Star Trek Flashback: Tomorrow Is Yesterday

In a weird coda at the end of the episode "The Naked Time," Star Trek established that the Enterprise could travel through time (whether the the story warranted it or not). The show delivered on that promise in the episode "Tomorrow Is Yesterday."

The Enterprise is accidentally thrown back in time to Earth in the late 1960s. In short order, they're taken to be a UFO, and unintentionally destroy an Air Force plane and abduct its pilot. Now the crew must repair their ship, erase the evidence of their presence, find a way to return the pilot and restore the course of history, and return to their own time.

There are quite a few episodes of the original Star Trek that make you think: "oh, they totally ripped this one off later for The Next Generation." This episode is one such touchstone for later Star Trek. But not for the early seasons of a still-finding its way Next Gen; rather, for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. That movie isn't without its own new elements: a threatened Earth, an environmentalist message, and of course, the whales. But consider everything else.

In both Star Trek IV and "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," our heroes find them transported back in time to the real-world present. They soon encounter a contemporary human who takes quite well to interactions with people from the future. They have to sneak around a military installation. And all of it is done with a decidedly comedic tone. (20th century pilot John Christopher: "I never have believed in little green men." Spock: "Neither have I.")

Star Trek IV has a lot more polish. And "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" has working against it the fact it was made for 1960s television, a time and place where the humor is intentionally crafted with "dopey slide whistle" sensibilities. Is it funny when an Air Force security guard just freezes when he materializes on the transporter pad? When a freshly upgraded Enterprise computer flirts with Captain Kirk? Well, no, not really. But then, this style of comedy has aged more poorly than even the 60-year-old sets have. (Notice all the wrinkles on the screens on the Enterprise bridge.)

But still, there's plenty here that does work well. It's an entertainingly breathless episode, where one problem keeps piling on after another. Most of the characters get good moments: Scotty points out that even once he's repaired the ship, they have nowhere to go; McCoy has a great reaction when Kirk compares him to Spock (that's comedy that does work); Sulu beams down to the Air Force base with Kirk (not sure why it's those two, but whatever). And with the character of John Christopher, the episode handles well that not all people from the past are stupid... but that our heroes will always, eventually, get the upper hand. Plus, I love that in this episode, made in 1967, the writers took their shot, declared that humans would land on the moon by the end of the 1960s, and were proven right.

How the episode gets out of these stacked-up problems feels like nonsense. After conveniently inching back in time again before shooting forward again, the transporter serves as a hand-waving solution to it all (not for the first time; certainly not for the last). It's not clear what's happening when someone is "beamed into themselves." (Is this like overwriting a computer file? Is one person being destroyed and swapped for another?) And I don't understand how that causes time to reset itself midstream. But I guess the sillier tone of the episode allows for sillier solutions.

Other observations:

• The footage of scrambling Air Force jets didn't match the rest of the episode even in 1967. But when they came along and updated all the Enterprise effects shots in the 2000s re-master, it made the grainy stock footage stick out even more.  

• Gotta get that slinky trombone music in when John Christopher spots a female crewmember on the Enterprise.

• On the Air Force base, the photo lab has a silent alarm on the door, but the computer records office doesn't. I'm sure it's just for writing convenience, but it's fun to pretend this is a sign of the times (and a reflection on the value of computers).

• Are the clocks on the Enterprise tied to some outside, observable force in the universe? Or did Spock program them to count backwards when the ship is moving backwards in time?

In a world where Star Trek IV didn't exist, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" might hit a bit better for me. Then again, I imagine that 1980s humor misses with a younger audience in much the same way this 1960s humor misses for me here. But it's still a fun enough episode. I give it a B-.