing future people came back to our time. When this episode was written “our time”
meant 1966-1967. This episode delivers
with the crew of the Enterprise
coming back to the current era. In a
way it was also little disappointing however because despite being back in the
1960s they never do anything in the 1960s.
You think the studio would want them go out and interact with the
present seeing as how cheap they could make it.
You don’t have to design special sets to make up some alien world; you
can film characters walking down a normal street engaging with everyday
humans. Maybe the writers were afraid that they
would have to encounter some society’s problems that we had in the 1960s that
they preferred to tackle by metaphor alone.
I really love the fact that Captain
Kirk and his crew have now twice by complete accident while trying to escape
some other disaster stumbled across time travel. I mean what luck, to twice in your career
discover something that should be impossible as possible. Just doing that once would
get you in the record book but twice is certainly something else. This would be the equivalent of an army
officer during the US Civil War trying escape an ambush by suddenly discovering
flight by complete accident; twice.
Since—as I just explained—this is
their first time travel adventure, we can forgive Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock
for their colossal errors in judgment in this episode. Kirk beams a 20th century man
onto his ship and his first instinct is to give him a tour without once
stopping the think of how this could be potentially effecting the
timeline. Then you have Mr. Spock who
objected when it was too late, after the genie was already out of the bottle so
speak with Kirk having given this tour to the reluctant guest. Then Mr. Spock suggests these rather drastic
measures without taking account what his disappearance could have on future
offspring not to mention the butterfly effect.
I expect Kirk and Spock to be smarter than this, but as it’s the first
time travel adventure so I am going to let it slide.
The biggest issue I have is the end
makes no sense. It also invalidates an
early part of this adventure. If the Enterprise
crew can just erase their presence there and even restore the reluctant guests
to their place in time without the memory of the future, then Kirk was captured and nearly imprisoned
for lengthy prison sentence all for no real reason whatsoever. Not to mention I don’t see how using the
transporter enables you to beam someone into themselves and have both the past
and present selves not be killed. It
also made unnecessary drama; we don’t need Captain Christopher and the police
sergeant to make their final trip exciting.
We saw what the bridge of the ship look like after the first trip through time.
Clearly if they go back and try to do it again they are risking a lot and this
is especially true seeing as their first trip was a freak of nature. They should’ve just done a Vulcan mind meld
on the two 20th-century humans on board causing them to forget, and
then did their temporal loop around the sun.
To end on a positive note, seeing
as I did like the episode, I love the classical line near the beginning of the
episode. Kirk says to Spock, “Moon
landings? That was in the late 1960s.”
To which Spock replies, “Apparently Captain, so are we.” There is so much to dissect from that
line. Of course the literal story
meaning that the Enterprise had
traveled back to the 1960s. There is
also the deeper meaning: Star Trek is
a product of the sixties, and that is so important to remember while watching
the reruns.
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