Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 10
"Tomorrow's Enterprise"
Writers: Henry Alonso Myers & Robbie Thompson
Director: Chris Fisher
Cast: Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, Martin Quinn, Rebecca Romijn
Strange New Worlds wraps its penultimate season this week with “Tomorrow’s Enterprise,” a touching time travel tale that puts the spotlight on Nyota Uhura and the woman she will one day become.
Returning from a protocols refresher course, Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) joins her shipmates on the bridge to study a mysterious white hole. On the other side of the anomaly, and one year into the future, a second Enterprise — this one under the command of newly minted Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) — takes readings from inside a black hole. When a rift unexpectedly opens between the two points thanks to an unknown cosmic critter, Uhura is suddenly intertwined with her future self, racing across and against time to save Scotty (Martin Quinn) from certain death.
Well, that’s all you’re getting from me plot-wise. However, I will say that “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” caps off this latest season of Strange New Worlds in spectacular fashion. After nine weeks of genre-jumping — which I actually didn’t mind — director Chris Fisher, whose last foray into the final frontier was the excellent “Valles Marineris” back in August, brings everything back to form with an episode that’s unmistakably Star Trek. There are no dinosaurs, puppets, or fire-breathing dragons. Instead, we get an hour of superlative sci-fi that does a bang up job reminding its viewers to never take a single day for granted. There’s no mistaking this episode for anything other than Star Trek, and it’s refreshing, perhaps even a little bit comforting, to say the least.
The finale’s affection for Star Trek: The Original Series is also evident in the details, none more so than Uhura herself. Celia Rose Gooding’s future Uhura exhibits considerable growth, while also being given the unmistakable beehive hairstyle and updated uniform made famous by the late, great Nichelle Nichols, and the effect is genuinely moving. This is more than simple fan service; it’s a heartfelt acknowledgement of the woman who turned this character into an icon in the first place.
However, these touches aren’t limited to Uhura herself. The costumes and hairstyles throughout the episode feel increasingly faithful to the look of those original adventures, while a handful of surprise name-drops are sure to elicit knowing smiles from longtime fans. Even the Enterprise herself seems to be gradually evolving into the ship we remember from the original series, with familiar details and design elements creeping ever closer to its classic counterpart.
None of this feels forced. Instead, these little touches work together to create the sense that we’re watching a bridge between two eras of Star Trek — one that understands exactly where it’s come from and ultimately where it’s headed. I know there are a lot of fans out there (myself included) eager for a Year One spinoff to close the gap more completely, but should that series never see the light of day, I suppose this is a decent enough alternative, all things considered.
Perhaps most impressive of all is the way “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” manages to put an invigorating and genuinely unique spin on the well-worn concept of time travel. Rather than simply using the temporal anomaly as a means of moving its characters from one point in history to another, the episode has both Uhuras working across time to help one another, with their efforts ultimately focused on saving Scotty. It’s an inventive approach that gives the story an emotional throughline while allowing the past and future to actively influence one another. That’s no small feat when you consider just how many time travel stories Star Trek has churned out over the past 60 years — and yet, this episode finds a way to make it all feel fresh again.
In short, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” is the sort of episode fans have been hoping to see this season. Not only does it trade in the familiar genre-of-the-week format for a proper Star Trek story, it also does a fantastic job of paying respect to that which has come before, while also putting a fresh spin on an established concept that’s become a little long in the tooth after six decades.
Whether we’ll see more of this heading into the final season remains to be seen, but for now, I can honestly say (put the phasers down) I’ve come away from the Enterprise’s latest voyage wholly satisfied — and yet hungry for more. Beam me up, because 2027 can’t get here fast enough!
