Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 3 - "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) protected the timeline in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 3, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," but it cost La'an the love she found with Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley). In Strange New Worlds season 2's stunningly powerful and emotional Star Trek time travel episode about time, love, and loss, La'an was charged with a mysterious mission that sent her and Kirk back to 21st-century Toronto. Together, Kirk and La'an foiled a Romulan plot that forced La'an to face the ghost of her past, her namesake, Khan Noonien Singh (Desmond Sivan).
Strange New Worlds "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" focuses on the unlikely pairing of La'an and Captain Kirk from an alternate timeline. La'an was transported to Kirk's reality where he is the Captain of the USS Enterprise, a starship of the United Earth Fleet instead of Starfleet. Kirk's timeline is one where Earth is mired in a forever war against the Romulans, and the Terran home world is a ruined battleground instead of the utopian home of the United Federation of Planets. Dropped into 21st-century Toronto, Kirk and La'an grow closer as they unravel an attack that will radically alter the timeline, and La'an's own life is forever changed by what she learns and who and what she loses in the balance.
What Meeting Khan Means For La'an
In a secret Toronto facility belonging to the Noonien-Singh Institute for Cultural Advancement, La'an realizes that the Romulans' true target isn't a cold fusion reactor, as she thought. Instead, the Romulans planned to kill Khan when he was still a young boy. La'an protected Khan by killing Sera (Adeleide Kane), the Romulan operative from the future posing as a human who waited decades to assassinate Khan. La'an placed in a position of not only meeting Khan but defending him from timeline-destroying Romulans upended her feelings and lifetime of hatred towards her supervillain ancestor.
As La'an itted to Neera Ketoul (Yetide Badaki) in Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 2, she secretly carries Khan's genetic augmentations and fears she will someday turn into "a monster" like him. La'an's constant need for composure and self-control is borne from her dread of turning into another Khan. But meeting Khan as a boy and also protecting him in order to prevent Captain Kirk's alternative timeline from taking shape shattered La'an's deeply held beliefs. Perhaps Khan grew into a monster not because of his augmentations but as a result of his upbringing and confinement in the Noonien-Singh Institute's genetic lab. But La'an is made of very different stuff from Khan despite her inherited DNA. La'an fundamentally saves lives, including Khan's, and her innate heroism means she has a different destiny entirely.
What Young Khan In Strange New Worlds Means For Star Trek
Strange New Worlds introducing Khan as a young boy is a risky move. "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is the first time Khan has been portrayed as a child rather than the fully-formed superman embodied by the late Ricardo Montalbán and Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek Into Darkness. The desired effect was for La'an to understand that she was never on the same path as Khan to become like him. Khan is also being raised among other genetically engineered children, and they are likely to become his followers when he becomes a warlord who subjugates a quarter of the people of the world in the Eugenics Wars. Strange New Worlds also posits that the Noonien-Singh family experimented with eugenics and created Khan as well as other Augments.
Khan was teased at the end of Star Trek: Picard season 2 when rogue geneticist Dr. Adam Soong (Brent Spiner) turned to a file labeled 'Project Khan'. However, it's debatable if Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 3's 21st-century timeline is the same reality as Star Trek: Picard season 2's. "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" makes the Khan of this reality a temporal focal point, and his elimination rewrites the course of history for the worse. The savagery and global upheaval that Khan caused in the Eugenics Wars is a crucial building block that will eventually lead to the optimistic future of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets. However, because this young Khan never meets Captain Kirk, that aspect of Star Trek canon isn't violated by Strange New Worlds.
The Romulans' Timeline Plot Against Khan & How La'an Stopped It Explained
Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 3's doesn't make it completely clear if La'an and Kirk are in the Prime Timeline's past or in the 21st century of Kirk's alternate timeline. However, deep-cover Romulan operatives infiltrated Earth for decades and performed numerous terrorist acts to stall humanity's progress so that they never travel to the stars. Agents from the Federation's Department of Temporal Investigations battled the Romulans, but when one was shot (presumably by Sera), he traveled to the future USS Enterprise and recruited La'an Noonien-Singh, specifically because she shares the same surname as the Romulans' target.
La'an and Kirk believed the Romulans' ultimate target was a cold fusion reactor somewhere in Toronto, based on Kirk's memories of his timeline's 21st-century history, but it was really the young Khan at the Noonien-Singh Institute that the Romulans were after. Meanwhile, Sera, posing as a human conspiracy theorist, explained the details of the Romulans' plan to Kirk and La'an, and she actually told them the truth as Sarah correctly sensed they could lead her to Khan.
La'an and Kirk believed that the 21st-century Toronto they traveled to was a divergence point that could lead to either of their timelines taking shape, but it's also possible that they were in the past of Kirk's timeline all along. Regardless, according to Sera, time itself was fighting back from her attempts to rewrite history, and Khan's existence was "supposed to happen in 1992" but is now taking place 30 years later. In Star Trek's Prime Timeline, the adult Khan lost the Eugenics Wars and fled Earth on the SS Botany Bay in 1996, but the Eugenics Wars seem to not have happened yet in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow's" 21st-century Toronto. Strange New Worlds' flux in time may have merged the Eugenics Wars with World War III in the 21st century, simultaneously altering Star Trek Prime Universe canon.
