First Aired: April 17, 2022
RETURN TO TOMORROW was the 5th episode of STAR TREK that I directed, but when I began my website, RALPH’S CINEMA TREK (https://senensky.com/table-of-contents/), in 2011, I did not do a post on the film. I only did posts of the other 6 episodes I had directed for the series and on those 6 posts, I had constant COMMENTS left from viewers who loved RETURN TO TOMORROW. They berated me for omitting it from my STAR TREK line-up. Finally in self-defense I did a post on the episode (https://senensky.com/return-to-tomorrow/), carefully examining its favorable aspects and I concluded the post writing:
I think I have resolved my feelings about RETURN TO TOMORROW. I realize that even flawed, the fascination and power of Dugan’s original concept has managed to survive. I will no longer assign the film to my spam box.
My declared intention was admirable, but I admit now that, still troubled with the negative feelings caused by the 2 final STAR TREK episodes I directed, I was not as aboard ship as I was proclaiming. RETURN TO TOMORROW was no longer in my spam box, but it had only recovered to a less negative box.
Last September I was invited by Scott Mantz to join him and his cohost Steve Morris on their podcast, ENTERPRISE INCIDENTS, when they were going to deep dive (their term for what they are doing) THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, my first STAR TREK assignment. The experience was truly an eye-opener. I went back and viewed the many episodes they had previously deep dived and I was willingly available to return to join them when they deep dived the next 4 episodes I had directed. Recently the ENTERPRISE INCIDENTS’ podcast of RETURN TO TOMORROW became available for listening. For over 2 hours the 3 of us minutely examined and discussed the things we admired, but also those sequences we found flawed.
Here is the podcast:
Further DEEP DIVES, but on the DEEP DIVE
Since that initial airing I have continued to deep dive deeper. I think less than half of the first half of the film through the “Risk is our business” speech scene works effectively. The problem lies in the sequences following the scene between Henoch and Nurse Chapel, when he declares his intention to kill Sargon. The problem? Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, the 2 major driving forces of STAR TREK, are not in the second half of the show, not until the finale. Their lead replacements in the events that follow are the imperial Sargon, replacing Kirk, the evil Henoch, replacing Spock and Thalassa replacing Dr. Ann Mulhall. But after the initial scene of Sargon awakening in Kirk’s body, when he sees Thalassa for the first time in Ann Mulhall’s body, Sargon becomes a weakened dying character. Henoch in Spock’s body (brilliantly performed by Nemoy) fares better, but Thalassa as scripted was less than a fully developed character. Here’s how I think the story could have continued after the Henoch/Nurse Chapel scene:
In a lab on the Enterprise (as filmed) Sargon and Thalassa (Thalassa has Ann Mulhall’s upswept hair) are together. The scene opens with a close-up on their hands touching. They are remembering. He kisses her hand. Henoch enters and stands in the doorway.
HENOCH: In two days you’ll have hands of your own, Thalassa, mechanically efficient and quite human-looking. Android robot hands of course, hands without feeling. Enjoy the taste of life while you can.
Sargon falters, the first sign of the effect of his lethal injections. As he moves away, Henoch, a smirk on his face, exits. Thalassa looks at him, reacting to his statement about android hands.
The next scene: Thalassa sits at a table. She sets up a mirror in front of her and looks at her reflection. She unpins Ann Mulhall’s upswept hairdo, the hair falling attractively to her shoulders. (The Scott scene is eliminated.) Henoch enters and sees this.
(Moving toward her, referring to the android bodies they are going to be installed in)
HENOCH: A thousand year prison, Thalassa, and when it wears out we’ll build another one and lock ourselves into it for another thousand years, and another, and another. Sargon has closed his mind to a better way — with these bodies. (He takes her hand, continuing to extol the joy of seeing, feeling in these bodies.) Would you prefer the body we’re building for you?
