Tomorrow is Yesterday (Star Trek TOS - S1E20)

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What happens when the Enterprise accidentally slingshots itself straight into 1960s Earth… and suddenly we’re the aliens?

This week we dive into “Tomorrow Is Yesterday”, where Captain Kirk and crew become the very thing conspiracy theorists warned us about: mysterious lights in the sky, disappearing pilots, and even little green men!

If you’ve ever looked at a grainy UFO photo and thought, “That might be the Enterprise...”, then this episode is for you!

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Transcript

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[Music] Hey, Lin Freakensys open and welcome aboard tracks and tangents. I'm your co-host, Brian. And I'm your co-host, Jackie. I'm the Star Trek movie with tracks that come to an end. And I'm your Star Trek expert who is here to get the tangents back on track. Each episode we watch and talk about a different Star Trek episode. And this week we watched... Star Trek, the original series, season one, Episode 19, tomorrow is yesterday. And with that, we are one episode shy of being a third of the way through season one of the original series. That's super exciting. I never thought I'd even get this far to be honest. Yeah. I think we covered it way back 12 episodes ago when we talked about statistically most podcast stop, after eight episodes, they just fizzle out. So we're still going. We're still here. Energy drinks are our friend. It's like living Groundhogs Day every day. But thank you all for your continued support and listening into our podcast. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you everyone for liking, sharing, commenting. Don't forget, if you're listening to this episode, the day it comes out on the 24th of February, this Friday, the 27th, we have another episode dropping on our Patreon for our crew members of the animated detours where we dive into the animated series for Star Trek. So go check that out. That's to be fun. Put it up with the housekeeping. Let's jump into this week's episode. We'll start with our revisit to last week's TurboLift T's. That's where we gave Jackie the title of this week's episode and Jackie without any other information tried to give her prediction or guess to the plot of this week's episode. We can skip it this time. A little foreshadowing for us all. Computer. What was Jackie's prediction last week? Jackie was excited to give her prediction last week, which was, I think the crew will visit a new planet. But I am going to imagine Dr. McCoy is going to touch something or pick something up, you know, be curious. And that will have a twist on reality where he is going to keep reliving his existence until they figure out how to cure it. So Jackie, how do you think you did with your prediction for this week? Big bomb. I mean, I think you understood the time travel aspect that the title was coloring itself up to. I was trying to think outside the box because these titles are weird, but I failed. But yeah, McCoy has a relatively minor role in this episode, so he's not the central focus point. But he's my favorite after my girl, Dan. What did you think about this week's episode? What were your initial thoughts? I actually really liked it. I was surprised. But I think I liked it more because the music added so much to it, kind of like emotion and intrigue. And it, because it's basically a very small story, so they had to make it go for a whole hour. Sure. But my musician, so I'm always going to pick out the, you know, the plunger mute trumpet when they look at it pretty girl and stuff. Right. There's a lot of background melody to punctuate moments of the episode. This is an episode that really closely in my mind resembles the tone of shore leave. Yes, where there's drama and there's tension, but it's punctuated a lot with internal jokes, comedic side relief bits. And he even broke the wall. You told me about the wall, but breaking the fourth wall. Yeah, Kirk looks at us. I think he comes close to breaking the fourth wall in a couple of points. He doesn't actually do it. Oh, I thought we were actually making it connect. So I like this episode. I think first and foremost that any episode that involves time travel, it's my second favorite type of plot to star track. My favorite plot episodes would be the ones that relate to the mirror universe that will get to eventually time travel is a lot of fun in star track on how they handle it. Plus when you have this type of an episode with its tone where they're not taking themselves super seriously where they have very punctuated comedic relief moments, as long as they're not too overbearing to the overall plot episode, as long as they're just sprinkled in as I think this episode does a good balance of doing. I think it's a really strong episode. Agreed. So with all that aside, Jackie, why don't you walk us through this week's episode? All righty. The opening of this episode, I believe is like a real Air Force base. At least it looks real to me. It definitely looks like they got some B-roll footage of actual jet fighter planes, a military base. And so it does add to that authenticity of what we're looking at. It instantly tells us that we're not going to see a normal episode that we've seen in the past. This is going to be something quite different. Right. So I was like, well, are we on Earth? There is there like another planet like Earth that we're going to encounter. And then we're taking inside the Air Force base, like at the command station and the navigator. His name is Webb. He sees like a blip pop onto his screen. And so he y'all first captain and says, look what I see. And I don't know where it came from. So the captain has all those fighter jets we were just talking about. Go back up in the air and see what's up. What is this blip? And we actually get to see imagine top gun. We see that, but from 1960 as we learn. Yes, instead of the danger zone, we get the triple zone. Oh, I like that. Yeah, we'll have to write the song for it. Trouble zone. Okay, we won't sing it. We'll just write it. So we have Captain Christopher going out to figure out what this is. And he's on it. He's launched his jet and he's flown up to try to intercept whatever this blip is. Yes, because right now they think they're seeing a real life UFO. And then who opening credit. Right. We get a great shot, I think of the enterprise as seen flying through the Earth sky. It's really cool. Yeah. And we get to see the opening credits. And since we're 19 episodes in and Jackie swears that she watches the opening credits every time for the music. Yes. Can you recite the monologue that Captain Kurt gives at the opening credits? He says that they're on a five year board. No, no, no, word for word, quote it. I don't know. He just talks about we're on a five year vote mission that you look out for all the. Five years searching for things for five years. The space travels version of Gilligan's Island in the three hour tour. There's five years, but yet it's like we have a million light years. So I think they just like to pick numbers out of the world. Well, light year would be a disc would be a measurement of distance. Five years would be a measurement of actual time. And so using the word