“You have a device in your pocket that protects you from changes in the timeline. If he dies, you can live whatever kind of life you want, and you’ll never have to hear the name Khan ever again.”
I guess I’m on Team Villain this week on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds because that proposition sounds AMAZING! We were doing so well. Last week delivered a perfect-10 episode, an hour I called the best Trek episode of the 21st Century. And now I find myself really wishing La’an had let us all live in a world where we never had to hear the name Khan ever again. Alas, Star Trek writers still can’t help but eat from the tree that grew from “Space Seed.”
Though Strange New Worlds delivered a home run of a season one, I was always nervous about La’an’s ancestry since the first episode established she was La’an Noonien-Singh because of all the baggage that name carried in the Star Trek universe — especially following the silly epilogue in Star Trek: Picard‘s season two directly invoking Khan for anyone who somehow failed to pick up on the only slightly subtler hints.
I knew La’an was a ticking timebomb where we were going to get back to Khan one way or another because The Wrath of Khan is the most universally beloved Trek movie, and the franchise’s writers refuse to move on. Numerous Trek villains have been as well-versed in classic literature as Khan or gave performances as big and arch as Ricardo Montalban’s. The final season of Star Trek: Picard shamelessly copied everything from little moments to major plot elements from Wrath of Khan, sometimes to the point of near-shot-for-shot recreations as if merely invoking the 1982 blockbuster would make the show better.
All that history just makes for a frustrating final third of an otherwise enjoyable episode. “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” opens wonderfully by taking us through a day in the life of Enterprise’s security chief. Seeing the minutia La’an deals with on a daily basis not only provides excellent world-building but really gets us into the character’s head. We understand La’an’s inner ennui through Christina Chong’s physical performance.
The writers also use this sequence to hide a plot point that will be important later. While Carol Kane’s Pelia is caught hoarding priceless pieces of stolen art from Earth’s history “in case this no money, socialist utopia thing turns out to be a fad,” she mentions still owning a bunker in Vermont. This exposition dump is handled a bit too clumsily, and I suspect the audience will remember Pelia before La’an does in the story. It’d make for a more satisfying solution if La’an was ahead of the audience.
Carol Kane as Pelia and Christina Chong as La’an (Paramount+)
Of course, Khan isn’t the only Original Series character here. Paul Wesley’s Captain James T. Kirk is also along for the ride back to the 21st Century. Once again, this is a slightly alternate universe version of Kirk as was the case in season one’s “A Quality of Mercy.”
Thankfully, Wesley has grown more into the role and gets more screen time here. He’s really starting to get the hang of that Jim Kirk swagger and comedic timing. He delivers the line, “I’m from space!” with aplomb. I wasn’t sold on his performance last time, and even when acting against Anson Mount, I thought Mount, as Pike, was giving the superior Kirk performance to Wesley.
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” operates largely as a buddy-partner story, and its two leads act well against each other. It works best when it’s about the characters and just focused on La’an and Kirk finding solace in each other.
But unfortunately, that final section derails “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.” They do at least seem to have finally cast someone who appears to be of South Asian descent to portray Captain Kirk’s archnemesis, though I wasn’t able to confirm if the young, Toronto-born Desmond Sivan actually does possess a South Asian heritage.
I just wish this franchise would let the past die, especially given the multiple attempts lately to resurrect and reinsert Khan into new stories like in Star Trek: Into Darkness and the aforementioned setup in Star Trek: Picard‘s second season. And given that last season has already teased a major return of Spock’s half-brother Sybok, the villain of another Trek film, Strange New World‘s is in serious danger of becoming Star Trek: Same Old Thing.
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