tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12380553.post5911444171545948798..comments2024-03-29T04:57:26.162-04:00Comments on John Kenneth Muir's Reflections on Cult Movies and Classic TV: Star Trek 50th Anniversary Blogging: "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (January 26, 1967)John Kenneth Muirhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15629979615332893780noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12380553.post-84000324435172018442016-05-10T22:22:42.876-04:002016-05-10T22:22:42.876-04:00John,
This episode is a lot of fun and has some me...John,<br />This episode is a lot of fun and has some memorable moments, but over (ahem) time and multiple viewings, it falls apart like John Christopher's plane caught in a tractor beam.<br />Wouldn't Spock just be able to work his Mind Meld magic on Christopher, making him forget the whole thing? And if they beam Christopher back to the exact moment they originally transported him, wouldn't they be beaming him into an aircraft that was falling to pieces at the time they took him? Wasn't that the reason they were forced to transport him to the Enterprise - because his ship was flying apart? Maybe there was some time travel mojo that explains it all, but it isn't very coherent to my primitive 21st Century brain.<br />At least it's appreciated that D.C. Fontana took the effort to show us how the Enterprise gets back to its own era. At the end of "Visit to A Hostile Planet," the Lost In Space variant of "Tomorrow is Yesterday," (should I put a Spoiler Alert here for a 50-year-old show?) we see the Jupiter 2 flying away from Earth, and we have no idea how they returned to their own time, or even if they did (until later episodes tell us they did). Lost In Space wasn't even trying to get the science right. Star Trek was...it was just really dodgy science.<br />It's also amusing that the next time the Enterprise utilizes "the Slingshot effect" to travel backwards in time ("Assignment: Earth"), it's casually mentioned by Kirk in his Captain's Log entry. "We used the slingshot effect, etc. etc., back in time, yadda yadda, we'll just go back the same way." I guess they must have figured out a way around that whole 'Enterprise flying apart' thing, so prominent in this episode.<br />I'd like to offer up another review of "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" which is good for several chuckles, and whose writer also ponders the complexities of beaming two bodies into the same space. Worth a look and a laugh.<br />http://www.chud.com/20715/star-trekkin-day-19-tomorrow-is-yesterday/<br />Thanks again for a great review!<br />SteveAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13101722769411384962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12380553.post-46176221311319697252016-05-10T22:20:34.960-04:002016-05-10T22:20:34.960-04:00I always have enjoyed this episode for what it doe...I always have enjoyed this episode for what it does well and just snicker at what it doesn't do so well. There's real honest-to-God chemistry between Shatner and Roger Perry, and Kirk and Christopher recognize one another as men of like kind separated only by the span of history. And the whole episode is really a what-if scenario that plays into the UFO craze of the 60's and 70's. <br /><br />I think its errors stem from too-many-cooks-handling-the-script syndrome, which appears to be related to production falling behind and forcing the two-part episode idea to be abandoned--there tend to be holdover elements in a frantic rewrite that don't make sense as they might have when the story and drama were intended to go another way. One can imagine the writers/producers watching at home and thinking, "Oh, crap! We forgot to explain that," or "Dang! I thought we dropped that bit of technobabble when we dropped the other bit of technobabble. Now it makes no sense." Christopher's escape attempt seems to be one such item, but then it may have just been an editing error where the scene got misplaced, since his escape attempt would have been sensible at an earlier point in the story. <br /><br />Overall, though, I have to love any episode in which the Enterprise is a UFO, Spock's status as an actual little green man from outer space is underlined for a pilot who doesn't believe in them, and Kirk claims his own status as a little green man from outer space! <br /><br />As an aside, I worked for a Colorado law enforcement agency, and there was an official UFO reporting number we gave out to the public. A colleague and I got curious one time on graveyard shift and called the number. Guess who answered? NORAD!Sherinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12380553.post-58635794744038059082016-05-10T18:22:21.700-04:002016-05-10T18:22:21.700-04:00Oh man, I hate this one.
Oh man, I hate this one.<br />Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03097420555737415471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12380553.post-34557243234125295432016-05-10T17:30:57.563-04:002016-05-10T17:30:57.563-04:00Hello,
It seems to me that the logical flaws in t...Hello,<br /><br />It seems to me that the logical flaws in this episode<br />are not as severe as you precieve them to be.<br /><br />The two men are not replaced by their older versions<br />from the Enterprise at a point in their respective <br />individual timelines prior to their having been taken <br />aboard the starship <br /><br />Rather each man is reinserted into his own timeline at <br />the instant just following his original abducation <br />by the Enterprise's transporter beam; the effect is a <br />virtually seamless continuity of their bodily existence <br />rather than an overlapping of two versions of themselves <br />trying to simultaneously occupy the same space at the <br />same time. <br /><br />The Enterprise backtracks itself back in time just <br />far enough to carry out these two insertions; it does <br />not erase all traces of its original incursion into <br />the past. You may recall that, even after Christopher <br />is returned to his own craft he stil retains his memory <br />of his initial sighting of the Enterprise; the erasure <br />of his memories begins for all the events that occured <br />subsequent to his having been taken aboard the starship <br />because, in this newest iteration of the timeline, <br />"none of it ever happened" <br /><br />I agree with you that this rationale for the purging of <br />the two men's memories of their experiences while aborad <br />the Enerprise is pretty feeble (And inconsistent as well. <br />If the two men from the 20th century lose all memory of <br />events that have been erased from the timeline than so <br />should have the crew of the Enerprise!) <br /><br />I have been enjoying these weekly retrospectives essays<br />of yours on the original Star Trek. I hope my long <br />winded postings are not too unwelcome.Ianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15341194802921963879noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12380553.post-22818721165406356312016-05-10T15:49:28.058-04:002016-05-10T15:49:28.058-04:00John very thorough review of this still enjoyable ...John very thorough review of this still enjoyable TOS episode.<br /><br />SGBSGBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07137406272001346149noreply@blogger.com