Title: Yesteryear
Airdate: 9/15/1973
Plot Summary
While Kirk and Spock are in the past thanks to the Guardian of Forever, something changes the past so that no one knows who Spock is anymore. It turns out Spock died as a boy because old Spock wasn’t in the past to save his own life. This change also rippled forth so that his mother separated from Sarek and was killed in a shuttle accident. He must go back to Vulcan’s past and save his own life, as well as right the present.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk is the only one not affect by the time changes. This is sort of odd as when they were all on the planet in City On The Edge Of Forever, all of them were unaffected by the time changes. Not sure why they were affected but the Guardian is a bit of mystery.
Logical
This is Spock’s episode, both young and old. He must come to terms with his youth a bit and also has to experience a death of his pet just like his younger self, since it never happened. Good moments between him and Sarek as well, asking Sarek to try to understand his son. Sarek promises he would though in later years we’d see it didn’t take.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy is the first one who doesn’t recognize Spock but Kirk thinks he’s just playing around. Later on Bones needs Spock and Kirk to do their physicals as they were the last ones to finish up since they were playing around in time while McCoy was doing actual work.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu doesn’t show up in this one.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura is also absent.
Three Arms Are Better Than Two, ya Fuzzy Face
While Arex and M’Ress sit this one out, we do a have new first officer, Thelin. He is the first officer since Spock is now a paradox. Interestingly he’s gray skinned rather than blue. At the time you’d chalk it up to an animation coloring error or some other limitation of the medium. In the original script, he was supposed to light blue.
But in Enterprise they made the gray skinned Andorians called the Aenar. The Aenar are blind however and its clear Thelin is not. In non-canon this is explained as he is half-Aena, half-Andorian.
While there’s no fixing Discovery and the rest of NuTrek, ya gotta love the dedication of Trek fans and creators alike back in the day to try to figure out all the lore and make it work, even from obvious mistakes.
We also get a cool looking bird alien that is one of the scientist working on the time portal.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty is surprised to find a Vulcan beaming up with the landing party.
Getting Animated
This episode can probably more than any other in TAS be considered canon. Spock being bullied by other Vulcans, the Forge and the city ShiKahr would be referenced in Enterprise. His “teddy bear” Ichaya is seen here. The beast that attacks apparently is a distant relative of Godzilla, as they have the exact same roar.
Most importantly is it is specifically outlined here that Vulcans DO have emotions and they control them. While this is more or less danced around in the Original Series, it’s not always clear. Sometimes it was repressed, sometimes it was that Vulcans don’t have emotions. The point is the show didn’t really lay down the lore clearly and this episode does.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
I said no one ever died in the series and for the most part that’s true. But here they have Ichaya die due to poisoning. Young Spock has to make the decision on whether to let the poison take its course naturally, causing his pet undue pain, or euthanizing him. He chooses to have him put down and dealing with it emotionally. Pretty heady stuff for Saturday morning cartoons. This is why Gen-X is so much less brittle than subsequent generations. Our cartoons were killing pets. Fuck your Spongebob bullshit.
Technobabble
Not a lot of tech in this one.
I Know That Guy:
There is one notable guest star this go around. Mark Lenard returns voicing Sarek.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
This is truly a good episode of Trek, animated or otherwise. Written by DC Fontana herself, it explores Spock’s past and some of the difficulties he would have as a child. He clearly had to choose a path, Vulcan or Human. It’s almost as if he’s alien by choice. Which makes his choice to join Starfleet all the more enigmatic. He chooses to be a Vulcan but to be around humans as much as possible.
It adds some depth to Sarek’s and Spock’s schism later in life. Here Spock chooses his father’s path. So later on when he chooses Starfleet, it probably angered Sarek.. well not angered but whatever negative equivalent would be. The point is that he thought Spock was going one way, only to change and upend whatever plans Sarek might have had for him.
I don’t like the JJ Abrams films but the little moment of Spock coming to the end of that journey and ready to join the vulcan science academy only to be told that they basically thought he was handicapped because of his human heritage (not to mention disrespecting his mother, don’t do that!) was one of the few moments I thought was perfectly in line with Spock’s history.
Spock having to repair the timeline only to have his pet die in the process when he didn’t before is thematically poignant and helps start on his journey as a child. But it doesn’t make sense. If “Selek” already saved him which Spock now remembers, then he should have again. And how would that affect Spock growing up? That’s a pretty big moment for any kid, I wonder how Spock ended up in exactly the same place?
But that’s a nitpick. Nimoy does a decent job with the voice acting, though Lenard lacks the stern gravitas he had in the show. It’s a great personal story of Spock and the time travel is incidental details. A fine addition to the lore and one I happily consider canon.
