Logline
A time ripple damages the Enterprise, forcing young and old Uhura to cooperate and fix the timeline.
Written by: Henry Alonso Myers & Robbie Thompson
Directed by: Chris Fisher
I feel like there were only 3 good episodes this season and 2 of them were very fan service. Tomorrow’s Enterprise (this one) and Order of Magnitude (the badmiral one), and Off-Hour (the disaster one).
Soap Opera, Stoner Vacation, Dinosaur planet, weren’t bad. But I do have a hard time recommending them.
Ghost Ship was really good, didn’t feel like Star Trek. But it was good horror.
Casablanca and the Muppets, were cool concepts, but did not gel with me. They might be good, but need to give them time to age a bit in my brain.
Anyway, about this episode. Conceptually fantastic. Scott and Urural hooking up seems fine, there is a bit of playful interactions with them in the films, and I actually haven’t watched all of TOS yet, but from some of the discussions of reddit, it appears there is also some implications there. So I feel that’s kind of interesting.
Jumping forward to Star Trek: Year One pilot is fun, since we now know that won’t be happening at all. And it did feel very classic Star Trek with the banter about bluffing in poker and Spock not getting it. It seems weird with all the work SNW did to get Spock more in touch with his human side, that he now feels more estranged then ever. But, it kind of works? Like it didn’t break my suspension of disbelief at all.
I thought Pike was still a Captain during The Menagerie, but Memory Alpha says he was a Fleet Captain, which I guess is a billet and not an official rank? So maybe he was a Rear Admiral but serving as a Fleet Captain? I don’t know man… military ranks be confusing. Time travel non-sense can also play a role…though that feels a bit disingenuous.
Also, I feel that the Enterprise was WAY too close to the event horizon. I can somewhat excuse Uhura jumping in to the black hole and not being crushed in to a singularity, because I feel like it was likely some kind of artificial blackhole, maybe made by the Prophet to give birth? I honestly would prefer if it was not the Prophets, because I feel like the universe feels too small now with all the recurring aliens. For all of Roddenberry’s faults, making TNG need to stand on its own merits and force the writers to not reuse legacy TOS content was a really wise decision.
With that said, I hate that the best of SNW is the best of TOS. Two remakes of Balance of Terror, a remake of Arena, and this. There is a lot I like about SNW, but the best is not original content, and that annoys me.
You know what really annoyed me most about this episode. No one believed Uhura! You got to be shitting me, fucking weird ass time shit happens all the time, and they just encountered weird aliens living in a blackhole, why would you not believe her, or at least humor her, especially since you don’t have any other leads. Picard didn’t gaslight Beverly when she was in a similar situation when she was trapped in a pocket universe that was slowly falling apart. One of the things that annoys me the most about the new Star Trek is just how unprofessional everyone is. I can live with things being a bit more loose and casual, but just be professional about it.
Anyway, great episode, and in retrospective, I thought I didn’t enjoy this season, but it turns out I actually did. So…there is that.
SNW was going to be cancelled at the end of this season, until the showrunner argued for another half-season to wrap things up. Which makes too much sense, since this was in many ways a shorter, breezier version of All Good Things. It even ends with a captain joining a poker game! And focussing on Uhura also works well for a pseudo-finale, since she was our focal character early in season 1 as well.
Which makes me wonder how the next season will feel. It reminds me of the Babylon 5 season 4 finale, which was written to function as the series finale when they thought they wouldn’t get renewed. And then the actual season 5 felt a little redundant. Not unwelcome, but kind of like a long addendum to the “main show”.
Regardless, an enjoyable episode. Celia Rose Gooding carried it well. They had fun with the time travel mechanics in a way that worked well enough. I think Trek relies too much on fan service, but I have to say the '60s hair tickled me, and I was delighted to see M’Ress. The Black / White Holes didn’t feel scary enough by far, but it seems like they weren’t exactly the real thing, so maybe that’s okay.
Which makes me wonder how the next season will feel.
I’ve been thinking about that lately. I see a couple of possibilities:
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A single, six-episode arc (which doesn’t really seem like this show’s style).
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Standalone episodes with significant time-jumps in between (seems more likely to me).
Of course, there are other possibilities (maybe a bunch of two-parters like ENT season 4?), so who knows?
