‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Gets Lost in Time in Its Season 4 Finale

The finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season four, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” (a clear reference to the “Yesterday’s Enterprise” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation), tackles a classic Star Trek problem: timeline shenanigans.

“Tomorrow’s Enterprise” opens with a voiceover from Uhura, who has recently finished her Starfleet protocols refresher course and returned to the U.S.S. Enterprise just in time to partake in the crew’s next mission: listening to what is at the center of a white hole. Scotty asks her out for a drink, but she claims she’s needed on the bridge and asks if they can talk later.

On the bridge, Spock says the theory is that white holes are the reverse side of black holes, and that’s why they’re studying it. Uhura suddenly hears music coming from the hole. Before she can warn Pike, a huge energy blast hits the Enterprise and Uhura falls and hits her head. The ship’s shields are at 40% and dropping and the controls aren’t responding. Scotty says the warp core is damaged and he’ll need some time to fix it.

Spock isn’t sure what just happened, but the ship is being held in place by some sort of tractor beam. As Pike says, “We are sitting ducks and we can’t see a thing.” 

Uhura tells Pike about the music and goes back to her controls, where she hears Scotty screaming. She responds to him over the communicator, but when he replies, he sounds perfectly normal. She’s the only one who heard Scotty in distress. Pike points out that Uhura is bleeding, so she asks to go to sickbay. Maybe she hit her head harder than she thought.

In sickbay, Dr. M’Benga finds no sign of a concussion. Uhura brushes off what she heard, claiming she just got her bell rung. M’Benga tells her to get a full shift of bed rest.

Uhura briefly falls asleep in her room, but is woken by the memory of Scotty’s screams. She meets La’An for coffee and describes what she heard to La’An. Uhura says that it hadn’t happened—yet. La’An knows what this is: a temporal incident. 

She warns Uhura that trying to change things in the future could make everything worse. Uhura wants to help Scotty, but La’An tells her that’s out of the question. Which means that when La’An suggests she locate the signal, she absolute should not do that. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Uhura goes back to scanning. No signal detected. She scans again, 300th time the charm, and finally, an anomalous signal comes up. Uhura calls out over the communicator… and she reaches another Uhura (let’s call her Uhura 2). After some disbelief about how this is possible, Uhura informs Uhura 2 that Scotty is in danger. They have to work together to figure out what’s going on and they may not have much time.

After the opening titles, we come back to Uhura giving voiceover again—but this time, it’s Uhura 2. We see the first part of the episode from Uhura 2’s perspective: in Uhura 2’s version of events, the Enterprise crew is exploring a black hole, not a white hole. There’s no awkwardness between her and Scotty. In fact, Uhura 2 and Scotty are a couple (secretly, of course). Kirk is the captain, and Dr. Boyce is the ship’s doctor. Ortegas has left the ship and is now teaching at the academy, but she’s back to escort Scotty and Uhura on a shuttle into the black hole. Beyond the obvious changes to the Enterprise and its crew, there are a few visual indicators that this is a future version of Uhura: her hair is different, and her uniform is reminiscent of Nichelle Nichols’ on Star Trek: The Original Series.

The subsequent events play out roughly parallel to the earlier ones: Uhura 2 hears music, an energy blast rocks the shuttle, the shields fail, and Uhura gets transported back to the ship, leaving Scotty and Ortegas behind.

In the transport bay, Uhura 2 desperately tries to bring Scotty and Ortegas back to the ship, but Kirk and Spock tell her that Ortegas is now an instructor and Scotty has been dead for a year. Huh?

Uhura 2 goes to sickbay, where Boyce checks her out, and finds nothing wrong with her. Uhura 2 is still panicked, so Chapel (with her hair piled up into a fancy pageant-girl style ‘do on her head, also reminiscent of her Original Series counterpart Majel Barrett) makes a quick call to Ortegas, so Uhura can see she’s okay. Boyce plays back a recording from the shuttle—the only sound is Uhura 2 shouting. There was no one else in there. Boyce tells her she needs rest. 

Back in her room, Uhura 2 tries to find residual life signs from the crash, but she only finds one. Hers. She tries scanning the black hole, too, but she still doesn’t find any signs of life. However, she does pick up a communicator signal coming from the black hole. It’s Uhura. Okay, cool. Now we know the events that led up to this point for both Uhuras. So what’s actually going on, and how are they going to do to fix this?

They figure out that Uhura 2 is Uhura one year in the future. Spock’s theory about white holes and black holes being opposite sides of each other must be sound. And since Uhura is on one side and Uhura 2 is on the other, the energy blasts must be causing some sort of quantum entanglement. They both mutter about how they hate time travel. They decide to ask Spock about creating a reverse pulse to counteract the energy blasts. That, apparently, will make everything better.