years is like deer and deer, they, they, and they're. Yeah. We need to have a chat. We need to have a chat with. I don't even know who we would at this point. Einstein who named all those measurements, physicists, scientists, Spock. We will sit down with Leonard Nimoy. Not really. That'd be really fun though. But we get our opening credits and we come back from our commercial break. Yes. And for some reason, they are all picking themselves up from the ground on the, on the bridge because they've been. Like, rustled around. We get that explanation in the captain's log as we come back from the opening credits. Kirk fills it in that the enterprise went on a routine resupply mission, which would be coming back out from the depths of space back toward Earth and colonized space. They got caught up in what I believe Kirk says is a dark matter star gets caught up in the gravitational pull of that space phenomena. And they threw the enterprise into full reverse, put all their power into reversing the engines to not get pulled into it. They broke free, but very much like the effect of a rubber band snapping the enterprise snapped backwards and accelerated very, very fast or accelerated away from the star. Very, very fast and that is where they, that is all they know at this point that they are just recovering from the sudden acceleration, which made them fall out of their seats. Yeah, everyone's a bit bumped up. I mean, this cast is really good at acting like they've been in like a earthquake. They're really good at that. But we find out that everything is okay, except those warp engines, they need some work that's but Scott is on top of it. The enterprise is now in its own orbit around the earth. Kirk asked for the viewing screen to be turned on and he can see Earth like as if we would through a normal airplane, all that opened land and beauty. Right, they're seeing what this obviously clues everyone to the fact that they are way too low besides the fact that they're visible to jet planes as we'll find out in a moment. They're probably partially visible from the ground. So they have to obtain a higher orbit, not only to achieve a stable orbit, but also so that they are not quite as visible to everyone on Earth. And also during this time, Yohara is trying to contact Starfleet to report what has happened, but she's unable to connect. On the other hand, though, she is receiving a message. She's picking up a different transmission signal. So we decided to listen to that one and it's like we're listening to a morning news report from Earth itself. Specifically a news report of the upcoming first manned mission or first moon mission from humankind to the moon, which everyone on the enterprise surmises puts them in according to them ancient Earth history of the 1960s, which would be modern time for when this aired. There in a time warp, so now we get to do the dance. No, we're not doing the dance. For the one fan that keeps track, this is our one reference to Rocky Horror for the episode. And then we also hear air transmissions that spark verifies is coming from underneath cloud cover, like from an airplane. And it's actually a fire jet. That's where we meet Captain Christopher, who is his name is call name is Blue J4. And ground control is called blackjack, just so you know when they're doing their call signs. I think top gun had cooler call signs. Yes, goose maverick. So they believe this is an UFO and they be they being the Air Force. Yes, and it needs to come down because hello, the people of earth are going to freak out and Kirk is telling Sue that we don't gain altitude. We got to get out of here, but again, enterprise she's sluggish. She's not going anywhere. And the been on the ground, the blackjack, they keep encouraging Blue J to get closer and closer so that he's able to tell them what he's seen. And then he's also told that two more jets are on their way to assist him, but it'll be two minutes for him to wait. And our captain Christopher says it's going to be way too late. That UFO is moving fast on the enterprise. The crew can hear that the humans on earth are trying to bring the enterprise down because Spock has figured out that this aircraft is heavily armed and he calls it an intercept door with missiles. So he doesn't know what exactly he can do to the enterprise. I assume Spock is getting all of this technical data from the ship's computer, but he's also concerned based on that information he's getting that the jet fighter could be armed with nuclear weapons. I think Spock is concerned the enterprise still has some of its systems down from the Jolt and the time travel and it's still bringing its systems back online. They don't have a lot of ability for evasive maneuvers to dodge missiles at this point. They certainly don't have traditional defense mechanisms against missiles, a giant ship that's supposed to operate in space, not in the atmosphere of a planet. So Spock is concerned that this one little jet fighter can do some pretty significant damage to the enterprise that they won't be able to fix in a timely manner. Kirk asked Scotty to activate the tractor beam onto the jet to hold it in place so the enterprise can finish its escape. Spock doesn't think that the jet will be able to withstand the tractor beams intensity. It could begin to break apart. The jet in fact does start to break apart and Kirk has to make the decision to beam the pilot aboard the enterprise in order to save his life. I just want to point out as Kirk makes the order and the pilot is beamed out of his jet onto the enterprise. Everyone gets beamed in the position in which they are when that tractor beam initializes. So if you're laying down you get beamed on board laying down. If you're running you are beamed mid stride in that run. So technically the pilot when he's beamed on board should be in a somewhat sitting position like he would be in the jet. So when he fully materializes on the enterprise in the transport room, he would still be in the sitting position but no longer have a chair to sit in so he would fall on his butt. Which would have been pretty comical. I think that would have fit the episode quite well. Instead he beams on board fully standing upright and he is facing the back wall so we do get to have him turn around to take in the entire transport room. I think it's a missed opportunity for a comedic moment. Well that explains my question later on in the episode. We'll see that coming up here. Yeah that makes so much sense. So as you just said he is beamed onto the enterprise and he has his helmet everything on and Kirk welcomes him down to the transport room. And the pilot is super days and confused. He all he does is say his name and he started rattling off serial numbers. Yeah but important to point out he is not scared, he is not fearful, he is just confused. It was a good way to put it. And cautious. Definitely also very cautious to his surroundings. Which makes sense. Well I mean yeah he is kind of like he was captured so he doesn't want to seem weak or you know he doesn't know what happened. Yeah and when he turns around he notices everybody looking at him as a human and when Kirk says you know hi. Well you speak English so like they I think it kind of relaxes a little bit. And so we know that his name now