Logline
La’An travels back in time to twenty-first-century Earth to prevent an attack which will alter humanity’s future history—and bring her face to face with her own contentious legacy.
Written by David Reed
Directed by Amanda Row
Note: This is a second attempt, as technical difficulties were preventing people from seeing the original discussion post. Apologies to the people who were able to comment in the original.
I would like to see a Short Trek of what went down during that 16hr+ road trip with Kirk & La’An
Lots of talking, probably. They probably spilled everything about their histories, and not just their personal histories, but the histories of their own universes. Thinking about that makes the ending all the more heartbreaking.
Wait what’s this? Star Trek writers can still create a time travel story that wraps up in an episode (or two) instead of lasting a whole 10 episodes of nothing?!
And they can weave in minor plot points from previous episodes to give it continuity without feeling forced?
How can this be?
If you’re referring to Discovery, I think the whole time jump saved the show. I really struggled through the first couple seasons but now I look forward to new episodes. It’s still not peak Trek, but I’ve been waiting for something that doesn’t center around Kirk or the Kirk era (similar to Star Wars and the Skywalkers) but instead jumps further ahead than previous eras for decades now.
What bugs me about discovery is that they ruin the efforts of all of my favorite characters in all of my favorite series by wrecking the federation.
Tolkien decided to not write a sequel to lotr because the happy endings were too well earned, even if mankinds nature is to become complacent with ‘good’, it’s frustrating to restart the struggle.
I agree with your sentiment, but I wish they would have done it differently. In my head cannon, I accept later seasons of discovery as one possible future, but hopefully not the prime timeline.
I have to ask how many millennia you expect the Federation to endure without periods of fragility?
The Federation isn’t wrecked forever in Discovery.
A half a millennium is a long time for human societies to stay stable, especially given the out-and-out full scale Temporal War that targeted the Federation.
It’s also important to keep in mind that it’s the Federation’s enduring values that allow it to be restored.
It was closer to decimated than fragile… And that makes me sad was all.
The amount of culture and history that is lost is on par with what could happen if we don’t get our act together in the real world.
Trek has underlying optimism most of the time but there wasn’t enough of that to redeem discovery for me. You bring up good points and highlight a silver lining. It’s just thinner that the one I wanted.
I think I could have accepted it with a better setup, too. Some unavoidable disaster that made sense, but the ‘burn’ was flimsy.
I believe that was referencing Picard Season 2, which this episode has a strong resemblance to.
S02 without the borg crap
The more I think about this episode the more impressed I get. There’s so many small moments where they could have taken the easy, obvious choice and it would have been fine, and instead they were just a little more thoughtful and a little more creative and it shows.
They could have just had Pelia push a secret button to reveal her stash of alien tech, and that probably would have been fine. Instead they show her as this woman who’s very smart and obviously immortal but otherwise…just a person living through history, which is so much better. Imagining the 250 years between the present and when she’s one of the most famous engineers in the fleet is fun.
They could have had the Romulan agent just be a cold, ruthless assassin from the future who’s here to get the job done, and that would have been fine. Instead she’s this slightly unhinged woman, trapped out of time, stuck undercover on an alien world for thirty years on a mission that she’s not sure exists anymore and I love the way she starts losing it at the end, that she just wants to kill this kid and be done with it.
They could have cast Khan as a hot 20 something available in the Toronto area and had him to a Ricardo Montalbán impression and give us a tense standoff, and I would have been annoyed at that, but it probably would have been fine. Instead they show us an actual child, and remind is that Khan was a horrifying monster, but he was created by a world with monsters of its own, monsters who built a child in a laboratory and raised him in a basement, and suddenly its a piece of implied context made explicit that I didn’t even know I wanted.
And of course they could have just had Kirk agree to fix the timeline because its the right thing to do, or because he loves La`an, or because…honestly, because the plot has to happen, this is something that so many stories would just gloss over to keep the story moving. And instead we get one line, “Sam’s alive?” and my heart jumped to my throat a little bit and immediately we understand why he’s willing to go through with this.
I’m really really impressed with the writers on this episode.
They could have just had Pelia push a secret button to reveal her stash of alien tech, and that probably would have been fine. Instead they show her as this woman who’s very smart and obviously immortal but otherwise…just a person living through history, which is so much better. Imagining the 250 years between the present and when she’s one of the most famous engineers in the fleet is fun.
