Strange New Worlds Just Gave the Original Series the Finale It Never Had

I just watched the season 4 finale of Strange New Worlds, Tomorrow's Enterprise, and I sat there with the credits rolling and every part of me that has ever worked on a television show said that was the end. That was a series finale. And I do not think that is an accident. For an episode with those uniforms, that hair, that bridge, it gave me way more Next Generation than it gave me Kirk and Spock, and I could not tell you why at first, but I can now.

Two Uhuras, a time ripple, Kirk in command of a ship he did not have yet. A lot of people are calling this finally real Star Trek, finally no puppets, finally a serious hour. I think the people saying that have the ending backwards. This was not the show finally becoming something. I think Strange New Worlds just gave the original series the finale it never got, built on purpose out of the only Enterprise finale that ever actually worked.

This Episode Belongs To the Original Series' 15 "Serious" Hours

I am not going to defend season 4 again, I did that last week, making the case that the gimmick episode is the real Star Trek and that the fantastic hour is the format. I am not taking that back and I am not repeating it. But go back to the original series' 79 episodes and sort them by how serious they are, and by my count you get about 15 that are what people mean when they say serious science fiction: Balance of Terror, City on the Edge of Forever, The Doomsday Machine, Space Seed, that handful.

Those 15 are the ones we hold up. When somebody says the original series was great television, those are the 15 they are picturing, and they picture them so hard they forget the other 64 exist. This episode belongs to the 15. It is a serious hour, an earnest hour, a big sci-fi idea played completely straight, and that is not the show finally becoming something, that is what the 15 were always for.

Endings are earnest, every one of them. You do not end a show on a costume party, you do not say goodbye with a puppet. When a story is closing it gets serious because closing is serious, and that has nothing to do with the room losing an argument about tone. If somebody wants to give this episode a garbage score because they are mad about the other nine episodes of the season, everything gets judged on its own merit, every time.

I will give one concession up front. Time travel is the easy get, it always is, it is the easy place for a Star Trek writer room to go when it wants a finale to feel big, and I do not care, because if this hour belongs to the 15, the real question is which one it is built like, and the answer is not any of the 15.

The Original Series Never Actually Got a Finale

The original series never had a finale, and I want that to actually sit for a second because we all know it and none of us ever thinks about it. The last episode of Star Trek to air on NBC was Turnabout Intruder, June 3rd, 1969. It is an ordinary hour, not even a good ordinary hour.

The cast knew about the cancellation before they finished shooting it in January of that year. No goodbye, no last mission, nobody got to say anything to anybody. The ship that every single thing in this franchise runs on, the one the whole universe is built around, was never given an ending. It just stopped.

All Good Things Is the Only Enterprise Finale That Ever Worked

Next Generation got one, May 23rd, 1994, All Good Things, and if you have not watched it in a while, go back, because there is the shape of it. Picard is unstuck in time: seven years in the past on the day he took command, in the present, and 25 years in the future as an old man at a vineyard.

The whole episode is him moving between the three, seeing the crew he is going to have before he has them, seeing what they become. The last mission is really a goodbye dressed up as a mission. That is the finale everybody agrees is the finale, and every Star Trek ending since has really been trying to be that episode.

Tomorrow's Enterprise Is Built Like All Good Things, Not a Yesterday's Enterprise Homage

Look at what you just watched. Two Uhuras, one at the very beginning and one in her prime, working the same problem across a gap of time. I want to be careful with the word here, because the press keeps calling the future one the older Uhura, the end of her career, and I think that is really wrong. She goes on to Kirk's five years, she goes on to the movies. The woman in that uniform is not at the end of anything, that is the Uhura we grew up with at the top of her game, and she walks into that era with confidence and character. What this show is playing is not the end of her career, it is the beginning of the mature era of her life.

Kirk's bridge is shown to us before it exists, with the uniforms and the hair, and bones gets mentioned before he has ever set foot on the ship. The crew we know is referred to before they arrive, the captain we have in the room with the captain who is coming. That is not a Yesterday's Enterprise homage. The title is a Next Generation title, sure, but it is built like a different Next Generation episode entirely: it is All Good Things, on the original ship, for the original crew.

Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers Say This Future Is Continuity, Not a What If

Akiva Goldsman got asked in an interview that went up this morning how close the future we see in this episode is to where the show actually ends up next season. He did not say alternate timeline, he did not say what if. He said, and I am quoting, "I don't think this is an alternate future. I think this is an interstitial future." Interstitial means in between, on the way there. He said it exists in continuity.

When Henry Alonso Myers was asked what would change between what we saw and where they land, his answer was one sentence: "Scotty doesn't die." That's it. So that bridge Kirk walked across is not a maybe. The men who made it say that is where the show ends.

The Production Timeline Shows This Was Built as a Goodbye on Purpose

Paramount announced in June of last year that season 5 would be the last six episodes. Season 4 filmed from March to the end of August, and this episode was the last one shot, on the stage in the weeks after the room knew the show was over.

