SNW 410: Tomorrow's Enterprise

The finale episode for Strange New Worlds' troubled fourth season dropped today, and if we're grading on a curve, it was pretty decent. That said, I was still yelling at the screen and metaphorically tearing my hair out (to do so literally would just be speeding nature along) at the abominably bad science and the misuse of words and the clunky story structure and the hand-waving away of inconsistencies and all the other frustrating stuff common to an episode of SNW in seasons three and four.

There was fun stuff too, and as usual the performances were good. I just wish, again, that this series (a) had bothered with a science adviser and (b) had someone in the writers' room who would call out structural problems and say, "OK, I like what you're going for here, but there's too much surrounding it. We need to bring the focus in some. Also, we don't need this reference or that mention and we can't have this other thing because it's inconsistent with that other thing."

Instead we have Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman running the show for Alex Kurtzman. It's too late to fix anything for next season, it's already in the can, but when the studio's internal politics are settled they need to put new people in charge of Star Trek. Preferably people who know what words mean as well as how allegorical storytelling makes Trek work best.

Let's get into it.

Episode 410: “Tomorrow's Enterprise” | Written by Henry Alonso Myers and Robbie Thompson | Directed by Chris Fisher

★★½

It's not that bad an episode overall. I'd like to give it a better rating, but I have to ding it for the inexcusably bad science. The continual treatment of this show as space-fantasy rather than science-fiction. These past two seasons of SNW—and this fourth year is worse than season three—have dumbed down Star Trek in a way that I just can't accept. At least it isn't a gimmick show like, well, the other nine episodes of the season are to one degree or another.

We open with a voiceover log from newly-promoted Lt. Uhura, who as a communications and language specialist should know better than to describe the cosmological phenomenon the Enterprise is observing as both "unique" and "rare" in the same sentence. Pick one, writers, it can't be both. The phenomenon in question is a "white hole," which Uhura credits Spock with theorizing could be the flip side of a black hole, an exit point for everything that gets sucked into the latter phenomena, even though that hypothesis predates Spock by centuries.

Anyway, she beams back aboard from being at a Starfleet "refresher course," which makes no sense because the ship is, as we said, at a white hole and nowhere close to anywhere one could beam to/from; plus, a bridge officer, even a junior one, wouldn't need a refresher course on Starfleet protocol and could be given updates on new ones just like anyone else on board. It's a dumb excuse for her to beam up, which is there because we need a circumstance for Lt. Scott to awkwardly ask Uhura out on a date. Initially, this seems weird and oogy, but then we remember the weird and oogy flirting she was doing with Scotty in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and here we get some context for that, so I'll allow it. Uhura pretends she doesn't have time to talk and ignores the invitation because she's needed on the bridge because they're at a white hole. Christ.

On the bridge, investigation of the so-called white hole is already underway, with Ortegas edging in a little closer than Pike is comfortable with; Pike gets confirmation from Spock that they're plenty close to get all the data they need, and Ortegas tells Spock he's no fun. Uhura reports receiving a signal of some sort from the phenomenon that she describes as music. On cue, the "white hole" expels some sort of energy that rocks the ship; Uhura gets thrown to the deck and starts ... something. Phasing in and out of reality? We don't know yet. Why just her? Because she bonked her head and no one else did? We don't know and never find out. Meanwhile, the shields and the warp drive are damaged and sensors are impaired. And they're being held in place as if from a tractor beam.

Also, not for nothing, but if they were really testing the hypothesis about white holes being a terminus of sorts for black holes, they would not be surprised by energy coming out of one. In fact, they'd expect it. Ortegas' desire to get them in as close as possible would just put them up close to something they theorize would be blowing out incredible amounts of matter and energy and battering them nonstop until the ship was pulverized. This is beyond stupid.

Anyway, Uhura goes back to puzzling over the music and hears, presumably in her earpiece, Scotty screaming in distress and calling her name. In a mild panic, she calls down to engineering but Scott is fine, just busy trying to fix the engines. What we learn in time is going on is, Uhura has somehow connected with her future self—one year hence (after Pike is promoted and James T. Kirk takes command), the Enterprise is in a nearby region studying a black hole and future-Uhura receives and responds to present-Uhura's attempt to find out what sent the music signal. This connection through the white/black hole is stable enough for the two Uhuras to keep in continual contact, and future-Uhura is convinced that her timeline has been altered—she had been aboard a shuttlecraft with Scott and Ortegas researching the "black hole" that suffered similar damage that present-Enterprise did at the "white hole"; as soon as she beamed back to the ship, the shuttle blew up and Uhura freaked out about Scott and Ortegas being lost with the shuttlecraft, but Captain Kirk is confused because Uhura was alone on the shuttle. Ortegas is off teaching something somewhere and Scott had already died nearly a year prior. Ergo, the timeline had been changed somehow. (Of course, if what they were studying was really a black hole, no amount of Scotty tinkering with the shields would have allowed them to safely enter its event horizon without significant time dilation and would be an insanely reckless level of risk for almost certainly no gain. Since none of that was a factor, this thing is NOT A BLACK HOLE. This does not occur to the finest crew in Starfleet.)

