Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x03 "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"
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.
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?
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.