To be fair, this time jump feels like a bit of creative rewriting; the changes aboard this future Enterprise (and its crew) feel far too expansive to have taken place in the space of just a single year. Perhaps changes were required to make it mesh with whatever is still to come in the series’ final six episodes, but it’s the kind of strange you basically have to purposefully decide to ignore. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not enough to derail what is otherwise a fairly satisfying episode, but it is strange.
The plot of “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” involves a lot of Doctor Who-style timey wimey nonsense that works a whole lot better if you don’t think about it too hard. While investigating a rare white hole (which apparently do theoretically exist!) the Enterprise is hit with a strange series of lights and chimes that precede a pulse of energy that causes a sort of temporal shift. Uhura begins hearing things—Scotty screaming, calling for help in a way that hasn’t happened yet. Meanwhile, in a future timeline, an older Uhura is part of an Enterprise mission to study a black hole when a shuttle Scotty is on blows up…only no one remembers him being on it. In fact, they all insist he’s been dead for a year. (See: Timey wimey!)
The upshot of all this is that Present Uhura and Future Uhura have to work together to save Scotty’s life and put their respective timelines back on the right track. It’s a clever plot, and once the two women manage to figure out how to talk to one another through the black/white hole, it’s an hour that highlights all the things Uhura is best at in any reality: Communication, loyalty, and care.
Fair warning, however: If you’re a person (like me) who struggles not to throw things whenever a genre series uses a bootstrap paradox to solve occasionally prickly or difficult problems of time travel, you’ll likely have to scream into a pillow during several key moments that rely on one Uhura performing an action that immediately impacts the other Uhura’s timeline in ways it probably shouldn’t. But the nifty visuals (Uhura passing through herself in hallways, the split screen of the two bridges) and Ethan Peck’s spot-on deadpan responses to her increasingly bizarre requests in both timelines help make most of it bearable. (Although, personally, I do really need to know if Pike actually becomes an Admiral.)
It also doesn’t hurt that this episode is a heck of a showcase for Celia Rose Gooding, who hasn’t had a ton to do this season beyond mentoring a genuinely terrible intern. She gives a remarkably nuanced performance playing two very different Uhuras, one sporting Nichelle Nichols’s signature 60s hairdo as an identifier we don’t really need. (But that is awesome, nevertheless.) The inclusion of the Scotty/Uhura romance that was briefly hinted at in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is honestly adorable, and another example of Strange New Worlds just fearlessly going for it when it comes to updating existing canon.
“Tomorrow’s Enterprise” is full of delightful Easter eggs and shoutouts that feel all the more valuable given that it’s pretty obvious we’re never getting the Star Trek: Year One prequel meant to bridge the gap between Strange New Worlds and The Original Series that so many fans want. From a Gary Mitchell reference (he’s Jenna’s step-brother!) and a McCoy mention to Chapel’s new hairdo and shots of never-before-seen-in-live-action aliens like Catians and Skorr, there’s a lot of stuff that seems specifically included to make long-time Trek fans do the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme.
