This is the only episode of the original series to use none of the Enterprise interior sets.

(This means the author of the TNG Companion made a mistake when he said "Family" was the first Star Trek of any incarnation not to show a scene on the bridge - "All Our Yesterdays" preceded it in this respect)

I have four nits! (One is really two nits)

The first is a Nemesis-style nit. How come the people from the past speak like people from Earth`s past? If the UT bothers to translate their speech, how come it doesn`t make it like Kirk would understand?

Kirk asks Atoz if he`s real. Atoz says he is. Then McCoy checks him with a medical scanner and says that yes, he`s perfectly real. First, wouldn`t a tricorder be more appropriate? Second, why did Kirk have to ask if McCoy`s scanner can do all the work?

Speaking of Atoz, how is his name pronounced? Sometimes it`s pronounced Ay-toz, sometimes Ah-toz.

Finally, Spock seems to still be rather illogical at the end of the episode. He tells Kirk and McCoy that Zarabeth is "dead and buried". Who buried her?

Maybe this is a subtle hint by the writers that Spock knows he impregnated Zarabeth, as the novels of A.C. Crispin suggest . . . else, why would he choose those words?

Buried in the snow drifts?

Anyone ever notice that the librarian's name is Mr. Atoz, or A to Z. Very appropriate name for a librarian.

Why didn't Kirk and Co. just say, flat out, "Hey, we're not native to this planet. We're just sightseeing?" Of course, it would have been a short show....

And why didn't Mr. A-to-Z notice their odd uniforms? Or Spock's ears?

Yet another planet where everyone's speaking English. If they did have universal translators, they surely would have malfunctioned, just as the phasers did.

The way they cut the scene, it looks like McCoy's hair defrosts in the blink of an eye.

Zorkon was obviously from the past. Atoz said that he had little on RECENT history, yet Spock recognized the name. And just when did he have the chance to look him up, anyway?

Five thousand years seems a very short time to progress from an ice age to Atoz's time. Fifty thousand years seems more likely.

In Zarabeth's time, there HAS to be plant life of sorts--all the animals can't be carnivores. Zarabeth herself must be carnivorous, or else she would starve on a diet of pure protein.

Kirk, McCoy, and now Spock, all seem to have a tendency to fall in love extraordinarily fast.

Scott was frantic to get them beamed back to the ship, yet it took him a long time to respond to Kirk's last hail.


Happy Holidays, everyone!

Phil notes in his book that a couple of brief lines of dialogue were cut from the teaser of this episode in the Paramount video release. They've been restored for the sci-fi channel remaster. How'd they ever get left out in the first place, I wonder?

Mariette Hartley, in one of her host segments, describes her character as being "sucked into the Time Tunnel." Wrong show, Mariette! :)

Yes, McCoy's hair defrosted instantly...or should I say de-flocked, because it looked like Kelley and Nimoy were sprayed with that flocking stuff some people use to simulate snow on their Christmas tree or windows around Christmas-time.

Did anyone pick up on McCoy's pinky ring? In a couple of shots in the last scene in Zarabeth's cave, you can see that De Kelley is wearing a pinky ring - something I never saw McCoy do in any other episode!

GUEST STAR PATROL (All the Tomorrows and Yesterdays Today...?)

Mariette Hartley (Zarabeth) was on Gene Roddenberry's "Genesis II" program.

Mariette Hartley (Zarabeth) was also NOT James Garner's wife in a series of (minolta?) commercials. (Showing my age here, again)

Poor Zarabeth. She had to suffer The Wrath of Zor Khan.

I must be blind. I did not pick up on McCoy's pinky ring until "Star Trek VI." (or on Jimmy Doohan's nine fingers-and I met him in person in 1977.) Guess I'll have to watch all my eps and movies again.

The Atavachron was the Beta 5 computer from "Assignment Earth." Mr. Atoz may have been ripped off from the original "City on the Edge" script, with an old man as the guide to the Guardian. See that board for further info in case I got this wrong (I probably did.)

I must be blind. I did not pick up on McCoy's pinky ring until "Star Trek VI." (or on Jimmy Doohan's nine fingers-and I met him in person in 1977.) Guess I'll have to watch all my eps and movies again.

Lord of the Rings riff: "Let me sing to you of Scotty of the Nine Fingers and McCoy's ring of Doom!"

Sorry, I couldn't resist that!

