Sending a probe into a white hole? I often just do that to the brown ones… poo. Juvinality aside, we’re finally here: The end of season 4 of Strange New Worlds, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.” Directed by series producer Chris Fisher, we last saw Fisher for “Valles Marineris.” Not a good start. Meanwhile, writing comes from Henry Alonso Myers, so we’re just going subterranean at this point, and he’s joined by Robbie Thompson. Thompson’s last episode was the actually good Star Trek horror episode, “The Griffin Incident.” If two out of three “ain’t bad,” then what’s one out of three?

After being little more than a side plot all season, Uhura is taking a bit more responsibility across the ship as the Enterprise is sat on the edge of a White Hole. Cue the hole ejaculating a bunch of white stuff and me trying not to make this sexual; the bridge crew is once again thrown about the place. Including Uhura getting head trauma after hearing some music notes before the White Hole ejaculates. She also happened to hear voices calling out in distress, almost as if there is something timey-wimey going on.

Getting the star dates wrong, Brad Wetherly and Onitra Johnson’s failing, a year later in front of a Black Hole, James T. Kirk’s Enterprise experiences a similar circumstance. However, at this time, Scotty and Uhura are docking their holes for the white stuff to shoot out and affect their lives. Well, kind of. A failed observation mission at the edge of the Black Hole with 80s Glam Rocker Erica and bland Scotty sees this future Uhura get her head trauma in a shuttle before being beamed back aboard the Enterprise alone. That’s when we find out that Scotty (doesn’t know) died a year ago at the White Hole.

Common sense would dictate that to write about time travel, you need to understand it and establish rules about it, but I guess when you’re Henry Alonso Myers, you want people to hate you. Not only is this the least interesting, least exciting, least set up, and generally not really worth it part of the season, but we’re not even really doing it with the guy whose whole story is time travel and knowing the future. Like most people, I love Uhura, but the way we’re treating her story feels disjointed, disinterested, and a little bit disrespectful.

We’re only showing now that Uhura is this great problem solver, this great linguist, this action hero after she mentored a Vulcan, played like she’s TV’s idea of autism, oh, and she’s been tortured too. Without actually doing much with her story in the prior seasons because there seemed to be no plan for this, it feels reactionary to the calls that Uhura hasn’t done much. To be honest, no one has done much because it has been the Spock and La’An show (featuring Chris Pike).

Let’s actually get to some summation so we can break things down properly: The McGuffin of the week queefs, knocking both versions of Uhura into concussion protocol, leading to the two talking to each other. If I could describe it more specifically, I would, but I’ve given up on that because it is treated as magic comms that bend time. Here is the thing with the two Uhuras (Uhurai?), we go through lots of the same thing with each. After several minutes of build-up, the head injury, and the comms thing, we repeat it again with future Uhura.

In the space of 20 minutes, we do multiples of the same thing twice. My problem isn’t that we’re showing the parallels, but the fact that we’re doing it in the least interesting way. A great example of this done well is “Blink:” You see the “timey-wimey” DVD clip, you see Wester Drumlins and the Angels, but it is all quick at the start so that the “timey-wimey” bit slows down to explain it all. Here, it is 8 minutes from recap to credits, 2 minutes for credits, then about 8 more minutes to catch up with the same beats in this sort of alt-future.

I’m not here to jizz my jorts over James T. Kirk sitting like a ponce or that mention of crew members I asked about last time before this episode even released. Having that nostalgia isn’t enough to make me overlook 20 minutes gone in a 60-minute finale. Sitting longer with that build makes me question the mystery we’re setting up, which, spoiler alert, isn’t really anything to do with our crew. It isn’t a new planet, it isn’t a new development of our characters; it is a thing we’ll get to here shortly that doesn’t feel very season finale-ish.

After the prolonged build-up, we actually get something that Doctor Who did for the 50th anniversary special as well, minus the reveal of attack eyebrows. While both future and present Uhura work together to solve this Black-White Hole thing and why there is time distortion that is connecting them, present Uhura sets up things that future Uhura completes. The whole door lock thing that builds to the Galifrey reveal. Fun idea, a good use of time travel of sorts. Again, creative, fun, and interesting.