is Captain John Christopher and Kirk keeps telling him to relax. He is okay. Come on down off the platform. You are among friends. I thought that helped them calm down also. You are okay. Yeah Kirk is very much in a soothing force and I think how Captain Kirk handles himself in these first few minutes. Definitely keep John, Captain John from panicking too much. But Kirk is also very cautious into the information that he gives out. Captain John wants a lot of answers. He wants them immediately. Kirk very much is soothing and reassuring but deflective and specifically says we will tell you what we choose to tell you when we choose to tell you. Kirk also apologizes for destroying the jet. So Kirk has Captain Christopher or we call him Captain John? We want to call him Space Man. Let's have Space Man follow him through the halt. Come with me to the bridge. Let's just give you like a small tour. And as they're going through the hallway a young woman walks by and says hello and there's that music change with that trumpet. It's like a birdlet? How was it like Jackie? Oh, that's a cupped trumpet. It's a pretty lady. You can play music but you can't imitate it. I will describe it as my notes have it as burlesque jazz. Okay. You don't agree. But you get the point like he's not used to seeing women in a working role. Yeah. So the woman in question is a crew member. She is in full uniform. We'll point that out. And he does say she's a crew member. She's not just a lady. Correct. But Captain John's first response was literally and I quote, "A woman?" He's never seen one before. So for perspective he's a fighter pilot that is seen with his own eyes UFO. He's been transported onto this UFO greeted by people he has no idea who they are surrounded by technology that is fascinating and beyond his comprehension. This is the moment that he actually shows the most amount of surprise, shock, emotion is in reaction to seeing a woman. Awkward. So they continue down the hallway and they walk onto the turbulence so that they can go to the bridge. And as they're chatting about the enterprise we learn that there are only 12 ships like this. Yeah. There's a later on in Star Trek history through interviews and books. It's been documented that there are 14 ships that are quote unquote like the enterprise. I in my head can't in like to some people like to explain off the comment from Kirk is he's trying to throw off Captain John because he doesn't fully trust Captain John. I think if you pull the technical manuals and look at the specific 14 ships that are referenced two of them are not quite in the same caliber in class as the enterprise. So I think Kirk's number is accurate but that's just that's my own personal belief. That's my own head cannon. That's part of why I like to be a Star Trek fan is to invent these reasons and facts to tie everything together through the inconsistencies. But it is of note we had the entire walk through the hallway and we have this entire conversation in the turbo lift. But when earlier Kirk ordered Captain John transported or being aboard the enterprise he makes the order from the bridge and then immediately comes down and the next scene that we get is instantaneous walking into the transport room as Captain John is materializing. It's an example of where did the extra time go what shortcut did Kirk find to get down to the transport room that they decided not to take to get back to the bridge. There's a slide. There's a slide. Yeah, like a playground. You remember know when you need it. I'm having less trouble imagining a giant red plastic slide in the inside of the enterprise to get from deck to deck. And I'm a little disturbed at how easy it is for me to picture that like shoots and ladders that be fun. Anyway, okay, sorry they're on the there so they're on the lift and Captain Christopher John he's like trying to get more information thinking that also you're part of the Navy and you're just secret. But Kirk has is like no we are United Earth space probe agency. Right, this is again one of the names that is tossed out. We are still at the point in the Star Trek episodes where star fleet is not a common name but for all intensive purposes. This is star fleet. Got it and again he basically says it's difficult to explain but we're from the future. But it is. It's a walking off of the lift onto the bridge. Captain John mentioned that you know he doesn't believe in little green men and in front of him is Spock and your her and Spock says I agree. And we get a moment where Captain John is reacting to scene Spock if it's not super obvious from the camera cuts he's noticing Spock's pointy ears to identify him as an alien. So we're getting this reaction. This is the first alien that Captain John is seen again would like to point out not as surprised as when he saw a woman crew member 30 seconds ago. Exactly but Kirk says go ahead and look around just don't touch anything you might find stuff interesting and he replies interesting and a half would be a better word. And then Spock does report though that they finally achieved an orbit outside of the Earth's atmosphere so they shouldn't be confused as a UFO by anybody else. Spock takes Kirk aside and tells him we can't let him go back to Earth. I mean he he knows too much the information that he has could in fact affect the future and our what we're doing. It's very much back to the future. It's the crux of every time travel episode that we're going to see someone from the future goes back in time negatively impacts or makes a change to the past which ripples forward into the future. Now the future changes which means their present is messed up follow along or watch 50 Marvel movies recently and reluctantly Kirk agrees. He tells Spock to take captain john to go get something more comfortable with the quarter master because that flight suit looks super uncomfortable and then come back to my quarters and we'll chat some more so we're in the quarters and captain john is wearing that gold outfit. Mike so because he's a good because he's also captain yes a spot and captain john enter Kirk's quarters and spot has given captain john command yellow starfleet uniform to wear including the delta insignia talk about that for a second it's an interesting choice. And I don't know if it's just the fact that the costume department didn't have anything else to put him in I doubt it so why would Spock choose to give him a uniform that he hasn't earned especially because we're about to have a conversation about how ineffective he would integrate into their society if the enterprise can make it back to the future. And not put him in some kind of non service civilian clothing yeah like even the FBI has like a hoodie and stuff so was it a sign of respect because he is a military person off camera when Spock is giving him the uniform does he tell him this is kind of the equivalent of the uniform you would wear if you were a crew member if we have to take you into the future. And you decide you want to try to be a part of starfleet we're giving this to you as a way to keep you calm to keep you distracted to absorb the blow of the news they're about to deliver him that you're not going to go home not really sure it's an interesting choice. Well another interesting thing we learn though