8.2/10
93%
61%
77%
78%
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S4E01 — Valles Marineris
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S4E02 – The Griffin Incident
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S04E03 — Human Best Friend
- Star Trek Strange New Worlds S04E04 — A Case of Chiaroscuro
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S04E05 — Level-Five Transporter Accident
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S04E06 - Off-Hour
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S04E07 — Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S04E08 — Orders Of Magnitude
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S04E09 - Once La'An A Time
- Star Trek Strange New Worlds S04E10 — Tomorrow's Enterprise
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds soft launched when we first saw the U.S.S Enterprise in the sister show Star Trek: Discovery in its second season finale. It's own series started in 2022 and was set in the years just after "The Cage" (The unaired pilot from 1966) and features Captain Pike, Una Chin-Riley as Number One, Spock, Uhuru and Scotty (in season 3). The show has been greenlit for 5 seasons, with the final season expected to air in 2027.
The episode starts with Lieutenant Uhuru on her way back from a Starfleet Protocols
Refresher course. Why are they always on their way back from a course or a conference at the start of these episodes? Don’t they spend any time on the U.S.S Enterprise?
This time, Uhuru makes it back to the Enterprise without incident, just in time to help the crew investigate a white hole. Spock has hypothesised that a white hole might be the opposite end of black hole — where the black hole sucks in light and matter, a white hole deposits it back into the universe.
As she’s settling in to the communications station, Uhuru hears a strange burst of what she thinks sounds like music. Why Pike wasn’t like “Oh, no! Not another musical episode!” when Uhuru reports what she hears I don’t know, after all, it was brought up in episode 7, Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass, missed comedic moment if you ask me!
As they’re preparing to launch a probe into the centre of the white hole, several strange pulses emanate from its centre, trapping the ship in some form of tractor beam and draining the shields. Then Uhuru hears a garbled message over the comms. It’s Scotty and he’s saying that there’s a massive energy build up, he screams and is then cut off. Panicking, Uhuru radios down to engineering but Scotty is fine and has no idea why Uhuru would be concerned for his safety.
A strange energy wave hits the ship, temporarily disabling the inertial dampers and Uhuru gets thrown to the floor, banging her head in the process. After being checked out in sickbay and being told to rest due to her head injury (and the fact she’s adamant she heard Scotty screaming at her from the middle of the white hole) Uhuru heads to her quarters where she begins to obsessively scan the white hole to see if she can track down the source of the communications she received.
Realising she hasn’t got enough compute power, she moves her search to the science/computer lab (at least I think that’s where she is — the set’s been used a couple of times before but I can’t recall it being named). After boosting the power to her search she finally discovers a comms signal and, without notifying the captain having just returned from a Starfleet Protocols Refresher course mind you, she reaches out to contact whatever is she’s found.
What Uhuru discovers on the end of the comms will change her views of not only her fellow crew mates but herself, her place on the ship and how the very fabric of life exists in the universe.
Star Trek
Mirror, Mirror
🚨Red Alert! Major spoilers for Tomorrow’s Enterprise coming up! 🚨
The white hole being the opposite end of a black hole isn’t a new scientific concept (I recall reading about something similar in a Stephen Hawking book) but I think it might be the first time we’ve seen two ships either side of one in a Star Trek episode.
And the whole other Uhuru “1 year in the future” concept makes sense when you think about all of the timey-wimey effects the black hole’s gravity would have on the localised area.
There’s a lot of stuff here we just have to go with, like the handy fact that Spock’s equations take almost 1 year to formulate and it takes 1 year to grow a dilithium diamond — canny that!
The juxtaposition of the two Uhurus is very nicely done with us seeing how, if she just trusts in her own abilities, she can be both a successful member of the crew and a good friend too.
And the addition of the budding romance between Scotty and Uhuru on the white hole side, compared to the devastation Uhuru feels at Scotty’s loss on the black hole side shows just how much impact a year can have on a person in terms of growth and relationships.
The scenes of Uhuru in the two versions of the Enterprise where they’re mirroring each other’s action and then crossing paths was exceptionally well done and a nice way of showing the concurrency of events even if they are a year apart in linear time.
Yeah Baby, Yeah!
One thing I thought that let this episode down was the whole “space baby” concept.
They mention the term “space baby” nine times in quick succession. You know when you hear a word or phrase over and over it starts to sound stupid and make no sense? I felt that after the 3rd or 4th time.
In Tomorrow’s Enterprise there is some kind entity in the middle of the space between the black and white hole. The music that Uhuru’s been hearing are the “midwives” looking after the entity being born crying out that the birth is breach — meaning the “space baby” has turned and cannot be “born” properly — and that it’s in danger of dying.