Present-Uhura believes Scotty is in danger, Future-Uhura is desperate to save him, neither knows what's going to happen since Future-Uhura's memory is of the "correct" timeline—she remembers the past year with Scott alive (and casually dating her), and should recall everything present-Uhura is experiencing, but that is conveniently ignored even though addressing it with one line of dialog that serves as more proof of a timeline alteration would have been easy. The two of them investigate from their respective times, under the assumption that the white and black holes have created a quantum entanglement between them and thus is the source of timeline disruption. Present-Uhura consults Spock about white/black holes and time disruptions. Hypothetically. Spock is busy trying to free the ship from the not-a-tractor-beam holding them at the "white hole," but will consider Uhura's request for how to generate the sort of reverse energy pulse she wants in his free time, but it will take months to finalize. That's OK, because Future-Uhura can go to her Spock, who has had a year to consider it.

Future-Uhura consults her Spock, who is likewise attempting to free the ship from its tether to the "black hole." (Hey, Spock—if it's a real black hole, what's tethering the ship to it is called gravity. Since this is something else, you might want to clue into the fact that it is NOT A BLACK HOLE.) Though annoyed that it took Future-Uhura so long to follow up with him, he does have a solution for her; unfortunately, it requires something called a "dilithium diamond" to serve as "an anchor." Dilithium diamonds are rarely found naturally, but they can apparently be synthesized over the course of several months by bombarding a quantity of anti-matter with a steady pressure from anti-protons.

OK, I've already been taken out of the story multiple times because of nonsense surrounding the alleged black hole, and now I'm asked to accept "dilithium diamonds" as a thing AND that thy're made of anti-matter AND that one can handle anti-matter in the open AND that once the anti-matter becomes a "dilithium diamond" it's no longer dangerous. I'm sorry, but this level of bullshit is unacceptable in any story that wants to be taken seriously as science-fiction. First these writers have no idea what a black hole is and still use it as the focal point of their plot, then they just pull inconsistent nonsense Treknology out of their asses. In the established Star Trek canon, dilithium is a mineral element that in crystalized form is an ideal regulator for harnessing/focusing matter-anti-matter reactions. It is naturally occurring as an ore that gets mined from planets/asteroids. It's not anti-matter. If you compress coal with enough force over enough time you get a diamond; if you compress raw dilithium, you get crystalized dilithium. I might, might buy that compressing anti-matter with anti-protons could convert it to matter, even crystalized matter, in a sort of -a × -a = +a sequence, but Uhura is seen handling an eggplant-sized chunk of anti-matter in the open air with tongs. Even if the container she puts it in is a vacuuous magnetic bottle, she's not operating in a vacuum and has touched it with matter—both tongs and air—which would have blown up her lab space if not a large chunk of the ship. This bullshit is in service of providing "an anchor" for an energy pulse. What does that even mean? What do you do with it once you have this thing to "anchor" your energy? What the fuck is it for? Why does this plot point exist?

Future-Uhura transports the "dilitium diamond" into the black hole, and instead of it being crushed into the thinnest of thin paste by the intense gravity that doesn't exist because this is clearly NOT A BLACK HOLE, it just sits patiently in the void awaiting an energy pulse sent into the white hole at the other quantum entanglement point. That never happens, though, because the white hole instead expels another burst of energy that further shakes up the ship but apparently doesn't further damage it. What it does do is swap the Uhuras: Future-Uhura is now in the present with Captain Pike, Present-Uhura is in the future with Captain Kirk. And their line of communication has vanished, so the Uhuras can't talk to each other anymore.

Present-Uhura goes to Future-Uhura's quarters, where she's not impressed with the decor; before long, Captain Kirk walks in. Just walks in. Doesn't buzz, doesn't call ahead, doesn't knock, just walks right in. Rude. Anyway, Kirk knows something is up with Uhura because she's acting weird. And her hair's different and her uniform is different (though no one comments on the uniform). Kirk knows Uhura's lying about all being fine because "if there's one thing I know about Nyota Uhura, it's that no one bluffs better," and this Uhura is really bad at it. Because she hasn't learned bluffing at the feet of the master yet, an event described here by Kirk that was during a forced stay at a starbase when she played poker with Kirk, Ortegas, and Gary Mitchell (first Gary Mitchell mention in SNW) for hours on end until she was able to outbluff everyone at the table.

