When they said "black star" in this episode, they meant what we now call a black hole. The terminology was still in flux at the time the episode was made, and the scientific community didn't settle on black hole until not too long after this episode came out.
Another candidate at the time was “collapsar,” which was actually put to use in Joe Haldeman’s outstanding novel “The Forever War,” published a few years after this episode aired.
So, Christopher's son, who would presumably be born in the late 60's or early 70's, would go on to man the first flight to SATURN? Oh, Roddenberry. You had such high hopes for us.
Obviously Christopher was on the same mission as Renée Picard. 😉 He's one of the old nauts, if they let John Glenn up at 77 then an astronaut in his 50s is not impossible.
At the time this episode was made, if the funding had continued as is, NASA envisioned that the landing on the moon would be followed up by a landing on Mars by the early 1980s. So a Saturn probe in the 90s or early naughts did not seem out of place.
They could have launched the Saturn probe from Moonbase Alpha. Another visionary who thought we could do better. They never factored in the political landscape bogging everything down.
Air Force Captains, at least in the US are pay grade O-3. Navy Lieutenants are also O-3. They even use the same insignia. Similarly, in Stargate, where the space fleet is ran by the Air Force, the ship COs have the rank of Colonel.
It's simple. When they flew round the dark star at the beginning, they were going anti-clockwise and so went back in time. At the end, they flew round the sun clockwise and so went forward in time. That's just science!
Well, duh! Time Travel is all about rotational direction. H.G. Wells practically said as much in Time After Time, so it HAS to be true! 😁 And while we're at it...why do you think circles figure so prominently in Gallifreyan/Time Lord decor, fashion, architecture, and alphabet? Coincidence...I think not! 😁 LLAP🖖
At 15:20 Steve declares, "The characters spend a lot of the episode doing things that seem important when they're doing them, but wind up contributing nothing to the outcome of the story." So in one sentence Steve has summed up my entire life. I love this channel. ❤
This is one of my favorite TOS episodes. It's the one that turned 11-year-old me from a viewer to a fan. It shows a crew of people who are kind, intelligent, helpful, generous, brave, resourceful, and exactly the kind of people you want to spend time with. There are so many little touches that show how much the characters like each other. My favorite is during the "now what do we do?" conference when Scotty says his engines can get them out of this and Kirk looks at him with a proud smile. It's not a "commanding officer pleased with his competent crew" moment - it's a man enjoying his friend's excellence and pride in his work. When Christopher laments that he didn't get into the space program, Kirk says, "You made it here before any of them." What a kind and generous thing for him to say, especially considering he knew Christopher wouldn't remember it. Yeah, the plot is straightforward, and the timey-wimey will give you a headache if you look at it too long, but this episode has tremendous heart. And I was a kid - suspension of disbelief was as easy as breathing. If you told me what the parameters were, I was in. When the end credits rolled in 1967, a Trekker had been born. So, we will agree to disagree about this episode. Just don't call me when it's airing, because I'll be busy being an 11-year-old again.
I always saw ST:IV as rewrite of this episode where the crew does have a positive effect on the future and the things they do actually matter in the end
Yeah, I can see that, tho it never occurred to me. What DID occur was that ST: The Motion Picture was just weird expansion of the 'NOMAD' episode. (I forgot the title.)
I don't know if this is a reference or a coincidence, but Stargate SG-1 has an early-season episode ("1969") where the protagonists are accidentally transported by sun-related technobabble to, well, 1969. They also end up on a military base, and when one of the characters is interrogated by a suspicious military officer, he identifies himself as "James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise." Funnily enough, after the main series ended, SG-1 ALSO had a movie ("Stargate Continuum") where the hardly-ever-mentioned-use-a-star-to-time-travel thing came back to cause the main plot. (Though a bad guy used it instead of the heroes.)
Interesting trivia: This episode was originally intended to be a direct continuation of The Naked Time. The slingshot at the end of The Naked Time was intended to be a cliffhanger, leading into this episode.
Yes, that’s why the time travel at the end of The Naked Time seems to come out of nowhere for no reason and the beginning of Tomorrow is Yesterday seems so abrupt.
I think the way they thought about restoring the timeline was like rewinding the videotape and freshly hitting record. But I’m overthinking on a nitpick. But it does end with “we’re in now, now. Everything that is happening now, is happening Now.”
I think the whole story they told Captain Christopher and the security guard was just a comforting lie, and the _Enterprise_ crew _really_ just beamed their particles out to scatter in the atmosphere, obliterating those versions of them. There actually wasn't any nonsensical "beaming into themselves" shenanigans, they just straight up dematerialized them. (Unless Starfleet actually retained some kind of variant of the old Project: Quantum Leap technology?) I always liked how that security guard they snatched was _absolutely flabbergasted_ at the chicken soup coming out a slot in the wall. Like, Good God, how in Heaven's Name could food come out of a _slot in the wall??!!_ It must be _magic!_
@@speeta Yeah, that was exactly my thought as well. I hope no one ever told him about those new-fangled horseless carriages! I imagine he must have been totally dumbstruck every day, considering he worked for the _Air Force_ and all. 😀
This felt like a comic book story where they came up with the cover first and had to figure out a story to explain it afterwards. "Oh, Boy! A modern day fighter jet finds the Enterprise just floating there! How did this happen? What will happen next? Better buy the comic to find out!"
07:05 Momma said "Spock you out!" And am I the only one that involuntarily mentally adds "Baks" every time someone refers to Scotty. You'd also like to think that a bunch of smart space men would know that a tractor beam, even on the lowest Tractor Factor, would destroy an F-104. Those things exploded if they hit a cross wind.
Yeah, I thought so as well. Of course later theories about the butterfly effect totally roast Spocks theory about it being at all feasible to simply keep Christopher to start with.
@@MrAndyBearJr Yes, and remember that Spock is both private about sexuality and not up on his personal skill sometimes; I think it is very plausible as the sort of mistake he'd make - a nice touch.
