“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” is time travel episode that lasts for 61 minutes. It’s a reasonably interesting plot with a decent payoff… that lasts for 61 minutes. It’s got some great character work from Christina Chong and Paul Wesley that indulges in their excellent chemistry… but it lasts for 61 minutes. (I think you’re getting the point now).
 
The time travel shenaniganry, while fun, relies to heavily on a mystery box that lasts for 45 minutes or more; and a twist that really should have come a lot earlier in the plot.
 
We open with La’an Noonien-Singh’s (Christina Chong) routine as security officer seeming to drag. Interpersonal disputes, noise complaints and Pelia’s (Carol Kane) light-fingered kleptomania are all beginning to grate on the security chief, who — despite the best suggestions of Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusonmokun) seems determined to do it all alone. The (self-induced) beatings will continue until morale improves, it seems… until a stranger materializes on the Enterprise. Foisting a futuristic device into La’ans hand, the grey-suited man (Christopher Wyllie) tells her of an attack in the past, and that she must “get to bridge!” before dying a gunshot wound.
 
La’an makes her way to the ship’s command center quickly, only to find a crew that doesn’t recognize her, and Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) in command.
 

Captain Kirk of the United Earth vessel Enterprise grapples with this new interloper has he turns down a request for aid from Captain Spock (Ethan Peck) of the Vulcan ship Sh’Rel  — but it’s La’an, with her strange badge and stories of an alternate reality that command his focus and disbelief. La’an is convinced that she –- and Kirk — must go back in time to fix history. Kirk isn’t convinced, however, and wants to inspect the grey-suited man’s device, which is the last thing La’an wants.

A brief “struggle” results in them both being tossed back into the past without any preparation: no phasers, no communicators and no tricorders. Despite Kirk’s frustration with this predicament, he agrees to help, and together they explore 21^st century earth; no, not New York City, but Toronto (home, of course, to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Discovery production).

Through theft from a Roots store, chess hustling and the purchase of some hot dogs at the Toronto Harbourfront, we learn more about Kirk and his reality — where Earth is a battle-scarred wasteland and humanity lives scattered amongst the solar system; no Iowa, no sunsets and no Canada. Tragic, really. La’an begins to warm to him a little, and why wouldn’t you? Wesley’s Kirk oozes quiet, affable charm in half smiles and shrugs, while also still having that flair of bravado and intelligence that we have learned to expect from the inventor of fizzbin — or a premier 2D chess hustler.

The sequences are nice, but as they drag onto into evening and morning — via a rather tortured “I can’t sleep, so I’ll watch the other person sleep” moment — the whole thing gets a little tired. We do, eventually, get to the crux point of their differences on “what is the correct timeline,” the classic time travel debate: one that makes clear how Alt-Kirk’s United Earth is merely surviving on the edges of the solar system, paling in comparison to the prime timeline’s paradise: where La’an’s version of Earth still has sunsets, and Kirk’s brother Sam is still alive.

This crucial point is interrupted by the dramatic (and far less interesting) explosion of the Lake Ontario bridge, which has collapsed in a massive explosion.

The duo race to scene, where they discover that the bridge was blown up with photonic weaponry (certainly not available in this time period) ; the evidence is carted off by a mysterious black van, which leads to a reasonably entertaining car chase through Toronto. Listen, I know we all love the whole “Jim Kirk can’t drive” thing, but the car chase just actually lasted too long, with two acts and a bad musical cover. The most interesting bit was the argument over Kirk’s middle name, which leads to the discovery that this Kirk does not recognize the name Noonien-Singh at all.

It’s a mysterious portent and a little titbit of something interesting within a few minutes of Dodge Challenger product placement.

Eventually, the police catch up with Kirk and start to arrest them; only for the photographer from earlier, Sarah (Adelaide Kane) to ward them off with a phone livestream and accusations of police harassment. This, erm, rather light touch nod to the current state of attitudes to the police (especially when compared with Picard Season 2) is only really here as a segue to introduce the woman, who has also been tracing the mysterious debris to its black-site home.