is that when Kirk turns on his computer to record it has a lovely sultry lady voice and calls him dear at the end of everything it is still a major barit giving the recording but you're right it is no longer the flat emotionless computer voice it is very much a sultries a good way to put it flirty. She's a computer dear she keeps the computer keeps calling Kirk dear even when he tells her to tells it to stop talking to me like that okay but I guess they got the computers updated or something on sign a 14 and that planet has to happens to be ruled by women so they thought they'd upgrade her voice too I guess. The way they word it is they decided since it's a woman dominated society on that outpost that service the computer they decided to give the computer a woman's personality which means a woman's personality is just sultry and flirty it's a weird thing to add to the episode it doesn't really add anything to the overall plot my thought to because it was spot that made that it even giggles comment it was really weird. It is kind of weird it does give a bit of comic relief so we'll assume that that's what's purpose it serves but it doesn't do anything else. Maybe also because we it takes three weeks for it to be able to get removed so maybe that's why they want to throw that in there to just look at all this time we have I don't know captain John jokes that they have interesting problems then Kirk gets down to business saying you can go back to earth you know too much and if you do go you have a chance of changing all of the future of what will happen and so by not going back everything will just be kosher and captain John fights back like what about my family they'll miss me and then spot comes back with well I did some calculations and your name doesn't pop up about anything significant. So it'll just be a little while they miss you but the paradox the time travel if John was to make a significant contribution to history originally and he's been removed that significant contribution would not appear in the enterprises data banks so does he make a significant contribution and the enterprise and Kirk and Spock are existing in an alternate time long time. So is this always supposed to happen maybe he was supposed to make a contribution that would negatively affect the timeline and so the correct thing to do is he was supposed to be pulled out of time lots of time paradoxes when it comes to these time travel episodes. This is like a build your own mystery book Jackie's referring to the choose your own adventure. Yes that's what yes choose your own adventure. No I think we're going to write a build your own adventure sci-fi book series that's a knock off to this. So we take a commercial break and then we come back where Spock contacts Kirk in his quarters saying he has new information regarding captain John and if he can make it all go back to the conference room so Kirk tries to contact captain John and no reply he's not answering thing Kirk has security try to find him he is probably trying to escape. We pop into the hallway and see that yes captain John is trying to escape he ambushes the security officer and takes his phaser then goes into the transport room to try to have that remember transport him back to earth but Kirk knocks him out before he has a chance to do anything and then we end up in sick Bay. Captain John is in a nice hospital bed McCoy confirms that he's quite healthy you know except for some bruises and then McCoy takes Kirk aside and asks what are your plans with him if he can't go back to earth you can't just stay here is he going to relearn a trade can he learn to forget his family like that seems crazy. Kirk seems to pin a lot of hope on this idea that it's not so bad if we take him with us back to the future like you said retrain him but McCoy I think brings up the point and Kirk is on board with it that it's a lot to ask the guy to suddenly pick up and move 300 years into the future roughly and retrain yourself learn a new trade integrate yourself into society. So again Kirk doesn't really have a good plan is to what to do but then spot comes in and he actually admit that he made an error in his calculations and McCoy is like yes historical moment you know because they snark back and forth in his search on captain john Christopher there may not have been much happening but we learn that he's going to have a son. Who is going to be Colonel Sean Jeffrey Christopher and he will be the first successful earth to Saturn probe mission it's going to be a huge it's very important for the development of space travel for humans and earth which is the precursor to what starfleet becomes all that's grander than huge. So now Spock is changing his tune to say we have to send him back to earth if a son is never born that could drastically change history so we don't have a choice and Kirk almost seems pretty relieved in this moment he agrees that john has to go back and seems to breathe a little easier because the choice really has been taken away from Kirk Kirk no longer gets to make the decision the decision has been made for him. Cutting to the briefing room captain Christopher Spock and Kirk are discussing how they're going to get him back to earth as well as removing all the evidence that the enterprise was ever in the area. We also learn that captain john Christopher's plane had cameras that took pictures and his radio recorded all of the chatter back and forth so that needs to be removed also right this becomes the biggest problem in the biggest hurdle to get captain john back onto earth and seamlessly reintegrated back into normal life. John can talk about what he saw but they're counting on with there being no physical evidence will just be dismissed as another pilot another person with a UFO story that no one really looks too deeply into so long as they can get rid of these recordings and these photographs. So he drafts a map of where Kirk and ends up being sued can go to be able to get all that evidence and bring it back to the enterprise right because originally captain john wants to go on the away team to help out but his request is denied Spock and Kirk point out that they can't risk him getting hurt or killed and they have to keep him out of harm's way because if he dies he can't father this important son and everything's for not and now we jump to the air force base where we're inside the building and Kirk and Sulu are looking for this room where all the evidence is held and they find a giant primitive computer and they're just like an aw. I thought that was funny yeah although I don't know how much in awe they would be they literally refer to their own computer database as tapes so they talk about it being an antique and they've seen it in the museum but again it's 1967 and the writers are struggling to come up with futuristic technology to distinguish the enterprises technology from this ancient computer. And then we get a view from the enterprise McCoy Spock and then like those extra crewman in the transport transport a room operator transport a chief at this point and star trek. Yeah he has like the robe or something on a different outfit that doesn't match anything and definitely an engineers type uniform from this time period and they're just waiting for them to return like