What if Kirk had not beamed up Captain Christopher, but instead had beamed up Majors Nelson & Healy, forcing the ship’s crew to beam down to NASA to deal with Colonel Bellows, while Jeannie blinked up to the Enterprise to rescue Tony & Roger. (And send the Enterprise home with a more elaborate blink than usual.) Barbara Eden in a Star Trek uniform. Sigh…
One thing I remember from the episode is Mister Kyle offering the security guard some chicken soup. When the shocked guard confirms it is what it appears to be, Kyle vigorously nods in agreement like he's having some sort of neurological fit. He's rapidly nodding his head, and rapidly blinking in time with the head nods.
Oh yes, I always remember that scene; why, food coming out of a slot in the wall _must be magic!_ (I assume it was some kind of early pre-replicator food processor device that used storage tapes for food selection? Starfleet ships were shown to have galleys in the TOS era, and the replicator did seem to be _kind of_ a new-ish device in early TNG.) Maybe that poor man just wasn't the sharpest crayon in the toolbox?
The oddest thing is that a food replicator is installed in the transporter room, an operational area filled with delicate high-energy instrumentation that should probably never be exposed to spilled soup, at all. The reason it's there is, they couldn't afford to film Kyle taking the air police officer to the briefing room set that normally doubled as a rec room where you'd expect to find food facilities. It was cheaper just to saw a hole right there in the transporter room wall and put in a little sliding door.
Here's a fun philosophical question: if Captain Christopher seems to have no memory of his experience after he's beamed into himself, does that mean that Kirk & co. killed Captain Christopher, the time variant? Same with that other guy. If so, where is that on the Tuvix scale?
The episode was great for just that reason. It was an episode that concerned itself with entertaining its audience, not preaching at them. Thank goodness!
@@powerbadpowerbad TNG is Star Trek only in name. I call it “Star Trek: The First Imitation.” I watched the pilot when it aired and when it was over I couldn’t wait to see a rerun of the original (I did like the character of Data though).
As a kid I enjoyed imagining that Captain Christopher might have been a colleague of the funny Air Force Majors Nelson and Healey in the contemporary TV show 'I Dream Of Jeanie'. And then I had fun speculating about what Mister Spock might have observed and concluded about Jeanie if she had stepped in to help the Enterprise crew fix their plight. She too often had plot-driven unintended consequences of her well-intentioned actions, so surely hilarity would ensue.
Beat for beat, it's like you beamed into me and gave me your exact thoughts when I watched the episodes again and again in the 70s...if that makes sense.
This one of my favorite TOS episodes! 😊 I disagree with the "erasure of actions" part. I see the new plan of traveling back in time just before the incident happens as the crew learning and trying a new way to solve the problem they're in, after the original plan of destroying the evidence has failed. I think it shows us the crew learning and evolving ❤
What evidence was there that Spock used the transporter to get back and shoulder pinch Capt. Christopher? Spock could have walked around the back hallway of the lab, make a u-turn and return to the front door of the darkroom office. Or were you just joking? Also, I am old enough to brag that I was a teenager and watched this episode when it was first aired. I saw every TOS episodes when they first came out. This was cutting-edge stuff at the time. We can sometimes make fun of the writers now, but recall this was the first time paradox episode in Star Trek history. A side note: Dorothy C. Fontana wrote this episode. She was previously Roddenberry's secretary, but had a writing talent. BTW, she was an alma matter of my high school in Little Falls, N.J. She was graduated about 10 years ahead of me. I've been a Star Trek fan ever since, but not for some of the more recent programs.
It's only one year till the BELL RIOTS happen. I hope you're starting to prepare for them. An episode on DS9's "Past tense" would be greatly appreciated.
Until the end of the episode i would assume that Kirk's plan was to erase the fact they were ever their (as best as they can) then warp to a uninhabited planet and then destroy the enterprise.
Normally, you would argue that the journey is more important than the destination, so it wouldn't matter that the destination effectively wipes out the journey.
I remember first seeing this episode when I watched it on MeTV with my dad, a solid 5 years ago. Seeing the F-104 on the small screen was really neat to see, as it isn't included in movies/TV as often as I'd like. I also find it really funny when Spock mentions the interceptor being possibly armed with nuclear missiles, since while the F-104 never operationally was equipped with them, the USAF DID test/evaluate a special rack system meant to hold an AIR-2 Genie (unguided 1 Kiloton nuclear air-to-air rocket, intended for taking out formations of Soviet bombers). John Christopher is a really interesting character, and I loved seeing his development throughout the episode. He pretty closely matches what a pilot from the era would be like. It was also neat to see him join up with Starfleet at the end. Onto some neat information: Since the episode is set in around 1967, this would be close to the end of the Starfighter's service life with the USAF (the were removed in 1969, but were used by the Puerto-Rican Air National Guard until around 1975, when they were replaced by LTV A-7D Corsair IIs. By this period of time, the few F-104As that were being used stateside (since the USAF was using the Charlie-model Starfighters in Vietnam for Close Air Support/strike) were upgraded with the J79-GE-19 engine from the F-104S, as well as having the M61 Vulcan added back (since most A model Starfighters had the gun removed), making them a bit faster than the standard Alpha models. The last F-104s in US service were F-104G and TF-104Gs, which were actually owned by the West German Air Force. Similarly to the F-5E Tiger IIs used by the 425th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron, they were being used to train foreign pilots (namely West German). They would be retired in 1983.
My wife and I are watching all of Star Trek (first time for her, rewatch for me), and we literally just watched this episode last night! Great timing! Great review!
I had to double check my memory that this episode was originally written to follow on from "The Naked Time", instead of it being just a 3-day trip back in time in that episode and the slingshot effect being the result of a "black star" in this one.
If only Kirk had had time I'm sure he would have explained that a "black star" is what they used to call in the later 20th century and early 21st century a "black hole".😁
I like your last point about this episode being more clearly a 1960's TV show. I was a kid when this first ran on TV & I remember this episode being much more like the shows I was used to watching, such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Wild Wild West & Lost in Space. Thing is, I was too young to really "get" a lot of what Trek was "about". I was more focused on a keen SciFi TV show. It wasn't until years later in High School & I saw these in re-runs that I appreciated the show a lot more. Please, keep up the great reviews!
Your point about Star Trek being a 60s style TV show reminds me of my college roommate. He was studying to be a director. He didn’t watch much Trek, but when I had the ST:TOS episode “Court Martial” on, he was literally squirming at how old fashioned the direction and camera angles were.
