Stardate 58460.1

The Cerritos approaches Krulmuth B where there’s a portal of unknown purpose. Ensign Boimler is excited. Mariner is less enthused. Boimler explains the portal was discovered by Captain Pike and the original crew of the Enterprise.

Rutherford and Tendi join them, excited by the idea of scanning for radiation. Mariner’s been put in charge of the mission which annoys Boimler.

They beam down to the portal site. Tendi tells Boimler the portal was actually discovered by Orions. Her great-grandmother was on that crew. Boimler is skeptical. Tendi is irked by his questioning.

Rutherford detects heronium in the portal. Boimler strikes a pose at the mouth of the portal, wishing that he could’ve lived in the time of the first Enterprise.

Rutherford takes a photo of Boimler and it triggers the portal. Boimler gets sucked through, leaving the other three behind.

On the other end of the portal, a 3-D live action version of Boimler flies out and lands at the feet of Spock, Una, and La’an.

An animated Strange New Worlds opening credits sequence!

Stardate 2291.6

Pike reports Boimler’s arrival, calling him “the time traveler,” which has interrupted their mission to deliver grain to a colony on Cetlik-2.

Una informs Pike that Boimler’s delta is also a communication device.

PIke’s the first thing Boimler sees when he wakes up in sickbay. Boimler tries to end the holodeck program.

Una gives him back his delta. He’s startled and scampers away from her and won’t make eye contact. Una finds that strange.

La’an takes Boimler away, briefs him on temporal protocols, advises him not to make any attachments to people he meets.

Boimler waits in Pike’s ready room and tries out the saddle on display. Uhura comes in to get some work done. Boimler fanboys out, weirding Uhura out.

La’an notifies Boimler he needs to report to the transporter room to beam down to the planet.

Boimler tries to explain to Spock and M’Benga why he’s so in awe of them. He geeks out over M’Benga’s 120 tricorder.

Boimler describes to Spock what he and Rutherford did to activate the portal. He theorizes the radio isotopes emitted when Rutherford took the holo-image of him must’ve triggered the heronium.

When he describes it as dumb luck, Spock laughs out loud at the idea. This startles Boimler who checks with M’Benga to see if this is unusual and new behavior.

Pike contacts Spock and informs him there’s an unidentified ship approaching and they’ll be beaming Spock’s team back on board.

Boimler freaks out over stepping onto the bridge of the Enterprise. Pike has him stand where he can’t touch anything.

Pike suggests arming torpedoes in case the Orion vessel is unfriendly. Boimler interjects, insisting the ship is a science vessel and peaceful.

As Pike and the Orion captain talk, Spock reports that the Orions have beamed the portal off the planet and onto their ship. When Pike asks the meaning of this, the Orion captain claims Spock is mistaken and then the ship takes off.

Pike and Una unpack the chaos that Boimler has unleashed.

In the bar, Ortegas and Chapel sneak up on Boimler while he’s working on warp field mechanics. They tease him a bit about inputting future knowledge into the system and possible time travel symptoms.

They invite him to movie night and he asks if it’s a way to celebrate Captain Pike’s birthday. Boimler lets slip that, in the future, Pike’s birthday is a holiday, and then swears them both to secrecy that he blabbed that. Ortegas mulls the idea of throwing Pike a party and then giving Boimler all the credit.

Chapel excuses herself to go greet Spock. Boimler notes the giant smile on Spock’s face with concern.

Boimler goes to find Chapel and share his fears that he’s broken Spock somehow.

Chapel assures him that Spock was acting this way before his arrival. Boimler realizes Chapel’s the influence that’s affecting Spock. She looks upset but admits she never expected she’d be able to keep this version of Spock.

Boimler finds the bridge crew stymied on how to track the Orions. He volunteers a solution, but suggests they all look away while he’s implementing it so they aren’t exposed to his future knowledge.

As they close in on the Orions, Boimler insists Pike must find a peaceful solution since Tendi’s great-grandmother is on that ship.

Pike opens a channel to the Orions who want him to persuade them to return the portal. Boimler correctly interprets this to mean they want a trade. After scanning the Enterprise’s cargo hold, the Orions suggest the grain they were carrying for the colony would suffice.

The portal is returned and Spock calculates there is enough heronium for one more trip. Boimler takes his leave of the Enterprise crew and thanks them for one of the greatest experiences of his life.

As the portal activates, Boimler looks back one last time only to be knocked over as Mariner flies out of the portal, using up the last of the heronium.

Pike notifies the Enterprise there are now five to beam up.

Boimler and Mariner squabble about her “rescuing” him while the Enterprise bridge crew try to solve the problem of their abundance of time travelers.

