Star Trek: The Original Series - "Tomorrow is Yesterday" Full Reaction!
Added 2023-12-04 18:00:05 +0000 UTCWatch along with your own copy of the episode by syncing up with me!
Comments
Though StarFleet uses Naval rank names, the rank insignia on the sleeves of their uniforms are not equivalent with today's navy. Currently, a Naval Captain has 4 solid rings on the sleeve, but Kirk has two solid and one thin ring. That's actually the rank of a Lieutenant Commander, which is what Spock is supposed to be. Spock has two solid rings which is a Lieutenant. Captain Christoper has one thin ring which would be a Naval Ensign (The lowest Naval Officer rank). BTW, the uniform of an Ensign is far more common than any other rank so maybe that's why they gave it to him to wear. The rank of a Navy Lieutenant and an Air Force, Army, and Marine Captain are the same. A Naval Captain is the same as a Colonel in the services listed above and both are 3 grades higher than a Captain in those services. If you think that's confusing, look up the non-officer ranks commonly known as the enlisted ranks.
SitkaWest
2024-04-14 20:46:49 +0000 UTCThis episode had me from the moment a F-104 did a ground effect landing gear retraction followed by a 4g pullup takeoff and climb out.
Mike_G
2023-12-23 02:50:05 +0000 UTCAfter the mess of "The Alternative Factor," this is a welcome return to form. The dialogue is sharp, the characterizations are on point, and the story is both fun and tense at times. The only wonky part is beaming back the two Air Force personnel in a manner that won't allow them to change the future. It never has made sense to me, either, but sometimes you gotta suspend disbelief a little more than usual. Love seeing you vibe to the opening theme, Bunny, especially in your Starfleet uniform! Great reaction.
Lee
2023-12-05 04:44:22 +0000 UTCPutting Christopher and the Guard back where they were so it looked like they never left works out, but frankly they should still have all their memories. There would be two Enterprises too. I love this episode though. I love when Star Trek goes time traveling to the present day because shenanigans inevitably ensue and commentary on the present day is made.
SuicuneSol
2023-12-04 22:50:59 +0000 UTCI think he may also have been alluding to UFO sightings in general (implying that maybe other UFOs were accidental Starfleet time travelers too).
Derek H.
2023-12-04 21:59:33 +0000 UTCI've always liked this episode, but I like it MORE now as an adult then when I first saw it as a kid in the 1980's. It's one of those episodes that I think grows on you. It's always fun to have a show set in a different time period do an episode where they are at 'present day Earth' -- present day for Star Trek being the late 1960's. They also did a great job with the 'accuracy' of the time period since that was all 'current' when the episode was made. The fighter jet that Christopher was flying was a F-104C Starfighter -- NOT one of our best craft, sadly. It had a horrible safety record and didn't stay in service with the USAF for long. Hence the popular nickname of 'Widowmaker'. It looks primitive by today's standards, but was a powerful craft for it's time. Spock was wrong when he guessed it might have nuclear missiles though -- it never carried those. The Enterprise had already done time travel, as shown in a previous episode, but the 'Slingshot Maneuver' that the Enterprise accidently fell into, and then used on purpose later on, was used several times more in later shows and movies. If Christopher wasn't going to have a son who had such a historical role to play, the Enterprise would have forced him to return to their time with him. I tend to agree with McCoy that he COULD be re-trained. At the least, they would have cared for him and done what they could to allow him to have a quiet life. But this pre-dates the idea of the Back to the Future movies which also revolved around that same idea of 'making sure things happen in order to get the future correct' -- and again, we will see this idea later on. I always love it when shows/movies tackle this thorny issue. Regarding the transporting of the two men -- I always took it to mean they 'swapped' the bodies -- they beamed up the person and then swapped it out with the 'other' person at the same exact second, so that the person wouldn't even know anything had happened. If this would actually work....well, that's open to argument. :) Curiously enough, the actor who played Captain Christopher, Roger Perry, actually HAD served as an intelligence officer in the United States Air Force during the early 1950's Finally, this was the first Star Trek episode be written solely by a woman -- D.C. Fontana had worked on the script for Charlie X but not all of it and she wasn't given credit for it.
Greg Polander
2023-12-04 20:20:03 +0000 UTC"You seem to have a lot of them" (accidents) I think Capt. Christopher was referring to the tractor beam that caused his plane to break up, in addition to the accident that Kirk mentioned that threw them back in time.
Preaching to the Horse's Mouth
2023-12-04 19:58:03 +0000 UTCOne nice little touch in this episode... When Captain Christopher is given a Starfleet uniform, his sleeve insignia is one solid braid, which is lieutenant rank. One might assume he should have had either a crewman's jumpsuit with no rank insignia (because he's not in Starfleet) or two solid braids and a dashed braid (captain rank). But Starfleet uses ranks based on naval ranks, and Capt. Christopher is in the Air Force. From federalpay-dot-org: "A captain in the U.S. Air Force is ... the third lowest officer rank and is equivalent to the rank of lieutenant in the Navy and Coast Guard." So giving Capt. Christopher a lieutenant's uniform wasn't an oversight... it would be the correct equivalent of his USAF rank. 😀
Derek H.
2023-12-04 19:02:54 +0000 UTC