It’s not just fun–but it speaks to a different demographic than most shows speak to.
It’s telling older women that it’s not too late to change and grow and learn. Here she is, obviously having already lived a long life–but then we learn she hasn’t ALWAYS been an engineer from the start. She did not begin as someone obviously fascinated by science.
She realized later in life. And then she was able to SUCCESSFULLY pursue her career and become an expert. Just because she wasn’t a child prodigy didn’t mean she couldn’t learn and grow. There’s SO many stories focusing on people who have things 100% right immediately out of the gate. Top grades in school, top performance at work, accolades, reccomendations from the time they were teens.
But this story is of an ordinary eccentric retail worker…who goes back to hit the books and succeeds with her change.
This lesson will go over 75% people’s heads…but in true Star Trek fashion, even if it elludes many, it’ll hit home with the demographic it’s meant to talk to. Older women who feel like they’re too old to change. That they shouldn’t even try. It’s talking to THEM like so many other characters in Star Trek talk to other overlooked people.
And that makes this detail–one out of many in this excellent episode–top Star Trek.
Although it does remain very funny that they’re doing this much work to make us care about Sam Kirk, a character who’s fate is to die off screen to a brain parasite before the episode even starts. Sorry Sam.
I think it’s more that they’re introducing Kirk sideways, by way of humanizing him through how he cares for Sam.
Wow. You get my first Lemmy upvote on this post! Thank you for pointing out all these details.
I guess I’m one of the few voices of dissent again… I enjoyed last week’s episode, but this episode is disappointing again. The romance between La’an was very unnecessary and unnatural. They had no chemistry and it felt incredibly awkward. I still can’t stand their choice for Kirk. Feels like I’m watching Darrin from Bewitched (or some other “ordinary working man” type character) doing cosplay and not a star ship captain, and certainly not a captain like Kirk. Not only does he not have “the look,” but I hated the way he delivered all his lines.
The only breath of fresh air for me is that a disaster takes place someplace other than New York, LA, or the US in general. However, they definitely didn’t hire enough extras for Toronto. Everywhere looked too under populated and not enough racial diversity (ie: where were all the Asians? Toronto is filled with East, South, Subcontinental Asians). I’ve never seen the streets of Toronto so sparse.
Wasn’t that somewhat of the point. Laan doesn’t have chemistry with anyone due to her tragic childhood and family lineage making her an outcast. Kirk is a good enough man to see though that.
I was not a fan of Wesley’s Kirk in S1, but he won me over here. He has a physical gawkiness that I don’t associate with the character, but he nailed the confident bravado and understated nerdiness that endeared Kirk to sci-fi fans fifty years ago.
For me there was a couple wild suspensions of disbelief that just didn’t work. Earning enough cash from an afternoon of playing randoms at chess in the park to afford a full on suite at a decent hotel downtown Toronto. And the police just letting them go, no license, no identification of any kind…
I did really enjoy Toronto in general and thought the main plot was strong enough, but agree the romance was unnecessary and also think the dialogue needs some work.
I’d argue that was more believable than “wave a tricorder at a cash point” like we’ve seen in the past. Also, how far did the money from one pair of second hand glasses go in Voyage Home and we didn’t doubt that.
As a security officer, La’an is highly trained in social engineering, and Kirk is cunning on his own, as we see in how he zeroes in on the best car around and steals it with minimal physical harm to the owner. I’d say there’s a good chance they didn’t pay for the hotel room at all, but conned their way in on someone else’s credentials. Same deal for crossing the border twice.
Not just the hotel, but enough to bribe two separate border officers to let them cross the border the day after a terrorist attack
I’m with you on this. La’an is my fave character in this show so I was really looking forward to this episode. But after watching it, I felt it just wasn’t very good. I think, for me, it was mostly the writing, followed by the pacing, and the fact that while Kirk is my all-time fave Trek Captain… I just do not like the Kirk in this show. I just don’t find the actor they chose to be a suitable fit at all, unfortunately.
Still, the episode did have a few good moments, and it’s only 1 of only 2 episodes, so far, that I haven’t enjoyed with this series. So that’s still a good batting average.
Hopefully I’ll like the next episode more!
As others have mentioned, far too many suspensions of disbelief in this one. I’m not sure which is more ridiculous though: Kirk hustling general public at chess winning enough money for a downtown Toronto hotel suite or the brutally awkward romance between La’an & Kirk.
