Logline
La’An travels back in time to twenty-first-century Earth to prevent an attack which will alter humanity’s future history—and bring her face to face with her own contentious legacy.
Written by David Reed
Directed by Amanda Row
Note: This is a second attempt, as technical difficulties were preventing people from seeing the original discussion post. Apologies to the people who were able to comment in the original.
The more I think about this episode the more impressed I get. There’s so many small moments where they could have taken the easy, obvious choice and it would have been fine, and instead they were just a little more thoughtful and a little more creative and it shows.
They could have just had Pelia push a secret button to reveal her stash of alien tech, and that probably would have been fine. Instead they show her as this woman who’s very smart and obviously immortal but otherwise…just a person living through history, which is so much better. Imagining the 250 years between the present and when she’s one of the most famous engineers in the fleet is fun.
They could have had the Romulan agent just be a cold, ruthless assassin from the future who’s here to get the job done, and that would have been fine. Instead she’s this slightly unhinged woman, trapped out of time, stuck undercover on an alien world for thirty years on a mission that she’s not sure exists anymore and I love the way she starts losing it at the end, that she just wants to kill this kid and be done with it.
They could have cast Khan as a hot 20 something available in the Toronto area and had him to a Ricardo Montalbán impression and give us a tense standoff, and I would have been annoyed at that, but it probably would have been fine. Instead they show us an actual child, and remind is that Khan was a horrifying monster, but he was created by a world with monsters of its own, monsters who built a child in a laboratory and raised him in a basement, and suddenly its a piece of implied context made explicit that I didn’t even know I wanted.
And of course they could have just had Kirk agree to fix the timeline because its the right thing to do, or because he loves La`an, or because…honestly, because the plot has to happen, this is something that so many stories would just gloss over to keep the story moving. And instead we get one line, “Sam’s alive?” and my heart jumped to my throat a little bit and immediately we understand why he’s willing to go through with this.
I’m really really impressed with the writers on this episode.
They could have just had Pelia push a secret button to reveal her stash of alien tech, and that probably would have been fine. Instead they show her as this woman who’s very smart and obviously immortal but otherwise…just a person living through history, which is so much better. Imagining the 250 years between the present and when she’s one of the most famous engineers in the fleet is fun.
It’s not just fun–but it speaks to a different demographic than most shows speak to.
It’s telling older women that it’s not too late to change and grow and learn. Here she is, obviously having already lived a long life–but then we learn she hasn’t ALWAYS been an engineer from the start. She did not begin as someone obviously fascinated by science.
She realized later in life. And then she was able to SUCCESSFULLY pursue her career and become an expert. Just because she wasn’t a child prodigy didn’t mean she couldn’t learn and grow. There’s SO many stories focusing on people who have things 100% right immediately out of the gate. Top grades in school, top performance at work, accolades, reccomendations from the time they were teens.
But this story is of an ordinary eccentric retail worker…who goes back to hit the books and succeeds with her change.
This lesson will go over 75% people’s heads…but in true Star Trek fashion, even if it elludes many, it’ll hit home with the demographic it’s meant to talk to. Older women who feel like they’re too old to change. That they shouldn’t even try. It’s talking to THEM like so many other characters in Star Trek talk to other overlooked people.
And that makes this detail–one out of many in this excellent episode–top Star Trek.
Although it does remain very funny that they’re doing this much work to make us care about Sam Kirk, a character who’s fate is to die off screen to a brain parasite before the episode even starts. Sorry Sam.
I think it’s more that they’re introducing Kirk sideways, by way of humanizing him through how he cares for Sam.
Wow. You get my first Lemmy upvote on this post! Thank you for pointing out all these details.
Okay there was a lot that worked for me in that episode. The amazing decision to have Pelia knowing nothing about engineering to being a veteran warp core engineer in 200 years. Going for child Khan and really leaning into the fucked up reality that these children were science experiments kept locked in basements for the first time in the franchise? The reminder that Toronto is actually pretty damn photogenic when it’s not shot on a CW budget.
