The title comes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act V, sc v, fatalistically describing the inevitability of death and banality of life:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Shakespeare has a long history with Trek. Apart from Picard’s interest in his plays, the Bard’s words have lent themselves to episode titles, including TOS: “The Conscience of the King” (Hamlet), “Dagger of the Mind” (Macbeth), “All Our Yesterdays” (Macbeth), ST VI: The Undiscovered Country (Hamlet), VOY: “Mortal Coil” (Hamlet).
In TNG: “The Defector”, Picard performs Henry V, and Data and he do the same in “Emergence”. Picard uses the excuse of the away team being actors performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in “Time’s Arrow”. In DS9: “Improbable Cause”, Garak and Bashir debate Julius Caesar. In ENT: “In a Mirror, Darkly” the similarities between Shakespeare’s plays between the Prime and Mirror Universe are mentioned. Various bits of Shakespeare are quoted as well, notably General Chang, a Shakespeare aficionado in ST VI and Spock quoting Hamlet in DIS: “Perpetual Infinity”.
The Stardate is 1581.2, whereas last episode it was 2393.8, and it was stated that 1224.3 was four months prior to that. Pelia says she still has a bunker in Vermont in case this “‘no money, socialist utopia’ thing” doesn’t work out, echoing explicitly for the first time the fan view that yes, the Federation economy is basically socialist in nature. She has a painting she claims is a fake and says the Louvre can stop calling her, indicating that at least the institution and some art survived World War III. Her artifacts have labels identifying them as the property of the Archeology Department.
La’An spars with M’Benga. The doctor was shown to be a proficient fighter in SNW: “The Broken Circle”, and actor Babs Olusanmokun is a 2nd-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. On the wall of the gym we see Klingon-esque weapons on the wall, including a few that look like variants of the standard bat’leth and mek’leth.
The dying stranger tells La’An there has been an attack in the past, and shows her a holographic diagram which we’ve seen on the main viewer of the 29th Century Federation timeship USS Relativity (VOY: “Relativity”), using the TCARS interface (as opposed to LCARS). This indicates he’s either from the 29th or 31st Centuries, as Agent Daniels used a similar interface in ENT. At some point between the 31st and 32nd Century, following the Temporal Cold War the Temporal Accords included a complete ban against time travel (DIS: “Die Trying”).
The blurry ripple that accompanies the change in history is reminiscent of the visual effect used to signal a shift into an alternate timeline in TNG: “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. The disappearance of the time agent and La’An’s continued existence in this altered timeline is attributed to her holding on to his device.
Kirk is wearing a different badge insignia, and identifies the ship as the United Earth Fleet ship Enterprise. Spock is in command of a Vulcan ship, the Sh’Rel, so this timeline doesn’t appear to have a Federation, and the Vulcans are losing a war with the Romulans.
It’s of note that of Kirk’s two appearances in SNW so far, they have both been alternate timelines versions - which still jibes with Prime Kirk’s claim in TOS: “The Menagerie” that he only met Pike once, when he took over command of the Enterprise.
La’An says Starfleet has regulations to deal with situations like this. Given the Temporal Cold War impacted at least the 22nd Century, that doesn’t surprise me. The Department of Temporal Investigations was first seen in DS9: “Trials and Tribble-lations” and the licensed novels say it was first created in 2270. As we find out later, the DTI doesn’t exist yet in SNW’s time, but La’An implies that regulations dealing with time travel exist. That means Starfleet acknowledges the existence of the phenomenon, rejecting the 22nd Century Vulcan Science Directorate’s determination of that time travel is impossible (ENT: “Cold Front”).
Despite Kirk’s identification of being in New York, mid-21st Century, they’ve landed in Toronto, specifically Yonge Dundas Square. Kirk claims never to have been to Earth at all, having been born in space on the USS Iowa. His counterparts were born in Iowa, USA, in the Prime Universe 2333 and on the USS Kelvin in the Kelvin Timeline. Kirk says in his time Earth was a battleground, occupied and now a ruin. Earth is filled with clouds of ash that won’t clear for a thousand years and has underground lunar habitats.
Kirk says indignantly to La’An asking him about revolving doors, “I’m from space.” In ST IV, when Gillian Taylor asks Kirk if he’s from outer space, he replies, “No, I’m from Iowa. I only work in outer space.”
Kirk hustles chess for cash. Kirk has been established to be an excellent chess player ever since TOS: “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Kirk beat Spock regularly at 3D Chess (he calls the 2D version “idiot’s chess”), and in this timeline he also kept beating his XO, a woman.
Kirk points out that if they fix La’An’s timeline, they’ll destroy his, which is consistent with the model of the Trek timeline as a palimpsest - overwritten rather than branched.
Addressing Kirk’s worry that he won’t even exist in La’An’s timeline, she says she’s heard stories about Kirk from his brother Sam (who was still a member of the crew last time we checked). Kirk and La’An both remember the bridge explosion - one of the longest in the world destroyed soon after completion - from their timelines, so this isn’t the nexus point. The bridge seems to be fictional, as I can’t identify a real world bridge in Toronto that resembles it.
La’An identifies the charring on the wreckage as that left by a photonic bomb, a technology that won’t be developed for at least a century. Photonic technology was first seen in ENT: “The Expanse” as a precursor to photon torpedoes, using variable yield antimatter warheads, so the timeline is consistent.
(Continued in comments)
Good catch!
A script slip that made it past continuity, then, is the Doylist explanation. Watsonian I would then prefer it to be that the USS Iowa be a civilian ship distinct from UEF ships rather than a different military fleet or pre-unification one.