Series: Star Trek (The Original Series)
Episode: 1.19 Tomorrow is Yesterday (1-26-67)
Rating: 4/5
Redshirt Status: 0/22
Notable Guest Stars:
Roger Perry – Captain John Christopher
Review:
This is not one of the strongest of the episodes, but overall is not the worst either. It’s the first true time travel episode as the Enterprise finds itself stuck in in a slingshot due to a ‘black star’ which I am assuming due to notes I read about this episode is what would be called a black hole. They arrive back in the late 1960s, just shortly before the moon landing.
For some odd reason when the stop they are in the outer atmosphere and able to be seen by observers on the ground. This causes some problems when they send up plans to find out what the UFO is. They end up bringing Capt. John Christopher onboard to avoid changing the timeline. Spock eventually realizes that was a bad idea and they spent the rest of the episode trying to fix this mistake and coming across a variety of obstacles.
This episode has a lot in common with The Voyage Home. They use the same method of going to the future and coming home as they did in this episode. There is also the talk of if you took someone from the past and brought him to the future, would he be able to be reeducated so he was up to date, or able to handle being away from his family/friends in the past.
So this is a good episode to watch if you are fond of time travel stories. It also makes you consider how everything is interconnected and taking one element away could change everything.
Interesting Notes:
- Directed by Michael Herlihy
- Written by DC Fortuna
- First true time travel episode in Star Trek
- According to Wikipedia, this originally was designed as a second part to the episode The Naked Time shown earlier in the season. Perhaps because it ended up being written by someone else it doesn’t seem to connect in anyway that I can see that possible.
- Considering that this episode aired 2 years prior to the launch of Apollo 11, they were fairly accurate on when the moon landing happened.
- On the flip side, this episode aired the day before the Apollo 1 fire, killing 3 astronauts and delaying the program for a year.
Pros:
- Interesting sets and a connection the time period
Cons:
- Timeline issues. They hadn’t quite settled on when Kirk & Co were in the timeline. They are about 300 years in the future, although this episode suggests 200.
Sokorra Lewis 