During a jail visit by the procecutor, Kirk mentions that he was reading in the library. Its a good thing it was a long time in the past, or the procecutor may have thought Kirk was in the bathroom! (couldn't resist that one, either)

With the third season emphasis on cost cutting, and a few bottle (or mostly bottle) shows done ("Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", "Day of the Dove", "And the Children Shall Lead"; the last two using the generic planet set for a few scenes) why would TPTB approve a script that required the construction of mostly new sets, and had not one scene on the Enterprise? OK, for the medieval scenes, they probably used stock Paramount sets, but the Library and the ice planet had to be built (although the Atavachron was Gary Seven's Beta 5.) Was there extra money left over at season's end?

Talk about a temporal loop! An entire planet retreats back into its own past. At least Kirk and the boys didn't have to worry about messing up the future in this ep. Even if Kirk accidentally kills the person who invents the Atavachron, the original lineage would still produce the person. And if Kirk kills the original lineage, the actual person who invented it has retreated into the past also, and will guarantee the invention thereof.

This “retreating into the past” thing deserves scrutiny. The “temporal loop” analogy is of interest.
1. Let’s assume that no one will retreat any closer than 80 years into the past.
(assuming someone is 30 years old and doesn’t want to live long enough to witness the super-nova in their own lifetime)
2. Let’s also assume that the entire population was NOT neutered or spayed before retreating.
3. Let’s also assume that not everyone will be able to subdue the urge to procreate.
Therefore, when it comes time to retreat into the past again (temporal loop thing) there will be several hundred or thousands more people than was sent back the first time. By this analogy, they will eventually either be FORCED to leave people behind to die in the supernova, or be FORCED into extinction due to overpopulation. (assuming the original strain survives to produce the person who invents the Atavachron)

On the face of it, it looks like retreating into their own past is the worst thing they could've done! (Unless they truly disable the ability to procreate before allowing passage into the past)

There was a book based on this episode that served as a sequel...I think it was called "Yesterday's Child" (or something like that.)
It showed Spock's "son" still alive in the era he met Zarabeth.

I know the novels are not canonical, but I think this idea would've made a great Trek episode.

Whether or not a person sent back in time will procreate or not is one thing, but all these people are being sent back into less technologically-advanced times; does this mean they influenced the science of the old days with 'present-day' knowledge, thus creating 200 years ago the science that was probably thought to evolve naturally, but was actually caused by a temporal loop? If you were sent back to, say, 1830, could you live like they did back then, or would you give humanity a boost and 'help create' tv, radio, and medicinal drugs earlier to make your life easier? The time travellers would probably all swear not to change things, but you can't trust every one of the thousands sent back. The planet would wind up with thousands of paradoxes, as time travellers went back and encountered their heroes and major figures in history (ie the Earth equivalent of, say, Jesus, Bethoven, Cleopatra, Napolean, etc.). I know I'd be very tempted to do so, especially if I were single and seeking a famous mate.
With all these temporal paradoxes (speeding up technology faster than it should have been) the planet might have been destroyed in the nova with people with just 17th century science, instead of the advanced type Kirk and crew found, thus making the saving of the planet's population a reality.

I agree that the infusion of more "advanced" citizens scattered throughout the past would probably make the "temporal loop" thing impossible. By the time they reached the super-nova, a totally new civilization would probably exist, and when (or if) THEY go back into the past again, they'll create a whole new future to live out.

And just who was sent back when they learned that Sarpeidon was going to be destroyed in the coming nova? Would they bother with criminals, or the mentally insane? Probably not, which would mean they were probably left locked up to die in the nova, or killed beforehand, but why bother?
Adults might grasp the consequences of their actions, but how do you explain to kids aged 7 and up and teenagers who might like to mess things up?

Maybe the people sent back *were* made sterile.
And maybe they could go back to any point in the past 500 million years, so there'd be a lot of room. It would be interesting to work out all the other implications of this. One easy out is
that the situation is an artificial situation, an experiment created by the Q, the Vians, the Metrons, the Zalkonians, take your pick, whichever advanced race you think would have done this.

The time portal intersects a brick wall. So when the workmen were building the brick wall, didn't they ever notice anything weird going on?