And you know what? Paul Wesley doesn’t have Kirks voice, and the script still doesn’t quite sound right, but he’s got the Kirk delivery really nailed. He doesn’t sound like Shatner, but he sounds like Kirk
Kirk gets a mysterious call in the middle of the night from a woman he’s never met asking weird questions and his response is to ask her out
10/10 Kirk behavior
Also it feels kind of significant that they finally dropped the word socialist on screen to describe the Federation? They’ve always danced around it before, but I’m glad they finally made it explicit, even in an off hand way. It helps make the Federation feel less “magical” and more like something that people who existed in history, connected to both the past and the future, had to actually build
Having Pelia say it, with the lens of historical perspective, is perfect.
The Federation may not use the word or describe its society that way, but someone who’d lived in the United States in the 20th and 21st century might.
I really really like Pelia as a character and a concept. I think its a very smart approach to immortality to have her be someone both used to and unresistant to change. The world happens. Time moves on. Over centuries kingdoms turn into empires turn into wastelands turn into spacefaring cooperatives and she’s not jaded nor stagnant, she just continues to grow and adapt and change as things change around her.
I do love also how she’s not some wisened genius race. She’s just old. Like maybe her people were space faring at some point in time, but given how long they live getting fast high end tech isnt necessary so they probably werent as advanced as most species we encounter in star trek.
But also even if they were it’s been a long time since they used their tech and even if they remember it it’s not like she would know how to build it. Like I know how to drive a car, and can do some basic mechanic work, and I know the broad strokes of how an internal combustion engine works. If someone asked me to build them a car they’d be out of luck.
Did she leave that gun with that little boy?
She left the gun that had shot Kirk in plain sight to be found be the security team she believed were on their way.
And in fact we heard the footfalls of the team running towards the room just as La’an hit the button and vanished. She didn’t even have time to get herself out of young Khan’s sight.
Did anyone else catch what looked like an unspoken, knowing look from Pelia when La’an appeared on the bridge after returning? Does Pelia somehow remember their prior encounter on Earth? Is it explicit, or more like the way Guinan would have an intuition, or a subliminal feeling? Or did I imagine that?
I feel like it was a “aha I remember when you wore that outfit.” I was kind of hoping they would have a conversation at the end. Instead we got the DTI 😄
Yeah I was really expecting pelia to come in and lift the watch back up at the end and comfort laan
Actually thinking about it that might be why the line “I’m awful with faces” was there …not just to explain away why 21stC Pelia didn’t recognise why la’an knew her but she didn’t know laan, but also why 23rdC pelia doesn’t remember a meeting 200 years prior
I imagine she will take a few episodes to figure it out. This definitely seems like a thread that hasn’t spooled all the way out yet.
The focus on the watch at the end suggests there’ll be a future plot point revolving around Pelia and the watch and La’an. Although it also seemed a bit ominous, so it might also pick up La’an getting into some eugenics-related trouble later, as I imagine those threads are also not spooled all the way out as you put it so well.
It’s unfortunate that the writers didn’t plan this beforehand, so we could have had some foreshadowing a few episodes beforehand with a first meeting between the two where pelia acts a little weird (because she remembers her from 200 years ago).
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Pelia remembers it, that meeting was before the timelines diverged, so it happened in the current timeline.
I’m sure Pelia had a flash of recognition, but she is not the same type of high and wise immortal as Guinan. 200 years is a long time, and perhaps her memory isn’t perfect. La’an didn’t tell her explicitly that she was from the future, so she might just be having some serious deja vu and wondering about the resemblance of this security officer to that weirdo who showed up at her door in 2022.
Wait what’s this? Star Trek writers can still create a time travel story that wraps up in an episode (or two) instead of lasting a whole 10 episodes of nothing?!
And they can weave in minor plot points from previous episodes to give it continuity without feeling forced?
How can this be?
