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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S4E9 'Once La'an a Time' airs

tvSep 18, 202644619

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 9, “Once La’an a Time,” centers on La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) as the Enterprise beams down to a flat planet that recreates the fairy-tale Elysian Kingdom from Season 1. The episode stages fantasy doppelgangers of the crew, including a werewolf Prince Dashing version of Kirk (Paul Wesley) and an Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) who becomes a dragon, and links the phenomenon to a sentient nebula and a Boltzmann Brain connected to Dr. M’Benga’s daughter, an explanation the reviewer calls an “electron-thin hand wave.” Blog.TrekCore says the installment indulges the cast’s desire to reprise those storybook roles but delivers thin character work and only a few laughs, failing to fully use La’an’s season-long emotional crisis. The review contrasts this penultimate episode with stronger recent installments such as “Off Hours,” “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass,” and “Orders of Magnitude,” arguing that the show’s genre-hopping here lacks purpose. The piece notes there is an interesting premise tied to La’an’s doubts about her sanity and goodness but criticizes the episode for making the Kingdom characters, not La’an’s inner struggle, the story. With one episode left in Season 4, the review suggests this chapter does little to advance La’an’s arc.

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