All right, it’s FAR, okay, Zarabeth?
When Zarabeth first asks Spock about himself, he tells her he’s from a planet thousands of light years away. Is he talking about Sarpeidon, or Zarabeth’s planet? Neither makes sense. It takes the Voyager about a year at maximum warp just to travel one thousand light years, according to their "70-years to travel 70,000 light years to the Alpha Quadrant journey." That’s over a century after this episode, and Janeway told Kim in Flashback(VOY) that ships in the time of Sulu’s captaincy of the Excelsior, 20 or 30 years after this episode, were "half as fast." So if Sarpeidon is "thousands of light years" away from Vulcan, which is a Federation world, and the future Excelsior is half as fast as the Voyager, how long did it take the Enterprise to travel there? Now it’s possible the atavachron transported Spock and Bones through distant space as well as time, but then how would Spock know where Zarabeth’s planet is? Even if he had an photographic memory with detailed knowledge of distant Milky Way star systems, there’s know way he could see the stars from Zarabeth’s planet through that thick snowstorm, let alone discern their identity and calculate the planet’s location.
Man, if I encountered Mariel Hartley wearing nothing but animal skins, I’d act irrational too
The premise that Spock’s irrational behavior is due to the fact that he is 5000 years in his people’s past, and is becoming like the Vulcans of that time period makes no sense. If you travel back in time, you mutate into an earlier evolutionary ancestor? So if I traveled back in time 40,000 years, I’d mutate into a Cro-Magnon? Given the way Phil pointed out the creators have bashed 20th century humans on one of the tote boards in the NextGen Guide, as well as Nog’s description of the them in Little Green Men(DS9), why didn’t Kirk and crew revert to corrupt, bigoted, selfish, warlike people when they traveled to the 20th century in Tomorrow is Yesterday, City on the Edge of Forever, Assignment: Earth, and ST IV?
And for my next trick, I’ll saw this nebula in half
In the second to last shot of the episode, the sun goes nova, and the planet begins to glow, but rather than blowing up or disintegrating, it simply disappears.

So why didn't Kirk or McCoy revert to behaving like their ancestors?

Because they are already illogical & irrational to begin with.

Presumably Spock is reverting to what Vulcans were like then because of the telepathic "pressure" of the Vulcans of that era. After all he can sense the death of several hundred Vulcans in "The Immunity Syndrome," so the presence of millions of "old style" Vulcans surely must have an effect.

His use of the term "dead and buried" was likely intended as a simple figure of speech.

We know that the Atavachron prepares people in some way before they go back, so perhaps it selectively edits their memories of certain details that might threaten the "proper" timeline. Conversely some of the people who go into the past may become the person or persons who invented specific things, lead specific political movements etc. Similarly any children had by those who go into the past will be children that, as far as the history of the planet goes, were "supposed" to be there. If they weren't the timeline wouldn't have developed in such a manner as to result in what we saw on screen.

Funny that a planet than can develop time travel can't find a way to stop their sun going nova. And why engage in time travel when finding a new planet would be much safer?

Trivia note: Fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth's 1986 album was called Atavachron. The cover art includes a drawing of Holdsworth in a Star Fleet uniform carrying the futuristic looking Synthaxe guitar synth controller he used at the time.

Perhaps it was all of the time travel in a localized area of space that caused the Nova. I remember reading something about that in the Yesterday's Son novel and the one involving the Guardian about how highly localized time travel can affect a solar body.

The civilization that was on the guardian's planet may also have used the guardian to escape into different eras of the past.

"Missing scene"....Spock returning to his quarters and finding Chapel there....with a rolling pin in her hand.

Chapel: "Let's talk about this Zarabeth NOW!"
(tapping rolling pin in her hand)

Spock: (raises eyebrow)

Then..."To be continued..." pops up on the screen.

My idea for the "rolling pin" came from those old "Bugs Bunny" cartoons, the old b&w silent movies & the old Vaudeville acts of the "Roaring 20's" in which the jealous wife was waiting for her cheating husband to come home & let him have it.
I'm glad to see someone else enjoys slapstick humor as much as I do.

However, on a serious note, I must point out, that if I were Chapel & found out about Spock's liaison with Zarabeth, I would be jealous and AT LEAST talk with him about it on a sensible level.

What puzzles me is Mr. Atoz...Kirk & the others come and warn him about the doom awaiting their planet and Mr. Atoz thinks that Kirk & Co. are residents of Sarpeidon (?)

Can't he see that Kirk & Co. are wearing uniforms of some kind and are NOT residents?
Do people of Sarpeidon go around wearing Starfleet uniforms?

HMMM...Maybe they do...and they got 'em from a "Star Trek" convention on Gamma III (?)

Last time I checked, Spock and Chapel were not a couple. And frankly, I feel sorry for Spock. Chapel is annoying.

>>Mr. Atoz thinks that Kirk & Co. are residents of Sarpeidon?

I've never actually seen the ep (and I hate to spoil your punchline) but the Blish novelization makes much of Mr. Atoz being too harrassed with trying to get everyone 'out' before deadline to notice anything about the landing party other than they're not gone yet.
(As a former information-desk attendant in a book superstore, I can sympathize big-time with the poor man! )

PS to Anonymous: If you're going to insult another poster, at least have the common decency to do so under your real name - and get your facts straight. Yes, John A. can be a goofball, but he's also a faithful, fun and intelligent contributor to these boards.

Anonymous 1: So why didn't Kirk or Mccoy revert to behaving like their ancestors?