Wordlessly she takes her hand from his grasp and heads for the door. Henoch continues speaking as he moves to the entrance of the adjoining lab.
HENOCH: Don’t you want to see the body we’re building for you?
She stops, then slowly follows him into the lab where an android figure lies on a table.
(Introducing the android on the table)
HENOCH: This is your new body, Thalassa.
Henoch causes the android’s hand to lift as the dialogue continues (as in the scene filmed with Henoch, Thalassa and the android) ending with:
THALASSA: No! I cannot live in that thing. I’m beginning to hate it.
Thalassa storms out of the lab.
CUT to the scene (as filmed) of a weakened Sargon summoning Dr. McCoy. Thalassa enters and implores Sargon to continue in the bodies they now are in, she kisses him passionately, he collapses to the floor, Dr. McCoy enters and declares him dead.
CUT to: A revised version of the (filmed) Sick bay scene with Dr. McCoy, Nurse Chapel and another nurse. Thalassa is now in the scene.
Camera fades in on an insert of the monitor on the wall, it pans down to dead Sargon on the table, widening as it moves left and panning to a wide shot of Sargon on the table, McCoy and the nurse are left of the table, Nurse Chapel is right of the table and Thalassa stands at a distance from the foot of the table. (The dialogue as filmed continues) Camera slowly zooms into a CU of Thalassa. She realizes that Sargon is truly dead. She turns and leaves the Sick bay.
CUT to: CU of a distressed Thalassa as she moves through the Enterprise corridor. She stops, She has made a decision.
Cut to: Sick bay. (as filmed) McCoy stands over Sargon lying on his bed. Thalassa enters.
THALASSA: Would you like to save your Captain Kirk?
And the scene as filmed continues to:
THALASSA: You dare to defy someone you should be on your knees worshipping!.
And then a voice:
SARGON: Thalassa, my beloved!
THALASSA: Sargon. Where are you? I thought you were destroyed by Henoch.
SARGON: I have power even Henoc does not suspect
THALASSA: Yes. I see. I understand.
Nurse Chapel (as filmed) enters. McCoy is sent from the room. Frantically he tries to reenter. Then a robotic Nurse Chapel comes from the Sick Bay. McCoy hurries back in and finds a dazed Kirk alive and Ann Mulhall, back in her own body. She says that Thalassa has gone to Sargon. McCoy sees the 3 smoking charred receptacles.
MCCOY: Spock’s consciousness was in one of them.
Kirk responds with shock. He then says.
KIRK: Bones, prepare a hypo, the fastest deadliest poison to Vulcans. Spock’s consciousness is gone. We must kill his body. The thing in it.
CUT to: Uhura screaming on the Bridge, Henoch standing over her. The scene will continue as filmed to Sargon’s speech:
SARGON: (Voice) We now know we cannot permit ourselves to exist in your world, my children
KIRK: But is there any way we can help you?
SARGON: Thalassa and I must now depart.
KIRK: Sargon? (No response) Sargon!
Kirk moves slowly to his command chair and sits. Spock, McCoy and Ann Mulhall stand around him.
KIRK: I never really met him. I only heard him in his first contact with us. He said, “If you let what is left of me perish, then all of you, my children, all of mankind must perish.” What did that mean? He had a reason for coming here. But I never had the chance to sit and talk with him. And there were those androids they were building. But why? For what reason?
CUT to Enterprise flying by with the producer credit.
And that’s my framework for how the film might have been.
You know, risk was not only the business of space flight. In a lesser way risk was our business in television production. STAR TREK’s original defeat, and make no mistake, being cancelled after only 3 of the desired 5 seasons was a defeat. Flights like RETURN TO TOMORROW that didn’t quite live up to expectations, flights that aspired far beyond the usual norm of what was television; those flights were necessary and STAR TREK made many of them. So in spite of the fact that Risk is our business was cancelled by higher authority’s Business is our business, 55 years later, STAR TREK is still alive and kicking.
The Journey Continues
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