TOS - Tomorrow is Yesterday

This episode has a very interesting premise. However, it is not a good as it could have been. Tomorrow is Yesterday involves the first use of time travel in Star Trek as a major plot device. However, once the location of the Enterprise is revealed in both space and time and Captain Christopher is beamed aboard, the characters spend large amounts of time arguing about whether Christopher should be returned or not, and then rehashing that same argument. Also, Kirk’s computer problems, although meant to be funny, are simply annoying, nothing more than a stupid, completely irrelevant tangent, which does not fit in with the rather serious nature of this episode. Many of the scenes that take place in the army base are enjoyable, especially Kirk’s and Sulu’s information recovery mission and Kirk’s subsequent interrogation and rescue, which are appropriately serious, while at the same time incorporating humor into the storyline. This episode also includes a shot of the ship other than those 12 shots used over and over again through the run of the show. Most of them are actually quite good for the original series, except for one toward the end of the episode in which the Enterprise is shown leaving Earth orbit with part of its nacelle missing. There are also many continuity errors in this episode. First, when the Enterprise engages its warp drive at warp 3, it takes about 10 times longer to reach the sun then it should have. It is possible that Kirk could have ordered the ship to proceed at impulse to the vicinity of the sun before engaging warp drive, and this is simply not shown in the episode. However, it also takes the Enterprise far too long to exit our solar system, while moving at speeds in excess of warp 8. This could be explained as the effect of temporal distortion due to the fact the Enterprise was moving forward in time as well as space at the time. Also, the transporter seems to have no operational limits in this episode, given the extreme distances Captain Christopher is beamed, as well as the army patrol officer. However, this as well could be attributed to distortion in the space-time continuum due to time travel. Also unusual is the fact that the Enterprise is moving at incredibly warp when it commences transport, a very risky action, so much so that in the Voyager episode Maneuvers, B’elanna almost was prohibited from performing it by Captain Janeway. And even then she had to synchronize the angular confinement beam with the frequency at which the warp core was operating. Therefore, this could also be attributed to distortion in the space-time continuum due to time travel. Appropriate modifications to the transporter could have been made, but if they were, that fact was not included in the episode. Aside from the annoying continuity errors, computer problems, and sometimes repetitive dialog, much of this episode is actually reasonably good.