Anonymous 2: Because they are already illogical & irrational to begin with.

Luigi Novi: In the first place, the premise wasn't that going back in time makes one illogical and irrational, it was that going back in time causes one to revert to the evolutionary ancestor of that time, and as I've said, it makes no sense.
---In the second place, humans in the 23rd century, despite being illogical or irrational by Vulcan standards, are nontheless supposedly evolved from 20th/21st century humans, yet they did not act racist, greedy, or prone to using drugs (as Nog noted in Little Green Men(DS9)) in ANY of the other stories where they visited the 20th century.

Tim Quequen: Presumably Spock is reverting to what Vulcans were like then because of the telepathic "pressure" of the Vulcans of that era. After all he can sense the death of several hundred Vulcans in "The Immunity Syndrome," so the presence of millions of "old style" Vulcans surely must have an effect.

Luigi Novi: Huh? From THOUSANDS OF LIGHT YEARS AWAY? Uh-uh, I don't think so. There's no reason to "presume" such a thing. Besides, Vulcans usually have to make physical contact with others to use telepathic abilities. Yes, I know that A Taste of Armageddon(TOS), By Any Other Name(TOS), The Omega Glory(TOS), and Sarek(TNG) show Vulcans using telepathy without doing so, but for the most part, Vulcans have to touch a person's face to initiate contact, and even in these four eps where that wasn't done, the Vulcan (Spock or Sarek) was close by, or at least on the same ship.

To both Anonymous's: Please use a bit of creative thought and pick a pseudonym. Keeping track of all the people who've posted as "Anonymous", especially in the same thread, is confusing as all hell.

To the Sept 8 Anonymous: People have every right to post jokes, even if not everyone thinks they're funny. Lighten up, skip over them, or get lost.

Anonymous of Sept.9/01: You have revealed yourself as a troll, and I have no desire to feed you, so this will be my last post on the subject:

Poking randy-but-lighthearted fun at the sexual attitudes of a fictional 60's TV show is one thing.

Making pointed sexual references designed to annoy and embarrass real-life posters - still without revealing your identity - is something much more disturbing...and revolting. Please leave me alone, OK?

WOW...where is everybody? (Crew-wise, that is)

Only Kirk, Spock & McCoy in this episode?!?!

No Chekov, Sulu, or Uhura...and we only hear the VOICE of Scotty in this episode!

The creators can't seem to make up their mind about showing women's navels...Droxine got to show hers, Chekov's ex-girlfriend in "Way to Eden" did too...why not Zarabeth?

The footage of Kirk passing thru the wall was done flawlessly! KUDOS!

The reason why there were no interior shots is because the production crew knew TOS was going to be cancelled in a few weeks and packed the sets up prematurely.

Yes, but "Turnabout Intruder" which uses almost all of the interior sets, was supposedly filmed after this episode.

According to Joan Winston in "Star Trek Lives", she was on the set for TI, and it was the last one filmed.

You could imagine the hysteria of the production crew scrambling to put the sets back together for the last episode after taking them apart just before this one.

This is yet another episode that SHOULD HAVE BEEN a two-parter. I think it ended a bit too abruptly.

A 2 parter? What would they have built it on? Spock in love?

Todd is right. "Turnabout Intruder" was filmed during the last week of December 1968, running into January 2 or 3, 1969.
I don't think this should have been a two-parter, it would have seemed too padded.
There would have been no hysteria, John. "Trek" had two soundstages at Desilu/Paramount. The standing Enterprise sets were on Stage 8, and planet sets were built on Stage 9. The standing sets were not struck until the show was cancelled. (The NBC trolls have paid dearly since that one, haven't they, with the 1980 Olympic boycott, the 1992 pay-per-view Olympic debacle, and the flopperoo reign of Fred Silverman as NBC President in 1978-81.)

What I meant by "two parter" was more stuff with Kirk lost in his time period....plus scenes in which McCoy notices that he's acting like a caveman.

From my point of view, there was a little hysteria putting the sets back together...
My proof? Watch the next episode "Turnabout Intruder" when Lester/Kirk is restrained in Sickbay, she/he has to run ALL THE WAY DOWN THE CORRIDOR to get to McCoy's office. In all the episodes before this one, Sickbay is attached to McCoy's office. Somebody goofed putting the sets back together.

I sent away for the Classic Guide today, I can't wait to read it. Forgive me if this one is in there...
When Mr. Atoz is showing McCoy how the disc player works, he mentioned something about a disc being in the wrong place and that he needed to file it where it belonged. Why? In a short time it would not matter.

Because he is a librarian. No matter what, the library MUST be organized.

Kirk is a mind reader?

