In Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (S4 – EP9) Once La’An a Time

Synopsis: La’An enters a genuine fantasy world where the fairy tale becomes a personal test of courage and control.

The Story

La’an is the focus of this episode, particularly her behaviour in recent episodes, which has seen her distancing herself from those around her for fear that she might end up like her ancestor, Khan. When the Enterprise comes across a planet that looks rather like how you might imagine Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, La’an joins Pike, Spock and Pelia as part of the landing party.

As they investigate, they soon learn that they are once again experiencing the Elysian Kingdom, which we first encountered in the first season. On that occasion, it appeared to help Dr M’Benga deal with the difficult emotions surrounding his sick daughter. M’Benga believes that, this time, the Kingdom has come into play to help La’an reconnect and reconcile the two conflicting sides of her personality.

She is helped along the way by Jim Kirk, who once again deserts the Farragut to join the Enterprise crew—this time in the role of Prince Dashing, who also happens to be a werewolf. Meanwhile, Pike and Spock’s Elysian doppelgängers beam aboard the Enterprise, only to find themselves completely out of their depth in a world governed by science rather than magic. Suffice it to say, the story eventually concludes with La’an rediscovering and rebalancing the light and dark sides of her personality.

The Acting

Every actor in this episode embraces full-on panto mode, playing up the absolute ridiculousness of the premise. Anson Mount completely embraces his role as the cowardly King, while Ethan Peck takes great joy in channelling his inner villainous wizard.

Christina Chong also makes a good go of things and perhaps has the most difficult job of all, given that she is essentially playing two roles: the über-professional and serious La’an, and the thoroughly spoiled Princess Thalia, who has scaffolding fitted beneath her dress to prop up her boobs. This essentially sees La’an’s boobs becoming almost as much of a character as Pike’s hair.

Speaking of Pike’s hair, there is a truly funny moment aboard the Enterprise in which the Elysian versions of Pike and Spock both attempt to fix it, only to eventually admit defeat.

Overall

I’m not generally a fan of this type of Star Trek episode, and I wasn’t particularly fond of the first season’s visit to the Elysian Kingdom either. So, I wasn’t particularly thrilled to see a return to that world, even though it is used on this occasion as a lens through which La’an can explore her emotional state and regain her inner balance.

The episode succeeds at that task, but I would rather have seen La’an find some resolution to her trauma through a more traditional Star Trek story than one which once again relies upon tropes from a completely different genre. To put it less politely, I was bored by this episode pretty much from the moment it revealed itself to be another visit to the Elysian Kingdom.

I was even more annoyed by the fact that we learn nothing about the alien intelligence behind the Elysian Kingdom or why it appears to be particularly interested in Pike’s crew. Of course, that assumes there is some form of alien intelligence at play in the first place.