“The Elysian Kingdom” or “Hey, the costume department said the King Arthur thing fell through and we could have these fantasy medieval costumes for free if we wanted”

Influences: “Masks” (TNG), “The Royale” (TNG), “The Killing Game” (VOY), “The Bonding” (TNG), “Lonely Among Us” (TNG), “Imaginary Friend” (TNG), “Clues” (TNG), Dramatis Personae” (DS9), “Metamorphosis” (TOS), “Our Man Bashir” (DS9), “Far Beyond the Stars” (DS9), The Bernice Summerfield Adventures: “Oh No It Isn’t!”

Let us skip over “The Serene Squall” for the time being, as I have nothing useful to say about it yet. I may come back later to make a “Nice top”/”They have a name” joke or a “We don’t talk about Sybok, no, no” joke.

For a ten-Episode season, Strange New Worlds seems to have a high proportion of Weird Ones. So, still light on the “new worlds”, but hitting it out of the park on the “Strange” I guess.

And just check out the list of influences there. Yeah, this is a “Lonely Space-Consciousness Takes A Liking To Someone And Does Magic Stuff” episode, which is a pretty popular high-concept Trek idea, most especially associated with TNG, but cropping up elsewhere too.

We’ve had all these parts before. The lonely non-corporeal consciousness. The ship transformed. The characters compelled to act out a Story. The characters being mind-whammied into thinking they are the characters from the story. I’m not even sure if this particular combination is unique.

M’Benga has gotten a pretty fair share of screen time this season compared to some of the others, but this is his proper focus episode. We also showcase Hemmer quite a bit, and I’m starting to like him. In particular, because he actually plays against expectations here. Your gruff, cynical characters, you expect them to chuff at a Shenanigans episode, being all angry and not wanting to play along. But once Hemmer understands what’s going on, he honestly seems to be perfectly happy to roll with it. Just like, “Fuck it, yeah, I’m a space wizard now.” I kinda love it, with his adoption of theatrical flair as he showcases the full power of his powerful wizard powers.

It’s also the biggest showcase we’re going to get for Ortegas, which is upsetting, because she’s not even herself for it. And I have some misgivings about the mechanism of getting M’Benga to the bridge by having her clock herself unconscious on the corner of her desk because she didn’t sit down properly before putting the ship in gear.

Ortegas has shown up a lot and gotten in a lot of bon mots, but she hasn’t really had any focus in depth; we just don’t know a lot about her other than that she’s got a quick and fun retort whenever the situation calls for it. And this in a small way undermines what is in general a very well-constructed episode. Because one thematic element that seems to run through it gets muddled with Ortegas. It seems like in recasting the Enterprise crew as the characters of the Elysian Kingdom, there’s a deliberate inversion of archetypes. The strong, hard, tough-as-nails La’an becomes a timid, preening princess. Uhura, the young cadet uncertain in her life path becomes the strong, confident tyrant. Spock, a scientist renowned for his honesty and integrity becomes a treacherous wizard. Una, who is at least on paper, cold, detached, and clinical, becomes the ethereal guardian of the forest, at one with nature. Bold, brave and loyal Space Daddy Pike becomes a simpering, cravenly, treacherous chamberlain. And just in case you missed the point, he’s got flamboyantly bad hair too.

But what do we make of Ortegas, who takes on the role of Sir Adya, the valiant knight? I mean, she’s cool, a lady of action, and as quick with her tongue as with her sword, which is not a cunnilingus joke, but we can work on that later. Is that playing against type for Ortegas? I guess maybe insofar as probably Ortegas is laid-back and easygoing? But Ortegas is also very cool and quick-witted, so I don’t know. Possibly Sir Adya is meant to be an overly stiff, serious character, but they play her so over-the-top that she’s goofy anyway, so that undercuts the point if there is one.

Also, Ortegas and Una’s characters are lovers. A bit starcrossed because of their respective roles as the loyal, serious knight and the free-spirited protector of the forest, but they are absolutely warm for each others’ forms. And this particular element came from Rukiya, not from the book, where they never met. (I’m not 100% sure Sir Adya is meant to be a woman. The illustration in the book looks male, but not unambiguously so. M’Benga uses female pronouns when reciting passages about her, but he might be adjusting the story based on what’s going on around him at this point) I mean, Rukiya wanted them to “team up”; she doesn’t tell the audience whether this included smooching.