Uhura finds Spock, who is currently attempting to remove their ship from the tractor beam in which it’s stuck. Spock says the calculations for a reverse pulse would take a long time, and he’ll look into it when he has time to spare—i.e., not now.

Luckily, a year should be plenty of time for Spock to get those calculations done, right? Time for Uhura 2 to step up to the plate.

Uhura 2 goes to her Spock, who is attempting to free their ship from the opposite side of the hole. She asks about the white hole from a year ago. Spock remembers, and is surprised she didn’t come to him sooner for the mathematical solution to their little quantum entanglement equation. Basically, to create a reverse pulse, she would need a specific anchor: a dilithium diamond. They’re extremely rare, but can be made synthetically in just about a year. That’s a convenient amount of time! It’s back to Uhura for now.

Uhura needs antimatter to make the dilithium diamond, so she asks Scotty for help. He’s surprised by her interest, and he asks her out again. Uhura 2, listening in, hisses that she should say yes. Uhura tells her “no,” which Scotty thinks is directed at him, and he takes off.

As Uhura focuses on creating the diamond, Uhura 2 gives her hell for how much she missed out on. Uhura puts the diamond into container 629 and puts it in the cabinet. 

In the future, Uhura 2 removes the container and finds the diamond. Chapel comes in before she has a chance to do anything, so Uhura 2 asks Chapel if she would change her past. Chapel is “so excited to marry Roger” (that’s Dr. Korby to you), but she doesn’t regret her time with Spock at all. She tells Uhura 2 not to live for tomorrow and tells her to go get some rest.

Uhura 2 is talking to Uhura. Uhura 2 is ready to send the dilithium diamond into the black hole on her end, and Uhura will send the reverse pulse through the hole on her end. Uhura just has to convince Pike to send the pulse through, which Uhura 2 explains is easy—just bluff your way through it. (There has been a poker theme running through this entire episode which, frankly, has been kind of annoying. Apparently, Uhura didn’t know anything about bluffing, but in the year between the two timelines, she has learned to bluff so well she started beating everyone in poker.) 

They both enter their own respective bridges and sit down. Uhura sputters out that she needs to send an energy pulse into the white hole. Spock interrupts to inform Pike that there is another pulse incoming. We see the two ships side by side, with both Uhuras freaking out about the pulse and realizing they’re too late. They each fall on the floor and hit their heads. 

When they get up, they realize they’ve switched timestreams. Uhura 2 is on Pike’s Enterprise, while Uhura is on Kirk’s. Uhura 2 calls Uhura and gets no response. Pike is standing over her, asking why she wanted to send a pulse through. She says it’s not important. He tells her that Scotty says they’re getting weapons back and they’ll be on their way soon. He sends her back to sickbay. 

On Kirk’s Enterprise, Uhura wakes up in sickbay. She banged her head so badly she needed sedation, according to up-do Chapel, who calls over Boyce and Kirk. Uhura insists she feels fine as Boyce runs a bioscanner over her. Over the comms, Spock tells Kirk there are no life forms nearby and the ship’s weapons will be back up in thirty minutes. Kirk explains that the pulse tethered the Enterprise to the black hole, so they’re going to blast their way out. He suggests Uhura get some more rest and leaves. 

Out of sickbay, Uhura tries calling her future self, begging for help. Nothing makes any sense! She is now in her quarters—which are actually future-Uhura’s quarters—and is mystified by what she sees. Especially by a plaque on the wall covered in what is essentially a dead language. 

Uhura starts reading it as Kirk comes into her room. He can tell she’s lying, and he knows that no one can bluff better—he taught her how. Uhura finally admits that she isn’t “his” Uhura. Future Uhura and her somehow got linked through the anomaly and switched places. Kirk sighs. “I hate time travel.” You and me both, Kirk. Uhura mentions La’An, which makes Kirk get a little sad. “Is she here?” Uhura asks. Kirk blows past the whole La’An issue and focuses back on Uhura.

Uhura 2 is desperate to get to “her” quarters, muttering that she shouldn’t destroy the space-time continuum. She runs into Scotty, and she’s really happy to see him. She gives him a long, long hug. He came to tell her he noticed a soundwave coming from inside the white hole. Uhura 2 realizes that she could translate what the notes are actually saying… because it’s not a white hole or a black hole. “It’s actually both!” she exclaims, and gives him another hug. 

