rating: **** (Classic)
the story: La'an ends up thrown into the past, where she and a Kirk from an alternate reality have a chance to prevent the rise of her ancestor Khan.
review: "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is one of those instant classics. It's arguably the best episode of any Star Trek in the modern era. It's the kind of creative statement and achievement that speaks to the entire franchise.
When the character of La'an Noonian-Singh was introduced in Strange New Worlds, her surname gave her immediate recognition in a series that was otherwise set to feature a mix of well-established (Pike, Spock, Number One, Uhura) characters, some less well-knowns (M'Benga), and assorted all-new creations. La'an represented a mix of all the above. She herself was brand new, but her distinctive last name meant she was related to one of the most famous, and infamous, characters in all of Star Trek, one who debuted in the original series ("Space Seed") and went on to be featured in two feature films (Wrath of Khan, which many fans still consider the undisputed best movie of the franchise, and Into Darkness). As the first season progressed we learn more about La'an, including the prejudice she faces, and feels, due to this unusual ancestry, giving her the kind of depth only the best-established characters otherwise enjoyed. By the end of the season she had become one of the major characters of the series.
Early in this second season, she has taken great strides to outright stealing the spotlight from all of them. "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is a monumental achievement. Like a lot of episodes in the franchise, it hinges on classic time travel tropes. There was a time in the fandom when the overly familiar was hugely frowned upon, but at the moment fans have grown once more accepting of it, which is why Strange New Worlds exists at all, with the ability to once again embrace the episodic format that dominated most of the rest of the franchise once upon a time. Early feedback has deemed "Tomorrow" reminiscent of the classic example of time travel in franchise lore, "City on the Edge of Forever," in which Kirk must prevent a drastic change in the timeline by allowing a woman he inevitably falls in love with to die. The daring twist of "Tomorrow" is that La'an must actually allow Khan to live.
It's impossible to grasp the impact of the episode without spoiling that. There's so much to talk about, and so much to love, and it all needs discussing.
The Strange New Worlds version of Kirk first appearing at the end of the previous season gets an unexpected chance to shine as part of all this. Star Trek now has three versions of the character, catching up with Spock in that regard. Perhaps moreso than Spock, this Kirk is an unexpected revelation. William Shatner will always cast a huge shadow over the role and the franchise, and will be as synonymous with it as Leonard Nimoy and Spock, and yet Chris Pine has proved to be resilient in the mainstream (this year he just headlined a successful launching of a new Dungeons and Dragons cinematic vision). Paul Wesley, who made his name in The Vampire Diaries, will probably never be in serious competition with either of them, and yet in "Tomorrow" he gets to give as dynamic and complete single experience with the role as has yet been attempted. His hustling games of chess, eating hotdogs, even the awkward dynamic with La'an all combine to a show-stealing appearance, if he weren't appearing opposite Christina Chong's La'an. This whole episode only works if Kirk and La'an are a compelling pair, and for a version of Kirk only making his second appearance, and being tasked with keeping up with someone not named Spock, it's a challenge well-met.
"Tomorrow" tackles big franchise mysteries. It explains the sliding time scale of when exactly the Eugenics Wars occurred (Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and Picard all traveled to relative contemporary times and didn't seem to have been touched by them), and even contextualizes Enterprise's Temporal Cold War, concluding a mystery that series never got around to doing itself as to why it happened at all, and probably even the identity (or species) of Future Guy (the Romulans, as long suspected). But most of all, as Kirk in Final Frontier once claimed, "Tomorrow" concludes that you can't fix things by removing pain from the equation. La'an can't fix herself by preventing Khan's ascension. It's not that he's a boy when she finds him, but that his evil has to happen for all the good that follows.
The whole story predicates on La'an needing to fix the timeline when she discovers something changed it and led to a version of reality where Kirk exists much as before, but outside the boundaries of Starfleet, the Federation, where humans never embraced the stars, not in a Mirror Universe kind of way, but without having truly realized their potential. Kirk's convinced to play along since his brother's dead in this one but alive in the other (in the original series, the episodic format didn't really let him mourn Sam's eventual death in "Operation: Annihilate!"). Turns out temporal agents have been postponing the Eugenics Wars for years (and it's even hinted that the wars lead directly into WWIII, helping explain that, too). For a franchise that has dipped into the past and the future many times, it's always been reluctant to explain any of this foundational material, in-canon, making "Tomorrow" important on that score alone.
By the end of the episode, the normally stoic La'an finally breaks down, the result of the cathartic experiences she's had. Pike has struggled with his eventual fate since his appearances in Discovery, and the previous episode had just explained how Number One, Una Chin-Riley, got her own reckoning, while Spock hurdles toward confrontations with his own destinies (the implosion of his relationship with T'Pring, a confrontation with Sybok), and these are expected developments, given presentation. "Tomorrow," no one could have seen coming. Her antipathy toward the Gorn will clearly continue to play out, and yet here La'an gets to confront something far more personal, and find some closure from it.
When Star Trek cuts this deep, it's rare for it to play out this way. Often it'll be a dark experience, but certainly nothing that feels remotely like a romp, which is how Kirk's effect takes "Tomorrow." The lack of truly standalone episodes in modern lore means it's often hard to pinpoint standout experiences that are comparable to what's been previously achieved, and yet "Tomorrow" not only successfully evokes templates but moves well beyond them, and makes its story deeply personal in the process.
To top all that off, the episode also makes great use of the new character Pelia, who is deliberately positioned to echo Next Generation and Picard icon Guinan, who put in a similar appearance in the latter's second season, and there's really no question that Pelia's appearance in "Tomorrow" is not only pitch-perfect for the character, but hugely immediately enjoyable, and a welcome distraction in the episode itself. If this were somehow the only time you see the character, you'd love her for this spotlight alone.
criteria analysis:
- franchise - "Tomorrow" is a deep cut that speaks to the whole history of Star Trek storytelling. It revolves around Khan, Kirk, and explaining how the whole timeline works.
- series - Back in the Enterprise days fans always worried how a prequel to make a meaningful impact on franchise lore without breaking it. "Tomorrow" is a textbook example of how to do it.
- character - La'an instantly claims what Gene Roddenberry once termed "beloved character status," rocketing her not only in importance to her own series but throughout Star Trek lore in this appearance. And this version of Kirk gets his best spotlight, too.
- essential - There's not even a question. It's the kind of experience that speaks to all three other criteria for mandatory viewing, and even if none of them fit, it would still need seeing to believe, if you didn't like Star Trek in the first place, it would explain the whole phenomenon well enough on its own.