Then again, as we learn in a diner, Sarah isn’t a complete conspiracy nutjob, because she’s got photos of a Romulan warbird, and knows of a cold fusion reactor in Toronto that is probably at the same secret location. Only now does Kirk remember that this reactor is about to explode and destroy Toronto as part of a Romulan first strike: a detail that he (and the writers, honestly) should have informed of us earlier instead of making us do all that stuff with the bridge that is immediately forgotten.

Instead, we now get treated to the third side-quest of the episode, as La’an and Kirk go in search of someone who could discretely make them a device to find the reactor: none other than Pelia, who has holed herself up in a warehouse in Vermont during this point in history.

This is a cool connection, and reasonably well foreshadowed; but they could have done this a) earlier in the episode and b) with a bit of linkage into the general plot than yet another stage on the mystery box circle of doom. I like Carol Kane! I do! She’s great here, especially as she bumbles about trying to work out why they’ve come to her for engineering help when she isn’t an engineer (whoops).

But it’s really contrived; and we’re nearly 45 minutes into the episode and we’re still chasing…what? A cold fusion reactor that might explode? And we’ve only now found out it’s probably the Romulans? When we could have found that out about 20 minutes ago?

Even this sequence — where La’an devises a cold fusion reactor finding-device out of an old wristwatch — is really laboured. Everything just goes on about three of four minutes longer than it should, and the character interactions that are enjoyable are just surrounded by fluff. Even when they return to Toronto for a nighttime walk beside the wonderfully identifiable architecture of the Royal Ontario Museum, the semi-flirtatious banter between La’an and Kirk just goes on too long.

Sure, we get this moment of La’an letting her defenses down up, and explaining why she feels the need to be so guarded, but I was watching it and wondering how exactly there was still 20 minutes to go.

They also, of course, find the cold fusion reactor, which is inside of the “Noonien-Singh Institute” — I guess the ROM is renting to eugenicists now? — which is great – until Sarah shows up with a gun, revealing that she is also a time traveler… and a Romulan agent. She’s come back to alter the future and prevent the Federation from existing, which seems to happen a lot to the old UFP, doesn’t it? In typical Kirk fashion, Jim believes that she’s bluffing, and attempts to talk her down.

Until she kills him, which is a nice way to undercut the character trope. Good thing this isn’t our Jim Kirk, eh? La’an gets little time to mourn -– I say little, but the moment drags on long enough to kind of kill the tension –- before Sarah drags her into the black site, killing anyone in their way before reaching her target: the locked quarters of a young Khan Noonien-Singh. Yes, that’s right folks, it’s “kill baby Hitler” time. Hooray.

Sarah begins monologuing, and explains her whole rationale to La’an. The Romulans have a “time altering assessment computer” (presumably it came free with the cloaking device) that they use to assess nudges in history, and getting rid of Khan is a surefire way to stop the Federation forming. Sarah also shares her frustrations with the whole plan, and the increasing complications that the Temporal wars are causing as they shift the timeline, and time “pushes back”. Apparently, this was all meant to happen back in 1992.

Good news for Bill Clinton, I suppose, but bad news for this Romulan agent, who has been stuck on earth waiting for 30 years. But now, she’s going kill pre-pubescent Khan, and she’s doing her best to convince La’an to help. They’re both aware of the horrors Khan will inflict on earth, and that La’an knows she must let it happen.

After stopping Sarah, La’an comes face to face with her young ancestor, Khan Noonien-Singh (Desmon Sivan). Making the descendent of a mass murder meet their hated ancestor and then having her tell him “He’s in the right place” is mental. It feels abhorrent to say and accept that La’an just must let him live, but’s that the “kill baby Hitler” philosophical debate all over. The “right” course of history must be protected, which despite everything is kind of the point.

Returning to the Enterprise, La’an finds that all is well and back to normal… only to find  to find Department of Temporal Investigations agent Ymalay (Allison Wilson-Forbes) waiting for her.

