That said, it was also probably the most ridiculous episode, from a technical point of view. Vive la ridiculousness!
I'm a little drunk, due to the shots, so I don't know if I'll be able to get in all I wanted to, with this textual synopsis, here. But I'm going to try. First off, thinking about this episode has me amused by how it contrasts with earlier episodes. This one is the first one to really just make no sense at all, from a physics-logic standpoint (I think; for the record, I'm not a physicist); partially, the earlier episodes avoided that conflict/hazard by being... not about science. Writing this makes me realize that while 'Star Trek' is considered the hard sci-fi god, and 'Star Wars' is considered the fantasy sci-fi god, there hasn't really been a lot of difference between them, in these early Star Trek episodes. There hasn't been a lot of hard science - at least from a plot standpoint - going on.
This episode of Star Trek, however, is rooted in actual science. Bad science, I think - for one thing, they refer to what I think is a black hole as a 'black star' - but still, the plot revolves not around fantastical beings but the concrete effects of physical actions. They get caught in a 'black star' and escaping it launches them backwards into time, where they have to deal with the actual effects of time travel, and - importantly - not just the drama of dealing with personalities.
I'm tempted to say "This! This is what science fiction should be!" but that would be a.) a little overly enthusiastic, and b.) diss space opera, so I won't. I do think this episode is the best representative so far of what Star Trek should be, or at least, is viewed as being. Personalities are neat, and I don't think 'hard' sci-fi is defined by a lack of personality; Robert A. Heinlein is probably my favorite author (Neal Stephenson is seriously fighting for the title, but I don't think either would really care), and his stories manage to be both 'hard' in their being grounded in actual science and also predominantly about people and personalities, not predominantly about physics.
But the preceding 19 episodes have been about as 'hard' as my cock while I'm thinking about your mom (so sorry for that, but after thinking it up, I couldn't not share it), and have been personality-driven in the way that soap operas are, not in the way that non-embarassing stories are. 'Tomorrow Is Yesterday' managed to give the semblance, at least, of being about actual science, not ESP or magic rays, and also do the Heinleinian thing of just looking at how that science would effect actual people in an actual circumstance.
I've spent an awful lot of time saying "This episode is not painful to watch," but that's basically what it boils down to. It was interesting people who were likable reacting to an interesting situation in an internally consistent universe. That hasn't really been the case, a lot of the time, to date.
Arggggghhhh! There was something else I wanted to mention, but I've forgotten what it was. That's just frustrating, dammit. Oh! I remembered! The time period! As I snickered at the show's usage of the term 'black star' I also was reminded of how amazingly old this show is. Not, like, ancient - I guess 'amazingly' was probably a bad term - but like... I dunno, it's a lot like thinking about Heinlein's stuff. It reads as good science fiction today. Like, after we went to the moon. After we have satellites in orbit giving us global communication at near real-time. After we have people living in space in a space station. The fact that it was conceived and produced before any of that was true... and still rings true, as a satisfying narrative... is amazing to me. That Heinlein wrote 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress' three years before we actually even landed on the moon is awesome. That this episode deals with time warps and black holes ('stars') and shit, before we'd landed on the moon, is less impressive but still impressive.
Less impressive? Let me tell you why: The resolution doesn't really make any sense. They put a bunch of people into a place where they already exist and rather than making both versions explode into pudding because they're occupying the same space, they just forget shit. I've read a lot of time-travel sci-fi in my day (well, at least a bit; I get annoyed by it, because it always tends to travel the same paths, so I actively avoid it, but I've still hit most of the high points as far as respected sci-fi with time travel goes, I think) and this episode's take on time travel issues is almost insulting in its lack of any real logic at all. No matter what Spock says.
So we're left with something of a paradox (apropos, considering the time-travel plot) in that this was the most satisfying and 'hard' sci-fi feeling episode to date, despite it being the first one I could argue with on the grounds of science and logic. Because for once, the crux of the plot didn't revolve around science-as-magic ridiculousness, but instead revolved around science-as-we-know(knew)-it.
Basic plot summary: The Enterprise gets warped back in time, to the 1960s, and beams aboard a historically important Earth-person of the 1960s. Getting back to the future without destroying it is the desired end-point. They get there by way of ridiculousness, but the ridiculousness is satisfying.
Random statistics: 1 50mL bottle of cherry (wild or black; I can't remember) Stolichnaya, 1 shot of Deep Run vodka straight, and 5 vodka tonics constructed of one part Deep Run to two parts Schweppes tonic water; WAY TOO LONG spent rambling about shit on this post, and VERY HAPPY about watching a Star Trek episode that was super-satisfying on all levels (even the ones it was disappointing on) after 19 episodes that fell short of what I expected from the most famous sci-fi series ever.
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