Mariner suggests they make some more heronium to activate the portal. Spock agrees that is an option, but it is a dangerous one. Mariner volunteers Boimler to help Spock while she assists Uhura with translating the portal’s inscription.

Boimler shares his fears of being stuck in the past with Mariner before Una’s appearance scares him off. Una asks Mariner about Boimler’s weird behavior around her and Mariner explains he has a poster of her in his bunk. Una thinks it's a sexual thing and decides she doesn’t want to know.

Mariner fangirls at Uhura who expresses the pressure of her future iconicness is a bit much. Mariner insists they take a break and makes some Orion Hurricane cocktails (adapted for the lack of real Orion liquor) for herself, Uhura, and Ortegas.

While Ortegas and Mariner plan Pike birthday party, Uhura starts working on the translation again. Ortegas reminds her work will still be there in five minutes. Uhura relents and pounds back her Hurricane. Ortegas takes the opportunity to look at the glyphs from the portal on Uhura’s PADD. She recognizes them as characters she saw on an antique Nausicaan billiard set on Starbase Earhart.

This cracks the code for Uhura.

In the lab, Spock discusses with Boimler his conversation with Chapel and draws the conclusion that his experiments in expressing human emotion are discontinued by his future self.

Their attempt to synthesize heronium fails, eliciting a lot of screaming from Boimler.

Boimler sits, listening to the warp core when Pelia finds him. He asks about the colony and if there was more grain for them somewhere. She explains the grain they traded the Orions for the portal was specifically designed to grow in their biome.

Boimler sneaks onto a shuttle thinking he’ll trade the portal back to the Orions for the colonists’ grain. Mariner surprises him there and agrees to help. La’an finds them both and takes them to Pike.

Pike tells them he’s confining them to quarters until they reach Starbase 1 where he’ll turn them over to Starfleet.

He dismisses La’an and asks them to stop encouraging the crew to throw him a birthday party. Boimler tries to encourage Pike to celebrate the birthdays he has left without telling him about his crippling future accident.

Pike tells them he already knows about his future and that not wanting a party isn’t about that. He tells them this birthday will make him a year older than his father was when he died.

Boimler reminds Pike that there are people on his crew who would miss him like he misses his dad and would love to have one more conversation with him to remember. Pike considers that.

Pike admits he knows they must feel so strange. He wonders how he’d feel stepping back in time and visiting Archer’s Enterprise, the NX-01. This reminds Boimler of something and how he and Mariner could still go home.

Boimler and Mariner brief the bridge crew on their visit to the starship history museum where they mentioned that ships like the NX-01 used heronium alloy in their hulls. Ortegas asks if they need to dig up an old ship. Boimler corrects her because starship tradition is that new ships start construction with a piece of the last ship to bear its name.

This means Pike’s Enterprise has a piece of Archer’s Enterprise on it. Mariner tells them where to find the piece and Ortegas and Uhura both fangirl over their heroes from the NX-01.

As Boimler and Mariner prepare to return to the portal, Mariner stops to clarify things for Una. She explains that Boimler’s poster is a Starfleet recruitment poster that features Una.

Boimler admits she’s a big reason for him joining Starfleet. He even quotes, “Ad astra per aspera.” She is deeply touched.

As they are about to beam down, Spock bids farewell to Boimler with the classic Vulcan salute and “Live long and prosper.” Boimler is so stunned, he can’t formulate a response.

When they arrive at the portal, the Orions are waiting for them, having received Boimler’s offer to trade the portal back to them despite Uhura’s attempt to block the signal.

Boimler and Mariner explain they come from a future where Orions are no longer seen as all being pirates and where one of their best friends in Starfleet is Orion. They tell him Tendi’s great-grandmother is on his ship. Pike strikes a deal that if they let them use the portal, history will record that it was discovered first by Orion scientists. The captain like that and signals to his crew to step away.

As they activate the portal, Tendi and Rutherford’s voices can be heard and Boimler and Pike yell to not come through.

Mariner and Boimler step through the portal and return to their animated 2-D world and friends. On the Cerritos, Ransom walks by and admires Boimler’s Una poster. Ransom reveals that Mariner fought to get the portal assignment. Boimler deduces she did it so he’d get to see his favorite portal. She denies it.

On an animated Enterprise, the crew celebrates Pike’s birthday. Chapel asks what they’ve been drinking. Ortegas says the Orion captain gave them real Orion liquor and so they made genuine Orion Hurricanes. Una and Uhura comment that they feel two dimensional and Spock demonstrates some strange physiology.