Whether you want to call them subspace anomalies, temporal rifts, or plain old wormholes, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey regions of space (h/t "Doctor Who") have a lot to answer for in "Star Trek".
The white hole in "Tomorrow's Enterprise", the "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 4 finale, allows Lt. Uhura to communicate with a version of herself from a year in the future as they try to save crewmate (and love interest) Scotty from death by exploding console. It's also an excuse to pay homage to two of the greatest ever episodes of "The Next Generation", while maybe also providing an origin story for an important element in "Deep Space Nine"'s mythology.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "TOMORROW'S ENTERPRISE" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.
The episode's title is the most blatant call-back. In "Yesterday's Enterprise" (first broadcast in 1990), Captain Picard and the Enterprise-D crew encounter an unstable region of space that brings them viewscreen-to-viewscreen with their ship's direct predecessor, the Enterprise-C.
Twenty-two years earlier, the latter vessel was attacked by Romulans while responding to a distress call from the Klingon outpost on Narendra III. Its disappearance inadvertently triggered an all-out war between the Federation and the Klingons, creating an all-new timeline where Lt. Worf is (understandably) nowhere to be seen, and the deceased Lt. Tasha Yar is back on the bridge.
It's a brilliant story, revealing a different side to some familiar faces, now shaped by a lifetime on the front lines. This Enterprise's prime directive is war rather than exploration, with a bridge crew who carry phasers as standard, and see this ship from the past as a potential source of spare parts.
Picard and Enterprise-C captain Rachel Garrett (a younger version of the character appeared in the standalone TV movie "Section 31") eventually decide to send Yar and what remains of the out-of-time starship's crew back home in the hope of averting the conflict. (After their return to the past, the Romulans capture Yar and several members of the crew. Yar later gives birth to a half-Romulan daughter, Sela, who shows up in "The Next Generation" two-parter "Redemption".)
As in "Tomorrow's Enterprise", two points in time are connected by a strange phenomenon (Data describes the "TNG" version as a "temporal rift in space"), while both episodes hinge on one person recognizing that something is a little, well, off. In "Yesterday's Enterprise" it's Guinan who gets a feeling the Enterprise-D isn't how or where it's supposed to be; in "Strange New Worlds", it's Uhura — or, to be more accurate — her present and future selves.
In the latter regard, "Tomorrow's Enterprise" shares more connective tissue with "TNG"'s majestic series finale, "All Good Things…"
Once again, there's a "large subspace anomaly" involved, but in the Enterprise-D's TV swansong, it's Picard who gets to see the bigger picture. Throughout the feature-length mission, he's bounced through time by cosmic trickster Q, who — for once — might actually be giving his old sparring partner "Jean-Luc" a helping hand.
Picard finds himself hopping between three distinct points in his life: the start of his tenure on the Enterprise, the "Next Generation"'s "present day", and a future where he's an old man tending his vineyard. All the captain knows is that he has a puzzle to solve, and that failure will result in the end of humanity. No pressure, then…
Strangely, the anomaly is non-existent in the future but significantly bigger in the past — so much so that, when Picard is briefly transported billions of years back, it's grown so much that it's blocked the evolution of all life on Earth. ("Strange New Worlds"' season 4 opener, Valles Marineris, deals with similarly significant consequences.)
It also turns out that Picard's own actions — casually throwing tachyon pulses at the problem — created the phenomenon in the first place, and that it can only be stopped by flying three incarnations of the Enterprise into the eye of the storm.
Meanwhile, in "Tomorrow's Enterprise", the Two-huras have to work together, communicating via the white hole/black hole bridging their two timelines. The stakes are slightly lower than the fate of humanity, but — with Scotty's life on the line — just as emotionally charged.
As in "All Good Things…", solving their predicament is dependent on passing information between the two time periods. For example, future Uhura (with her Original Series-esque hairdo) is able to make use of a "mathematical conundrum" and homemade dilithium diamond that her past self set in motion a year earlier.
The duo also translate the musical signals being emitted by the cosmic rift, realizing that a giant space baby is about to be born, and that the energy bursts bombarding both Enterprises are effectively contractions. They then join forces on a coordinated spacewalk to help ease the baby out of its breach state, a job neither could have completed alone.
Fans of "Deep Space Nine" (set roughly a century later) may sense something familiar about this new kid on the block. The species' non-linear approach to time, coupled with a penchant for making giant space vortices their home, suggests they're closely related to the wormhole aliens, aka Prophets, worshipped by the Bajorans. Were the beings who anointed Benjamin Sisko as their Emissary born this way?
But the roll call on board the Enterprise of tomorrow is the bigger tease, even though it exists just a year in the future. With just a fifth and final season of "Strange New Worlds" to come, the episode suggests that the next 12 months will be extremely eventful for the Federation flagship's HR department: Kirk will replace Pike in the big chair, Spock will embrace his more logical Original Series persona, and the fate of the absent La'an — famously not on board the Enterprise during its famous five-year mission — remains intriguingly ambiguous.
"By the time we're done with season five, all those questions [about what happens to the various characters] will be answered," co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman told SFX magazine ahead of season 4. "We're moving everybody to the place where, when you turn off the set after the last episode of 'Strange New Worlds', you won't wonder where they are."
Have we just seen the shape of things to come? Or has that timeline ceased to exist, just as the possible futures of "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "All Good Things…" evaporated after the closure of their respective anomalies? The answer to that question is in the hands of the occupants of "Strange New Worlds"' writers' room… though wormhole aliens who experience past, present, and future simultaneously may also have an inkling of what's in store for the grand finale.
Every episode of 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' is now available on Paramount+.