Gene Roddenberry was a pilot. I head canoned (before I ever heard the term) that Christopher was a self insert, and his experience (which he remembered) was where he got the idea for Star Trek. (I was 12, so give me a break) I always loved the episode because it was funny and focused on the way the characters interacted.
I always thought that Spock just walked into the back room and then found another door to sneak up on Christopher. I never surmised that he transported back to the ship and then transported back behind him
I think when Spock explained the speeding up and breakaway, he was trying to "dumb it down" for Kirk and just provide a simple explanation. Stargate SG-1 was a master at this...they would have Carter start to explain something, then O'neill would basically say "I don't need the technical details, just tell me if it will work or not". SG-1 used that to avoid a lot of technobabble that Star Trek succumbed to. I totally agree with the "beaming back into themselves while the ship disappers" thing though. They really didn't think it through. It's still a good episode...nothing else in the 1960's even came close to this. There is a trope for the oddities in this epiosde. "Early installment weirdness"
I feel like it makes sense that, now that they are aware of the time travel phenomenon, they can control it better than when they hit it accidentally. They can make sure to extend the breakaway phase of the process to go more forwards than backwards, say. If you are in a boat and suddenly there’s a lot of wind, you’ll go downwind. If you then invent the process of tacking, you’ll go upwind, evel though the wind is blowing the same way.
Yes, because Starfleet's rankings are based on U.S. Navy ranks, where a Lieutenant (navy) is the equivalent of a Captain (army / air force), and Christopher is Air Force.
One of the first times I saw this episode I noticed that when Christopher is in his plane with his mask on, his throat isn't moving while he talks. Unless he's speaking telepathically that isn't possible. Now I can't unsee it.
Whether it’s a single episode of a show, or whether it’s a show that revolves around time travel as its premise, time travel stories never really make sense. Sometimes the writers will set up rules for how time travel works in their story world. Like Quantum Leap where Sam could only time travel within his own lifetime. And even then, many of the precise details were left a bit vague. And then the revival show threw that rule out the window right away. In Star Trek terms, I think Tapestry is probably the best time travel centric episode. Given that Trek is future-set sci-fi, a lot of the time travel episodes involve them travelling back to contemporary times. Tapestry uses time travel to tell a very character based story, with a “be careful what you wish for” message for Picard at the end.
oddly, my youngest brother got his name from this episode. the pilots sons name is revealed at the end and my mother named my youngest brother Shawn Jeffrey. (mom used the Americanized spelling. either that or she had no idea how the writers spelled it.)
Tomorrow Is Yesterday is my favorite episode. Why? I had been watching Star Trek since the first episode, but it time travel was something I had been doing in my head for several years at that point, but didn't really know about the time travel 'trope.' That was the night I truly fell fully and completely in love with science fiction. I had watched the Hammer monster flicks for years, but they were more horror than science fiction. It was also when I started wanting to write science fiction. And Spock's telepathy was another 'trope' in SF that I adored. My original characters, while normally set in modern times, often time travel and have psi powers.
I think when it comes to the resolution D.C Fonta wrote herself into a coner, and the fact of the matter is i realised it didnt make sense when i first watched it when i was about 11 or 12. Its not one of those situations where I'd watched it over and over again only to discover the holes. I like this episode for the most part other than that though.
Hey Steve, just wanted to say that I've started rewatching Star Trek after having my appreciation of it rekindled by your channel. I've gone all the way back to TOS and I'm working my way forward. I'm also giving Discovery another shot too and enjoying it a lot more this time around since I'm coming at it with an open mind. Keep on keeping on!
Discovery is a show that clearly has issues, but it's really not a bad show on the whole. As usual, when the main character is a black woman, the only real criticism that most people can come up with is that it's 'woke', because they haven't actually watched it. Glad you're giving it a chance!
Yeah, the "We'll beam you into yourselves so neither one of you will remember anything that happened" thing doesn't really make any sense, and it brings the episode down a few notches.
The scene at the base where Kirk gestures to the bulletin board on the wall, like it's a relic of lost technology. Obviously the future has better things than that. I also dig the opening. Some of the best USAF and NASA footage was used on several occasions, evidence of ST's credibility with those institutions.
Just a thought: Maybe a branching point between the mirror universe and the STO continuity. One where nothing happened an the other where a mysterious ship appeared one day and crushed a military plane and abducted the pilot. The wreck was recovered, the recordings were likely reviewed immediately, after being returned to base. Since two thing can't occupy the same space at the same time (Outside an event horizon) them being bale to be beamed in to the same space as each other suggests to me a difference in time line.
Even as a kid watching this episode, the whole "beaming into yourself" didn't make ANY sense at all to me. I think a better, interesting, and more poignant resolution would have been if they did indeed take Christopher back into the future with them. His character could have been brought back in later episodes.
There was a fun bit of comedy in this episode. The ship's computer had had some maintenance done on a planet with a woman dominated society. They thought the computer lacked a personality and had given it one, female of course (as Spock remarked). The crew found interacting with the "improved" computer quite annoying, with the way it addressed them as "dear", its tendency to giggle and other idiosyncrasies. Captain Christopher found the whole absurd thing very amusing. Nice touch of levity in an otherwise quite dry episode.
I recently watched this episode again and honestly it never even occured to me Spock used the Transporter, I just assumed there was a door in the officer that Spock used that conveniently led into the hallway, the Transporter makes a lot more sense lol 😂😂
The "warp field in close proximity to a gravity well inducing a time warp" was discovered and established by accident first at the conclusion of The Naked Time. Eventually Spock is able to calculate the variables accurately enough to be able to control their time warp factor the next time they try. Here, Kirk has no protocols to guide him through this unintentional temporal incursion. He has to act fast and without sufficient forethought, and makes mistake upon mistake through the first act until Spock tells him to knock it off 'cause he's only compounding their problems.
Steve, hey what do you think of the character "Vash". I thought she was a great character, seen dudes of Picard we have not seen before or really since, maybe a video idea?
I think this episode is a lot of fun. It may not have any deeper meaning, but it's an enjoyable story, and I like the way it kind of serves as a blueprint for future time travel episodes. It is very basic and sets up the concept so future stories can use it to more effect.