Present-Uhura brings Kirk up to speed, and we switch perspectives to Future-Uhura in the present, who bumps into Scotty in the corridor and gives him a bear hug he isn't expecting. Once Scotty recovers from the hug, he asks her to take a look at something from his scans of the white hole. It's an echo or something, a sound wave, but incomplete, "like half a note." She has a bit of an epiphany at this, hugs Scott again, and goes to her quarters, where, in parallel with Present-Uhura, she's visited by Pike (who, unlike Kirk, does wait to be let in). Pike had witnessed her hugging Scotty, which was another clue that this was a different Uhura. "I know a thing or two about time travel," he says. Future-Uhura explains everything to Pike, including the supposition that the other half of the transmission Scott found is in the future with Present-Uhura.

Cutting back to present-Uhura in the future, she's in sickbay with Kirk and Chapel. She wants to know what happened to Scotty in this altered timeline and Chapel explains he was killed in an accident relating to the incident with the white hole, and during the explanation Uhura clues in on what she needs to complete the transmission Future-Uhura has only half of. She puts it all together and determines it's a message from an intelligence inside the black/white hole (further making me nuts that we're calling it a black hole). They figure out that the intelligence is midwiving a birth of ... something. The damaging energy bursts are like birthing contractions and the crew(s) needs to assist in delivering the "space baby" in order to solve the problems facing both iterations of the Enterprise.

Their solution, naturally, is for Uhura (both of them) to go outside in an EVA using drones—powered by ground up dilithium diamond, because sure, that makes no sense—to physically act as, what, obstetricians? Uhura uses the drones, which are haptically linked to her EVA suit gloves to enter the black hole—which has a membrane sort of physical boundary, and thus IS NOT A BLACK HOLE—to adjust the "space baby's" position, but of course it fails, so she/they, of course, launches herself/themselves into the black/white holes AND DON'T DIE A GRUESOME DEATH BY SPAGHETTIFICATION, SO IT'S NOT A BLACK HOLE. Regardless, the two Uhuras meet in the void and were apparently successful in birthing the space baby? Somehow? By just being there? Soon the two Uhuras find themselves on what appears to be an empty Enterprise bridge, but it's just a mindspace for the alien intelligence to talk to them in. The alien describes itself as being a nonlinear form that lives outside of time, very much like the Bajoran prophets in Deep Space Nine—in fact, I think we're supposed to believe that this intelligence is related to, if not a representative of, those beings that will be discovered living in the Bajoran wormhole a hundred years hence, or maybe that the "space baby" is the original Prophet-as-they'll-come-to-be-known. The Uhuras are praised for their assistance and surprising nature and then everything reverses ala Superman spinning the world backward, putting each Uhura back in her own place in time with full memory of the experience.

We see Future-Uhura beam off the shuttlecraft again, this time with Ortegas and Scott right behind her. Uhura plants a big smooch on Scotty to the bemusement of all present, then we get a wrapup voiceover form Uhura that could be from either time that talks of her lessons learned about living in the moment and her attachment to her fellow Enterprise crewmembers. The voiceover plays over scenes from both times, one of Pike hosting a Captain's Dinner with senior staff, the other of a poker game with Kirk and others from his time, including Uhura. The end.

This series has been in dire need of a science adviser for ages, but this ep took the cake bad-science-wise. Jesus, people, crack a book. Or just look up Neil DeGrasse Tyson—big Trek fan that he is, I bet he'd be more than happy to tell you how this script's use of black holes (and white holes) is off-the-charts insane. (He might also tell you that his sideburns are more accurate Starfleet points than Anson Mount's are, but we'll chalk that up to a style choice by Captain Pike.) This is not an insurmountable issue! Just revise your story so that either:

1. The crew initially thinks they've encountered a white/black hole, but as events transpire they soon realize that the phenomena don't have the proper characteristics and are therefore something else, something new and fascinating to study;
2. The alien intelligence and "space baby" are so alien that they exist at some sort of threshold point between the black and white holes, assuming the white hole is really the "back side" of a black hole, where the gravitational force is canceled out. Or something.

Option 1 is easier and far more fitting if the intent was indeed to make this alien intelligence akin to the Bajoran prophets.

It is fun to see the contrasting Uhuras, the future version being more confident and comfortable in her shoes (and apparently way better at poker), and the hair/makeup/costuming was outstanding in making Celia Rose Gooding look like she could be the same character as the one Nichelle Nichols played. The learning-maturity-from-my-future-self thing is a little trite, but they pull it off OK.

