78 – All Our Yesterdays

Grade: A

Summary

A planet orbits a sun that will soon explode in a supernova. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to warn any survivors that they must leave the planet before it is destroyed. They find a library of sorts with a librarian named Mr. Atoz. He quickly tries to get the three of them to go through a strange time portal back into the planet’s past. Kirk ends up in the planet’s Renaissance Age, while Spock and McCoy end up during the planet’s Ice Age. There they meet a beautiful but lonely woman.

Commentary

Finally, after what seems like dozens of really bad episodes, we get a high quality one. I really like this kind of sci-fi, where the emphasis is on the characters and the story, rather than the special effects. Mariette Hartley is wonderful in this episode, and it’s great to see sides of Spock’s character that haven’t been developed before.

Since this series was nearly over, I sometimes wish the ending had been a bit different, so that Spock would have been able to stay on the planet like he wanted to. Or better yet, allowing Zarabeth to come with him. But that would have probably weakened the storyline. It really is Spock’s version of City on the Edge of Forever, and my favorite episode of the third season. Maybe if this had aired a month or two earlier, there could have been a fourth season.

Of Note

This is the only episode in which only three of the main cast are seen on screen. Uhura, Sulu, Scotty and Chekov do not appear in this episode. This episode also has the latest stardate, even though there was one more episode shown on TV after this.