Come one, come all to the U.S.S. Enterprise Annual Renaissance
Festival! Assemble upon Bosworth Field for the joust, but — pray — no wagering.
This is a review of “The The Elysian Kingdom,” the eighth episode of Star Trek:
Strange New Worlds. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, take heed: spoilers lie ahead.
They really are just pulling episode premises out of a sack they found in the back of Gene
Roddenberry’s office, aren’t they? And I don’t mean that in a bad way! I think it’s terrific.
I’ve been having a great time this first season, and that great time continued
as I was watching this episode, which sees the crew of the Enterprise forced
to act out a fairy tale. It’s reminiscent of the TNG episode “Qpid,” where Q transports
Picard and company into the story of Robin Hood, and also of DS9’s “Our Man Bashir,”
where most of the crew become holodeck characters with only Bashir and Garak remaining themselves.
In this episode, we have Dr. M’Benga and Chief Engineer Hemmer in the Bashir and
Garak roles — albeit without the simmering sexual tension — while everyone else aboard
the Enterprise is behaving like characters from the fairy tale
M’Benga has been reading to his daughter, Rukiya, when he materializes her from the transporter.
The fun in episodes like this is in getting to watch the actors ham it up
playing characters other than the ones we’re used to seeing them as,
and this episode is no exception. The standouts in that area are Anson Mount,
who goes from the bold and heroic Captain Pike to the king’s simpering and cowardly chamberlain,
and Melissa Navia, normally the quick-witted helm officer Ortegas, who becomes the king’s bodyguard
and spends most of the episode in a state of tension hoping she gets to kill somebody.
The other character transformations are fun — Spock gets to be a wizard, Uhura gets to be a
sneering, scheming evil queen, the normally tough-as-nails Lt. Noonien-Singh gets to be a
pampered princess — and as M’Benga, who finds himself the king of this strange but oddly
familiar realm, Babs Olusanmokun does a good job showing us confusion that gradually gives way to
resolve, as he realizes what’s going on and begins to figure a way out of it — but it’s really Anson
Mount who makes the most of his opportunities here. It’s not just that the chamberlain is
so different from Pike, it’s that Mount finds just the right note to give a performance that
is funny but not too broad. A lesser actor, without Mount’s instincts or comic timing,
might easily have resorted to clowning and mugging and gone way too far over the top, but Mount
nails it. He has been outstanding this season, and this episode only reinforces what a smart and
versatile actor he is, and how fortunate the Star Trek franchise is to have him in a leading role.
Of course, the fairy tale antics are not just for fun. Ultimately, this episode builds to a
resolution of a plotline that has been running throughout the season: Dr. M’Benga’s terminally
ill daughter. It turns out the fairy tale fantasy has been imposed on the Enterprise
by a disembodied entity that lives in a nebula the Enterprise has just surveyed. The entity senses
Rukiya’s loneliness and pulls her out of the transporter buffer so she can
experience her favorite fairy tale in real life. The plot of the fantasy even deviates
from that of the book to match what Rukiya wants to happen — for instance,
she ships the king’s bodyguard and the local forest archer, portrayed by Number One.
Rukiya is cured by the nebula entity, but if the Enterprise leaves,
her illness will return. So, M’Benga leaves it up to her:
if she wants, she can remain in the nebula, in disembodied form, and live an immortal life of
endless imagination with the entity, but doing so will mean leaving the Enterprise and her
father. Rukiya chooses to stay in the nebula — which isn’t much of a surprise, I mean how much
fun can it be to spend your life in a transporter, with occasional breaks where your dad reads to you
from the same goddamn book? Father and Daughter say their good-byes, and things go back to normal.
It’s a nice ending, although I do have a slight problem with it. I’ll get to that in a second,
but first lemme tell you what I liked about it.
The main thing I appreciate about it is how it’s a really good example of serialized storytelling.
I know Strange New Worlds has set itself apart from the other current live action Trek series
by favoring stand-alone episodes over the heavily serialized Discovery and Picard,
but Strange New Worlds has also been carrying on several multi-episode arcs this season,
and doing a much better job with it than Discovery often has or Picard has ever even come close to.
Look at how the show has handled the story of M’Benga and his daughter.
The story is introduced early in the season, in episode three I believe,
touched on in a few subsequent episodes to remind us that it’s there, and now in episode eight
it moves to the forefront, becomes the focus of the episode, and is resolved. It doesn’t feel
like it was strung out too long, it doesn’t feel padded, the resolution is satisfying but also
slightly unexpected. I naturally assumed that Rukiya would either be cured or would die,
but this episode finds a third way — she lives, but in a way that forces her to be separated
from her father, so we get an ending that is sad, but in a bittersweet way.
The slight problem I have with it is this: after little Rukiya is transformed and
taken into the nebula by her new friend, she immediately reappears in adult form
to thank her father for letting her go and to tell him that she’s had a wonderful, happy life.
M’Benga is confused, but Rukiya tells him that time works differently for her now — moments
for him are years to her in her new form. And that bit is fine, I have no issue with
that — standard issue sci-fi stuff. I just think Rukiya’s return is a bit too much.
M’Benga makes a difficult choice — to let his child go, to give her a life, but a life he can’t
be a part of. He’s mostly sure he’s making the right decision, but there’s still that
doubt, that uncertainty — is she really going to be okay? Am I ever going to see her again?
Those questions are only allowed to linger for a few seconds before Rukiya comes right back
to reassure him that, hey, you made the right decision, and I’m great, and don’t worry,
you can come back to the nebula someday and we can see each other again! It all worked out great!
I’m sure Dr. M’Benga is grateful for the return visit, and it speaks well of Rukiya
that she’s such a thoughtful daughter, but in terms of drama, it’s a little deflating. Why
do the bittersweet ending if you’re going to instantly dilute the bitter with more sweet?
There’s another issue I have with the writing of this episode, that ties into the show’s
episodic format. A few of the Enterprise crew members who appear as fairy tale characters
aren’t established as their normal selves beforehand. It’s not a big deal if you’ve
been watching the show all along this season — when La’an shows up as the spoiled princess,
or Uhura is revealed as the evil queen, you get the joke — but it’s still a sign of sloppy writing
that they aren’t shown as their normal selves before the fantasy scenario begins.
Other elements important to this story, such as Rukiya’s illness and the story her dad reads to
her, were introduced in earlier episodes as well, but they are still re-introduced here,
so that their importance and meaning are comprehensible within the context of this episode.
The same should have been done with the characters of Nurse Chapel, La’an, and Uhura, who not only
don’t get moments to establish their usual characters before the fantasy begins,
but also don’t appear after the fantasy ends! Might seem like small details, since most of us
are watching every episode of this series and we therefore know these characters already,
but those details matter when you’re writing an episodic series, where theoretically every
individual installment needs to be able to stand on its own.
Those are relatively minor issues, though, when all is said and done. It’s not a perfect episode,
it might be the weakest of the season so far, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. The performances
were excellent, the fantasy conceit was explored in a way that I found funny and entertaining,
and we got a touching, if somewhat overplayed, resolution to the story of Dr. M’Benga and Rukiya.
As with the Freaky Friday episode a few weeks ago, it’s nice to see Strange New Worlds stage a
light comedic episode, with some heart, and mostly pull it off.
Those are my thoughts. Please share your thoughts with me in the comments.
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Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you next week for a review of episode nine!