If you’re referring to Discovery, I think the whole time jump saved the show. I really struggled through the first couple seasons but now I look forward to new episodes. It’s still not peak Trek, but I’ve been waiting for something that doesn’t center around Kirk or the Kirk era (similar to Star Wars and the Skywalkers) but instead jumps further ahead than previous eras for decades now.
I believe that was referencing Picard Season 2, which this episode has a strong resemblance to.
What bugs me about discovery is that they ruin the efforts of all of my favorite characters in all of my favorite series by wrecking the federation.
Tolkien decided to not write a sequel to lotr because the happy endings were too well earned, even if mankinds nature is to become complacent with ‘good’, it’s frustrating to restart the struggle.
I agree with your sentiment, but I wish they would have done it differently. In my head cannon, I accept later seasons of discovery as one possible future, but hopefully not the prime timeline.
I have to ask how many millennia you expect the Federation to endure without periods of fragility?
The Federation isn’t wrecked forever in Discovery.
A half a millennium is a long time for human societies to stay stable, especially given the out-and-out full scale Temporal War that targeted the Federation.
It’s also important to keep in mind that it’s the Federation’s enduring values that allow it to be restored.
It was closer to decimated than fragile… And that makes me sad was all.
The amount of culture and history that is lost is on par with what could happen if we don’t get our act together in the real world.
Trek has underlying optimism most of the time but there wasn’t enough of that to redeem discovery for me. You bring up good points and highlight a silver lining. It’s just thinner that the one I wanted.
I think I could have accepted it with a better setup, too. Some unavoidable disaster that made sense, but the ‘burn’ was flimsy.
Random thoughts as I watch (cross-posted from the old place):
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Wow, first that outburst, and then Spock jams too much. Truly in his wild child phase.
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BTW, was that a Denobulan?
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Pelia totally worried that this whole utopia thing just a passing trend. And hilariously having to prove (?) she isn’t a thief.
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They really are taking advantage of Babs O’s Jiu-Jitsu training this year, aren’t they?
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Captain James T. Kirk, the greatest menace of Temporal Investigations!
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Oh boy, alternate timeline where the Federation doesn’t exist time!
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“Maple leaves, politeness, poutine.”
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Clever distraction.
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I wonder if 3D chess is a thing in the United Earth Fleet timeline, because Kirk is good at the 2D in it.
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Okay, I guess they do have 3D Chess.
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I generally try not to be like this… but goddamn I’d like to thank them for having Christina Chong in various states of tight clothing and undress.
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Good thing the time travel guy went to the ship Sam Kirk was on.
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Oh man, I was looking forward to driving across Lake Ontario to Toronto (presumably from Rochester or Buffalo or something, right?), which totally would be a logical economic and engineering choice, I’m sure!
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Mildly annoyed that Kirk doesn’t drive to Beastie Boys.
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James Discreet Kirk
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Soongs gonna break in even to the timelines and series they aren’t in.
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Jim Discretion Kirk
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OH FUCK ROMULANS
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We have gone (zero) days without Romulans trying to screw up the timeline.
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Probably the first time that DuckDuckGo has been mentioned in Star Trek.
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Yeah, Pythagoras is the worst, Pelia.
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Oh, so this is a predestination paradox where they make her become an engineer and as a result she is there to inspire La’An to go look for her later.
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KHAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN! KHAAAAANNNNNNNNN! (Or at least the institute for him)
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To be fair, this is like the third face that Captain Kirk has had.
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We have gone (ZERO) days without a time-travelling Romulan that had to ditch the ears.
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We have gone (ZERO) days without (a) Captain Kirk dying. We’re three-for-three on Kirk actor deaths, folks!
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KHAAAAAAAAAANNNN! KHAAAAAAANNNN! KHAAAAAAANNNNNN!
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THEY CAME UP WITH AN EXPLANATION WHY THE EUGENICS WARS DIDN’T HAPPEN IN THE 90’S! THE MAD LADS DID IT!
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Face to face with great-great-great-great grandpa Baby Genetics-Hitler.
