Fairies, a princess, and dopplegängers – it is like Pride but less interesting. Returning for only her second episode of Strange New Worlds following various Walking Dead projects, Reservation Dogs, Nancy Drew, and Heathers, we’ve got Sydney Freeland. Freeland previously directed “The Serene Squall.” We also somewhat see a return for her fifth episode, though she’s been a staff writer for two seasons and this season’s story editor, Onitra Johnson. Johnson initially came to us with the enjoyable one-off, “The Elysian Kingdom.” Don’t get ahead of me now – let the joke land.

Angry that the day ends in a Y, that she had to go to a wedding (I hear you, sister!), and that anyone bothers to question her mental state, La’An is angry. Not that this matters because, for plot reasons, here is a Discworld without its turtle, so Captain Pike, Spock, La’An, and Pelia go on an away mission to see how far I can be taken before I swear at Carole Kane. Between her and Tracy Ulman, I am ready to bash my own skull in with a rock. I think the only thing that could tip me over the edge would be a fantasy storybook episode of Star Trek taking itself seriously.

The Elysian Kingdom 2: We Only Have One Joke Too. Turns out the strange world isn’t so new, as we’re back in the kingdom of Queen “Let’s make the Black woman the villain” and somewhat camp acting. However, this time the crew knows about the fantasy land, and in fact, like a gay couple that has been “roommates” for 25 years, the person that looks a bit like them starts acting like them in a Wife-Swap fantasy. Emphasis on the fantasy.

At this point, I don’t know if it is my anger at the season, the fact I have been up since 07:30 yesterday (now 00:30), or if I generally want to climb in a meat grinder. However, my patience for “Once La’an A Time” wore thin before we got to the fantasy stuff. When Pike starts describing the “hilarity” from the wedding that happened just over there, just off-screen- where La’An saved someone from a spy by setting fire to the bride and caking the groom at a diplomatic mission during a wedding- I genuinely wanted to crawl inwards on myself.

That’s not character writing – that’s 2000s Disney Channel trying to be funny. Or SNL. They are both aimed at a drooling audience who couldn’t see the message of They Live if you wrote the premise in big bold letters on a billboard. The point I am trying to make is, I’m not coming into “Once La’an A Time” without biases. I thought “The Elysian Kingdom” was fine as a camp one-off episode but enjoyable for what it was. Season 4 doesn’t help, as it is 50/50 on serious “proper” Star Trek and this “silly” or irreverent nonsense that is fine in a 24-episode season, but not a 10-episode season.

If I’m honest, there are maybe two positives from the episode, both of which make me sound like a pervy old man. Ok, three, but the third is the reason we have one of my favorite dumb lines in Strange New Worlds, so is it really a third? Call me a pig, call me whatever you like, but the only reason I’d care for this fantasy world is the dresses and the cleavage as a result. Indeed, the dungeon scene (stop it, you perv) with Christina Chong’s Princess Thalia – you could ask me what color the chamber pot was; I wasn’t paying attention.

We’ve had enough of being a perv. Let’s talk about Anson Mount’s camp, cowardly Sir Rauth, and his line “I shall open the magic clam.” I think to open it, you do clockwise circles on the top, which might make it a bit wet if you do it for long enough – that’s totally normal. You can either use your fingers to open it or the tip of your tongue, but it does mean you’ll taste the wetness. It is totally drinkable, but can be a bit salty, circumstances pending; again, it is totally normal.

Yes, if that made the edit, I am surprised too, but honestly that’s about the only thing that makes me enjoy this mess of an episode. That and maybe the line where Sir Rauth, Pike’s dopplegänger, mistakes “Enterprise” for “Enter the prize.” Otherwise, I just don’t get the point until we plainly state that La’An needs to come to terms with who she is. That’s been her story not just this season but for long enough. In fact, long enough that I wish we’d seen it by now, possibly in a more interesting, written like it is adults watching sort of way.

Instead we’re “treated” to the storybook where Uhura is Maleficent, and everyone is just a bit more annoying, aside from Pike’s Sir Rauth. It sometimes feels like Anson is the only one who is funny enough that he could be the back half of a pantomime horse and still make me smile. This time the evil queen is attempting to capture/destroy the “Iron Dragon,” otherwise known to you and I as The Enterprise. The twist this time is that, yes, the fantasy is real-ish and we have grumpy La’An being forced into playing the role of the princess despite that being her polar opposite.

