The inevitable fairy tale episode on SNW

 

Star Trek does love a good dress-up show.

 TOS featured numerous episodes in which the crew dressed up (by choice or otherwise) in various costumes and the introduction of the holodeck in TNG created the opportunity for the casts of future series to play dress-up even without venturing to a strange new world.

 

So it should come as no surprise that, in the ninth episode of its inaugural season, Strange New Worlds (SNW) offers up its first real costume party – “The Elysian Kingdom”. Although not particularly well reviewed by fans online, I found this episode to be just goofy enough to be charming.

 

And I liked the underlying mystery: what is holding Enterprise near an apparently unremarkable nebula? Why does everyone but M’Benga and Hemmer seem immersed in a child’s fairy tale? And how are M’Benga and Hemmer going to save the ship and her crew? 

 

In fact, I was surprised at how much tension (and emotion) that mystery plot delivered, despite the fairy tale silliness.

 

For me, “The Elysian Kingdom” seemed reminiscent of the TNG episode, “The Royale”: odd, somewhat silly, but with an interesting intellectual challenge and actual stakes at the end that made it quite effective.

 

And I like the fact that M’Benga and Hemmer finally get a chance to shine. Babs Olusanmokun (M’Benga) and Bruce Horak (Hemmer) create good chemistry while playing the straight men against the silliness of the rest of the cast. I like Hemmer as a character and hope to see more of him.

 

And, although I feel the writers kind of threw away the Rukiya storyline they had been working so hard to develop, I think M’Benga already has depth as a character that Dr. McCoy only really developed by the third se
ason of TOS.

 

That being said, “The Elysian Kingdom” confirms once again that Anson Mount is not a comedic actor. His performance in this episode is annoying (his character is supposed to be annoying but his performance is unnecessarily so) and it borders, at times, on offensive.

 

Meanwhile, Christina Chong really surprised me playing the frivolous princess that she is almost unrecognisable as the strong, capable La’an Noonien-Singh. 

 

It’s nice to see Celia Rose Gooding (Uhura) get such a meaty part to play and she carries it off well. Meanwhile, Rong Fu’s role (Mitchell) in the show continues to grow, both before and during the fairy tale storyline.

 

This is not a great episode by any means. I’m not even sure it’s a particularly good one. It seems to have been written specifically to resolve the Rukiya plot and I’m not sure why. The story line, one of the few real through-lines in this episodic series, was working well, with Sage Arrindell delightful in the role of Rukiya, Dr. M’Benga’s terminally ill daughter.

 

I don’t really understand the need to resolve it so quickly… nor do I understand why the creative team would decide to do an episode that, in its heart and soul, cannot stand on its own.

 

All of that aside, “The Elysian Kingdom” is not awful Star Trek either. Through some interesting performances and a strong mystery plot, it manages to hold its own.