When McCoy tries to come back to the library alone, he can't make it (because he and Spock went through simultaneously). No one mentions this. McCoy doesn't say, "••••, I tried to walk through but hit the rock." Yet Kirk turns to Atoz and says (of McCoy), something like: "Why can't he get through?" Atoz then theorizes that he and Spock must come back together.

How did Kirk know what McCoy was trying to do?

Way cool how Spock's ear tips stay white (frostbite) for a while after they come in from the cold.

I don't recall ice cliffs in the CD McCoy looked at -- just snow drifts, but that is being too picky.

Sir Rhosis

How did Kirk know what McCoy was trying to do?

I'm thinking he made a very, very educated guess. Can you imagine the good Doctor not whirling right straight around and attempting to head back through?

EQUIPMENT ODDITY:
It starts when Kirk looks at a disc in the library...he is viewing a "Wild West" scene...in a mid-1800's timeframe. So...how come when he hears the scream and runs thru the portal, he's in a Salem, Massachusetts in a 1600's-1700's timeframe?)

Along the same lines, it seems rather unusual that Sarpedion...a planet light years from Earth, would have the EXACT history as Earth!

What exact history? They shared a few basic similarities over a few broad time periods. An interesting coincidence for the galactic sociologists, sure, but given the 'millions' of inhabited planets in the Trek universe, not really worth a second look.

If Spock and McCoy really couldn't get back, can you imagine how lonely McCoy would have been? Spock and Zarabeth would be "fooling around" on a regular basis, with McCoy always left out in the cold. And he thought life before he met Natira was lonely. He would be kicking himself on a daily basis: "Why the devil didn't I stay on Yonada? I could have been happy, but nooo..."

How come the Enterprise didn't detect the real Atoz's life signs from orbit?

Wouldn't it be rather inconvenient to have a door to the future just sitting there at that brick wall waiting for somebody to accidentally go through there? Unless it was only there when the disc was in the viewer. But that would mean Atoz left Kirk's disc for a while without filing it. That seems unlikely, especially since he didn't have a whole lot to do at the time.
Maybe if someone slipped through, one of the Atozes could gently point them back through, and they would just think they hallucinated.

Shouldn't that doorway to the past have some sort of label on it??

GREAT SFX: The replay of Sarpedion's history on those flat round discs. COOL!

John A. Lang expressed earlier that this episode should have been a two-parter. Considering the budget constraits of the third season, I'm surprised the producers didn't think of trying at least one two-parter, which is traditionally in television a budget-saving move (because it costs a little less to produce one longer episode which fills two airdate slots than it does to produce two separate hour ones).

This ep is one of my all time favorites. I thought it was one of the most emotionally powerful episodes. Spock having to leave Zarabeth alone for the rest of her life is just incredibly sad. This woman's glimmer of hope for companionship was destroyed. She probably led the rest of her life with the sad ideas of what could have been.

How was McCoy able to figure out that Zarabeth was lying about "Not able to go back"? He was unconscious when Spock & Zarabeth were talking about the Atavachron (sp?) And if he was only half-asleep, how was he able to figure out that one must be "prepared" first before entering the past in order to become a "permanent resident"?

Interesting moment: At one point Kirk mentions he comes from "an island called Earth". There was a sci-fi movie in 1955 called "This Island Earth". Was this line intended as a tribute?

GREAT MOMENT:

The super-nova at the end with the destruction of Sarpedion is flawless.

The Constable that tells the Majistrate that he heard Kirk speak to the unseen spirit called 'Bones' is either lying, or a line of dialogue is missing. At no point does Kirk refer to either McCoy or Spock by name when he's captured near the portal.
I guess it was one of Atoz's replicas that removed McCoy's ice age disc from the viewer, and returned it to its proper slot, since Kirk and the real Atoz look through at least a couple before they find the right one.
Poor Zarabeth; she was doomed to remain alone, even if Spock remained behind, since he wouldn't have survived the trip much longer.
People are wondering why McCoy didn't change, as Spock did. I say that he did, because he was pretty nasty to Spock, "Now, you listen to me, you pointy-eared Vulcan!--", and the way he violently grabbed Zarabeth by the ears, screaming something about how she'd kill to keep Spock there. McCoy can be gruff and short-tempered, but I think this is sh, even for him, so he did revert to a human from 5000 years ago.
Zarabeth says that Zorkon provided her with the just essentials to survive. I wonder if he's related to Jeff Probst?

I believe "Survivor: Sarpeidon" will premiere during the 2005 season. :D

Sir Rhosis

How come nobody from Kirk's "adventure in time" notices Kirk's uniform and figures out that's he's not from "their time" or "their planet"?

Same thing with Zarabeth.

