Synopsis: Lt. Noonien-Singh is sent back in time to restore her timeline, which means the ending of an alternate one.
In this episode there is a situation which can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C.G.) Jung called an enantiodromia, or that everything turns into its opposite.
In “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” while walking in the corridor on the U.S.S. Enterprise Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh happens across a dying man seemingly from the past, but holding a device that allows her to travel to another time and place. She touches it and finds herself in a different Enterprise, and when she goes to the bridge she finds not Captain Christopher Pike, but Captain James Tiberius Kirk. There is no Federation or Starfleet, but a United Earth Fleet. Noonien-Singh explains to him that she came from an alternate timeline and shows him the device. When Kirk tries to take it from her they are both sent back to twenty-first-century Toronto. Once there, Noonien-Singh tells him that in her timeline he could be an explorer not a soldier. They then witness the destruction of a bridge and realize that this may be the place where their two time lines diverge. They investigate and are aided by a reporter, Sera, who tells them that the bridge was blown up in protest of international cooperation. As it turns out, Sera is also from the future—she is a Romulan disguised to look human. Sera needs Noonien-Singh’s DNA in order to enter the Noonien-Singh Institute for Cultural Advancement, where she intends on killing the boy who will become the notorious Khan Noonien-Singh. The reason for this is because if it were not for the tyranny of Khan Noonien-Singh and the dark times that he caused, then Earth would not have become united against him, which led to the eventual United Federation of Planets, one of the Romulan Empire’s chief adversaries. She believes that if she kills Khan Noonien-Singh then the Federation may never come into being. But La’an Noonien-Singh defeats Sera and the timeline is restored.
In this episode, when Sera describes to La’an Noonien-Singh that the dark ages brought on by the tyranny of her ancestor, Khan Noonien-Singh, led to an enlightenment of the planet, this can be compared to Jung’s concept of an enantiodromia. He believed that this moving from one end of the spectrum to the other was the principle that guided the cycles of all natural life. Something to remember when we find ourselves if times which seem bleak.
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