A Guest Blog by Mindless-Droid

This week’s classic Star trek episode is All Our Yesterdays. The Enterprise heads to a planet whose star will go nova in three hours and finds everyone gone except the librarian of the planet. The library happens to be a time machine and Kirk hearing cries for help inadvertently steps through the time machine into the past. Spock and McCoy attempting to find the captain are also accidentally sent back to a different point in time. As time runs out they must each find a way back before the sun explodes trapping them in the planets past forever.

Most people’s reviews I read like this episode but I for one find it filled with illogic to coin a phrase. First off I’m not one for time travel in the Trek universe. Okay City is great but The Naked Time should have been linked to Tomorrow is Yesterday because after that episode we are in a three day earlier alternate time line and I can forgive the non-chalet way we slingshot around the sun to save the whales because well colorful metaphors, newclearar wessels (spell check had no suggestions for that one) and it was just plain fun. We won’t mention Assignment: Earth.

Now seriously how did the Enterprise find out that the star would go nova and in three hours no less? Who told them? I’m no expert in stellar physics but even in the Trek universe would it be possible to predict to the second when a star would go nova. Anyway their scans show everyone is gone so they beam down anyway. After finding out there is nobody left why not just move on it would seem that the Sarpeidions got out of dodge. A quick side note one thing that this series always had was really cool planet and star system names. Let’s say that they found the planets inhabitants still there what would they have done anyway with only the Enterprise how many people could they have saved? We’re here to rescue your planet but we can only take a couple hundred people the whole mission makes no sense.

Next we meet the librarian. A librarian named Mr. Atoz get it A to Z and we go round and round asking questions getting vague answers so that the hero’s don’t know it’s a time travel library. Another thing that bugged me the Sarpeidions can manipulate time but didn’t have space flight capability seems a bit odd. Back to Mr. Atoz first he doesn’t recognize an alien in Spock and if everyone had left why was he still there if he sent the last person off why not just pop in his disk and be gone it’s not like he had to lock the place up or anything it would be vaporized in a couple of hours.

So Kirk hears a scream and steps through the time portal Spock and McCoy follow him through and get transported to a different place without changing the disc but later we see Atoz change the disc before he can escape. Then Kirk can talk to Spock and McCoy through the time portal through the library through the time portal into the other past what?

Spock has now figured out that the Sarpeidions have escaped into the planet’s past which brings up a whole new set of questions. In The City on the Edge of Forever McCoy’s one simple act changed all of history now you have an entire planets population mucking around in the past. You would think the library would be blinking in and out of existence. With so many people you would think someone would accidentally alter the timeline somewhere along the line. What if some person escaped into the past and accidentally stops the person who discovers time travel from discovering the secret and all of a sudden the whole planet reappears in the present. I could hear the collective “Ah crap” from the entire population.

This episode was the Spock gets the girl episode. Being transported 5000 years in the past Spock takes on the characteristics of the Vulcans of that time without logic he falls for Zarabeth who they meet and who has been imprisoned in the past. This is another point that I didn’t like if the Atavachron prepares you to enter the time you choose and Spock wasn’t prepared for that time period wouldn’t he stay as he was? Also his phaser won’t work because of the time period but the tri-corder does. Kirk trapped in the Salem witch trial period of the planets past had some good moments. When the locals heard him calling out to Spock and McCoy Kirk called McCoy Bones that was pretty funny just like Catspaw when the skeleton was hanging next to McCoy and he called him Bones.

So Kirk convinces the prosecutor to take him to the portal and he returns to the library and forces Mr. Atoz to help him find the period into which Spock and McCoy have been sent. They find the right disc just as Spock and McCoy reach the portal nice coincidence. At first Spock tries to push McCoy through and remain with Zarabeth but he can’t get back alone because they had come through together why that is who knows. So after a tearful goodbye Spock and McCoy return to the library. Mr. Atoz switches discs and makes his escape into the past. Spock assures McCoy that all is as it was and with time ticking down why are they standing around kibitzing get back to the ship time is running out and Scotty is having a cow. Anyway McCoy says to Spock that it did happen meaning Spock’s emotional behavior. Spock admits it but says that she Zarabeth is dead, dead and buried. Okay here’s another thing she was banished alone in the past who buried her. Well they make it back to the ship just in time as the star explodes and the Enterprise warps away.

A couple of bits of trivia. The re-mastered shot of Beta Niobe exploding is pretty cool and the effects were based upon actual photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. No red shirts were harmed in this episode actually no other crew member is seen in this episode although we do hear Scotty on the communicator. This was the last adventure of the Enterprise according to the Star date even though it aired before the episode Turnabout Intruder.