Well, the Sarpedions did comment on Kirk's attire.

I agree. However, they failed to figure out he was from "somewhere else" besides Sarpedion

Luigi asked, way back in the old days: When Zarabeth first asks Spock about himself, he tells her he’s from a planet thousands of light years away.

I always assumed he meant Vulcan. But, I'm sure he says "millions of light years away." Which makes even less sense, and I'm led to wonder if Mr. Nimoy had an issue with the writer and director about that.

I'm sure someone's pointed this one out, but just in case... When McCoy says, "You haven't been honest with me, Spock", look very closely at DeForest Kelley's mouth. His lips do not move.

Live long and prosper.

Check out the floor of the Sarpiedon Library. It seems U-Coat-It delivered there, as well as to Elba II.

I think Kirk left his phaser behind in the old world!

I saw the All Our yesterdays' enhanced Supernova shot...still like the original better than ever, I saw the episode as a 9 year old kid in 69...

My 2 cents worth.

I thought it was nice, though it should have been a bit brighter. Other new shots were the E in orbit around the planet. I haven't been able to double-check it, but someone said the matte lines have been erased from the viewer discs.

Well, I haven't seen the original in ages- but I liked the new shot. Especially the little 'Mini-Veridian III' right at the end. :-)

(On a side note- I was suprised with the departure of Spock and McCoy- I hadn't remembered the set looking that good, the lighting too!)

Boy, all that wandering around in Parkas in frozen wastelands... they missed out on a real opportunity in Star Trek VI to havee McCoy grumbling about "Just like Sarpedion..."

Was it just me, or is there something inately just plain fun about James Kirk almost being doomed by a librarian pushing him on a rolling cart? It just makes me grin. :-)

I saw the "All Our Yesterdays" enhanced Supernova shot...still like the original better than ever...
I disagree. As someone who's watched this countless times since 1969 (I was 14 when this episode aired on NBC) I liked the re-mastered end shot better. Improved a so-so episode quite a bit.

RUMINATION:

In Sarpedion's Ice Age, Spock is the one with the emotion and McCoy is the one with the logic.

its always Ponn Farr in my house, baby! -- [austin 'spock' powers]

The remastered "All Our Yesterdays" repeats this weekend. This kicks off the third season of the remastered run. The following week is "Arena".

I posted this on the "Re-Mastered" page in the Sink, but I'll say it here too. The New York City area's Trek viewers will get a change of venue again - the third in as many years, starting this weekend with the aforementioned "All Our Yesterdays". The episodes will be run on WPIX Channel 11 Saturday/early Sunday at midnight. WPIX was the New York home for Trek from Sept. 1969 until August 1998. So, it's kind of like "Old Home Day."

I watched this on its first- run, the story was awful to a 9 yr old kid,
but the supernova shot was a blast (no pun intended), one of the best shots ever for sci-fi.

I think the cgi people shoulda left it alone

GREAT ENHANCEMENT:

The supernova at the end. Not only does the star explode, but it shatters Sarpedion as well.

those flat round discs John mentionned is now what we call dvds, on earth.Wonder if Paramount sued the originial
inventors...also communicators are called cell phones too...

Gene R was 20 years into the future., not 200!

The phasers don't work, but McCoy's medical device does?
I'd assumed that the author was using the ludicrous idea that phasers wouldn't work because they "hadn't been invented yet", but if the medical device works then some other reason would have to be used for why the phasers didn't work.

I guess they're just powered differently. Maybe the time portal renders weapons inactive, to prevent the old I'm-going-to-kill-my-own-grandfather-and-see-if-I'll-still-exist time paradox from being carried out. As a futuristic weapon, maybe the phaser uses somekinda tiny dilithium crystal which is shorted out by the time portal.
The tricorder is basically an electronic device run on perhaps battery power.
Then again, you could always go back in time and whack Grandpa on the head with it to kill him ...
...but that's another episode for another time

Here's TrekMovie.com's review of the episode. I got a kick out of the review's opening line.

At the end we see Mr. Atoz escaping into the past.

What about his replicas?

Um, I was under the impression that they were mechanical in nature. It could be that on Sarpeidion, androids are not considered living beings. It's even possible that the replicas had limited programming, rendering them more like walking computers. If so, then Mr. Atoz had no need to be concerned with his replicas' well being.

Alternately, it's possible that the replicas had already preceded Mr. Atoz and were already in the past.

Live long and prosper.

Here's an analysis from Orion Press, of the original story this episode was based on, titled "A Handful of Dust".