La’an does confront Ymalay with the correct view on it, which is that they — whether they intended to or not — made her make a horrifying choice to protect the timeline. Ymalay does sympathize, but only a little. This whole incident was a mistake on their part, and one that La’an fixed. Which, of course, means she never gets to talk about it again. Go time travel! With time restored and the 29^th century device returned, La’an calls up the correct-timeline Lieutenant Jim Kirk — just to see that he is alive and well, before collapsing with emotion.

KIRK ALERT

So, Paul Wesley’s back for round two as James T. Kirk: how did he do? I think he did very well here. With a lot more screentime than in “A Quality of Mercy” — and some good story beats to bounce off of — Wesley is clearly coming into his own as the inheritor of one of science fiction’s greatest characters. This Kirk increasingly feels like his character, and not a pale imitation of either William Shatner or Chris Pine, but there are still instinctive actions, phrases and expressions that make this indisputably Jim Kirk.

The confusions around the revolving door, the attempted bluff with Sarah, the unique and Shanterian delivery of “My God…” when the bridge explodes — it’s all James T. Kirk. I’m looking forward to more of it, but next time, will the “real” James T. Kirk please stand up?

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• The grey-suited man’s time travel device utilizes the same TCARS interface system seen aboard 29th century Wells-class Starfleet vessels. This computer system was introduced in the 1999 Voyager episode “Relativity,” and was revived by Strange New Worlds graphic designer Timothy Peel.
• This episode marks the first appearance of agents of the Department of Temporal Investigations since its origination in 1996’s “Trials and Tribble-ations.” (The agency did, however, have its own series of tie-in novels chronicling the adventures of Agents Dulmer and Lucsly.)

• La’an calls Toronto “The biggest city in what used to be called Canada,” indicating that the country’s name (or its existence as a regional identity) has changed since the 21st century era.
• La’an breaks up a dispute between Transporter Chief Jay (Noah Lamanna) and a Denobulan cadet in the start of the episode; while they’ve been seen in animated form in Lower Decks and Prodigy, this is the first live-action Denobulan seen since Dr. Phlox in Star Trek: Enterprise.
• Kirk refers to his grandfather Tiberius as the source of his middle name; this piece of Kirk family history was established in the opening moments of the 2009 Kelvin Timeline Star Trek film.

• According to its alternate-reality dedication plaque, the United Earth Fleet UEF Enterprise was build at the Luna Shipyards — since there’s no San Francisco left in this dark 23rd century.
• Somehow, La’an’s handprint was able to unlock the secure area of the Noonien-Singh Institute. If that was possible due to her Khan-sourced DNA, how likely is it that the Institute would let one their lab-created children have access to the site’s security system?
• The Torontonians amongst the viewers will no doubt have enjoyed the various on-location shots at Yonge-Dundas square, the Harbourfront and the Royal Ontario Museum, which were fun moments for those of us familiar with the city. The joke about Kirk thinking they were in New York is also a delightful nod to the Canadian city’s role as a stand-in for the Big Apple in a great deal of television and film.

“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” is a good concept for a time travel episode, but the execution was just a bit flat. This is no “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” It’s certainly no “City on the Edge of Forever.” It’s got a lot more in common with Enterprise’s “Carpenter Street” in many ways. Chong and Wesley are really good actors, and I can see why they were paired together; the chemistry is good, but it’s not really romantic chemistry in my view.

There’s a certain veneer of a fan-fiction pairing to them that I think should’ve stayed on the cutting room floor, and the fact that the romantic tension is very limited before they kiss speaks to that. This is a standout episode for Christina Chong, and though she’s excelled for every moment she’s had in Strange New Worlds, and she once again proves that she is one of the best parts of this show.

Overtly tying the Temporal Cold War of Enterprise back into canon as an explainer for differences in timeline — after learning about the War’s future impact to the Discovery era — was clever, but that was kind of it for plot moments I enjoyed.

Still, it was a good advert for the Ontario Tourist Board, so give them that. I would recommend visiting Toronto in the summertime, however: it’s warmer, and there are significantly fewer time travelling Romulans to worry about.