I always thought the time difference was do to "Leap Centuries" That could be Retconned to explain away the 200 year v.s. 300 year remark... Just go with it!
Steve, I love your show. It also always puzzled me why star trek doesn't more often use the slingshot effect. He could have used it to save Vulcan in the 2019 movie. 😅 Picard could've used it to never come in contact with the Borg. Knowing how to calculate time travel should have made spock the most powerful being in the universe. It doesn't bother me. It's just fun to think about.
Why did it work opposite? The same reasons toilets flush backward south of the equater: temporal coriolis effect on a big ball of wibbley, wobley ball of timey, whimey stuff and tachyons.
Going back/forward in time just depends which way you go around the star. But generally I like that this episode doesn't mean anything. It being almost a comedy of errors of continuous farce works fine within the premise of goofy sci-fi shenanigans show. And switching the brain off part works good for Voyager.
The Orville solved the slingshot problem, beautifully. Don't engage the warp drive, accelerate to .999c with the impulse engines and let time dilation eat up the calendar until 2264. Science!
I think the episode does have a lesson for the audience - if a mistake is never made, there is no reason to fix the mistake, and no one will ever know ;) Anyhow, thanks for the entertaining review. Always fun. Peace and long life.
I think because of the Chain of problems and whoopses you mentioned earlier, they only thought about going back in time again at the end so for the characters, everything they did had at that moment some sort of importance, even though it eventually turns out to be indeed pointless. Edit: oh you mentioned this. I personally think this makes the episode good enough/not taken back by it. But everyone has their own opinion off course 😅
The Enterprise returned to the future at the end of First Contact without any info on how the Borg opened the time fissure or what equipment would be needed to do so. Just reviewing the data from the sensor logs was apparently enough?
There's a Star Trek novel called 'The First Frontier' (I think) that uses a star's gravity, paired with a close encounter to a 'super string' that bollixes things up.for the crew, the Federation and Earth itself. As a result, the deus ex machina popularly known as The Guardian Of Forever tosses members of the crew back sixty five million years to find out why the dinosaur-kiilling asteroid never hit the Earth, never wiped out the dinosaurs, never cleared the way for rhe rise of the mammals...yadda, yadda. Anyway, it's got all the same lapses in logic as this TV episode plus MORE, but it's not a bad book. In fact, I re-read it now and then. I like it because none of the characters act strangely, there are plenty of exciting passages, a few new and interesting characters are introduced and, of course, it all works out for the best. Now that you've reminded me of it, I may just go back and read it, one more time. 🌟
I just asked myself, ‘if time travel is that easy, why don’t more rogue Captains do it? Well, because there’s people protecting the timeline. And then I wondered if it would be possible to mess with their creation. And I’m pretty sure that what came to mind next was in a Rick and Morty episode. So, rogue Captains don’t do it because the writers don’t hate themselves.
In this episode going back in time was accident but going to a specific date in the past requires some serious meta physical quantum computations as later star trek shows explained.
"The characters spend a lot of doing things that seem important when they're doing them, but wind up contributing nothing to the outcome." And they call this a fantasy show.😂
When they said "black star" in this episode, they meant what we now call a black hole. The terminology was still in flux at the time the episode was made, and the scientific community didn't settle on black hole until not too long after this episode came out.
Another candidate at the time was “collapsar,” which was actually put to use in Joe Haldeman’s outstanding novel “The Forever War,” published a few years after this episode aired.
_"Voyager Six disappeared into what they used to call a black hole."_
@@michaelhall2709 Thanks for that explanation. I enjoy that book and always meant to look up that word.
I was always impressed by that--very au courant. "Black hole" became the dominant term in the early 1970s.
So, Christopher's son, who would presumably be born in the late 60's or early 70's, would go on to man the first flight to SATURN? Oh, Roddenberry. You had such high hopes for us.
That son would be in his 50s now, just one more disappointed Gen Xer
Obviously Christopher was on the same mission as Renée Picard. 😉
He's one of the old nauts, if they let John Glenn up at 77 then an astronaut in his 50s is not impossible.
At the time this episode was made, if the funding had continued as is, NASA envisioned that the landing on the moon would be followed up by a landing on Mars by the early 1980s.
So a Saturn probe in the 90s or early naughts did not seem out of place.
@@captainyossarian388 Oh yes. Remember the space exploration promised to us in "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"? Jupiter in the 1990s, as I recall.
They could have launched the Saturn probe from Moonbase Alpha. Another visionary who thought we could do better. They never factored in the political landscape bogging everything down.
I always liked that they issued Captain Christopher a Starfleet uniform, with appropriate rank insignia.
I never noticed the appropriate rank insignia,good attention to detail-TROOPER.
I think not. Christopher’s uniform has only a single Lieutenant’s stripe on the sleeve.
@@figmillenium, I think as an Air Force Captain, he has a lower rank than the equivalent of a Navy Captain.
Air Force Captains, at least in the US are pay grade O-3. Navy Lieutenants are also O-3. They even use the same insignia.
Similarly, in Stargate, where the space fleet is ran by the Air Force, the ship COs have the rank of Colonel.
It's simple. When they flew round the dark star at the beginning, they were going anti-clockwise and so went back in time. At the end, they flew round the sun clockwise and so went forward in time. That's just science!
Hahahaha!😂😁😅🤣
Oh no! One of those silly Earthlings has figured it all out. We need to pay him a visit before he writes that comment - The Time Police
Well, duh! Time Travel is all about rotational direction. H.G. Wells practically said as much in Time After Time, so it HAS to be true! 😁
And while we're at it...why do you think circles figure so prominently in Gallifreyan/Time Lord decor, fashion, architecture, and alphabet? Coincidence...I think not! 😁
LLAP🖖
Just like in the Superman movies. You don't even need to fly around the sun, just fly around the earth to spin it backwards or forwards as needed
To quote the great Basil Exposition: " I suggest you don't worry about those things and just enjoy yourself."
At 15:20 Steve declares, "The characters spend a lot of the episode doing things that seem important when they're doing them, but wind up contributing nothing to the outcome of the story." So in one sentence Steve has summed up my entire life. I love this channel. ❤
When you said, "Radar has picked up a UFO". I got an image of Radar O'Reilly telling Colonel Potter he saw a UFO.
