Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 10, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.”
Putting aside the promise of a title like “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” – which obviously echoes the all-time-great Next Gen episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise: – as well as any fan hopes for a Captain Seven from Star Trek: Picard showing up with the crew of the Enterprise-G (yes, some folks were holding out for that unlikely team-up), the Season 4 finale of Strange New Worlds is an enjoyable finish to an incredibly frustrating 10-episode run of highs and lows.
Zeroing in on Celia Rose Gooding’s Nyota Uhura, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” is a time-travel romp that also functions as a sort of preview of this iteration of the USS Enterprise crew’s end – as well as the show’s. While investigating a white hole – “a unique and rare occurrence,” as Uhura says in her log – as well as fending off Scotty (Martin Quinn), who wants to ask his crewmate out on a date, the newly-promoted lieutenant takes a hit to the noggin after the phenomenon unexpectedly erupts with energy. Next thing she knows, she’s hearing Scotty over the comms suffering some kind of deadly accident… but nobody else hears it or believes her. Nobody except… her future self!
Uhura has often proved to be a great lens through which to tell Strange New Worlds stories, first as the young cadet who was just learning the ropes of serving on a starship, all the way through discovering the hard truths of the job (Hemmer, we miss you!) and the sublime moments it can also offer. And Rose Gooding is terrific as always in this week’s episode as she has to play not just the current-day Uhura, but also the Uhura she’ll be in a year’s time.
Speaking of which, Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, the showrunners of Strange New Worlds, have never tried to hide how much they want to tell stories with The Original Series crew – they were planning a spin-off of SNW called Star Trek: Year One, after all. So once again we get a version of the Enterprise where Kirk is now captain. The events of this future timeline are slightly off, since Scotty is dead after the accident that happens in the past, but you gotta figure it’s mostly correct? I think? If you’re willing to take that leap, then we know Pike has less than a year left before he becomes an admiral and Kirk takes over, Ortegas (Melissa Navia) is going to leave the ship to become a flight instructor, and La’An… well, she’s not around anymore, but nobody wants to talk about it. It’s all a tantalizing tease for how Strange New Worlds might end.
As for the romance between Uhura and Scotty that’s happening in the future timeline, it’s funny how this show keeps going back to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier well. And I’m here for it! That movie – which used to be considered one of the worst of the original crew’s films, though I think that take has softened over the decades (I love it, flaws and all) – did allude to a romantic relationship between the two characters, but it never went beyond that. And really, it’s never made sense that the crews of these starships aren’t hooking up more. Plus, Rose Gooding and Quinn have plenty of chemistry and charisma. Here’s hoping Strange New Worlds keeps pushing this particular final frontier next season.
However, the problem “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” faces is how everything is wrapped up, with the white hole (and black hole on the other side of it in the future timeline) turning out to be some kind of space baby-producing galactic phenomenon that we can’t hope to truly understand… but which tidies up all the problems Uhura has faced for the past hour in a deus ex machina that really puts the deus in the machina.
Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
- Scotty checking his breath before he talks Uhura. You know you’ve been there!
- Uhura pretending to not hear Scotty ask her out. You know you’ve been there!
- Aha, a Gary Mitchell reference! I just was wondering a couple of weeks ago what happened to Jenna Mitchell (Rong Fu), who was often at the helm of the Enterprise in previous seasons. But also, it was always weird to have a Mitchell sitting there since we knew that Gary Mitchell would eventually take that position – the Gary Lockwood character who was Kirk’s best friend and turned into a god-like being in the first William Shatner episode of TOS, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Now we know Jenna and Gary are step-siblings… and have the same job, I guess?
- Bones also gets a mention here, as he apparently serves as a medical officer alongside Dr. Boyce in the future timeline while Dr. M’Benga is off on Vulcan. This lines up with M’Benga eventually being a Vulcan expert on TOS, but it still doesn’t account for where Dr. Mark Piper is (the doctor in that same first episode with Shatner).
- Man, the Enterprise has suddenly got all kinds of aliens walking around. I spotted a member of the cat-like species, the Caitians (M’Ress in live-action!?), a bird-like Aurelian, some kind of reptilian dude who was hanging out with a shirt on but no pants like Donald Duck, and some others too. Who was your favorite?