Guided through this hell, I mean fantasy land, by Prince Shaggy-a-lot-of-aliens looking like David Beckham/Jamie Tartt during their curtain bangs era, it makes me wish I was high. Separated by La’An’s anger, the rest of the away crew are captured by the Queen’s guard and imprisoned. Well, mostly. We have the dungeon scene to establish the princess’s whereabouts and significant cleavage; we have the Queen putting people in paintings like it is a 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, and we have Pelia being somehow more annoying. It is like magic. Carole Kane finds new ways of making me hate her.

As you might guess with it being a La’an story, we follow her and the guy who is clearly hiding a major secret that’s as telegraphed as my dislike for fantasy midwifery. Somehow, more than the previous outing, “Once La’an A Time” plays on the fantasy tropes a little more heavily than I think anyone should. Hell, I’ll be honest, I thought when we got the “We are now heading into the deep, dark swamp,” we were about to have an international incident level of racism. Thankfully Scotty doesn’t exist in this fantasy land, so I don’t have to complain about that.

Doesn’t mean I’m not going to say the thing that needs to be said now that I’ve mentioned racism. On the ship with Spock’s dopplegänger (I don’t care about the name at this point), you have Mount’s Sir Rauth doing his camp overacting in the face of Uhura. If you’ve seen the episode, you know where I am going. Why do we have Uhura and M’Benga come out of the sickbay together only for Mount to act like White folks in the South in the 1950s? Do we need two White guys reacting as if their dog’s got shot at the sight of two Black people? Odd choice that one!

Something else that is odd is having Una’s dopplegänger even being in the episode. She’s in the episode for one scene, and it is the second time I’ve seen Rebecca Romijn kissing a woman in a show for reasons that I’ve yet to have explained to me. For Ugly Betty’s “A Tree Grows in Guadalajara,” Henry Alonso Myers was a supervising producer; here in “Once La’an A Time,” he is the executive producer and showrunner. Listen, if I were Melissa Navia, I wouldn’t be complaining, but I don’t get it. Is it just queerbaiting for the sake of it, or does the relationship between Una and Erica’s dopplegängers have relevance?

I think, beyond my established disinterest in fantasy (light or high), this is my problem with the episode. When it is focused on the core of the character in focus, La’An in this case, there is actually something interesting and good going on – the duality of who you are and what it makes you. However, as an episode or even as a whole, there is this faff around it that feels bloated, unwanted, simply just filler that proves to be nothing of interest or relevance to the overall episode or the series.

Earlier I said that Uhura’s dopplegänger Queen Whatshername, basically imprisoned Captain Pike, Spock, and M’Benga’s dopplegängers. Effectively, we don’t get a resolution to that. I mean, we do. We have to reset so we can move on to the season finale, but there is nothing on-screen about it because we cut straight to Pike and co escaping the castle, already out of the dungeon, and so on. As far as writing goes, it feels like we’re missing beats to establish these things, or we’re too focused on something else to provide the relevant “this happened, and this happened, therefore this happened.”

This hasn’t been a problem here alone. It has been with all odd-numbered episodes this season. It is the idea of someone too excited to get to their “fun” bits that they skip over the basics of writing a competent episode of TV. Maybe it was cut up in the editing; none of us truly know. It just doesn’t make for good TV.

Ultimately, “Once La’an A Time” has a story worth telling, and when it is focused enough to tell it, there is something worth watching. However, like a child off their Intuniv, it loses focus and interest in itself rather quickly. The performances are as you would expect, and Anson Mount is a delight at knowing the perfect tone to play camp, but none of it is the common wheelhouse for these actors. Thankfully, this seems to be the end of Carol Kane’s involvement, and we can maybe enjoy more of the show now. All seven episodes.

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SNW "Once La'an A Time"

4.5

Score

4.5/10

Pros

• Pretty dog.
• “I shall open the magic clam!”

Cons

• Unnecessary lesbian kiss for the sake of it.
• Those dresses make me quote Jerry Lawler about dogs.