This is one of my favorite TOS episodes. It's the one that turned 11-year-old me from a viewer to a fan. It shows a crew of people who are kind, intelligent, helpful, generous, brave, resourceful, and exactly the kind of people you want to spend time with. There are so many little touches that show how much the characters like each other. My favorite is during the "now what do we do?" conference when Scotty says his engines can get them out of this and Kirk looks at him with a proud smile. It's not a "commanding officer pleased with his competent crew" moment - it's a man enjoying his friend's excellence and pride in his work. When Christopher laments that he didn't get into the space program, Kirk says, "You made it here before any of them." What a kind and generous thing for him to say, especially considering he knew Christopher wouldn't remember it. Yeah, the plot is straightforward, and the timey-wimey will give you a headache if you look at it too long, but this episode has tremendous heart. And I was a kid - suspension of disbelief was as easy as breathing. If you told me what the parameters were, I was in. When the end credits rolled in 1967, a Trekker had been born. So, we will agree to disagree about this episode. Just don't call me when it's airing, because I'll be busy being an 11-year-old again.
I think the art of suspending disbelief is an under-appreciated skill. When I saw this first as a kid, it all worked for me.
This was the first episode to show a starship in earth's or any other planet's upper atmosphere,which was different in TOS.
Chief Kyle deserves a shout out for that fancy transporting work
I always saw ST:IV as rewrite of this episode where the crew does have a positive effect on the future and the things they do actually matter in the end
Yeah, I can see that, tho it never occurred to me. What DID occur was that ST: The Motion Picture was just weird expansion of the 'NOMAD' episode. (I forgot the title.)
I don't know if this is a reference or a coincidence, but Stargate SG-1 has an early-season episode ("1969") where the protagonists are accidentally transported by sun-related technobabble to, well, 1969. They also end up on a military base, and when one of the characters is interrogated by a suspicious military officer, he identifies himself as "James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise."
Funnily enough, after the main series ended, SG-1 ALSO had a movie ("Stargate Continuum") where the hardly-ever-mentioned-use-a-star-to-time-travel thing came back to cause the main plot. (Though a bad guy used it instead of the heroes.)
It’s definitely a reference imo
Interesting trivia: This episode was originally intended to be a direct continuation of The Naked Time.
The slingshot at the end of The Naked Time was intended to be a cliffhanger, leading into this episode.
Yes, that’s why the time travel at the end of The Naked Time seems to come out of nowhere for no reason and the beginning of Tomorrow is Yesterday seems so abrupt.
I think the way they thought about restoring the timeline was like rewinding the videotape and freshly hitting record. But I’m overthinking on a nitpick.
But it does end with “we’re in now, now. Everything that is happening now, is happening Now.”
I think the whole story they told Captain Christopher and the security guard was just a comforting lie, and the _Enterprise_ crew _really_ just beamed their particles out to scatter in the atmosphere, obliterating those versions of them. There actually wasn't any nonsensical "beaming into themselves" shenanigans, they just straight up dematerialized them.
(Unless Starfleet actually retained some kind of variant of the old Project: Quantum Leap technology?)
I always liked how that security guard they snatched was _absolutely flabbergasted_ at the chicken soup coming out a slot in the wall. Like, Good God, how in Heaven's Name could food come out of a _slot in the wall??!!_ It must be _magic!_
Evidently he never ate at an Automat cafeteria.
@@speeta Yeah, that was exactly my thought as well. I hope no one ever told him about those new-fangled horseless carriages! I imagine he must have been totally dumbstruck every day, considering he worked for the _Air Force_ and all. 😀
This felt like a comic book story where they came up with the cover first and had to figure out a story to explain it afterwards. "Oh, Boy! A modern day fighter jet finds the Enterprise just floating there! How did this happen? What will happen next? Better buy the comic to find out!"
07:05 Momma said "Spock you out!"
And am I the only one that involuntarily mentally adds "Baks" every time someone refers to Scotty.
You'd also like to think that a bunch of smart space men would know that a tractor beam, even on the lowest Tractor Factor, would destroy an F-104. Those things exploded if they hit a cross wind.
Tbf they had no reason to know the specs of 1960s fighters though I suppose they could have googled it (or whatever the Trek equivalent is).
I always found it odd that it took a while for it to occur to Spock to check on whether Christopher had children.
The thought only occurred when Christopher mentioned that he had kids. You see Spock come to the realization in that moment.
Yeah, I thought so as well. Of course later theories about the butterfly effect totally roast Spocks theory about it being at all feasible to simply keep Christopher to start with.
@@MrAndyBearJr Yes, and remember that Spock is both private about sexuality and not up on his personal skill sometimes; I think it is very plausible as the sort of mistake he'd make - a nice touch.
@@patty4349 to be fair: if we go by the butterfly effect, almost every time travel in almost every sci-fi show is utter nonsense
What if Kirk had not beamed up Captain Christopher, but instead had beamed up Majors Nelson & Healy, forcing the ship’s crew to beam down to NASA to deal with Colonel Bellows, while Jeannie blinked up to the Enterprise to rescue Tony & Roger. (And send the Enterprise home with a more elaborate blink than usual.)
Barbara Eden in a Star Trek uniform.
Sigh…
I read somewhere that she almost cast in "The Cage" as Vina back in 1964, when it went to Susan Oliver instead of her.
It’s fun to think about how things like this could be happening every day.
This is definitely one of the Star Trek episodes of all time.
One thing I remember from the episode is Mister Kyle offering the security guard some chicken soup. When the shocked guard confirms it is what it appears to be, Kyle vigorously nods in agreement like he's having some sort of neurological fit. He's rapidly nodding his head, and rapidly blinking in time with the head nods.
Okay, now I have to watch it again to see that!
Oh yes, I always remember that scene; why, food coming out of a slot in the wall _must be magic!_ (I assume it was some kind of early pre-replicator food processor device that used storage tapes for food selection? Starfleet ships were shown to have galleys in the TOS era, and the replicator did seem to be _kind of_ a new-ish device in early TNG.) Maybe that poor man just wasn't the sharpest crayon in the toolbox?