Goldsman has said Paramount's first idea was a movie, two hours, wrap it up. The room said no, two hours would be awful, and they landed on six episodes instead. Goldsman describes those six as having "essentially no genre hopping," calling them a suite of episodes that are about our goodbyes to those characters. Six goodbyes, one tone, ending on Kirk's first day in the chair.

Goldsman Told Radio Times His Time With Star Trek Is Over

The one that got me came 8 days before this episode aired. Goldsman sat down with Radio Times and said the thing out loud: "Nobody's called. The sets are gone." And then this: "at least for me, my time with Star Trek is over now."

The bridge Kirk walks across in this hour has been struck. The man who built it says his time is over. He said it a week before I did.

Season 5 Is the Epilogue, and Uhura Saying a Name Is the Thread Left Hanging

Here is where I land. This is the end of Pike's story. Everything of consequence that does not point forward to Kirk and his Enterprise happened in these four seasons, and it closed tonight. Season 5 is not the end of Strange New Worlds, we just watched the end. Season 5 is the epilogue.

I think the overlap is provable because the episode showed the scene. In the future, Uhura says La'an's name and Kirk reacts, not a big reaction, a real one. Something happened between those two and we do not know what. When Goldsman got asked about it this morning, his entire answer was "you'll have to watch season 5." The one thread this hour leaves hanging on purpose is the one that points at Kirk. What points to Kirk is held for the overlap, what doesn't is finished.

It is not a random thread either. Last week I noted that La'an spent a whole fairy tale following strangers, fake versions of her friends, because being guided by somebody who doesn't know you is easy, and being seen by somebody who does is the hard part. Now the man who flinches at her name in the future is the one person in this entire franchise who knows her from a week that nobody else remembers.

This Was Always Uhura's Show

If the show is over, let me tell you who it was ultimately about, and it was not the captain. This whole series started with Uhura. Go back to the first episode, she walks onto that ship, a cadet, advanced placement, does not even know if she wants to be in Starfleet, half a foot out the door. In the last real hour of the show, Pike gave her a field promotion, and she walked off this episode Lieutenant Uhura, the one we grew up with, taking her place properly. The captain whose show this was is the one who pinned it to her.

On some level this entire series has been through her lens, and I don't think I fully saw that until tonight. Think about who they handed the time travel to. Goldsman has said on the record that Spock and Uhura have endings the original series already wrote, locked, nothing to decide. So the room gave the one job that could change anything to the one person aboard who can't change where she ends up. What does she do with it? She doesn't touch her own life, she spends it on somebody else.

Celia Rose Gooding leads the charge in this one and carries it. They tried to play the present day version of her as young, at least as young as the kid at the very beginning, and I almost think that is a misnomer, because what I saw wasn't a kid, it reminded me of who she was when she first showed up on this show. That is an actor holding four seasons in her body at the same time and letting you see whichever one the scene needs. That's how you solve two Uhuras, not with a wig, with a performance. And it is an honor to Nichelle Nichols.

The Scotty and Uhura Romance Is a Bold Liberty Pulled From the Movies

The Scotty and Uhura thing is not from the series, it is from Star Trek V The Final Frontier, 1989. It was never in the show, and the room took a liberty there. I think they took it pretty hard, and I am fine with it, because Myers said out loud this morning that they are writing from what the movies implied, giving these people things to play that the original show never let them play. A prequel that treats the movies as the outline is doing the bold version of the job. The safe version is pretending the movies don't exist. They didn't take the safe version.

One Itch With Paul Wesley's Kirk, Plus Two Easter Eggs

There is one itch, the same itch I have had all season. I still can't tell if Paul Wesley is trying to do a Shatner cadence or if that is just how he talks. It's stilted. I have decided it's fine.

Two Easter eggs before I'm out. The cat officer who hands Kirk something in the shuttle bay is Lieutenant M'Ress, the communications officer from the animated series, now in live action. Chapel's girlfriend works for the Department of Temporal Investigations, and for those of you who love Deep Space Nine, I think that's awesome. There is also a bird-like, griffin-looking officer on that ship straight out of the cartoon, and I am going to let people tell me who that is, because I have a guess and I would rather hear theirs.

My Score

Look at what's sitting here. An hour that belongs to the 15, judged on its own, not on the nine that came before it. A finale built the way the only Enterprise finale that ever worked was built, for the one ship that never got one. A showrunner saying in print that the future we saw is continuity, that the sets are gone, and that his time is over. A show that started with a cadet and ended with Pike pinning her as lieutenant, and handed the one job that could change everything to the one person who couldn't change herself. The movies as the outline in a room bold enough to use them. And a Kirk who talks funny, which I've decided is fine.

There is one score, and it's a 10 out of 10 for me. Sixty years ago Enterprise just stopped, no goodbye, no last mission. The lights went off in January and the last episode aired in June. Tonight, a cadet who walked onto that ship four years ago sat down at her station as Lieutenant Uhura, and I think it gave the original series the ending it never got. Season 5 isn't the end, you just watched the end. Season 5 is the part where they hand Kirk the keys.

Tell me which original series episode is on your 15, the serious ones, the ones you hold up, and tell me if I'm crazy for calling this the end.