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#63: Star Trek: The Animated Series, season 1, episode 2 "Yesteryear"
Written by D.C. Fontana, directed by Hal Sutherland.
Stardate 5373.4 (late 2268 to early 2269)
(Some events take place in 2237 & an alternate timeline.)
"Logic offers a serenity Humans seldom experience in full." - "Selek"
The Enterprise has returned to "The Time Planet" which contains the Guardian of Forever - a place where all points in time converge to conduct survey missions through time. After returning from ancient Orion, Captain Kirk and Commander Spock are surprised to find that no one remembers who Spock is. Least of all the First Officer of the Enterprise, an Andorian Commander named Thelin. After consulting computer records and learning that there was a Spock on Vulcan that he died at a young age, Spock requests the Guardian of Forever to allow him to travel to Vulcan in the past where he must prevent the death of his younger self without causing any additional changes to the timeline.
Originally released: 15 September 1973
"Yesteryear" on Memory Alpha (mirror)
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What did you think?
This is a neat little bootstrap paradox episode.
This is also another early example of “competency porn” in Star Trek.
Spock didn’t even exist in that universe and the entire crew of the Enterprise, including Spock’s counterpart, worked to solve the problem simply based on Kirk’s claim that all of reality was wrong.
Spock wasn’t arrested or treated as a threat, he was regarded as an equal. The resources of the Enterprise were used to figure out exactly what changed by his understanding and he was allowed to just go back and fix things once he put two and two together and discovered the paradox. All on his and Kirk’s word.
This is a DC Fontana script, and she also helped shaped TNG in the beginning, so those sensibilities definitely carried over.