The oddest thing is that a food replicator is installed in the transporter room, an operational area filled with delicate high-energy instrumentation that should probably never be exposed to spilled soup, at all. The reason it's there is, they couldn't afford to film Kyle taking the air police officer to the briefing room set that normally doubled as a rec room where you'd expect to find food facilities. It was cheaper just to saw a hole right there in the transporter room wall and put in a little sliding door.
@@user-mg5mv2tn8q "This what we in the future call an Automat." 😂
@@gentleman-shutterbug That's what I always thought about when watching that scene. 😄
"Didn't they have those things since _at least_ the 1920s?"
Here's a fun philosophical question: if Captain Christopher seems to have no memory of his experience after he's beamed into himself, does that mean that Kirk & co. killed Captain Christopher, the time variant? Same with that other guy. If so, where is that on the Tuvix scale?
I suppose they did.
But you're getting into "the transporter is a murder machine" territory rather than Tuvix territory here
The episode was great for just that reason. It was an episode that concerned itself with entertaining its audience, not preaching at them. Thank goodness!
Finally a TOS episode. More please (I haven't started watching TNG yet) ❤❤❤
You haven't ??? BUCKLE-UP !!! You're in for a very fun ride. LOL.
@@powerbadpowerbad I don't believe anything can be better than TOS 😃
@@powerbadpowerbad TNG is Star Trek only in name. I call it “Star Trek: The First Imitation.” I watched the pilot when it aired and when it was over I couldn’t wait to see a rerun of the original (I did like the character of Data though).
As a kid I enjoyed imagining that Captain Christopher might have been a colleague of the funny Air Force Majors Nelson and Healey in the contemporary TV show 'I Dream Of Jeanie'. And then I had fun speculating about what Mister Spock might have observed and concluded about Jeanie if she had stepped in to help the Enterprise crew fix their plight. She too often had plot-driven unintended consequences of her well-intentioned actions, so surely hilarity would ensue.
Beat for beat, it's like you beamed into me and gave me your exact thoughts when I watched the episodes again and again in the 70s...if that makes sense.
This one of my favorite TOS episodes! 😊 I disagree with the "erasure of actions" part. I see the new plan of traveling back in time just before the incident happens as the crew learning and trying a new way to solve the problem they're in, after the original plan of destroying the evidence has failed. I think it shows us the crew learning and evolving ❤
"'Little green men' is how we refer to ourselves, you don't get to say that." 😂😂😂
In the episode, I think Spock says “Neither do I”.
What evidence was there that Spock used the transporter to get back and shoulder pinch Capt. Christopher? Spock could have walked around the back hallway of the lab, make a u-turn and return to the front door of the darkroom office. Or were you just joking? Also, I am old enough to brag that I was a teenager and watched this episode when it was first aired. I saw every TOS episodes when they first came out. This was cutting-edge stuff at the time. We can sometimes make fun of the writers now, but recall this was the first time paradox episode in Star Trek history. A side note: Dorothy C. Fontana wrote this episode. She was previously Roddenberry's secretary, but had a writing talent. BTW, she was an alma matter of my high school in Little Falls, N.J. She was graduated about 10 years ahead of me. I've been a Star Trek fan ever since, but not for some of the more recent programs.
It's only one year till the BELL RIOTS happen. I hope you're starting to prepare for them. An episode on DS9's "Past tense" would be greatly appreciated.
Best line, "I'm a little green man from Alpha Centauri"
I thought that it was 'little furry creatures from Alpha Centauri'... 😜
I enjoyed the mission in Star Trek Online that recreated the solar slingshot. It was a nice call-back.
Until the end of the episode i would assume that Kirk's plan was to erase the fact they were ever their (as best as they can) then warp to a uninhabited planet and then destroy the enterprise.
I expected them to use time dilation on impulse drive somewhat close to light speed.
Normally, you would argue that the journey is more important than the destination, so it wouldn't matter that the destination effectively wipes out the journey.
It was a simpler time, before people expected time travel stories to be internally (or externally) consistent.
Nice review, Steve. To quote Miles O'Brien and Doctor Bashir, "I HATE temporal mechanics!"
I remember first seeing this episode when I watched it on MeTV with my dad, a solid 5 years ago.
Seeing the F-104 on the small screen was really neat to see, as it isn't included in movies/TV as often as I'd like. I also find it really funny when Spock mentions the interceptor being possibly armed with nuclear missiles, since while the F-104 never operationally was equipped with them, the USAF DID test/evaluate a special rack system meant to hold an AIR-2 Genie (unguided 1 Kiloton nuclear air-to-air rocket, intended for taking out formations of Soviet bombers).
John Christopher is a really interesting character, and I loved seeing his development throughout the episode. He pretty closely matches what a pilot from the era would be like. It was also neat to see him join up with Starfleet at the end.
Onto some neat information: Since the episode is set in around 1967, this would be close to the end of the Starfighter's service life with the USAF (the were removed in 1969, but were used by the Puerto-Rican Air National Guard until around 1975, when they were replaced by LTV A-7D Corsair IIs.
By this period of time, the few F-104As that were being used stateside (since the USAF was using the Charlie-model Starfighters in Vietnam for Close Air Support/strike) were upgraded with the J79-GE-19 engine from the F-104S, as well as having the M61 Vulcan added back (since most A model Starfighters had the gun removed), making them a bit faster than the standard Alpha models. The last F-104s in US service were F-104G and TF-104Gs, which were actually owned by the West German Air Force. Similarly to the F-5E Tiger IIs used by the 425th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron, they were being used to train foreign pilots (namely West German). They would be retired in 1983.
My wife and I are watching all of Star Trek (first time for her, rewatch for me), and we literally just watched this episode last night! Great timing! Great review!
I had to double check my memory that this episode was originally written to follow on from "The Naked Time", instead of it being just a 3-day trip back in time in that episode and the slingshot effect being the result of a "black star" in this one.
Yes, it was originally supposed to be tied in to the climatic ending of "The Naked Time."
*prays to the reviews Gods* Please let Steve review DS9's "Past Tense" and Voyager's "Future's End" and use the former to shame the latter.
If only Kirk had had time I'm sure he would have explained that a "black star" is what they used to call in the later 20th century and early 21st century a "black hole".😁
Suspended reality works for A LOT of sci-fi. Especially the older ones from the 50's and 60's. But it's always been one of my favorite TOS episodes.
