It’s rare that you get to see a show that keeps showing you familiar beats and still feels fresh. I’ll tell you what, I really enjoyed this episode. I know I say that a lot. This one was fun.

It’s Thursday, so it’s Star Trek day, and this is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, episode 8, “The Elysian Kingdom.”

We’ve had the shore leave episodes. We’ve had the homage episodes, like “Amok Time” with “Spock Amok.” We’ve had episodes that are very, very similar in tone to original series episodes. What we get here is what I kind of call the magic entity episode. By that I mean there are things in the universe we can’t explain. There are Qs, there’s the Squire of Gothos, there are powerful beings out there. This episode is exactly that.

The Ship Becomes the Storybook

The episode starts with a bedtime story. Dr. M’Benga is reading to his daughter, and she’s telling him the parts she wishes they would change. Oh man, I wish they would do this, or that, or the other.

Then we cut to the mission. The ship has been doing a complete survey of a nebula, and it turns out there’s an intelligence in there. M’Benga looks around and the world has changed, the world being the ship. The Enterprise has essentially become the land of the storybook he’s been reading to his daughter. He’s King Ridley. Pike is another character. Ortegas is another character.

The only other person who isn’t affected, come to find out, is Chief Engineer Hemmer. I was very happy to get Hemmer back, because we haven’t seen him in a few episodes. Hemmer is a telepath, and that’s how we begin to learn there’s an entity involved. He explains that he turned around in engineering and everything had changed, and he felt a consciousness trying to push in on him. He had to push it out, because obviously he has years of training for that.

While he’s trying to hold that line in his own head, he gets captured by Queen Neve, the evil queen, who Uhura is playing in this little farce.

The Mercury Stone

There are parts of the story being used and parts of the story being changed, and that’s what begins to clue M’Benga in. The MacGuffin from the storybook is called the Mercury Stone, and come to find out, the Mercury Stone is his daughter.

He goes to his quarters, because the one place his daughter always wanted to visit and finally see was his quarters. And there she is. She’s cured, it’s amazing, and he’s excited about it.

Hemmer volunteers so the entity can speak through him, and he says, “Please be gentle.” Then the choice gets laid out. If the world goes back to normal, she gets sick again and she’s going to die. Or the entity takes care of her.

It’s a tough decision. Ultimately M’Benga decides what’s best for his daughter. He says okay, and he lets her go.

She becomes energy and goes into the cloud. Not a few minutes pass, and out of the nebula comes more energy, and it becomes a grown woman who says time moves differently for them. It’s his daughter. She’s fully grown, she’s on her own adventures, and she says, Dad, you made the right choice. Oh, and she named the entity Debra, after her mom.

Babs Olusanmokun Barely Moves, and It Wrecks You

Man, I’ll tell you what. Babs Olusanmokun, who plays Dr. M’Benga, is such a great, nuanced actor. He’s sitting there looking at her, and it’s funny, he doesn’t emote much. But what he does, God, it’s so powerful. He’s so happy, there’s joy, there’s this whole mixture of emotions, and it all comes across.

The Language We Speak as Sci-Fi Fans

I was about to say I’m not always a fan of this kind of thing. That’s a lie. I am a fan. I’m a fan of episodic television, and we missed it. I’ve said for years and years that I wasn’t that much of a fan of this or that or the other, and at the end of the day I love this. I love what the show’s doing, because it harkens back to an earlier era. At least for me it does.

If we can connect on anything as fans, it’s that Star Trek reaches across the years and makes vast, just wonderful universes out of our imagination, so we can dive in deep. I love the show for that. I love Strange New Worlds. I love Star Trek in general. But mostly, this touches the childlike sci-fi fan in me.

You have to remember there was a time in science fiction television, and filmmaking actually, where you went with what you had. You want to know why you got “The City on the Edge of Forever”? One, it’s a wonderful yarn, a fantastic story. But it’s also a period piece you could pull off, because it takes place in a not so distant period from when the series was being made.

Same thing here. You forget sometimes that the things we find stereotypical are actually the dialogue we have as sci-fi fans. The language, if you will, of science fiction. There’s no difference between this and an episode like “Shore Leave,” where all of a sudden you see a giant Easter bunny and all these other creatures and characters, and everyone’s going, what’s going on? It’s the same type of thing. It’s good stuff, man.

I enjoyed the heck out of this episode. I really can’t wait to talk about it with Mrs. Know-It-All, because she’s going to absolutely chew this all up.

The Standouts

La’an singing. Oh yeah, it’s a thing. If you haven’t seen the episode, you need to go watch it. La’an singing is choice, and you get to see her be a style of character you’ve never seen from her.

Ortegas, again, my spirit animal. Melissa, I love you, sister. She’s amazing in this.

I really like Pike as this sort of foppish court guy. It’s such a departure from who his character is, and I love that, especially because he’s having so much fun. You can totally tell Anson Mount is going, oh yeah, I get to get rid of the hair thing and just part my hair in the middle. I think he’s just loving this, and you can totally see it.

And oh, I love Chapel. Chapel plays this earthy, crunchy healer woman in the forest, and she’s so funny. Again, it’s just a lot of fun.

The Verdict

Strange New Worlds “The Elysian Kingdom” lands at an 8.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

I had a lot of fun with it, man. I really did. I would have liked us to know who the antagonist was a hair sooner, meaning the entity that spun this whole thing. Bringing it in at the back half of the third act was a little bit of a mistake. That being the case, I’m going with an eight and a half. I liked it. I thought it was good.

The episodes are going really strong, seriously. On IMDb so far you’re looking at 8.2, 8.1, 7.9, 8.5, 8.2, 8.0, 7.4. So at the end of the day, my reviews are holding up in terms of the overall.

Drop a comment on the video above and let me know what you thought of the episode. I’d love to hear whether you like the fun romp fantasy episode or not. I know I thoroughly enjoyed it.