Scotty leaves, and Pike comes down the hallway. He’s figured it out. The haircut, she’s slightly older. Pike thinks she knows something he should know before he fires on that star cluster.

They go somewhere quiet to talk. He knows she can’t say anything because of the rules of time travel, so he starts fishing for it. He thinks Scotty is involved because he saw them hugging. Uhura 2 finally opens up and says that they did something to the timeline, and Scotty is in danger. He dies, now, only he’s not supposed to. She doesn’t know what happens, and she and her younger counterpart were working together to fix it. She opens up and tells him everything she is in Starfleet is because of him. Aw, cute. They have a moment. Pike stands and tells her he can’t tell her what to do, and she hugs him.  

Back to the future… Chapel comes into the room with Kirk and Uhura. Chapel knows the Uhura in front of her isn’t their usual Uhura. Chapel asks if it’s an alternate dimension; Kirk explains it’s time travel. Uhura explains she is one-year-ago-Uhura, and that she’s there to save Scotty. He’s not supposed to be dead. She finally asks how it happened. 

Chapel explains that, a year ago, while they were trying to free themselves from the gravitational field of the white hole, Scotty’s console exploded. Uhura was with him; she sang to him. Suddenly, Uhura turns to the plaque on the wall, realizing what it means. They aren’t words, they’re music notes. But they’re only half of the puzzle. 

Uhura commands the computer to put together the notes from her wall with what came out of the anomaly, then run that through the universal translator. The translation comes through (and this is where shit gets really weird—not just normal time travel weird): “We are the midwives. The baby is breeching. Stay clear. We are the midwives. The baby is breeching.” Kirk is about as shocked by this as I am: “There is a baby inside the anomaly?” 

This isn’t just an anomaly, Uhura explains. These are two points connected through time. Conceived now, born into the past. The pulses are contractions, but the baby is in breech so the contractions aren’t working. They need to fix this before the contractions get worse. Chapel explains it best: “We have to deliver a space baby.” Uhura insists it has to be her that delivers the baby because her future self has to be doing the same thing so they can save Scotty. 

So Uhura walks out on the surface of the Enterprise. “We are here to help. We mean the baby no harm,” she tells the spinning stars that appear. This seems to satisfy them, and the stars disappear back into the black hole. She takes out some drones, which are linked with her gloves.

On the bridge, Spock is very confused, and asks why exactly Uhura is out on the roof of the ship, but Kirk won’t tell him.

The drones enter the black hole. Uhura looks at her little arm computer, saying she can’t see them, but they are still intact. Everything’s going well, until one of the drones detaches. There’s no way to fix it… from here. Kirk warns her against it, but Uhura says Scotty would do it for her. She unclips her tether and floats into the black hole.

Spock tells Kirk the energy build-up is critical. Chapel shouts that there’s another contraction coming. We slam back to our Enterprise, where Pike watches Uhura 2 float into the white hole. The contraction hits the ship and Scotty is knocked back, hitting his head hard. Chapel rushes to him.

Inside the hole, the two Uhuras meet and work together to turn the space baby. They are surrounded by glitter, and everything fades to white.

The two Uhuras meet on an otherwise empty bridge. Uhura asks if they are dead, but her question is interrupted by a sound coming from the hole. Then a voice comes out. “This is not your end. We exist outside of linear time. We warned you, but you didn’t understand at first, so we disabled your ship so you wouldn’t hurt the baby. This new life will be in peril—until you save it,” says the voice. 

Uhura 2 asks what this new life is, and the voice says there is no translation for it. They live in the past, present and future. The voice names the space baby—some kind of sound. The voice says that they will send them back to their correct times, and they will be the only ones who will remember this, so “next time” they will know what to do. Uhura 2 tells Uhura that she is doing great, and to never stop growing.

Everything rewinds. Uhura 2 is beamed back into the transporter bay from the shuttle. Ortegas is there… and Scotty comes back too. Uhura 2 kisses him deeply.

We get voiceover from both Uhuras to close out the episode. Uhura 2 says the only day we live in is now as she plays poker with her crewmates. Uhura says the future is not all she thinks about as she sits down to dinner with her crewmates. 

And so ends season four. We got a preview of the future of the Enterprise, but there are still plenty of things the show needs to explain before its final voyage, like what happens to La’An.

Frankly, I think the “space baby” storyline was a bit ridiculous. There were too many loose ends: What the hell is this space baby? How does it connect to Scotty dying? And how does Uhura figure out that the two are connected? It was frustrating, but at least “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” had a nice sci-fi edge to keep it feeling like Star Trek. Hopefully, that feeling continues through Strange New Worlds’ fifth and final season.

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