Writer: D.C. Fontana
Director: Michael O'Herlihy
Producer: Gene L. Coon
This episode brings several new tropes to the Star Trek table. The most significant of which is that this is the series' first major foray into time travel. Time travel had served as a deus ex machina in "The Naked Time", and mentioned alongside various other pointless sci-fi buzz terms in "The Alternative Factor", but this is the first episode to be based solely on the premise. And, establishing a Trek trope, when the crew travels back in time, it's to Earth and fairly near the time period the show is being made in. Other Trek stories that employ this cost-saving method of travelling to an production contemporary period include "Assignment: Earth", Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, "Future's End", and "Carpenter Street".
Initially, the time travel at the conclusion of "The Naked Time" was meant to be a cliffhanger leading into this episode, but for various reasons this idea was dropped, leaving the end of that installment somewhat of a non sequitur, and the Enterprise falling backwards in time due to the gravitational whiplash of a "black star" -- referencing the at the time theoretical concept we now call a "black hole", a term which had yet to be popularly coined.
They end up back in the 20th century, and a news broadcast picked up states that the first manned moon launch is scheduled for "next Wednesday". Amazingly enough, the Apollo 11 mission was launched on a Wednesday two years after this episode aired, thus placing the episode's timeframe in 1969! The plot of the adventure concerns the fact that the ship is spotted by the USAF and an Air Force pilot accidentally taken aboard. Thus the Enterprise crew must infiltrate an Air Force base, eliminate all evidence they were ever there, return the pilot to his proper place (his yet to be born son will lead a manned mission to Saturn), and then figure out a way to get back... to the future!
It all adds up to really fun hour of television, with some neat sci-fi time travel paradox ideas thrown in for good measure, but not nearly as complicated or overbearing as some Trek time travel plots will become. I question the idea that if the Enterprise beams someone back to the same momentin time that they left, they loose all their memories of being on the ship, but other than that it's a fun little basic time travel story, and very much I think the model for The Voyage Home, one of the franchise's most popular cinematic outings.
Rating: 3.5 out of 4
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