The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 3, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," now streaming on Paramount+.
The third episode of Strange New Worlds brings back James T. Kirk, this time making him the captain of the Enterprise in a timeline without the Federation. It's already the second time-travel episode in the series, but it just fixed Star Trek's biggest history problem: the rise of Khan Noonien Singh.
When the infamous Khan first appeared in Star Trek, he was found in stasis on a pre-warp vessel launched from Earth in the 1990s. Anticipating the problem with the future catching up to his series, Roddenberry fudged it by saying the resulting World War III left very inconsistent records of the time. For fans interested in organizing the universe's timeline, the Khan problem only got bigger as the 1990s came and went without a society-destroying war led by genetically augmented individuals. Other series have visited their series' present-day well into the 21st century. While time travel may cause many of the characters' problems, it's the solution to the writers' headaches. Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber likely thought if anyone even remembered Star Trek by the 1990s, they'd be lucky. As the franchise continues to expand, the storytellers can "fix" these historical problems.
How Star Trek Uses Time Travel to Change Its Canon
In "Space Seed," the episode introducing Khan, Spock said that Khan and his fellow augments took power in over 40 nations simultaneously in 1993. This meant the SS Botany Bay ship launched, complete with stasis technology, sometime before the 21st century. However, Star Trek: Voyager later time-traveled to 1996, visiting a world that still hadn't heard the infamous name. In fact, the episode suggested that the computer age of the late 20th century was not supposed to happen. A Starfleet time-traveler crashed in the past, and humans mined it to advance their technology.
Sarah, the Romulan time traveler stranded on Earth since the 1990s, suggests this trend continues. While pretending to be a conspiracy theorist, she reveals that world governments have recovered alien technology from temporal wars. The Romulan time travelers are trying to prevent the creation of the Federation. Yet, the Noonien Singh Institute is using this technology to advance their interests. Sarah strongly implies they are the forces trying to prevent the unified Earth that gave first birth to Starfleet and then the United Federation of Planets.
While explaining this to La'an outside a young Khan's bedroom, she mentions that Khan was "supposed" to rise to power in 1992. She was there to stop him, but something had already changed the past. She was stranded. Yet, she also said that "time is pushing back" against the changes, suggesting Khan's vicious rise to power and the Eugenics Wars are part of Earth's destiny. Like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse suggests, "destiny" is just another word for canon.
Strange New Worlds May Have More Canon Changes and 'Fixes' In Store
When Paramount wanted to reboot The Original Series as a feature film franchise, time travel was how they did it. The Kelvin Timeline movies are called that because the death of George Kirk on the USS Kelvin changed Star Trek history. While that broke the timeline, Strange New Worlds and their alternate reality Kirk are used to fixing the biggest historical problem in the franchise. Khan's rise to power in 1993 became a problem in 1994. There were novels that recolored the Eugenics Wars as one in the shadows. When Khan appeared in Star Trek Into Darkness, the storytellers deliberately left the history vague.
While it's a long-standing theory, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" confirms that time-travel high jinks have permanently altered the Star Trek timeline. The "past" for Captain Pike and the Strange New Worlds characters isn't the same as in The Original Series. The effects of time travel, including adventures fans haven't seen, change things. This is perhaps why Strange New Worlds' technology is much more advanced. (At least, other than the real-world reason that visual effects have come a long way in 56 years.)
Star Trek storytellers already know that using time travel to change the characters drastically is a risky move. Yet, with a more measured approach, it can be used to even retcon Star Trek character deaths in ways that don't feel like a gimmick. Time travel can be abused and lose its magic quickly if deployed incorrectly. However, it does allow the franchise to continue to dream of the future while incorporating the world's present.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debuts new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+.