I liked the episode but I’m kinda with you on Paul Wesley’s Kirk. I like the actor, I like the new Kirk as a character… there’s just no connection in my mind between him and Shatner’s Kirk.
I felt the same way about Ethan Peck for quite a while, but he grew on me too.
where were all the Asians? Toronto is filled with East, South, Subcontinental Asians
Well the romulans have been pushing humanity apart fro a while they delayed Singh by 30years. Maybe they been working even longer
I totally agree about the change of locations! Where were the exterior scenes filmed? Was it really Toronto?
Yeah, that was definitely actually Toronto. The big area they’re wandering around in at the start is Yonge-Dundas Square, and I’m pretty sure this is the clothing store they stole from. The “Noonien-Singh Center” at the end was actually the Royal Ontario Museum - both the interior and exterior.
Kinda weird seeing Star Trek characters actually wandering around in an area I know decently well.
Like Discovery, Strange New Worlds is filmed in Toronto, so it was a fairly easy location shoot for them.
Me at the beginning: Oh, great. More time travel. I’m so sick of time travel and temporal mechanics. The Science Vulcan Directorate has determined that time travel has been done to death.
Me at the end: 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
You echo my exact sentiments. I was so prepared to be disappointed by “yet another time travel episode to modern day, oh boy” and the writers pulled it off.
I’ve been incredibly impressed by S2 so far, gotta say.
I enjoyed that episode a lot, although it would have benefitted from its length being tightened up by ten minutes.
What do we think was the nature of the Romulan interference with Earth? And what time period is Sera, the Romulan agent from?
The DTI agent appears to use 29th century tech, which is several hundred years after the Romulan Empire’s supernovae-driven collapse but possibly around the time of the Romulan-Vulcan reunification of Ni’Var. Is she from that same time period?
Sera also shows Kirk a picture of what looks like a TOS-era Bird-of-Prey as part of her alien conspiracy photo deck. It has the round nacelles typical of the 23rd century, rather than those seen in ENT’s 22nd century designs, or some other design representing the 20th/21st century in which these attacks take place.
Is she a time agent from the 23rd century (with the appropriate Romulan ship in orbit)?
Is that her guessing who Kirk is, and planting the evidence he’s most likely to recognize? Or was that really a Romulan design from the 21st century?
Which leads to me wonder if the Romulans started interfering with Earth’s development only due to temporal war shenanigans, or had they been doing flybys for as long as the Vulcans?
Maybe, Sera is from a 29th century Romulan Star Empire that wasn’t devastated by a supernova. Could the destruction of Romulus have been the result of a time war?
I suspect we will never get answers to any of that. The DTI has always been more about driving fun plots than establishing any sort of clear worldbuilding about how they work. And that’s probably for the best, because time travel really doesn’t make much sense, and that only becomes more obvious the longer you spend trying to make it make sense.
They literally just clarified how time travel works in this episode. Clarifying the DTI books take that only big probability wave changes form stable alternates, most collapse back to the “prime” waveform and reinsert key events elsewhere if they’re interfered with. Also we know we have at least one other time travel episode this year from Mariner and Boimler to appear.
Sure, but that clarification only holds until another writer on another time travel episode decides they need different mechanics for whatever story they want to tell. Because time travel is nothing more than a plot device, its nature changes depending on the plot it’s facilitating.
Well they have an actual science consultant on the franchise now, which I assume if why this episode moved to a more of a modern understanding of time and multiverse theory here. Hopefully she keeps them consistent from here on.
Never thought that letting an episode run longer in streaming would be viewed as a negative.
I wouldn’t have cut anything.
I agree. I’m usually the first to complain when it’s obvious a show/movie needed an editor to cut unnecessary filler but this this episode used its time well IMO.
I don’t think their issue was the length per se. Rather, if you cut it shorter, you quicken the pacing and remove the parts of the story that didn’t need to be there. At least that’s how I interpret it when someone says runtime could be tightened up.
What didn’t need to be there though? Very few scenes were wasted, the all gave us something, be it exposition or character work.
It’s almost a throwaway line but I’m pretty sure she implies 21st century Romulans are interfering with Earth independently, and she’s running a parallel mission?
“This was supposed to happen in 1992!”
Is that a reference to how the eugenics wars were supposed to happen in the 90’s but obviously those came and went so they’re softly retconning when the eugenics wars took place?