in and out. Well it's a comedic moment because McCoy makes a comment that it's taking too long. Spock replies that they're being stealthy and stealth generally requires more time and so it's a fun interaction to further develop the relationship between McCoy and Spock and their contrasting personalities. They're fun and friendly you know they're not each other but they've only been gone 15 minutes and 28 seconds so calm down and then we're jumping back to earth and to do and Kirk are still at that computer and a loan security guard catches them. He asks for their belts and their bags and you know come with me McCoy and Spock are still worried so they send like a signal from enterprise that is beeping in a belt that the security guard is holding. I think Spock and McCoy try to call Kirk and Sulu on their communicator but the communicator is in the bag that Sulu just handed over the guard gets distracted by the communicator opens the communicator and in doing so activates an emergency SOS signal which is what triggers Spock and McCoy to immediately beam out the communicator and whoever's holding it. Back up to the enterprise and now we've got a new problem now they've got two people from earth on the enterprise and as the security guard materializes on the transporter platform he is in the position that they beam to my piece I crouched over and holding it all weird bike like like hunchy hunched over. Yeah I think because right before he ends up getting beamed up there's a movement by Sulu or Kirk toward him so he gets defensive and he points is gun at them and you're right that's the position he gets beamed up and again proving that captain John when he was being aboard the enterprise from his jet should have been in a sitting position and when he rematerialized should have fallen on his butt. So the security guard is still so scared of where he is he doesn't move wall McCoy just plucks every like his gun and the phaser out of his hand and just staring stuck there and they have a commercial break so coming back from that commercial break Sulu and Kirk have already gathered all of the radio transmissions but now they need to find the photographs that are in another. Part of the facility in the photo lab by another part of the facility we mean literally one door up on the left very easy so they slip in but they can't find them just willing around willing nilly so they go into the dark room which has a silent alarm and notifies three other security policeman that come running down to the photo lab. Well it's also the base commander is who's alerted and I believe it's the same technician who found the original blip of the enterprise on the radar I could be wrong but it's two people in the commander's room one of them being the commander and the two of them run down to the photo lab and they pick up another security guard on the way. So while they're running though the Kirk and Sue didn't know they triggered the alarm Kirk tells Sue to wrap up what he's doing and he will go back into the other room just to make sure they didn't miss anything but as he's closing the door he meets up with the commander and those two security policemen that are after him so Kirk is now fighting the three officers trying to. Trying to you know keep them distracted and Sue is able to beam up back to the enterprises all of the evidence and Kirk is captured and taken back to the commander's office on the enterprise. The spot comments to Sue that it was a good idea you beamed up when you did Scotty says the warp engines are back online and McCoy wants to know what spark is going to do about Kirk being left behind on earth and how we're going to rescue him. Spockman says he has his own idea and has Captain John join him in the briefing room back on earth where in the Colonel's office and he is interrogating Kirk trying to figure out who the heck he is. He's like you better start talking how would you get into all this top secret rooms and you know just how and why and Kirk just replies oh I just popped out of thin air then the Colonel says hmm what's in your bag and pulls out a phaser and Kirk's like be careful with that and that seems to be the only thing that Kirk has shown emotion over. So the Colonel uses this as kind of like a motivation to give him to speak some more but I mean Kirk keeps just saying you won't believe me again the Colonel is playing with the phaser I mean he even tosses it to another officer luckily it didn't go off or hurt anyone and he's like I'm going to ask you again person who are you where did you come from or you know I can just start listing the charges for you. So Kirk just goes I am a little green man from Alpha Centurri a beautiful place you ought to see it and the Colonel just gets even more angry and he said I'm just going to lock you up for 200 years and this is when I thought that he broke that wall because he just like looks at us and goes that sound about right. I was going to ask if this was the moment you thought he broke the fourth wall he doesn't quite he definitely is just speaking out loud to no one but no he's not breaking the fourth wall. It was just so funny and then we jump back up to the enterprise where Spock is asking Captain John do you have the coordinates where the security office is how do we get there and he says I sure do but I won't tell you unless I get to go out. I want to go down to earth also and I mean after some scrutiny they do decide that Spock Captain James and Sulu will go down and it only take two fasers one for Spock and one for Sulu and the Captain John makes a comment to Spock you don't trust me do you and then Spock replies kind of the only certain points. Yeah it also doesn't make sense to give captain john a futuristic phaser that he is no training or knowledge in its operation I mean all guns are the same right no no no the rest of the host of this episode do not agree with Jackie's opinion on firearms. So anyways they go to the transport room and get on the platform but could Spock pass a literally move Captain john into position yeah it's also funny if you look he shifts Captain john over so that he's standing on the transporter pad but then you look just behind him at Sulu and Sulu's got almost an entire foot off of the transporter pad so it doesn't really make a difference. I'm going to have to go back and look that's funny and of course that accidental beam up that police officer is still there and he's still crazy looking yeah it's a fun little shot as they beam away there's a camera pan back over to the transporter control panel where we get the transporter chief so it's a fun reveal to the audience that the guard is still there. The transport master asks the transporter chief thank you transporter chief asks if the policeman is hungry and he says yes of course they am how about some chicken soup and then they wonder over to a wall and the chief pushes random buttons and it opens a flap and pulls out a bowl. Yeah this would be a food synthesizer or a food replicator that's insane it's gonna become pretty common star Trek technology in star Trek on the timeline moving forward i don't really know exactly when in the star trek history that it's added because remember we had the previous episode with Charlie X where they refer to baking turkeys in the oven