(Chapel doesn’t quite fit into the “playing against type” thing either, being cast as some kind of mystical healer, which, kinda?)

But like I said, this episode is very well-constructed. I like how M’Benga moves from thinking he’s being pranked, to suspecting that he is hallucinating from the chemicals he’d taken to the face earlier, to rolling with it and using his knowledge of the Elysian story to his advantage (He’s right; he should’ve anticipated Pike/Rauth’s betrayal); these stories tend to linger too long on the part where the hero refuses to play along with the scenario. I wish the transformation of the Enterprise had gone a bit farther than the occasional torchiere and the odd hanging pennant.

What an odd coincidence that the Benny Russel book M’Benga had been reading to his daughter for the past year just happened to be an apt metaphor for a father desperately clinging to his dying child in a way that denied her the chance at her own life. Honestly a point against him that he never noticed how the moral of the story could apply to his own life. I want to give this story some credit here for not bothering with a misdirect. They never really speculate on why the Boltzmann Brain is recreating the story, but in particular, they don’t try to make us suspect there is something sinister to it. Hemmer and M’Benga are clearly starting without the assumption that they could make sense of its reasons on their own.

Just like Hemmer rolled with being a wizard, he rolls with the revelation that M’Benga’s been keeping his daughter in a save-game in the transporter. Reno would’ve at least had a snarky “Oh fer Chrissakes, what the hell are you doing to my transport buffers? This is what ya get for not calling an expert, numbnuts.” I think “just rolls with it,” is probably the distinctive element of Hemmer’s characterization – an aspect of his pacifism, that he finds a way to work with the situation rather than against it. Hemmer and everyone else gets their minds wiped at the end of the episode, though, saving us from the repercussions of M’Benga being held accountable. Though he proceeds to tell Una the whole story at the end. I wonder if he included the bit where she was boning Ortegas.

It’s weird, now that I think of it, that this episode ends where a TNG episode begins, basically. The crew had just run into some trouble involving a big swirly thing in space, then they all suddenly wake up and it’s five hours later with no record of what happened. And the Enterprise crew here seems content to just roll with it, rather than spending an entire episode doing a procedural mystery to work out what happened to them. There’s possibly two crewmen with arrows in their shoulders. Moving on.

But I deliberately sidestepped around the climax, of course. Because, yeah. It is, objectively speaking, a little twee. The Boltzmann Brain sensed Rukiya’s loneliness, it wanted a friend, so it brought her out of the transport buffer, cured her space cancer (Odd that there is not only no payoff from what M’Benga learned from Omelas, but if anything he seems farther than ever from a treatment), and brought her story to life for her. Cool. But she’ll relapse if they leave the nebula. So M’Benga and the Enterprise can stay there forever, or they can leave her behind.

And they try not to say it, but let us not sugar coat it: “It’s only her body that’s dying,” says Debra. But that is the usual kind of dying. Staying in the nebula with Debra is dying. I mean, she turns into a magical space angel, sure, but again, we are still talking about something isomorphic to the usual form of death. This is a story about end-of-life care, and M’Benga realizing that it is time to let his daughter die.

I am still tapdancing around the subject here. “King Ridley wanted to keep the Mercury Stone, as it protected him and made him happy… until he learned it had a soul, and that it would die if he held onto it; he had to let it go, even if it meant he would not be happy anymore.” Perhaps one day Fresno will watch this episode and have something to say about mirrors and the fact that Rukiya, is the Mercury Stone. Mercury, which is both a fluid and a mirror. Yet by characterizing it as a “stone”, implied to be fixed in form, just as Rukiya, in the transport buffer is both formless – having no physical existence, yet fixed in form, unable to grow or change, frozen in a moment. Held fixed in formlessness, her body will live but her soul will die. Instead, she becomes a non-corporeal being like Debra: formless, but not fixed. Her body will die, but her soul will live, and, as we are shown a moment later, free to grow up, conveniently on fast-forward so that M’Benga can see the truth of it.

“Even if it meant he would not be happy anymore.” I can’t type that out without weeping. It is, perhaps, a black mark that she reappears a moment later and tells him to be happy and he says he will. Hopeless Star Trek optimism rather than honoring the choice. He did the right thing. He gave her up. He let her go. He did it because it was right. Even if it meant he would not be happy anymore. That’s what a parent does.

The end.