“Tomorrow Is Yesterday” is one of those classic episodes that is propelled to fandom greatness by way of nostalgia. There’s certainly no denying the overall impact that this episode has on Star Trek fandom. Many consider it to be a top-tier episode of the Original Series. But the truth is, as episodes go, it’s just slightly better than average, offering a rather entertaining, but ultimately empty story. By no means is it my wish to rain on anyone’s parade – any who may dearly love this episode – however, objectively speaking, there isn’t much to this particular installment that will appeal to anyone who isn’t a die-hard Trekkie to begin with. Add in the necessarily esoteric nature of a time travel story and the result is an episode that isn’t quite as good as most either remember or want it to be.

The overall premise is interesting enough: as a result of a freak astrological accident, the Enterprise is transported backward in time to the late 1960s. The episode then deals with events unfolding along several fronts: how the “natives” deal with the sudden appearance of a ship that simply doesn’t belong in their time; how the Enterprise tries to minimize contamination of the timeline; and how the Enterprise tries to get back to its own future time. Each thread certainly is entertaining, but there’s little real purpose or commentary here. It is, primarily, a self-indulgent episode which lets Trekkies feel good about the superiority of their characters over the peons of their contemporary (at the time) society.

These stories take shape around the character of Captain John Christopher who was beamed aboard the Enterprise when Kirk unwittingly destroyed his intercept fighter with a tractor beam. With Captain Christopher aboard, we learn that his knowledge of the future could prove dangerous to that future – should the wrong person learn about how events turn out. But the whole debate about whether or not Captain Christopher will stay is rendered irrelevant by Spock’s final solution to returning the Enterprise to its original timeframe (he simply transports Captain Christopher into is cockpit just moments after he was transported out – and his plane doesn’t get destroyed). And in the meantime, we’re forced to endure the usual winks and nods of watching someone from the past come to terms with a far superior technology.

However, I will say this about the character of Captain Christopher: He fares much better than I had anticipated that he might. He is compelling and able to evoke the necessary empathy from the audience. In short, he manages to make his end of the story much more bearable than a lesser character might otherwise have done. In fact, his character helps Kirk and Sulu retrieve audio and photographic evidence of the Enterprise which may have made the time contamination worse.

Unfortunately, the “prowling” scenes are ultimately boring and, worse still, they lead to another “fish out of water,” character, an unwitting security guard from an Air Force base, who is much, much worse than Captain Christopher. Indeed, the security guard character and performance are played purely for laughs – and the laughs just don’t work particularly well.

The episode reaches its most absurd sequences with Kirk and Sulu, still at the base, triggering a silent alarm. They are discovered by three Air Force officers. And Kirk manages to create enough of a distraction for Sulu to be able to beam out of harm’s way – with the evidence, too. But Kirk’s “distraction” is little more than overlong fisticuffs with the three Air Force officers – with Kirk winning handily until an officer manages to draw his gun.

Later, in an office, Kirk gets all cheeky with the officers but instead of amusing, it comes off as, once again, self-indulgent. Even worse, Kirk gets worried about the officers handling what looks like a small phaser – which begs the question: if he had it to begin with, why not simply stun the officers (who didn’t have their guns drawn)?

It’s this kind of forced conflict and plot twists that really brings down the episode as a whole. The concept of time travel and paradox are usually fairly abstract, but the episode managed to present them well enough. Unfortunately, it is the story that sprang up around the whole time travel concept that is the real detriment. Relying on your characters to be stupid is never a good device to use in creating a plot.

The episode’s best moment comes in the final scene with the Enterprise on its way back to its own time. With the ship fast approaching the future and the durability of the engines in doubt, Spock is counting off the time left before the Enterprise slingshots past its own time and ends up in some distant future. The moment I refer to comes when Kirk simply cuts off Spock, telling him to quit with the countdown. I loved how this demonstrated Kirk’s ability to simply let the chips fall where they may.

Make no mistake, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” is a mildly entertaining episode with enough fun moments (the computer “malfunction” is certainly amusing) to keep viewers from becoming bored or overwhelmed by the technobabble. But with a story about, essentially, nothing the overall quality of the episode is diminished.

Filed under: Original Series