so at some point early into the first year of the year. The first year of the enterprises mission food replicators and food sympathic synthesizers have to become technology that becomes available on the enterprise it just appeared but back on earth captain john spark and soon are walking to the colonel's office so that they can save Kirk it's also fun to point out that there was this huge debacle or conversation debate argument between spark and captain john about getting captain john's cooperation to show them where in the base Kirk would be held and where the interrogation room would be it's literally the same hallway they're hiding behind the same display case that we saw earlier for trophies literally Kirk is being held in the interrogation room that is directly across the hall from the photo lab where he's captured well so you probably didn't know that he the only knew the dark room yeah they probably had no idea that the show didn't have enough money to build another hallway there's a guard sending and the hallway and captain john walks by that guard to distract him which allows so you to jump on him and knock him out and then spark is able to go into the room knocking on the door having to open and he nerve pinches that person making a handful to the ground which then enables Kirk to leap up and take out the colonel captain john manages to steal a gun from one of the unconscious guards while everyone is distracted and holds them all at gunpoint demanding that they let him stay on earth and then we have a commercial break coming back from that commercial we're still in the office but spark has managed to slip into a back office and with its own separate exit to be in the hallway where he's able to go back into the office and not captain john out with another nerve pinch we're popping back to the briefing room on the enterprise this time we now are up on the enterprise in the briefing room and we brought captain john with us we have spark scottie and Kirk Spock says our best chance of getting home would be to recreate what happened to get them in the current position they are in they should create a slingshot effect by using the son's gravity and create a whooplas effect which would send them into their own time right by using the son as a means to use this slingshot maneuver it allows them to try to gain enough speed to trigger the time travel effect to get them back to their own time this is literally star trek meets back to the future time travel can only happen if you're traveling fast enough this is also going to provide a convenient way to get john and the security guard back on to earth because when they accelerate to these speeds for a moment time is going to travel backwards before jumps forward stay with me none of this makes sense none of this is scientifically proven very lost but this will allow them to gain enough speed jump slightly back in time by about a day transport captain john and the security guard back to earth in the exact right moment when they go missing which will also somehow mean that they won't remember anything and then magically the enterprise still traveling at fantastically high speeds will jump forward into their own time but also keep in mind is Scotty points out the enterprise is going to have to slow itself down otherwise it's just going to shoot past its own time and they'll continue to travel forward into the future apparently back on the bridge the enterprise leaves earth starts to go around the sun to be able to do their things not maneuver where they gain their speed as they're speeding up curtails john to go down to the transport room and get ready to go back to earth then to price passes earth they transport john and the security guard back down to earth to where they're supposed to be yeah specifically they transport john to the jet in the moments where john first sees the enterprise before the tractor beam was activated to lock on to the jet and the security guard is being down to the hallway outside the computer room before he catches Kirk and so you stealing the computer tapes yes and both of them are quite confused at first while they're there it's probably pretty disoriented to them also pointing out this shouldn't work they're literally beaming someone into their own body like a ghost yeah it's definitely problematic for star Trek technology and how the transporter works if you beam someone inside of another person they shouldn't take over this isn't quantum leap but let's just pretend that in the exact microsecond that they activate the transporter and they transport the person down the person that they're transporting into pops out of the timeline and it's just so instantaneous it's seamless to the to the to the viewer let's let's pretend that don't worry we want to pretend about it another time oh good because very hard for me to explain these things and then the enterprise continues on its way it's still gathering speed in its back to the future delorean maneuver and then finally suit those that they have passed Pluto and more importantly they have according to their calculations approached their correct time period so Kirk basically throws the enterprise into reverse you start slowing down the emergency break thing pretty much it's a good way to describe it they don't want to over shoot their time period there's a whole dramatic scene where the enterprise shakes around is it fights against the forces of decelerating from such a high speed but ultimately the ship stays intact they slow down to normal speeds they're back in their time period Kirk is able to reach starfleet command and say that they are home and then we hear his computer in her sultry voice say record ship arrival dear and then Kirk out and roll credits so Jackie what did you think about season one episode 19 tomorrow is yesterday what are your final thoughts I really enjoyed it I think they did a good job machine you know I have to add the music so machine the music along with the bits of comedy and I would presume the crazy science fiction that I know nothing about but is all the rage for you Trekkies I don't know that I'd go that far time travel episodes if you break them down too much they break apart there's too much time paradox when it comes to it we mentioned it briefly the entire well if they take captain john out of the history then do they have any record of anything that he would have accomplished would Spock's computer technically say that he disappeared and died on this mission to go look at the enterprise who knows but all that aside again I really like this episode as well time travels a great episode theme for star Trek they don't over do it ever they don't do time travel too much which is nice it doesn't get old and I really enjoy this format for the original series much like shore leave the interjections of the comedic moments the jokes the little inside tongue in cheek references the little breaks from the drama in the action I think really adds to the pacing of the episode and I really enjoy when the original series is able to do that effectively again just like time travel they don't do it too often so it doesn't get too old or too predictable but it's nice when they're able to pull it off like they did here so we're round out our summary of the episode here