I kinda like this theory. The temporal wars are still affecting the timeline, but time is pushing back to repair the timeline. In-universe reason to both retcon and act as a story element as well (with hopefully a Wesley Crusher appearance at some point?)
That fits with how they described time travel and alternative universe’s working in the DTI books too which is nice. It takes a major shift to the probability wave to spin off a new timeline (Human physiology difference like light sensitivity or the Narada incursion) smaller changes collapse back into the main timeline quickly.
The physics are so much better. The hard scientists in our household are happy.
Did anyone else catch what looked like an unspoken, knowing look from Pelia when La’an appeared on the bridge after returning? Does Pelia somehow remember their prior encounter on Earth? Is it explicit, or more like the way Guinan would have an intuition, or a subliminal feeling? Or did I imagine that?
Pelia remembers it, that meeting was before the timelines diverged, so it happened in the current timeline.
I’m sure Pelia had a flash of recognition, but she is not the same type of high and wise immortal as Guinan. 200 years is a long time, and perhaps her memory isn’t perfect. La’an didn’t tell her explicitly that she was from the future, so she might just be having some serious deja vu and wondering about the resemblance of this security officer to that weirdo who showed up at her door in 2022.
It’s unfortunate that the writers didn’t plan this beforehand, so we could have had some foreshadowing a few episodes beforehand with a first meeting between the two where pelia acts a little weird (because she remembers her from 200 years ago).
I feel like it was a “aha I remember when you wore that outfit.” I was kind of hoping they would have a conversation at the end. Instead we got the DTI 😄
Yeah I was really expecting pelia to come in and lift the watch back up at the end and comfort laan
Actually thinking about it that might be why the line “I’m awful with faces” was there …not just to explain away why 21stC Pelia didn’t recognise why la’an knew her but she didn’t know laan, but also why 23rdC pelia doesn’t remember a meeting 200 years prior
I imagine she will take a few episodes to figure it out. This definitely seems like a thread that hasn’t spooled all the way out yet.
The focus on the watch at the end suggests there’ll be a future plot point revolving around Pelia and the watch and La’an. Although it also seemed a bit ominous, so it might also pick up La’an getting into some eugenics-related trouble later, as I imagine those threads are also not spooled all the way out as you put it so well.
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A little remarked side effect of time travel is that it causes infatuation (Kirk, in “City on the Edge of Forever”) and horniness (Spock, in “All Our Yesterdays”). La’An experienced both!
Edit: I forgot about Bashir and Jadzia in “Trials and Tribble-ations” but honestly they just seemed to be acting in character!
What about Sisko, Bashir, and Jadzia (then later O’Brien and Kira) in “Past Tense”? I didn’t see any horniness except for maybe from O’Brien
Sisko did his horny stuff in the mirror universe.
La’An fell head over heels for someone who had never heard of her. Absolutely makes sense. An entire lifetime of being treated differently, because everyone knows. Even if they don’t treat her negatively, they still know.
This Kirk was the first person since grade school that she met someone who didn’t know.
Absolutely makes sense.
This came out of left field for me but I really love La’An as a character and I want her to be consoled so hard 🥺
Plus it ties in with the previous episode where she and Number One reflect on their augments, family history, and years of feeling shame about who they are.
I wish we knew a bit more about her family. It’s notable that she is ashamed of the history of her name, but proud enough to keep it. One imagines there must be a strong line of incredibly stubborn people desperate to redeem the horrible deeds of their family’s past.
I don’t remember the exact name of that building, but “Noonien-Singh Institute For Improving Society” or something vaguely like that. I imagine, if they weren’t evil incarnate duping the masses, that they were probably a very proud family that did a lot to attempt to make the world a better place. Perhaps before the “socialist utopia” they were a very wealthy family that performed a lot of charitable work and did great things. Perhaps Khan and his siblings were simply a huge mistake that were unintentionally contrary to all the other things they did.
Kirk gets a mysterious call in the middle of the night from a woman he’s never met asking weird questions and his response is to ask her out
10/10 Kirk behavior
Just here to note two details I appreciated:
- La’an still doesn’t know what a Romulan looks like after her adventure. The only one she met was surgically altered to look human, although Sera did drop a hint by complaining about the ears. Still, there’s plenty of aliens with non-human ears, so not really much to go on.
- If she was paying attention, though, La’an did get another clue about Romulan physiology: When she shot Sera, the blood spray was green! Of course, Sera remembered her grandma’s old recipe for molecular solvent, so La’an may have thought that was the reason for the coloration.