“Space Babies” (see how silly that’s beginning to sound after 4 mentions?) aren’t a new concept either, the whole reason the Titan-A was able to escape the gravity well in the nebula in the The Birth (Star Trek: Picard — Season 3, Episode 4) was because of contraction waves the nebula was having that propelled the ship away from the centre of the nebula.
At one point watching Tomorrow’s Enterprise, I did get the sinking feeling that it was going to be one of those Jellyfish babies again as yet more proof the writing team don’t have an original idea between them, but interestingly we didn’t see the “space baby” itself, just hints of what the “midwives” were.
No Tech Babble
Another issue I had was the fact that Uhuru — and only Uhuru — was the one to go out on to the hull of the ship to help turn the “space baby” into a position so it could be birthed. There’s a Chapel on both sides of the phenomenon and as she says herself, she’s delivered a lot of babies, so as there are two of her then why couldn’t Chapel help the “space baby”? (Can’t stop, won’t stop. I am making a point.)
Moreover, why did Uhuru even need to go out on the saucer section of the ship to launch the probe drone things? If she’s controlling them via a tactile gloves, couldn’t she do that from the comfort of her own bed if she wanted? I mean, the special effect shots were cool, and it led up to Uhuru entering the white/black hole but that could have been separate from the drone control thing — I just thought it was odd and maybe needed a little bit of technobabbly exposition.
Also, I don’t know if I missed something, if I am being too picky or if this is a bit of a big plot hole so let me know in the comments what you think about this: White Hole Uhuru starts the experiment to make a dilthium diamond which we know will take 1 year. Then Black Hole Uhuru says she’s ground up the dilithium diamond in order to give each drone enough power to help with pushing the “space baby” into the correct position.
So if a dilithium diamond takes 1 year to make, and White Hole Uhuru doesn’t have a dilithium diamond, how is she pushing the “space baby” from her side? How are her drones powered? Or do they just need super-powered drones on one side of the anomaly? It really makes no sense other than to link White Hole Uhuru to the 1-year-older Black Hole Uhuru.
Lights, Camera, Action!
The lighting changes between the two ships were also a lovely touch here. Just to dust of my BA Hons in Media Production so I can justify my degree to my family, let’s dissect the choices a little bit.
On the White Hole Enterprise, the lighting is muted with an orange hue. It’s subdued and leaves areas of shadow untouched by the light.
On the Black Hole Enterprise, the lighting is a bright blue-hued shade with no shadows and everything fully visible and in focus.
You could argue that the lighting choices reflect Uhuru’s inner state: hidden in shadow, murky and not at all clear on the white hole side. Vibrant, open and accessible on the Black Hole side.
The stark contrast with the two lighting styles alone shows the growth in Uhuru, it’s how she sees herself and, as it’s lighting, it’s reflects how others see her too.
Or maybe I’m I’m reading too much into it and it was simply a stylistic choice, let me know what you think!
Oh, and we need to see more of the disco Enterprise bridge lights please – they were mint!
And can we also give a round of applause for the hair, makeup and wardrobe department? The move to the TOS era style of women’s uniforms was excellent and Nurse Chapel’s hair was FLAWLESS. Loved it.
Fine Finale
Despite my annoyances with the plot, the episode itself was quite a strong one and it actually got back to the roots of what Star Trek is meant to be: an exploration of life out in the universe and within oneself.
Out of the episodes we’ve had this season, maybe 3 out of the 10 could be considered “proper” Star Trek, with the rest of them just a silly mish mash of genre-for-genre’s sake fluff, and out of those 3 Tomorrow’s Enterprise is certainly the strongest.
Celia Rose Gooding knocks it out of the park as the two different versions of Uhuru — the unsure newly promoted Lieutenant Junior Grade concentrating on her career over friendships on the White Hole side, and the confident Black Hole Lieutenant Uhuru who is able to balance career and friends, as well as playing a mean card game to boot.
It was also nice to see the romance between Uhuru and Scotty given some space to breath. While it was never expressly mentioned in The Original Series, bar some occasional flirting (which Uhuru did with Spock too), we did see how close the pair had become by Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with a couple of interactions hinting at a much deeper relationship than just friends.
One thing of note was that McCoy was mentioned but not seen, it could have been a nice introduction to him in the form of a cameo when the White Hole/Black Hole Uhurus swapped places and White Hole Uhuru ended up in sickbay again.
This season of Strange New Worlds has been rather hit and miss, with more misses than hits in my book, and while Tomorrow’s Enterprise wasn’t the best episode of Star Trek I’ve ever seen it was certainly one of the better episodes of the season and was a fitting finale that left the series on a much needed high note after a series of bum ones.
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