(courtesy Star Trek Strange New Worlds Memory Alpha)
If ever you needed proof that Strange New Worlds is not interested in doing things as they have always been done in Star Trek, then “Once La’an a Time” (no prizes for guessing what that’s a play on) is it. While it is a sequel of sorts with the crew returning to “The Elysian Kingdom” of the shows’ first season, this time the is on La’an (Christina Chong) who is still grappling with the internal struggle between her augmented self and the human side of her which simply wants to have friends and see justice done.
What’s odd about this episode, which is all kinds of playful and silly with all the members of the Bridge crew having mischievous or cruel fairytale doppelgängers, most notably Captain Pike (Anson Mount), James Kirk (Paul Wesley) and Spock (Ethan Peck), is how it tries to deal with a deeply serious existential crisis with a plot that borders on the playfully ludicrous. You can see what the intent is, the narrative driven by a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down approach, but the character who ends up shortchanged by this is La’an herself.
Yes, she arrives at the end of the episode with a measure of peace and unified self acceptance she simply didn’t have before, and that’s a good thing but it feels strangely arrived at with no real connection between what she goes through in the episode and its healing outworking. It’s not a bad episode at all, and it has some beautifully timed imaginative and comedic moments, again courtesy mostly of Pike and Spock whose doppelgängers somehow make it back onto Enterprise from the fairytale planet below and cause mayhem and havoc in their ham-fisted attempts to take over the ship, but it feels like each element cannibalises the other and nothing of any lasting value is achieved by the end.
The silly eats the serious and the serious eats the silly, and while the playful parts of the episode are amusing and enjoyable, they tend to crowd out whatever character arc which is a pity because La’an is a compelling character and you want her to have substantial, meaningful growth that feels well-earned and not the result of a plot that jokes out so much all the important stuff kind of gets eclipsed.
What is enjoyable are The Princess Bride Easter eggs courtesy of Carol Kane who starred in the film, which was one big fairytale parody, and possibly what “Once La’an a Time” aimed to be, and performances by many of the cast who really go all out in an episode which is fun but not quite as emotionally resonant as it thinks it is.
(courtesy Star Trek Strange New Worlds Memory Alpha)
While I love all the characters in Strange New Worlds, it’s safe to say that I have a favourite, one Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) who becomes not only the narrative centre of the final episode of season four but it’s beating heart and soul. While “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” didn’t exactly link all its time travelling narrative boxes together and there are assumptions and plot leaps that you could pilot a starship through, what emerged was a character study that was a cut above the usual.
In this episode, today’s Enterprise, and yes, that is a key demarcation, is positioned in front of a white hole which is conjectured to be the other side of a black hole’s coin. In other words, the two are possibly connected. But before anyone can get any decent readings, massive pulses emanate from the white hole and Uhura finds herself flung forcefully to the floor of the Bridge which is when time goes, in the immortal words of the Tenth Doctor Who, all “timey-wimey”. Giving away too much of the plot will spoil the temporal shenanigans that result from this massive bump to the head, but suffice to say that Uhura of today’s Enterprise ends up talking to Uhura from a year hence with the two frantically working together, after they stop being weirded out, to save someone very near and dear to them.
Who that must remain a secret for some reasonably profound and personal reasons but it does mean that Uhura is given a chance to show just how much she grows in a year after what we know is Pike’s all but inevitable demise and the sizeable changes that happen to Enterprise’s main Bridge crew. We get to see the possible fates of Ortegas (Melissa Navia), Doctor M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and La’an (Christina Chong) who ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- may or may shuffle off this mortal coil if future Pike’s reaction to an innocent enquiry by Uhura is any indication. Of course as the good people at Memory Alpha rightly observe, “since it [the timeline of “Tomorrow’s Enterprise”] was an alternate timeline where Montgomery Scott had died, clearly none of these fates are yet set in stone” and we likely will need wait until the six-episode final season of Strange New Worlds to see how the show shuffles the crew deck to arrive at its The Original Series configuration.
For now, what we have are intriguing possibilities and nothing more so best to leave the settling of the timeline’s final form until we farewell this most wonderfully inventive of Star Trek series. What really matters in “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” is seeing how sweetly earnest, kindly ambitious Uhura handles her present and her future with the transformative events of the episode, during which something big emerges from the black/white holes, completely changes everyone’s favourite comms officer to be a child of the present moment rather than a driven captive of future possibility. It’s a delightful episode in many ways, and while the plot may not exactly hold-up to close connect-the-dots scrutiny, it does a beautiful job of helping us to get to know, and love, one of the best members of the crew that little bit better.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount+