It wouldn’t be Star Trek without some time travel shenanigans. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 10 “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” lands Uhura in a quantum entanglement. There’s action, there’s romance, and a Space Baby?! Let untangle this in this review of our finale, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 10 “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.”
Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey
Quantum entanglement is the name of the game in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 10 “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.” With Uhura quantumly entangled with herself from a mere year in the future, there’s only so much that can change, right? RIGHT?! But everything IS different. Pike’s off the ship and Kirk’s the Captain. Ortegas has taken a job as the flight instructor for the Academy. M’Benga is spending more and more time on Vulcan leaving Dr. Boyce and a name-dropped Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy to fill the gap. No one wants to talk about La’an, no no no, and Scotty is DEAD?! We’ve got to set this right.
It’s not the first instance of this kind of time travel or quantum entanglement in Star Trek. Heck, it’s not even the first time we’ve seen it this season. The first episode of the season, “Valles Marineris” had the Enterprise harnessed between the 23rd century and pre-history. It’s fitting that the theme has made its way into the finale. However, as La’an cautions Uhura, it’s dangerous to try to alter the timeline. It’s also heartbreaking. I can’t blame La’an for dropping a bit of knowledge on Uhura about tracing the comms signal to try to prevent that heartbreak. Scotty is her friend too, after all. Thankfully, Uhura’s jaunt with time travel leaves her in a better place than La’an’s did. More on this jaunt in a moment.
MORE: Check out our reviews of episode 1, episode 2, episode 3, episode 4, and episode 5!
Space Baby?!
When I think of Star Trek and then hear the phrase, “Space Baby” I think of Clint Howard’s first appearance in the franchise—Star Trek: The Original Series’ “The Corbomite Maneuver,” where he is Balok, a literal alien baby in space. However, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 10 “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” gives us an indescribable Space Baby of light and sound. Something to note here is that it’s not just the science used to find a solution to birthing the Space Baby. Without Uhura’s understanding of music, this mission fails. Her use and understanding of music reminds me of Uhura’s first big mission in “Children of the Comet.” Similarly here, the music is not just song, but an entire language.
This detail highlights the importance of art as well as STEM. Without Uhura being able to detect the A minor chord, instead of translating as “a minor a,” all of this falls apart. It feels arbitrary. Here Star Trek not only puts a value on the science and math of it all, but on the importance of art. STEM is absolutely important, but so is STEAM.
Music is so integral to our history and culture that on the Voyager I probe in 1977, scientists felt the need to include a golden record featuring examples of music from numerous eastern and western cultures, indigenous, and folk music. Everyone from Mozart to Chuck Berry is included. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 10 “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” feels like the embodiment of that idea. We put music on a gold record just in case we found new life that could hear and understand us. Turns out the Enterprise did.
MORE: Watch our interview with Ethan Peck, Christina Chong, and Paul Wesley HERE!
Uhura and Scotty?!
One interesting surprise in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 10 “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” is future Uhura dating Scotty on the downlow. This is nod to something referenced only in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Apparently Uhura and Scotty were going on shore leave together. Obviously, this was not something that made it to television in 1966. An interracial relationship would’ve been far too controversial for TV in The Original Series era. Considering they had stations refuse to air the first interracial kiss on television in the Original Series episode, “Plato’s Stepchildren,” this kind of thing wouldn’t have even been hinted at back then.
But Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is taking the larger ideas of equality and freedom established in TOS and making them what they should have been. That being said, I don’t blame Uhura at all for falling for Scotty. Martin Quinn’s Scotty is entirely too charming, and frankly, so is Quinn. He plays the role of delightfully awkward nerd so well. Plus he’s kind and funny, too. Perhaps it’s my own little crush on Scotty showing, but yes, girl! Live in the moment, and as my girl, the newly upgradedCaptain Ortegas says, maybe the now of it is all that matters.
MORE: Anson Mount chats being part of Star Trek’s 60th and more, along with Rebecca Romijn and Carol Kane in this roundtable interview!
The Dreamer and the Dream
The edits in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 10 “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” are one of the best parts of the episode. It is masterful to layer the shots of each Uhura moving in parallel as they do. However, the highlight of the episode is putting Celia as Current Uhura next to Celia as one-year-older-and-dressed-as Original Series Uhura.
She is what the street preacher played by Brock Peters in the iconic Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Far Beyond the Stars” calls Ben Sisko, “The dreamer and the dream.” When I memorialized Nichelle Nichols here on Fangirlish after her passing, I described Nichelle Nichols as just that. Nichols dreamed of a day when women and people of color would be treated with justice and equality. She played that dream on Star Trek: The Original Series. And yet she helped move that dream forward into reality just by showing up to work on that set.
That final shot of both Uhuras standing together feels like a homecoming. Before Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiered, I described Celia Rose Gooding’s role as Uhura as a correction. It’s how Uhura should have been written in 1966. Seeing her dressed as the Uhura of now and in the style of TOS Uhura brought me to tears. It’s the fulfillment of a promise and as bold of a visual statement as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has ever made. As a woman, watching her save the day through assisting in the birth of the Space Baby, leaping untethered into a black and/or white hole, and rescuing the man she loves (and will love), makes it an incredibly bold statement about the power and strength inherent in femininity.
As a white ally, it fills my heart with joy to see a black woman exhibit such strength and grace. It warms my heart to know what it means for my friends of color to see someone that looks like themselves on screen exhibit black excellence. Let us hope and pray we stay this course with Strange New Worlds and all other Star Trek properties in the future.
MORE: Read our reviews of episode 6, episode 7, episode 8, and episode 9!
Final Finale Thoughts
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 10 “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” is a nice bookend to the season with quantum entanglement. The incredible visuals of the black and white holes, the Midwives, the Space Baby, and Uhura’s space walk are beyond gorgeous. The emotionally charged musical cues by Nami Melumad are deeply moving and gorgeous. Further, in an episode where music is the language, the untranslatable musical description of the Space Baby is especially interesting. As a musician, I would love to sit down with the conductor’s sheet music of that piece of the score, and look at the instrumentation breakdown and musical notation. How do you describe the indescribable? That musical flourish is a great place to start.
Finally, the midwives speak to the Uhuras, and offer one piece of foreknowledge. “You will always be ‘surprising,’” they say. Surprises can be a mixed bag, but this kind of “surprising” feels like an affirmation. Before they are sent back to their respective timelines, the elder Uhura answers a hypothetical question I’ve heard posed in counseling: What would you say to your younger self? It’s simple. “You’re doing great. Never stop growing.” We continue to do great when we continue to grow. Would that we all remember that.
I have to give massive props to the cinematography team, the editing room, and whoever plays Celia Rose Gooding’s body double. That is some Incredible editing work with the dual Uhuras. I felt totally immersed with each viewing of the episode due to the seamless editing work. Well done!
MORE: Check out our interviews with Deidre Hall and Rhys Darby!
Final Season 4 Thoughts
On the whole, Season 4 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, while an exercise in “Strange New Genres,” still feels like a return to form. We’ve had several solid Star Trek messages even amongst the wild genre-hopping. That’s not landed well with every fan, but I can tell you that more often than not, it has landed well with me. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has one season left and it’s only got six episodes. It feels like ending the series not with a bang, but a whimper. It’s not getting the flourish it deserves. But yet, after this season I find myself optimistic.
As Uhura says in our finale, “I don’t know what the next few years will bring, but I know who I want to be with—my family.” For me, Star Trek is my family. It’s a fandom where I’ve found community. It’s become engrained in my life, my friendships, and even my DJ handle (DJ Live Long and Party). With the turmoil at the studio level and no new Star Trek in production now, it can be difficult to have hope. But even after these series end, I will still have my Star Trek family. I don’t know what these next few years will bring, but for me, the community I’ve found that love a series focused on hope, justice, curiosity, and equality is exactly the kind of family I want to be in. Let’s finish the race strong, Strange New Worlds.
What do you think of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 10 “Tomorrow’s Enterprise”? Leave me a comment and let’s talk Trek.
All episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are streaming now on Paramount+.