What isn't pulled off OK is the altered timeline thread. Near the end of the show we see Scotty get killed in the present, due to the ship being struck and shook by another "contraction" energy pulse, and we see that undone when everything rewinds, but there's no satisfying payoff to it. I can only assume that the Scotty dies plot element was added in to give the Uhuras personal stakes in the bigger story as it didn't have anything to do with the quantum entanglement of the not-a-black-hole and its past counterpart white hole or the course of action Pike takes or anything else. They needed a motivation for Uhura to press on and not think she's just concussed and hallucinating, I suppose, but then it isn't tied into anything else.

Swapping present and future Uhuras worked pretty well, having each interact with the other's crewmates, and I don't mind that as a twist. We get no rationale for why Future-Uhura remembers her "correct" timeline, but that's minor. All the stuff between the two using the months between them to get Spock's complicated equations and to grow the dumb macguffin was an interesting device, but in service of stuff that struck me as extraneous. And did we need two stages of it? There were a lot of threads here to weave, probably too many. Or maybe it just felt that way to me because nothing made any sense and adding unexploding anti-matter and "dilithium diamonds" with no dilithium in them to the mix further frayed things in a way that wouldn't bother someone blissfully ignorant of what black holes are or how Treknology works.

Also, it seems unlikely that all the change from present-Enterprise to future-Enterprise happens in a single year. That's a lot of personnel change, aesthetic change, even personality changing for a short span of time. Kirk, Spock, and Scott all get promoted not one, but two grades in that span, too. I have to wonder if the fact that this was put into production after they knew they were being canceled resulted in altering it from a two- or three-year difference to just one.

Stray chronitons:

• The scenes on future-Enterprise include some background characters out of the 1970s animated Star Trek—or rather, two specific characters (the Catian officer Lt. M'Ress and the Aurelian Aleek-Om) and one alien of an unnamed reptilian species like this guy.

  

• Doctor Boyce is the CMO on future-Enterprise, though McCoy gets a namedrop, so he's there too as a subordinate? I presume this is why they reintroduced Boyce a few episodes ago, but I wonder if this was a mistake made by writers/showrunners who clearly don't know Trek as well as they think they do. Did they mistake Philip Boyce of "The Cage" for Mark Piper of "Where No Man Has Gone Before"? Was the intent to use Piper as the interim doc between M'Benga and McCoy like we would have expected, but they got confused and used the wrong character? Instead we get more confusion.
• Speaking of McCoy, Future-Uhura refers to him as "Bones," which is a nickname heretofore only used by Jim Kirk (and Spock once when he was speculating on what Kirk would say). It's not cool to have someone else—who presumably barely knows him—use the nickname.
• Kirk references Gary Mitchell, and in an attempt to get Present-Uhura to recognize the name elaborates that Gary is the stepbrother of Jenna Mitchell, who was among the Enterprise navigators in the first few seasons of SNW. Was that really necessary? Mitchell is a common enough name. What, did the step-siblings come up in the Academy together as competing navigators? This is another "what a small fleet!" coincidence thing that didn't need to be there. I suppose Asian-featured transporter chief Kyle in SNW season one is also stepbrother to British transporter chief Kyle from the original? That said, I still think it would be smoother for all if Joseph M'Benga isn't the same guy as the Dr. M'Benga that works under McCoy; if they were brothers instead of the same person I'd buy it.
• In the poker game scene at the end (on future-Enterprise), Spock is among those playing. He is also referenced earlier as having played in prior poker games. This doesn't track. The future-Uhura and her crew are from a time that clearly precedes the original series—Kirk's been in command for only a few months, Boyce is there, etc.—and in the first non-pilot episode of the original, Spock is unfamiliar with poker; Kirk asks Spock, "do you know the game?" which he would obviously not do if he'd played several games of poker with him. McCoy even quips that he'd "love to teach it to you," knowing Spock would be bad at it.
• After Chapel learns of the time-traveling Uhuras, she has a fun line about how she once dated someone who claimed to work for the Department of Temporal Investigations, an agency we first learned about in Deep Space Nine. Of her former paramour, Chapel says, "She was kind of nuts. Really nice arms, though."
• Present-Uhura mentions La'an to future-Kirk, who silently reacts in such a way that suggests, at least in his timeline (which is not the correct one, but only because Scott died? Surely that would have ramifications), that Something Bad happens to La'an in the intervening months.
• Future-Uhura calls Captain Pike "Admiral," leading us to believe that in a year's time he gets promoted at least two steps, but we know from "The Menagerie" that Pike remains a captain even when in his paralyzed wheelchair days. At least, that's how he's referred to and what people call him.
• Nice job in giving Jess Bush a wig for future-Chapel reminiscent of the one Majel Barrett wore in "The Naked Time," with hair piled atop her head. It's wacky, but fits Majel's look.

It's a far, far better season finale than we got last year. However, in a recurring theme over these past two seasons of SNW, I'd be really interested to see the finished version of this early draft script. It could have been great.