"Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (season one, episode nineteen; production code: 021; 26 January 1967): Wikipedia-link.
Commentary: "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" is the first time travel episode in Star Trek, setting the pattern of most time travel stories just not making sense.
The Enterprise is accidentally flung back in time to July 1969 by an encounter with a "black star," establishing the warp speed/gravitational slingshot technique that would recur, including in the feature film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). The starship is detected in the Earth's atmosphere as a U.F.O. & intercepted by a U.S. Air Force F-104 Starfighter. Captain Kirk inadvertantly destroys the aeroplane, which cannot withstand the Enterprise's tractor beam, & rescues the pilot by transporting him aboard. The initial plan is not to return the pilot, Captain John Christopher, because his knowledge of the Enterprise could pollute the timeline, but they soon discover that a not-yet-conceived son of Christopher's will lead an historically significant space mission to Saturn; so, they must return Christopher. So far, so good.
Kirk & Sulu beam down to Earth to destroy any physical evidence that could corroborate Christopher's eventual testimony: wing camera footage from the destroyed Starfighter & tape recordings of the radio communications between Christopher & the ground. They beam down in their Starfleet uniforms, but that could be forgiven as a lack of experience; in future time travel incidents, landing parties will dress to blend in with the native population. Kirk & Sulu succeed in pilfering all the physical evidence, but Kirk is captured & interrogated by U.S.A.F. Air Policemen & one Air Policeman is inadvertantly beamed up to the Enterprise. All understandable, no plan survives contact with the enemy.
The resolution is when "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" stops making sense. Scotty repairs the warp engines & the gravitational slingshot manuever around the Sun is used to propel the Enterprise back to the future—though first, they move further back in time to before the starship's arrival in Earth's atmosphere. Two contradictory things happen. First, as they move forward through time again, Captain Christopher & the Air Policeman are beamed into their own bodies just before they encountered the Enterprise crew. Wait, what? Physics still applies: two objects cannot simultaneously occupy the same space. Is this a "Tuvix" situation wherein the past & present versions of Captain Christopher are combined to form a new hybrid version? And the same for the Air Policeman? Second, the Enterprise returning to her own present somehow prevents the ship from ever going back in time. Wait, what? If the Enterprise was never intercepted by Christopher's Starfighter, why return Christopher & the Air Policeman at all? They men aboard the Enterprise are now essentially temporal doubles; their original selves still exist in the earlier timeline & those originals will never encounter the Enterprise & her crew, thus posing no danger of polluting the timeline.
This is not a time travel "paradox," a faux explanation that is often deployed to try to explain away writing that doesn't make sense, this is poor, nonsensical writing. Most writers aren't smart enough to think through the logical implications of a time travel story; so, most writers shouldn't write time travel stories. "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" starts off well & is a pretty light episode throghout, but the ending is an unsalvageable mess.
Fun fact: "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" correctly predicted the future. When the Enterprise arrives in the past, before the Starfighter intercept, the bridge crew hears a radio report that the first Moon landing attempt will launch on the next Wednesday. Apollo 11 did indeed launch on Wednesday, 16 July 1969.
No comments:
Post a Comment