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Oh, great, temporal investigations. No wonder they hate Kirk so much, even his alternate versions screw stuff around.
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Good ep. Way better than it sounded when I first heard about it.
I wish the Romulan agent succeeded but that led to a stronger Federation instead just to spite those meddling aliens.
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I love that Kirk had to die saving his own worst enemy so that the Federation could exist.
and subverting the “hero goes back in time to kill a mass murderer” trope, with “hero goes back in time to save a mass murderer”
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Seems to me that they are merging the eugenics wars and wwiii together in canon. Maybe the eugenics wars are the catalyst for wwiii or something like that?
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I am so late to this. I was up at the cottage for the long weekend and missed the episode until today.
Khan could be my neighbour.
Am I confused or is this a Star Trek “sub lemmy” that is super active? Is this an rss feed from Reddit or something?
If this is already this active, then fuck yeah lol
Star Trek fandom is OLD. And a lot of the old fans go back to the BBS and email list days. They’ve/we’ve weathered plenty of technology changes.
This is in fact the one sub I am NOT surprised is so active. It’s one part Old Fandom, and one part the new shows coming out being pretty good, making the fandom alive and kicking instead of moribund and dead.
@IonAddis @BROMETHIUS oh, I remember fandom when it was hand printed zines through the post - fandom survives, fandom finds a way
Mimeoed zines are in my past I confess.
I can’t say they were always as civil as they might be. Even in the late 80s with laserprint copies in vogue, there were folks who thought shouting everything in AllCaps was the way to get their message across.
@[email protected] you may wish to check the pinned message at the top of this community.
This instance was created by the senior mods of r/startrek and r/DaystromInstitute. The original mod of r/startrek is modding here. They’re hoping to attract some of the other Star Trek subreddits to join. The invitations have been made. So far, they’ve decided to keep the number of communities to three in order to let the conversations get going.
I didn’t expect to like this episode as much as I did.
Wesley’s Kirk is growing on me, and I give the EPs credit for using the alternate timeline Kirk’s to let his performance coalesce. I also like the deft weaving of the crazy car driving, heartbreaker Kirk with the think five steps ahead genius that he also had to be.
The acknowledgement in-universe that the timeline and humanity’s development has been interfered with is entirely credible given the accretion of temporal incidents across every era of the franchise.
I’m not sure how I feel about it giving comfort to those who feel so strongly that this isn’t the same timeline as the original TOS one. (I see some chortling on this point elsewhere.) Likely the temporal physics of this is best left for a deep dive /c/Daystrom Institute discussion, but I prefer hold to a view that this is absolutely still the same Prime timeline but that the timeline itself has been perturbed repeatedly even if the key events have kept their integrity. In fact, the Romulan temporal agent, while not a reliable narrator, gave credence to the idea that the Prime timeline had proven unexpectedly robust against major intervention by humanity’s enemies.
I was delighted to see DTI show up and be named. It seems all of a piece of DTI’s rigidity that they would leave La’an alone to deal with the trauma. It does however mirror Pike’s own experience in sealing his future with the time crystal. One senses that there must be some kind of intersection or mutual revelation to come, leaving aside the Chekhov’s gun of the temporally dislocated watch.
Knowing that Anson Mount had to relocate to Toronto with his wife and newborn explains why episodes featuring others in the ensemble were front loaded for this season. He’d said before he committed to the show that creative conversations would be needed as he wasn’t wishing to repeat the production experience he had in Discovery season two. A creative conversation with the EPs that limits a principal character’s presence is fairly extraordinary, but Mount seems to have done it in a way that’s generous to the rest of the ensemble.
With an ensemble so strong, and as we didn’t see as much of Chapel or Una as we would have liked last season, I’m fine with waiting to see more Pike later in the season. It sounds as though we have a Spock focused and an Ortegas to come before some big ensemble pieces in the back half.
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That’s exactly it.
That really explains a lot. Kudos to the production for really playing well to their constraints like this.