I love that Kirk had to die saving his own worst enemy so that the Federation could exist.
and subverting the “hero goes back in time to kill a mass murderer” trope, with “hero goes back in time to save a mass murderer”
I actually thought the plot of Picard series 2 was going to be something like this, Picard has to ensure WW3 happens, dooming millions to save his future. Instead we got, well what we got.
Seems to me that they are merging the eugenics wars and wwiii together in canon. Maybe the eugenics wars are the catalyst for wwiii or something like that?
Makes sense to be fair. The Augments take advantage of the War to seize a portion of the planet in all the confusion.
I didn’t expect to like this episode as much as I did.
Wesley’s Kirk is growing on me, and I give the EPs credit for using the alternate timeline Kirk’s to let his performance coalesce. I also like the deft weaving of the crazy car driving, heartbreaker Kirk with the think five steps ahead genius that he also had to be.
The acknowledgement in-universe that the timeline and humanity’s development has been interfered with is entirely credible given the accretion of temporal incidents across every era of the franchise.
I’m not sure how I feel about it giving comfort to those who feel so strongly that this isn’t the same timeline as the original TOS one. (I see some chortling on this point elsewhere.) Likely the temporal physics of this is best left for a deep dive /c/Daystrom Institute discussion, but I prefer hold to a view that this is absolutely still the same Prime timeline but that the timeline itself has been perturbed repeatedly even if the key events have kept their integrity. In fact, the Romulan temporal agent, while not a reliable narrator, gave credence to the idea that the Prime timeline had proven unexpectedly robust against major intervention by humanity’s enemies.
I was delighted to see DTI show up and be named. It seems all of a piece of DTI’s rigidity that they would leave La’an alone to deal with the trauma. It does however mirror Pike’s own experience in sealing his future with the time crystal. One senses that there must be some kind of intersection or mutual revelation to come, leaving aside the Chekhov’s gun of the temporally dislocated watch.
Knowing that Anson Mount had to relocate to Toronto with his wife and newborn explains why episodes featuring others in the ensemble were front loaded for this season. He’d said before he committed to the show that creative conversations would be needed as he wasn’t wishing to repeat the production experience he had in Discovery season two. A creative conversation with the EPs that limits a principal character’s presence is fairly extraordinary, but Mount seems to have done it in a way that’s generous to the rest of the ensemble.
With an ensemble so strong, and as we didn’t see as much of Chapel or Una as we would have liked last season, I’m fine with waiting to see more Pike later in the season. It sounds as though we have a Spock focused and an Ortegas to come before some big ensemble pieces in the back half.
If anything doesn’t this prove that this does take place in the same timeline as TOS but that timeline is in flux due to time travel and interference?
That’s exactly it.
That really explains a lot. Kudos to the production for really playing well to their constraints like this.
Did she leave that gun with that little boy?
She left the gun that had shot Kirk in plain sight to be found be the security team she believed were on their way.
And in fact we heard the footfalls of the team running towards the room just as La’an hit the button and vanished. She didn’t even have time to get herself out of young Khan’s sight.
What could go wrong?
Lucky for us this boy is not going to be a genocidal maniac.
I’m just kinda thrilled to see Canada in the Star Trek universe. Obviously they’ve been doing a bunch of filming out of Toronto so technically we have seen it, but it’s nice for them to sidestep the fact that 99% of the time they get thrown into Earth’s past and they end up in California. Kirk “recognizing” the city as New York was a cute touch given how often Toronto doubles for it. Also technically I guess this means that the greatest tyrant in Earth’s history technically is canonically Canadian too.
Kirk being a chess hustler was cute too, explaining how he’s able to keep up when playing Spock in TOS.
Aside from that, the episode was fine. I like seeing La’an getting some development, and seeing her spar with M’Benga (and getting beaten) was nice since it justifies him being actually kind of a badass, and makes the fight scenes in the first episode of the season more reasonable. Also a bit more behind the curtain of Pelia.
A lot of the episode was just goofy “man out of time” stuff, which is cute in its own right but doesn’t really add a ton. But it was entertaining and fun, and worth watching again, so I’m still calling it a winner.
Toronto passing as New York for characters was so meta and hilarious.
After the first episode of the season and seeing how he handled himself as a sparring partner, M’Benga should henceforth be called Dr. Seen-Some-Shit
