Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 9 Recap and Review

Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 9, “Once La'An a Time.”

Look, I’m sure it’s a lot of fun for the actors on Strange New Worlds to get to drop the Starfleet uniforms for the week and put on exotic dresses and costumes that remind them of their salad days from their college drama programs or whatever, but it’s not as much fun for us to watch. Or, at the very least, it’s not as much fun for me. Not fun at all at this point, in fact.

So yes, “Once La’An a Time” continues Season 4’s trend of doing kooky concept episodes – I’m so sick of typing “concept episode” at this point – but not just that. It’s now doing sequels to concept episodes from previous seasons. In this case, it’s to Season 1’s “The Elysian Kingdom,” where the crew all turned into characters from a storybook, including princesses and wizards and henchmen and warriors and so on. It was a new idea for the show at the time, and it was fun – not to mention that it was also centered on a key emotional storyline for Babs Olusanmokun’s Dr. M’Benga which involved his sick daughter.

But now we’re back at it, only this time the episode is mainly about Christina Chong’s La’An and the battle with her darker impulses that she’s been struggling with all season. And there’s no denying that Chong is typically brilliant here despite the circumstances she’s given; seeing the always-angry La’An try to cry, but proving unable to, is a hoot. And the episode, written by Onitra Johnson (who co-wrote the Season 1 episode) and directed by Sydney Freeland, eventually gets to a satisfying conclusion for the character after she literally has to face herself during the Elysian shenanigans.

And yeah, we get to see the Enterprise face off against a dragon – and be on the losing side until “magic” is deployed – which is an undeniably cool twist, and also kind of calls back to the sort of situation we might’ve seen on The Original Series if they had the budget. After all, that was a show that once gave us the giant hand of the Greek god Apollo grabbing the ship in space, and another time teamed up Captain Kirk and Mister Spock with Abraham Lincoln !

But you know, those episodes were fun, and “Once La'An a Time” is more annoying than anything else. I guess I have to keep saying this, but when you’ve got only 10 episodes per season and you continue to use that precious time to put your captain into situations where he has to act not like a captain, at a certain point you’re doing the character, the actor, and the fans a disservice. And that’s where Anson Mount (and Ethan Peck this week as well) finds himself as he has to prance around the Enterprise as his other self, Sir Amand Rauth, while the real Captain Pike is stuck in a painting for most of the episode. It’s a drag and it adds up to a bunch of nothing in the end.

Paul Wesley, meanwhile, is back after last week’s crackerjack Kirk episode, but this time it’s to play Prince Dashing, the storybook love interest of La’An’s Princess Thalia. The character turns out to be a werewolf, which sure, that’s fun, but it doesn’t really amount to anything either. And the show continues to push the romance between La’An and Kirk… you know, between a descendent of Khaaaaaaaan!!!! and the future Admiral Kirk. I won’t ding the show for doing this, but I am increasingly convinced that we are unlikely to ever get any answers as to how this makes any sense in the larger canon.

Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:

Somehow I’ve been spelling “La’An” as “La’an” all season. Please accept my shame and grant me forgiveness.

So is that a wrap for Pelia and Carol Kane? Strange New Worlds only has seven episodes left (Season 5, remember, will only be six episodes), so it’s generally been assumed that she’d be phased out and Martin Quinn’s Scotty would take over as Chief Engineer. Also, Pike says she’s flying the Elysian planet/ship “home” – does he mean Earth?

What happened to all the dopplegangers? Did Queen Neve (Uhura’s evil double) survive? I know they said beam her to the brig. What about Sir Amand Rauth and Wizard Pollux and the wet fart that was their storyline here? Will they pay for their transgressions?

Yes, the dog Runa is Christina Chong’s actual dog in real life too, Runa Ewok (amazing dog name), who she often brings to conventions and publicity events. Cute.

I had forgotten that Benny Russell, Captain Sisko’s alter ego from Deep Space Nine’s “Far Beyond the Stars” and “Shadows and Symbols,” was revealed to be the author of the book The Kingdom of Elysian back in Season 1. (Pelia pretends to be Benny here.) That same episode therefore established that Benny was an actual person and not a figment of Sisko’s imagination – for better or worse.