Benn, the only problem is that the replica that Kirk shoves into a room calls out, "Wait! I must prepare to escape!", something a clone might want to achieve, but an android? I suppose it was programed like Data with a desire to survive.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the population's trips into the past via the Atavachron created a paradox and was responsible for creating the nova that destroyed the world that they were trying to escape from? Thousands or millions of trips into the past by the Sarpeidon people created a massive time warp/chain reaction/time paradox of the time/space continuum and wreaked havoc on their sun-- forcing it to go nova, unaware that if they'd not time travelled the sun wouldn't have gone nova.
Well, there's somebody's novel idea there-- don't forget to pay me royalties!

And, here's the "final draft" script. Which was still significantly changed before it was shot.
The writer of the article, Eric Paddon, really has an inflated opinion about this episode. I think it was just OK; he thinks it's one of the series' best. Sorry, but....no.

What's up with Spock's tricorder, let alone his famous Vulcan hearing, at the beginning of the episode?
The Enterprise enters orbits and discovers the planet is uninhabited, they beam down to the Library and he scans for life signs but can't find anyone, then Mr.Atoz shows up a minute after they beamed down? Why? Shouldn't the tricoder have spotted Atoz immediately, since he was so close? And couldn't Spock hear Atoz and his two replicas moving about?
The only explanation that I can think of is that the walls are constructed of a material that blocks sensor beams.

It was discussed earlier if the replicas are androids are not. They must be clones, since Kirk is able to karate chop one into unconsciousness. An android would be impervious to that, wouldn't he?

And speaking of Atoz, man, is that guy O.C.D. or what?! He discovers a disc that's been misfiled, and he saunters over to the correct drawer to put it back in...even though his planet is about to blow up in 3 HOURS!!!

Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Tuesday, October 06, 2009 - 3:05 am: The phasers don't work, but McCoy's medical device does? I'd assumed that the author was using the ludicrous idea that phasers wouldn't work because they "hadn't been invented yet", but if the medical device works then some other reason would have to be used for why the phasers didn't work.

Perhaps Zor-kahn, the tyrant who exiled Zarabeth, arranged for the time portal to disable obvious weapons as part of the punishment, without harming other equipment.

Explanation added to Explaining Errors in Star Trek wiki on August 30, 2014

Continuing in the tradition of Geoff Capp explaining some nits in The Immunity Syndrome, I have one for this episode.
I've always been bothered how the Atavachron works, namely why somebody would walk through an exit to the outside when they use the time machine.
Not to mention how Sarpeidon could possibly still look nice and sunny outside when their sun is about to explode in a matter of hours (ie. radiation, and LOTS of it!).
So here's my explanation;
That's not the real view of outside, it's a holographic image within a chamber, much like the Enterprise-D Holodeck. Instead of walking into a drab, mechanical, machine-like room, users of the Atavachron can walk towards what looks like a park, before finding themselves in another era.
It could also be used by Mister Atoz as a way of feeling like he's not inside a stuffy building, and he can look 'outside' whenever he wanted. Also, as he knew that Sarpeidon was dying, he wanted to see what his world looked like in the past, rather than the dying, burned-up cinder it was becoming.
And since there should be some kind of machinery or equipment or units along the edge of the portal doorway, those are probably holographically camouflaged, as well.

Nova's do not work that way. You don't have a shirtsleeves environment and then, VOOP, nova!

This planet should have been uninhabitable for generations prior to the sun actually going nova.

Which is why I think that view outside is a hologram, and the Library is shielded or underground.

Actually, there could be no habitable planet around a star that goes nova. They didn't know this at the time, but a nova is a double star, one of which is a white dwarf and the other an ordinary star. The white dwarf pulls gas from its normal companion, which accumulates on its surface until there's enough of it for the intense gravity to trigger a runaway fusion reaction that produces the explosion. Then the process repeats. Depending on the exact configuration of the system, the explosions can be separated by a few years or by many millenia. A planet orbiting in such a system would have been sterilized by the white dwarf star when it went through its red giant phase, and would be bathed in hard X-rays from the gas crashing on the white dwarf's surface.

And, of course, Sarpeidon's past is full of people with English and Irish accents!

John Lang, way back when:

I think it was called "Yesterday's Child"

The novel, by Ann Crispin, was called Yesterday's Son, and was published in 1983. She wrote a sequel, Time For Yesterday, in 1988.

Both are long out of print, but you can probably find them on Amazon. Or, as I acquired my copies, in used book stores.