Ultimately, La'an killing Sera stopped the Romulans' plot cold. With Khan left alive in the 21st century, this either creates a different future for this reality, and the Captain Kirk La'an knew may still be born in a different timeline that may closely resemble the Prime Star Trek Timeline. But because Khan and that reality weren't erased after La'an returned to the Enterprise, it appears La'an protected the Prime Timeline's past, and Strange New Worlds may be saying the 21st century of "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is, indeed, the Prime Timeline's past but now with significant alterations. Either way, La'an's temporal device, which protected her from changes in the timeline, then sent her back to her proper Enterprise.
What Captain Kirk's Death Means For Strange New Worlds
Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 3 introduced the series' second version of an alternate reality Captain Kirk played by Paul Wesley. This follows Wesley's prior Captain Kirk from the alternate "Balance of Terror" future in Strange New Worlds season 1's finale, "A Quality of Mercy." "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow's" version of Captain Kirk grew up in space aboard the USS Iowa, and he was a soldier in the United Earth Fleet's war with the Romulans, which the humans and the Vulcans were losing (likely because the Romulans were using temporal tactics to give them the advantage). Captain Kirk is killed when Sera calls his bluff and shoots him in the chest. "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" switches the roles of Star Trek: The Original Series' "The City on the Edge of Forever," and turns Kirk into La'an's version of Edith Keeler (Joan Collins).
La'an fell in love with this version of James T. Kirk. She was instantly attracted to James, and La'an was gradually won over by his boyish charm, roguish qualities, and also Kirk's innate goodness. As La'an tried to explain to Kirk, her lifelong difficulty relating to people is because she can't let anyone get too close for fear of learning her secret. But this version of James T. Kirk had never heard of Khan Noonien-Singh because the Romulans assassinated him, and he never rose to power in Kirk's timeline. To La'an, the fact that Kirk didn't know who 'Khan Noonien-Singh' was meant she could finally let down her guard and be her real self with him. But Sera's bullet caused La'an to lose Kirk before she could try to bring him into her timeline.
Tragically, La'an immediately ed Lt. James T. Kirk on the USS Farragut when she returned to Star Trek's Prime Timeline, and of course, this version of James had never met her before. This means when Lt. Kirk sets foot aboard the USS Enterprise later in Strange New Worlds season 2, La'an will have to cope with the exact double of her lost love not knowing who she is. La'an ended Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 3 nursing her broken heart alone, unable to tell anyone about her loss and grief.
Strange New Worlds Brings Back Star Trek: DS9's Time Cops
It's fitting that a Strange New Worlds time travel episode co-starring Captain Kirk sees the return of the Department of Temporal Investigations. Introduced in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 5's classic "Trials and Tribble-ations," Temporal Investigations is an agency of the Federation charged with preserving the timeline, and they considered Kirk a "menace." It was a mortally wounded Temporal Investigations agent who recruited La'an Noonien-Singh, and another, Agent Ymalay (Allison Wilson-Forbes) met La'an after her successful mission to take back her time travel device. Ymalay also ordered La'an to never discuss anything she experienced with anyone, adding to Lt. Noonien-Singh's personal burdens and misery.
Interestingly, the time travel device used by the Department of Temporal Investigations in Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 3, projects a holographic interface that is a callback to the 29th-century TCARS interface seen in Star Trek: Voyager season 5 episode, "Relativity." La'an now has handled futuristic technology and, like Captain Christopher Pike, she has canonically seen what a Romulan looks like (at least one disguised as a human) before the rest of the Federation in 2259, but La'an is banned from revealing this to anyone.
Strange New Worlds Reveals More About Pelia
Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 3, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" also revealed more about the USS Enterprise's new Chief Engineer, Commander Pelia (Carol Kane). La'an turned to Pelia for help in the 21st century after she ed the extremely long-lived Lanthanite said she has a bunker in Vermont where she stores the (stolen) items she has collected since antiquity. La'an was surprised to learn that in the 21st century, Pelia "works retail" and is still a couple of hundred years away from becoming the master engineer she is in the 23rd century. By her own ittance, Pelia says the last time she took a math class was when Pythagoras invented math, which was sometime before his death in 495 B.C., which hints at just how old the Lanthanite really is.
As Security Chief, La'an began Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 3 incredibly frustrated by dealing with Pelia, who wanted to store her contraband booty aboard the Starship Enterprise, to being appreciative of the Lanthanite. Since they met in the 21st century of an alternate timeline, however, the Prime Timeline's Pelia likely has no memory of encountering La'an and James T. Kirk at "The Archaeology Department." But it was Pelia who inspired La'an's ability to find the cold fusion reactor that led her and James to Khan. La'an's affection for Pelia may be one-sided, but their unusual rapport may factor into future episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.