‘Star Trek’ Retro Recap: ‘Tomorrow Is Yesterday’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

I feel as though we’ve spent a lot of time over the past few Retro Recaps talking about ‘standards’ for the Star Trek franchise and there’s good reason for that. Because we’ve in essence hit the motherlode when it comes to these Retro Recaps since we’ve been able to reflect upon some supremely important moments in the franchise’s proud history. The kind that would forever resonate within the framework of the franchise, influencing other shows to visit these concepts time and time again and well, I suppose I’m slightly reflective of this particular discovery today, because the next episode of The Original Series saw the first appearance of another important plot point that the franchise would deeply fall in love with; time travel.
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For ‘Tomorrow Is Yesterday’ saw the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise have an unfortunate run-in with a gravitationally strong Black Star. One so powerful that it managed to catapult the ship into Earth’s past, the 1960s to be exact, wherein they were forced to interact with an Air Force Captain shortly after he got a little too close to the Constitution Class vessel and well, this ended up being quite the magnificent episode when all is said and done. Mainly due to the fact that this one really set the tone for future stories that would involve temporal shenanigans, since it focused heavily on the moral implications/complications when it comes to time travel as a whole.

The moral stuff was handled mostly aboard the Enterprise itself since Spock had to convince Kirk of the dangers of bringing Captain Christopher aboard the ship and I suppose this is really where the rules for the future were put into place since Spock points out the fact, that any changes to the timeline will cause all kinds of surprises and damage when and if they return to the 23rd Century. And of course, poor Kirk is forced to make a tough call when it comes to Mister Christopher, since he has to keep the man aboard to try and preserve the timeline and well, I loved this segment of the story. Because it poses some serious philosophical questions about time travel as a whole, if by chance man were able to achieve it and I’m glad it offered no easy answers outside of… don’t mess with the past.

But while all of that was interesting in its own right, this episode also offered up a lot of entertaining moments as well. Because Kirk and Sulu puttering around at the Air Force Base made for some delightfully awkward and charming moments, especially when the unnamed Air Force Sergeant gets beamed up to the ship, and Kirk does do an amazing job of keeping his cover while under fire. But all entertainment and conflict aside, I suppose if I had only one complaint about this story, it would have to be its ending. Because the whole thing does wrap up in ‘too-perfect’ fashion timeline wise, something that feels a little cheap considering what’s at stake here. But that really is a minor complaint since this is the saga’s first outing into the past.

If anything, all of these elements make for an easily digestible episode of Star Trek, which is quite impressive when you think about the subject matter. For there are so many other time-travel related stories waiting for us down the line, that become quite the convoluted and confusing mess. But this one, this was just a quick and simple ride, one that featured some laughs, some adventure and plenty of action and honestly, some cool special effects. Because the remastered stuff here really works well on screen and it was neat to see the Enterprise floating through the skies. Either way, that’s another first for the franchise in the books and as we hit the home stretch for season one, my excitement is only growing because the stories just keep getting better and better. Until next time.

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