Our Uhura goes to Spock, then has this future one return asking for the results of what she asked him to calculate; that’s a fun idea. The problem with it, more or less, is the idea that time travel is this Bill and Ted thing, where you don’t care for the paradoxes and the effects thereof. As I have said in these reviews for weeks, Star Trek has a fandom that’s typically a bit more discerning when it comes to the what and why of certain things.

My problem with that is the small group that thinks Star Trek is purely scientific with its nonsense; it is not. Some nonsense works, and there is some that doesn’t. What typically does work, both for these people and for weirdos like me who care about writing a bit more, is when rules are established within the universe itself, then followed. It earns a sort of, dare I say it, logic to what we’re seeing. Our rule here: Black Hole + White Hole = time magic and carefree paradoxes. Not really a solid footing to stand on logically.

Either way, the two Uhuras try to correct the timeline, save Scotty on the White Hole side of the timeline, and eventually Uhura figures out the musical notes as language. A callback to one of her early episodes in season 1. Generally speaking, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” isn’t bad, but when you’re asked to look at something a bit closer like this, it becomes a bit tiresome. As much as there isn’t anything bad, it isn’t quite special either. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said it was a mid-season filler; it is not, and that’s the problem.

Spoiler for a so-so episode of Star Trek, it is a magic entity space baby thing, again. So the whole episode is kind of about chosen family and being with people you care about, which would have been fine if it wasn’t the season finale. Call me unemotional, heartless, or far too logical if you like, but I just don’t care at this point. Why should I care about a future Uhura that we’re not going to see because it is after Pike is gone and the show has already been canceled, when the show isn’t about Uhura?

I keep saying it, and I keep feeling like I’m going in circles, but the show is called Strange New Worlds, and it wasn’t strange, it wasn’t new, and it wasn’t a world. We have a Pike story that needs to now be wrapped up in six episodes. We also have a cast of fine characters that are going nowhere, and nothing is coming of any of it. Taking all of that knowledge out of the equation, then yeah, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” is fine and nothing more. Not an episode I’d go out of my way to watch again.

That’s the most frustrating part of this; I wanted to like it. I wanted to find something in this season that was good and poignant, something that was building towards what has been confirmed as the end of the show as we know it. Yet here we are. Half a season of “bleh” middle-of-the-road stabs at comedy and irreverence, and the other half doing moderately fine things with the Star Trek concept, which all built to nothing in particular.

In fact, I asked my editor if he could guess this finale, and jokingly, through hatred for Alonso Myers, didn’t get it too far wrong. I’m not saying predictable is a bad thing, and I’m not saying that it was a surprise finale either; it is the idea that the show thinks it is more high stakes than it actually feels like to watch. That, I think, is my trouble with Strange New Worlds in general; it almost always acts as if you care about these characters because of TOS and yet seems to forget the danger is taken away because this is before TOS in the timeline.

I don’t want to sit here and give rewrites; I’ve got better things to do, like look at Rule34 of Anson Mount’s other cheeks, but season 4 of SNW has felt disjointed. I get that “A Case of Chiaroscuro” was a Casablanca reference, but what purpose did torturing Uhura serve? What purpose did Ash’a serve? To come to the end of a season with questions about why we’re following the story of the person the finale focuses on isn’t a good thing. In fact, I almost want to claim season 4 is as similarly uninterested in telling an interesting, overarching story as season 1 of TNG.

Ultimately, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” is a day I don’t hold my breath waiting to come, and that’s a damning statement given the actors and the setup this prequel could have done with that concept. Instead, I’m hesitant to see what’s next for the Strange New Worlds crew in its final season, yet also glad it will finally be over. Call me cynical, but if this is the season finale leading us into the final season, it is not the type of thing to instill that sense of hope you’d want in… well, seeing that final season.

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SNW "Tomorrow's Enterprise"

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• I like the more fun time travel bits, though they are few and far between.
• Glam-rocker Erica.

Cons

• What about this season led to this moment?
• Too many questions, very few answers.