with our favorite quotes from the episode see if we chose something different Jackie what is your favorite quote from the episode I really enjoyed when captain john and captain Kirk were stepping off of the turbo lift onto the bridge and captain john joked that he had never believed in the little green men and he happens to look up and Spock replies neither have I and they just have this moment this quote is just so very memorable and whenever we think of aliens or UFOs we automatically go to little green or big green human like things with giant eyes and I thought you were going to pick the quote when captain Kirk is being interrogated and he says he's a little green man from Alpha Centauri I'm not going to lie that one was up there I was going to be my first quote my second guest is the story of the story I chose a different one but it is a good quote so we said it's so cute we'll share it but the quote I picked is at the very end of the episode as they're making their sling shot maneuver around the sun and captain john is on the bridge looking at everything there's some dialogue that we left out of the summary where he's talking about how he wanted always being astronaut he never thought he'd make it in the space because he didn't make the story space because he didn't make the cut for the astronaut program it's pretty superficial to the plot of the episode but my quote is in that moment john says to Kirk I never thought I'd make it into space and Kirk replies take a good look around captain you made it here ahead of all of them again I think it's really cool that throughout the episode Kirk has sympathy and empathy toward captain john and his plate and circumstance even up until the point where they're betrayed and captain john pulls a gun on them and tries to use violence to get his way to stay on earth in the very next scene he's joining them in the briefing room and he's part of the group again throughout the entire episode Kirk treats him less like a handicap or a hindrance to the problem and more as an equal maybe even that might be why the show shows to put him in a command uniform instead of civilians clothing because they wanted to treat captain john is at least on some level is there equal at least to show him respect so and he really did beat everybody because it's super super you know far and time yeah but then he goes back to earth and he remembers none of it so there you go there's the bittersweet moment for for our quotes at this point I do have some triple tidbits or which is our version of fun facts for the episode and why do we call them triple tidbits Jackie because they're the best triple comfortable because Jackie doesn't know what triples are they're both a blessing and a curse which kind of a like glitter yes like glitter or like some of our facts so originally airing in the United States on January 26 1967 the story for this episode originated as a one page pitch from a writer in a gentleman named Robert just man I given directly to gene roddenberry as they were writing scripts and episodes for the first season roddenberry took that pitch and turned it into an episode and even though the episode in the plot is pretty much on point to the original pitch roddenberry gave just man no credit and just man received no royalties or any compensation for his pitch being used that's terrible that's the way Hollywood is this episode is significant in that it accurately pin points and it has to be an estimate that the moon missions would put humans on the moon in the late 1960s again we have the radio transmission that shows when they first move and they time travel back to earth and they get the radio news report I assume it's radio I guess it could be a television signal that the earth moon mission is launching this all takes place in airs in 1967 before the moon landing so they really don't know and this episode was written prior to 1967 so they really don't have any way to know that this is in fact going to happen other science fiction television shows and movies all written before 1969 with the moon landing also took a stab and predicted and talked about when the moon landing in the place so everyone knew everyone had pretty much optimism that it was going to happen but they all pinpointed in the 70s or even early 80s star tracking this episode is the first time that a fictitious science fiction piece of work accurately predicted the moon landing in the late 60s. However, this aired exactly one day before the tragic Apollo one fire oh no so little juxtaposition optimism to the space program predating by one day really the first major setback I would argue. The black star that was described as the source of the enterprises initial time travel back to the 1960s wasn't referred to as a black hole even though that's the phenomenon that they were trying to describe because the term black hole wasn't being widely used by physicist and other scientists to describe the phenomenon in 1967 black holes were observed they were known about but they weren't officially named black holes until relatively shortly after this episode aired. This episode was also going to serve as part two or a sequel to the previous episode the naked time that's the episode where they all got drunk on the water. We had so we're running around shirtless with the rapier that was it Jackie's eyes are lighting up in recognition but you remember at the very end of that episode they ended up doing their own form of time travel with accelerating really fast and not accelerating. They were able to go back in time by three days if I remember correctly so originally the naked time was going to end where they go back in time but they go all the way back to 1960 or the 1960s and then this episode would start so there wasn't going to be a black hole they of course changed it they broke it up into two episodes. That was a good idea though the addition of the security guard that gets beamed up and all of his scenes were added because originally the script called for filming the enterprises encounter with the black hole and it's time travel we don't see any of that on the screen they decided that ultimately that would be too expensive and they could easily just explain it with that first captain's log that we get. But that meant that the episode ran short of time so to fill it and padded out they added this character and they added all of his scenes and so that filled the episode back out. I think it was a good addition the food replicator that's added in the transporter rooms speaking of our friend the security guard was added instead of having someone bring him chicken soup or have them go down to the mess hall to get chicken soup. The fact that he was supposed to stay in the transporter room and not see more than he needed to it was cheaper to add a hole in the wall of the set and just push the chicken soup through and show this food replicator technology then it was to hire an extra to serve as a food delivery to bring him the chicken soup on scene so money saving because again they had to add his part at the last minute in my last triple tidbit the jet flown by captain. John by pure coincidence is a lock he'd f one oh four star fighter so literally a star fighter hunting down the enterprise but those are your triple tidbits and