I started thinking about the Ice Age that Zarabeth is in, and realized that, technically, she isn't alone.
There's no way of knowing what part of the planet she's on, northern or southern hemisphere, an island, a remote place (like Greenland or Siberia), but there are still people living through that Ice Age.
An Ice Age doesn't mean that the population is wiped out, so if she traveled even 100 miles south, towards the equator, she might have come upon remote encampments of people from that time period. It's better than being alone for the rest of your life.
Why would Starfleet send a ship to look at a planet that about to be wiped out by a nova in just a few hours? Kind of a wasted trip, since whatever civilization lived there would be atomized just hours from now. And it's risking 430 officers and crew for nothing.
The remastered special effects are an improvement (as usual) over the original effects. Sarpeidon just crumbles away like a tiny dust ball.

Actually, Steve, the problem is distance. Zarabeth is probably hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from the nearest civilized area.

How is she going to reach them? She has no means of transport, she would have to go on foot. And don't forget she'd been travelling through less than ideal conditions. One major snowstorm, and she'd be screwed.

Furthermore, there is the question of provisions. The only ones that Zarabeth would have are the ones she'd have to take along herself. And there would be nowhere for her to get resupplied. She might run out long before she got anywhere near the civilization in question.

Guess she realized that her only change for survival is to stay where she was.

Agreed. But my point was that if she had decided that being alone was too torturous to continue, would she have left her cave? She got a few short hours of seeing other people (Spock and McCoy), so maybe the urge to be with others might force her to search out others.
An Ice Age doesn't necessarily mean that it snows every day for years and years. Spock and McCoy showed up on a snowy day, which was no doubt common, but she had to have the ingenuity to survive-- kill animals, make fire, etc.
Yes, she would have to go on foot anywhere, but don't forget that OUR ancestors had to do the same thing, just to survive. Had they never explored on foot, Earth would have just one clump of humans on it, and the rest of the planet would be empty.
And who's to say that Zorkon The Tyrant didn't send other 'criminals' to her place of exile, and they're marooned on the other side of a mountain?
All your other points are valid, though (provisions, distance).

When Ann Crispin wrote her novel, Yesterday's Son, she speculated that the Ice Age covered the northern hemisphere and Zarabeth was way far up north. Too far to reach the civilized areas of the south.

Best answer anyone has come up with.

Regarding Zorkon The Tyrant again-- what i never really thought about was that the guy was a merciless tyrant that eliminated enemies and opponents...AND HE HAD THE POWER OF TIME TRAVEL! Prety frightening to think of how much of our history could have been changed had Hitler (or Orange Hitler) had access to time travel!

Further to my point on July 2013 when I mentioned Spock not hearing Atoz and his duplicates-- well, Aroz apparently didn't hear THEM either! Despite the trio speaking amongst themselves and then speaking to two Atoz doubles, the real Mr. Atoz is surprised to hear them. The library isn't too big, at least regarding the amount of area the landing party walks around in. Maybe the walls really are sound-proofed and you can't hear anything even around the nearest corner-- it IS a library, after all! Shhhh!

Regarding Zorkon The Tyrant again-- what i never really thought about was that the guy was a merciless tyrant that eliminated enemies and opponents...AND HE HAD THE POWER OF TIME TRAVEL! Pretty frightening to think of how much of our history could have been changed had Hitler (or Orange Hitler) had access to time travel!

Phil covered that in his book. Also, sending your enemies into the past might be a bad idea. One of them might take a page from The Terminator and kill your ancestors.

Then the logical thing to do would be to send someone waaay back, like 5000 years, where the chances of your ancestor being killed are about 0.00000000000000000000001 %.
After all, the math makes the number of ancestors to kill exponentially impossible;
2 parents.
4 grandparents.
8 great-grandparents.
16 great-great-grandparents
32 great-great-great-grandparents.
64 great-great-great-great-grandparents.
128 great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
256 great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
512 great...uh. You get the picture.

But the further back you go, the more potential descendants every individual has, so the more damage you can do with anything you affect.

Exactly. Killing just one ancestor could push the family line in a whole new direction.

Maybe that's why Zarabeth ended up where she was. Too far from the civilization of that time (which I mentioned in my posts here, two years ago). She did not have the means to reach that civilization.

The Zarabeth timeline might be even more screwed up than we know. Spock mentions knowing of Zorcon The Tyrant 'from the history tapes'. That makes me wonder how far back in present-day/Sarpeidon time did Zarabeth exist before being exiled in time? Was she sent to the Ice Age 20 years prior to the Enterprise's visit? 50 years? 100 years? She could have been sent back 87 years before Spock was even born.
I guess he's okay with dating older women!

The same for the Prosecutor-- he might have been living in the past for 30 years, but was sent back a decade before the Enterprise visited Sarpeidon.

Best not to think too much about it.

Wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey!

Of course, the novels have revisited the events of this episode. A.C. Crispin's Yesterday saga, in the 1980's, and, more recently, Greg Cox's 2014 novel, No Time Like The Past.