All Our Yesterdays by: Jean Lisette Aroeste and directed by: Marvin Chomsky

 

“All Our Yesterdays” is written by: Jean Lisette Aroeste and is directed by: Marvin Chomsky.  It was filmed under production code 78, was the 23^rd episode of Star Trek Season 3, the 78^th episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on March 14, 1969.

 

It’s kind of surprising to have quite a strong character piece as the penultimate episode of Star Trek, but “All Our Yesterdays” is an episode that focuses almost exclusively on the relationship between Spock and McCoy being put in a perilous situation.  Star Trek as a series can be accurately described as focusing on the trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in a situation so “All Our Yesterdays” as an episode is one that largely takes Kirk out of the scenario as he is relegated to the B-plot of peril.  The premise of this episode sees the main trio beam down to a planet which is hours away from dying as its star goes supernova and the populace have sent themselves back in time to live out the rest of their lives in a world of their own choice.  The Enterprise crew hasn’t actually come to stop the people from this fate, instead being motivated by attempting to save the entire planet under the belief that the inhabitants don’t know their extinction is coming.  The episode doesn’t go into the timeline breaking implications of sending the entire planet’s population into the past, hand waving it away by the librarian, Mr. Atoz played by Ian Wolfe, preparing them some sort of life in the past, something we see in Kirk’s plot.  Despite that this is a great premise, Kirk being sent into a past where he is accused of witchcraft after saving a woman from being attacked while Spock and McCoy are sent together into the planet’s ice age where there is a woman in exile Zarabeth, played by Mariette Hartley.  The danger of the trio being in the past is that they have not been processed, so they will be slowly dying and degenerating into versions of themselves that would fit into the time period they have been sent.

 

This degeneration means that Spock is going back to a more barbaric vision of the Vulcan people, being sent 5,000 years into the universe’s past with McCoy makes him emotional and specifically aggressive.  Writer Jean Lisette Aroeste sets Spock up romantically with Zarabeth, intentionally paralleling the romance from “This Side of Paradise”, Spock being manipulated by Zarabeth, who desperately does not wish to be lonely anymore.  The episode is clearly going to end in tragedy, the relationship will not last and McCoy is suffering from frostbite so they both need to get out of the ice age.  Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley get some of their best material here, Kelley especially as McCoy is the one who realizes what’s happening to Spock and tries to talk him out of it.  The pair without Kirk are much easier to come to blows creating this great tension and justifies Nimoy’s particular outbursts of emotion.  William Shatner as Kirk is given a weaker plot, mainly information gathering, but it’s still one that really works with who Kirk is as a person: he’s the one who is going to try and save the day, himself, and his crew above all else, willing to sacrifice only when he clearly cannot save others.  He’s the one who is able to get Spock and McCoy out at the last minute as the star is going nova and the planet is going to be destroyed.  He’s also the character given the large amount of the action, even when relegated to a B-plot.

 

Overall, “All Our Yesterdays” as an episode feels like an ending.  Some of this is coming from retrospect, there is technically one episode left but this episode was the last to be aired in what had been this season’s regular Friday night time slot and the show would be on hiatus for nearly three months before the final episode aired, but it as an episode it is almost wholly a reflection on the three characters responsible for driving Star Trek forward.  It’s a character piece that is honestly quite touching, even if there is a weak B-plot and the actual ending is a bit of an anticlimax.  This episode feels like a fitting goodbye to these characters and Jean Lisette Aroeste is clearly a fan turned writer who understands how to express this.  It’s just a bit of a shame that there’s one more episode left that happens to be an episode with an infamous reputation.  8/10.