Kirk was superb, I don’t think I could have accepted the car scene if it was anyone else. It’s Kirk, of course he’s going to drive like a nutter. I was genuinely shocked when he got shot. I thought there couldn’t possibly be a way for him to make it but they still got me.
La’an has grown on me so much, she was the one I was most dubious about in the early episodes of season one. I felt really sorry for her at the end, losing Kirk and being unable to talk to anyone about what she’s experienced. She’s gone through some pretty serious trauma already due to her genes and name and now she’s had to go through this pure insanity. I wonder what the significance of the watch is.
This does bring up an interesting observation… The Temporal Agents apparently have no qualms about coming to not only take back their gadgets and gizmos after someone from the past uses them, but seems to just drop in on the past and cryptically hand out missions to those same ancestors out of literal nowhere! This time travel stuff can be so mentally damaging that even those agents trained to directly work with it (Captain Brackston, for example) can mentally break. Whatever stress La’an was shouldering at the start of the episode has now surely compounded.
You would think that Starfleet of the future would have put together some form of “Temporal Psychology” department, or something. People who’s jobs are to go back to ancestors emotionally effected by time travel, and help them deal with any trauma. Telling La’an to, basically, just “shut up and suck it up” is a horrible way to deal with someone who, essentially, just saved your existence. I get she can’t talk to any of her contemporaries, but surely someone from the past could pop-in and act as a counselor of some sort.
IDK… I felt the temporal agent’s cold response to what La’an had to deal with was rather un-starfleet.
Maybe they know that she has Pelia there to comfort her?
La’an couldn’t tell Pelia the details around Khan or the Romulan incursions, but if Pelia recognizes her and asks after the handsome young companion she has with her in the 21st century, she could at least offer comfort for his nonexistence in this presence. I doubt Pelia could see La’an with this universe’s Kirk and not put her memories together.
Yes I was thinking the same thing, like “Lady you’re acknowledging how difficult this is to bear, could you offer like 6 free therapy sessions at least?”
Use discount code “temporal shenanigans” for 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com
She was discount Camina Drummer for me at first. Now I see her as her own character with a lot of potential.
A little remarked side effect of time travel is that it causes infatuation (Kirk, in “City on the Edge of Forever”) and horniness (Spock, in “All Our Yesterdays”). La’An experienced both!
Edit: I forgot about Bashir and Jadzia in “Trials and Tribble-ations” but honestly they just seemed to be acting in character!
La’An fell head over heels for someone who had never heard of her. Absolutely makes sense. An entire lifetime of being treated differently, because everyone knows. Even if they don’t treat her negatively, they still know.
This Kirk was the first person since grade school that she met someone who didn’t know.
Absolutely makes sense.
Plus it ties in with the previous episode where she and Number One reflect on their augments, family history, and years of feeling shame about who they are.
This came out of left field for me but I really love La’An as a character and I want her to be consoled so hard 🥺
I wish we knew a bit more about her family. It’s notable that she is ashamed of the history of her name, but proud enough to keep it. One imagines there must be a strong line of incredibly stubborn people desperate to redeem the horrible deeds of their family’s past.
I don’t remember the exact name of that building, but “Noonien-Singh Institute For Improving Society” or something vaguely like that. I imagine, if they weren’t evil incarnate duping the masses, that they were probably a very proud family that did a lot to attempt to make the world a better place. Perhaps before the “socialist utopia” they were a very wealthy family that performed a lot of charitable work and did great things. Perhaps Khan and his siblings were simply a huge mistake that were unintentionally contrary to all the other things they did.
What about Sisko, Bashir, and Jadzia (then later O’Brien and Kira) in “Past Tense”? I didn’t see any horniness except for maybe from O’Brien
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I would like to see a Short Trek of what went down during that 16hr+ road trip with Kirk & La’An
Lots of talking, probably. They probably spilled everything about their histories, and not just their personal histories, but the histories of their own universes. Thinking about that makes the ending all the more heartbreaking.