I like your last point about this episode being more clearly a 1960's TV show. I was a kid when this first ran on TV & I remember this episode being much more like the shows I was used to watching, such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Wild Wild West & Lost in Space. Thing is, I was too young to really "get" a lot of what Trek was "about". I was more focused on a keen SciFi TV show. It wasn't until years later in High School & I saw these in re-runs that I appreciated the show a lot more. Please, keep up the great reviews!
Futurama's "Rosewell that end's well" was so much betterl,
Your point about Star Trek being a 60s style TV show reminds me of my college roommate. He was studying to be a director. He didn’t watch much Trek, but when I had the ST:TOS episode “Court Martial” on, he was literally squirming at how old fashioned the direction and camera angles were.
Gene Roddenberry was a pilot. I head canoned (before I ever heard the term) that Christopher was a self insert, and his experience (which he remembered) was where he got the idea for Star Trek. (I was 12, so give me a break)
I always loved the episode because it was funny and focused on the way the characters interacted.
I always thought that Spock just walked into the back room and then found another door to sneak up on Christopher. I never surmised that he transported back to the ship and then transported back behind him
“Raw dog his wife and make that Saturn baby”
I seriously don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so fuckin funny before 🤣 🤣
I think when Spock explained the speeding up and breakaway, he was trying to "dumb it down" for Kirk and just provide a simple explanation. Stargate SG-1 was a master at this...they would have Carter start to explain something, then O'neill would basically say "I don't need the technical details, just tell me if it will work or not". SG-1 used that to avoid a lot of technobabble that Star Trek succumbed to.
I totally agree with the "beaming back into themselves while the ship disappers" thing though. They really didn't think it through. It's still a good episode...nothing else in the 1960's even came close to this. There is a trope for the oddities in this epiosde. "Early installment weirdness"
I'm amused by the fact that Ed Peck played both Col. Fellini and Officer Kirk on Happy Days. So in a way, it was Kirk vs Kirk.
I feel like it makes sense that, now that they are aware of the time travel phenomenon, they can control it better than when they hit it accidentally. They can make sure to extend the breakaway phase of the process to go more forwards than backwards, say.
If you are in a boat and suddenly there’s a lot of wind, you’ll go downwind. If you then invent the process of tacking, you’ll go upwind, evel though the wind is blowing the same way.
Aah, I love this episode.
Captain Christopher’s Starfleet uniform has only a single Lieutenant’s stripe on the sleeve.
Yes, because Starfleet's rankings are based on U.S. Navy ranks, where a Lieutenant (navy) is the equivalent of a Captain (army / air force), and Christopher is Air Force.
One of the first times I saw this episode I noticed that when Christopher is in his plane with his mask on, his throat isn't moving while he talks. Unless he's speaking telepathically that isn't possible. Now I can't unsee it.
Whether it’s a single episode of a show, or whether it’s a show that revolves around time travel as its premise, time travel stories never really make sense.
Sometimes the writers will set up rules for how time travel works in their story world. Like Quantum Leap where Sam could only time travel within his own lifetime. And even then, many of the precise details were left a bit vague. And then the revival show threw that rule out the window right away.
In Star Trek terms, I think Tapestry is probably the best time travel centric episode. Given that Trek is future-set sci-fi, a lot of the time travel episodes involve them travelling back to contemporary times. Tapestry uses time travel to tell a very character based story, with a “be careful what you wish for” message for Picard at the end.
The lighting on Kirk's eyes and others was always laughable. It even swapped between shots. So funny!
oddly, my youngest brother got his name from this episode.
the pilots sons name is revealed at the end and my mother
named my youngest brother Shawn Jeffrey. (mom used the
Americanized spelling. either that or she had no idea how
the writers spelled it.)
Tomorrow Is Yesterday is my favorite episode. Why? I had been watching Star Trek since the first episode, but it time travel was something I had been doing in my head for several years at that point, but didn't really know about the time travel 'trope.' That was the night I truly fell fully and completely in love with science fiction. I had watched the Hammer monster flicks for years, but they were more horror than science fiction. It was also when I started wanting to write science fiction. And Spock's telepathy was another 'trope' in SF that I adored. My original characters, while normally set in modern times, often time travel and have psi powers.
I think when it comes to the resolution D.C Fonta wrote herself into a coner, and the fact of the matter is i realised it didnt make sense when i first watched it when i was about 11 or 12. Its not one of those situations where I'd watched it over and over again only to discover the holes. I like this episode for the most part other than that though.
Hey Steve, just wanted to say that I've started rewatching Star Trek after having my appreciation of it rekindled by your channel. I've gone all the way back to TOS and I'm working my way forward. I'm also giving Discovery another shot too and enjoying it a lot more this time around since I'm coming at it with an open mind.
Keep on keeping on!
Discovery is a show that clearly has issues, but it's really not a bad show on the whole. As usual, when the main character is a black woman, the only real criticism that most people can come up with is that it's 'woke', because they haven't actually watched it.
Glad you're giving it a chance!
Yeah, the "We'll beam you into yourselves so neither one of you will remember anything that happened" thing doesn't really make any sense, and it brings the episode down a few notches.
It certainly sounds better than "We'll erase you from existence".
Janeway should have tried the line on Tuvix.
The scene at the base where Kirk gestures to the bulletin board on the wall, like it's a relic of lost technology. Obviously the future has better things than that. I also dig the opening. Some of the best USAF and NASA footage was used on several occasions, evidence of ST's credibility with those institutions.
Just a thought: Maybe a branching point between the mirror universe and the STO continuity. One where nothing happened an the other where a mysterious ship appeared one day and crushed a military plane and abducted the pilot. The wreck was recovered, the recordings were likely reviewed immediately, after being returned to base. Since two thing can't occupy the same space at the same time (Outside an event horizon) them being bale to be beamed in to the same space as each other suggests to me a difference in time line.
Even as a kid watching this episode, the whole "beaming into yourself" didn't make ANY sense at all to me. I think a better, interesting, and more poignant resolution would have been if they did indeed take Christopher back into the future with them. His character could have been brought back in later episodes.
Definitely would be interesting.
@BL2001 Saturn Baby could have been the mailman's kid.
I have a horrible suspicion that they simply killed the pilot and the security guard to preserve the timeline.