It reminds me of the Babylon 5 season 4 finale, which was written to function as the series finale when they thought they wouldn’t get renewed.
Even better, the actual series finale was filmed at the end of season 4 and withheld until season 5 ended (which is why Ivanova is in it instead of Lochley, for example). So season 4 sort of had two finales.
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Really enjoyed the episode, but sad that the nice moment between Pike and future Uhura was erased.
Did Star Trek really just do an inverse of the Galaxy Quest “Miners, not minors!” joke?
I thought it was a great finale. Better than last seasons finale. But still disappointed they couldn’t get Thomas Jane to do a quick cameo since we know that casting announcements and appearances haven’t lined up before.
I was hoping to see in the final episode the outcome of the “invisible ship” and if the theory about the Vulcan Cadet was true, so it was dissappointing to see the episode went to a different story. Also the story was a bit boring, only interesting bits were when Uhura ask Spock and Scotty to do something, in order to get it 1 year later. Not very original, but was fun.
One season to go, for the moment my biggest regret with the show is that we are never gonna see Captain Angel from S1 comeback, and I think never will (only half season left…). One of finest evil characters ever seen on ST
the outcome of the “invisible ship”
Balance of Terror?
the theory about the Vulcan Cadet was true
Wait, is there a theory she’s a Romulan or something?
One season to go, for the moment my biggest regret with the show is that we are never gonna see Captain Angel from S1 comeback, and I think never will (only half season left…). One of finest evil characters ever seen on ST
I wish so hard for the final season to just be nothing by Sybok. I will be so livid that there is no pay off for this!
This was a really good finale. It was well paced, the stakes for the crew felt strong, and it was a great timey wimey time travel sci fi story.
Regarding the stakes, one of my criticisms of prequels was that, as fans, the future is fixed, but here it felt a lot more tense. Even though we know scotty doesn’t die, I was half expecting one of the Uhuras to have to sacrifice themselves to save the other, which felt a substantial risk, and it really helped sell the episode.
CRG did great acting here, and did justice to “the same character but at different points in their life” - the confidence in future!uhura stood out.
I was very confused about the black hole / white hole’s scale - I was suprised at the final act when they’re basically right up against it, and the holes turn out to be roughly the same size as the enterprise itself. I think it could have been established a little better at the beginning, but that’s a minor annoyance.
The midwife aliens are the same being as DS9 prophets, I guess, they spoke to Uhura in song because they would know she can interpret that, where they knew to speak to bajorans in poetry and scripture.
I liked the little preview of future!enterprise’s looks, especially seeing a few background characters from different species.
Overall, great finale to an okay season. I hope the final season has loads of episodes just like this one.
Yeah, I was super confused when both the drones and Uhura disappeared into that barrier only five feet off of the ship.
It’s only an idea, but I told myself that it possibly only looks like a white and black hole on the outside as some type of self defense mechanism for the baby.
Outside of that minor(hah!) gripe, I loved this episode. Past Uhura helping future Uhura was a neat idea. I found Scotty and Uhura as a couple to be cute, and felt that Scotty’s actor portrayed his attraction to Uhura very sincerely.
I loved the TAS crew members that were present the shuttle bay while they were getting ready for the mission into the black hole.
Pray for Future La’An.
Space baby. Hmmm… Not the jaw-dropping finale that this season needed.
Ha! If only they had that in mind. You’d think that Trek could hire some innovative SF writers rather than produce this junk. You get the impression that most tv (and movie) SF is produced by people who’d prefer to be making angsty teenage relationship shows.
I enjoy SNW, but can’t argue the point. It often feels more like a teen drama than the actual teen drama Star Trek show.
What’s wrong with space baby? If we start to exclude “space baby,” we’re actually excluding a fair number of Trek episodes.
I’ve been trying to think of a word to describe the episode. Clunky seems about right. Of this season only one episode came near to not being cringe (and that was because it tried to recreate the “theme” of an old TOS episode). Production quality is exceptional; narrative just cringe and clunky.
Any good ones? 😂
Trick question - there are no good episodes of Star Trek.
Oh wow. An absolutely amazing end to this excellent season!
Oh and fuck Paramount, we need more Trek.
That was amazing!
Well that was a mess. Good riddance to this season.