finally for the episode we will share our episode ranking this is where we pretend the episode is a member of our crew of our fictitious starship. We have a starship every season and we assign a rank to the episode that indicates not only how entertaining we found the episode when we watched it but how important of a crew member we find it to be to serve on our starship. A higher rank episode means not only that we were more entertained by the episode but we find the episode would be a more important member of our crew a lower rank episode of course means that we weren't dis entertained by the episode and we find them to be a more disposable member of our crew such as a red shirt our episode ranking goes from the bottom and sin lieutenant junior grade and lieutenant of which we can have an unlimited number of crew members. And then at the top we narrow it down we can have seven lieutenant commanders five commanders one captain and one admiral as a reference point is we get to Jackie's ranking last week's episode arena Jackie ranked it a lieutenant which would be a roughly four or five out of 10 middle of the road and slightly below middle of the road. Jackie for this episode on the USS Galactic Glitter B what rank will you be assigning it? Well I need to demote someone but as a reminder though we can demote and promote in order to make room for the episode that we've watched and so I will be demoting the menagerie part one. I would like to add it to the lieutenant commander so we all full there and I want to put this episode in that in a commander spot. So that'll reunite Jackie's part one and part two of the menagerie in lieutenant commander completely filling up that section and adding commander rank status to today's episode tomorrow is yesterday. Why the change? Why the rank? Because finally I found an episode where I kind of understood what was actually happening besides all the space speeding thing but it was fun and I just liked it. All right and I'm gonna say we're gonna retroactively add a rule for our ranking system. We originally had the menageries by chance both paired up equally in our different rankings and they got split up at some point to make room. So the new rules gonna be they get promoted and demoted together so they're gonna take up the space of two ranks no matter what. And if none of this makes sense to you we will have a visual representation of our ranking posted on Wednesday on our patreon at patreon.com/treksintangents for anyone to view and to see what our current rankings are as well as where the ranking stood after each episode. And for my starship the USS cosmic shark I'm also gonna need to shuffle some things around to make room so we're going to take the episode what are little girls made of from the commander level and we're gonna drop that all the way down to lieutenant and that's gonna open up a spot in the commander level and I am also going to rank this episode as a commander. So what are little girls made of I believe at the time was an episode I found entertaining but looking how it stacks up against the rest of my rankings it's just not gonna be as entertaining so far as the rest of the episode we've seen to warrant a spot in the lieutenant commander position. So we'll drop it down to the junior grades and keep it middle of the road but we'll keep it as a lieutenant in kind of that unlimited capacity. This week's episode tomorrow is yesterday very similar reasons as I've mentioned before time travel episode fantastic an episode that leans into comedic jokes and comedy relief moments perfect. What keeps this out of the top tier perfect episodes for me a lot of sloppiness with the time travel theory and technology itself if time travel is just needed to sling shot around a large planetary object like a black hole or a sun it's something that we would see more often in star trek which we don't so it's got some problematic technology as well with how they return. Captain john and the security guard by beaming them back into their own bodies I don't really know what the solution would be but certainly transporting yourself into yourself can't be something that we that we find is a solution to problems in star trek so. Fantastic episode couple minor bumps that are going to keep it out of a perfect rating for me I think this is where ghost got the idea how to go back into your own body yeah but that will be our rankings feel free to leave a comment wherever you listen to the episode on whatever platform you listen to to let us know what ranking you would give this week's episode and your thoughts to the episode we'll be back next week to check through another episode. But before we go this is where we'll give our turbo lift ease for the week or elevator pitch to next week's episodes plot I will give Jackie the title of the next episode and Jackie with no other information will give a brief pitch to that plot Jackie next week's episode is entitled court martial. The enterprise is exploring this space and galaxy but they get a call and somebody in somebody's past some going to choose. So who is in trouble and obviously needs their help and tune in next week to see how accurate Jackie's prediction is if you want more show information you can find and directly support our podcast on patreon at patreon.com slash tracks and tangents as mentioned every Wednesday we post an updated ranking where we visually show where the episodes are currently ranked it includes all of the changes the emotion. The changes the emotions the promotions I don't think we've had a promotion quite yet so maybe soon and that's available for anyone to view for crew members who support the patreon we post once a month the fourth Friday and episode of animated detours where we dive into the animated series of star trek we also post all of the test episodes that we've done that led up to the production of this podcast you can listen to this podcast format as we dive into some episodes of fringe stargate sg one and hopefully we'll have some more of that coming soon so hopefully we see you all over there you can also follow us on x.com at tracks underscore tangents. We're also on instagram and blue sky at tracks and tangents Jackie working people find you and what are you up to you can find me over on instagram as jibum jibb o o m I shared sons of life like currently I'm waiting for hip replacements I also play the tuba and flute as well as showing off crazy fashion and lots of bright make up and like I mentioned earlier glitter plus I also have a shop at what not and you can look me up at glitter bo boutique I will see you there and you can watch me stream a variety of video games over at twitch.tv/pyritepoundtown on youtube I post video game and other random content on my main channel also pirate poundtown my second channel on youtube contains coin collecting and other hobby content at the pirate treasure hunting I post socially on blue sky at pirate poundtown and I can also be found on instagram under pineapple cannibal because who doesn't want to be a pineapple cannibal links to all social media mention can be found in the episode description thank you everyone for tuning into this week's episode we hope you had fun like we did we will see you all next week. travel travel travel to me and transmission.