There was a fun bit of comedy in this episode. The ship's computer had had some maintenance done on a planet with a woman dominated society. They thought the computer lacked a personality and had given it one, female of course (as Spock remarked). The crew found interacting with the "improved" computer quite annoying, with the way it addressed them as "dear", its tendency to giggle and other idiosyncrasies. Captain Christopher found the whole absurd thing very amusing. Nice touch of levity in an otherwise quite dry episode.
For reference, in the Star Trek universe, the 45th US President was a man named Anton York.
I recently watched this episode again and honestly it never even occured to me Spock used the Transporter, I just assumed there was a door in the officer that Spock used that conveniently led into the hallway, the Transporter makes a lot more sense lol 😂😂
The Black Star damaged the ship, even crinkled the overhead monitor screens which are totally not made of paper at all.
06:25 - In my headcannon Kirk told his people about this later and Spock pointed his mistake clearly out.
The "warp field in close proximity to a gravity well inducing a time warp" was discovered and established by accident first at the conclusion of The Naked Time. Eventually Spock is able to calculate the variables accurately enough to be able to control their time warp factor the next time they try.
Here, Kirk has no protocols to guide him through this unintentional temporal incursion. He has to act fast and without sufficient forethought, and makes mistake upon mistake through the first act until Spock tells him to knock it off 'cause he's only compounding their problems.
Steve, hey what do you think of the character "Vash". I thought she was a great character, seen dudes of Picard we have not seen before or really since, maybe a video idea?
The beginning of Tomorrow is Yesterday reminds me that in the 23rd century seatbelts haven’t been invented yet.
I think this episode is a lot of fun. It may not have any deeper meaning, but it's an enjoyable story, and I like the way it kind of serves as a blueprint for future time travel episodes. It is very basic and sets up the concept so future stories can use it to more effect.
I always thought the time difference was do to "Leap Centuries" That could be Retconned to explain away the 200 year v.s. 300 year remark... Just go with it!
Steve, I love your show. It also always puzzled me why star trek doesn't more often use the slingshot effect.
He could have used it to save Vulcan in the 2019 movie. 😅
Picard could've used it to never come in contact with the Borg.
Knowing how to calculate time travel should have made spock the most powerful being in the universe.
It doesn't bother me. It's just fun to think about.
Great episode and often overlooked.
Please review By Any Other Name.
15:20 "spend a lot of time doing things that SEEM IMPORTANT AT THE TIME."
Sounds a lot like how most companies work. 😂
Why did it work opposite? The same reasons toilets flush backward south of the equater: temporal coriolis effect on a big ball of wibbley, wobley ball of timey, whimey stuff and tachyons.
Roger Perry was married to Joanne Worley (Laugh-In) and Joyce Bulifont (MTM Show and Match Game)
This is a case of not every episode can be 'City on the Edge of Forever' or 'Balance of Terror'. Sometimes you just gotta pay the bills.
Alternate universe with alternative physical laws. Also jazz hands.
Sounds like the epilogue of Avengers End Game when Kirk and Company try to reset everything.
Going back/forward in time just depends which way you go around the star. But generally I like that this episode doesn't mean anything. It being almost a comedy of errors of continuous farce works fine within the premise of goofy sci-fi shenanigans show. And switching the brain off part works good for Voyager.
The Orville solved the slingshot problem, beautifully. Don't engage the warp drive, accelerate to .999c with the impulse engines and let time dilation eat up the calendar until 2264. Science!
I think the episode does have a lesson for the audience - if a mistake is never made, there is no reason to fix the mistake, and no one will ever know ;) Anyhow, thanks for the entertaining review. Always fun. Peace and long life.
A clumsy yet comedic episode
That's what I LOVE about this episode,the comedy.And the fight scenes. LOL.
The episode that established the enduring trope of Trek not knowing anything about time travel.
I think because of the Chain of problems and whoopses you mentioned earlier, they only thought about going back in time again at the end so for the characters, everything they did had at that moment some sort of importance, even though it eventually turns out to be indeed pointless.
Edit: oh you mentioned this. I personally think this makes the episode good enough/not taken back by it. But everyone has their own opinion off course 😅
The Enterprise returned to the future at the end of First Contact without any info on how the Borg opened the time fissure or what equipment would be needed to do so. Just reviewing the data from the sensor logs was apparently enough?
Scotty discovered a new element in the past, "Handwavium"!
There's a Star Trek novel called 'The First Frontier' (I think) that uses a star's gravity, paired with a close encounter to a 'super string' that bollixes things up.for the crew, the Federation and Earth itself. As a result, the deus ex machina popularly known as The Guardian Of Forever tosses members of the crew back sixty five million years to find out why the dinosaur-kiilling asteroid never hit the Earth, never wiped out the dinosaurs, never cleared the way for rhe rise of the mammals...yadda, yadda.
Anyway, it's got all the same lapses in logic as this TV episode plus MORE, but it's not a bad book. In fact, I re-read it now and then. I like it because none of the characters act strangely, there are plenty of exciting passages, a few new and interesting characters are introduced and, of course, it all works out for the best.
Now that you've reminded me of it, I may just go back and read it, one more time. 🌟
This is the best kind of trek episode.
So, Jason is doing fine? Love to hear it
For a five year mission that come back to Earth awful lot.
Still think you should just do your comedic recaps for every episode of Star Trek.
That stuff always bugged me too. It doesn’t make sense! I still love the episode. Best not to think about it.
I just asked myself, ‘if time travel is that easy, why don’t more rogue Captains do it?
Well, because there’s people protecting the timeline. And then I wondered if it would be possible to mess with their creation.
And I’m pretty sure that what came to mind next was in a Rick and Morty episode.
So, rogue Captains don’t do it because the writers don’t hate themselves.
In this episode going back in time was accident but going to a specific date in the past requires some serious meta physical quantum computations as later star trek shows explained.
@@robertmartinjr.4537
Man, writers got so mad at the question they made it canon rather than just keep telling people they aren’t masochists.
When is your Star Trek 6 video releasing?? I am eagerly awaiting it.
"The characters spend a lot of doing things that seem important when they're doing them, but wind up contributing nothing to the outcome." And they call this a fantasy show.😂