Matt and Sean call this a season low for Strange New Worlds in Star Trek SNW Season 4, Episode 9, "Once La'an a Time". They argue that the fantasy plot leaves La'an's character arc without enough room to land.
Order Sean’s next book, “In the Fields We Thirst” here: https://undecided.link/in-the-fields-we-thirst
Chapters
- 00:00 - Intro
- 01:55 - Mailbag
- 04:28 - Episode Description
- 04:51 - This Time in History
- 07:04 - Episode Discussion
Transcript
Intro
Sean Ferrell: In today's episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about a fanciful tale. Welcome everybody, to Trek in Time. This is of course, the podcast that takes a look at all of Star Trek in chronological star date order, unless we call an audible like we have been for the past nine weeks, in which we're taking a pause on our rewatch. We're currently in season three of the original series, but we have stepped aside into a little slip stream so that we can watch the newest season of Strange New Worlds. And then we'll get back to the original series rewatch, followed by the movies, followed by Next Gen. We are so close to the end of the original series. We're so close to the movies. We're so close to exciting changes. I hope you'll be interested in joining us. And who is us? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some horror. As a matter of fact, I have a horror novel coming out in April of 2027, In the Fields We Thirst. I'm hopeful that you'll be interested in taking a look at that. It's available for pre order already, so please follow the links in the description below and see what that's all about. And with me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt. Who's the, the Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And Matt, how is tech impacting our lives right now? Please talk about my router issues.
Matt Ferrell: Sean's wi fi and Internet causing some problems. But yeah, we'll, we'll push through it.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do our best. And if I suddenly Gl itch, we'll. We'll take that out in edit. So before we get into our discussion about today's episode, which is going to be once La'an a time. Oh, those clever writers and their clever puns. Which is episode nine of season four of Strange New Worlds. We always like to take a look at what you've had to say about our previous episodes. It's been a wild ride this season. It's been some ups, it's been some downs. It's been some ups again. And some downs again and again and again. Matt, what did you find in the mailbag for us this week?
Mailbag
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, talking about those downs. So from episode 243, like Chronotons through the Hourglass, which you and I were kind of like lukewarm on at best. Yeah, the comments reflect that as well. So we had comments like from Babarudra who wrote, yep, a surprisingly good gimmick episode. But I'm so done with the gimmicks. And when it comes to everyone having this, having to process lessons, maybe it'll continue into the future of the episodes. This series has definitely done character development, although from past Q episodes, it seems like the lessons his appearance brought were usually intended for one person. Agreed.
Sean Ferrell: Agreed.
Matt Ferrell: And then from Rebecca Catery, she wrote, I hated the premise of this episode from the beginning and watched it as much as I could stomach, but ended up skipping through all of the storylines until it got to the end with Captain Pike. I loved the ending, but couldn't stand the whole soap opera thing. Yeah, the entire episode could have been much shorter. Showing Pike facing feelings of the daughter he lost, mixed with some funny background scenes. I find most of it unwatchable. I too am sad that the producers chose to make so many silly episodes this season. I won't spoil what episode 10 is about, but it wasn't what they usually have for a season-ender Disappointed. Oh, that's next week for us. Not looking forward to that. And then finally, wrong answers only from Mark Loveless. Plot of Orders of Magnitude. Scotty invents a new type of alcoholic drink that he refers to as Magnitude. As the orders for it begin to come in, Scotty takes it upon himself to taste test every order before sending it out. After a late night party that is led by Scotty and Ortegas reaches the climactic height of drunkenness, Scotty and Ortegas launch an empty shuttle out and crash it into a nearby planet, causing the inhabitants to get extremely angry at the whole thing and creates a diplomatic nightmare scenario Pike must solve. Scotty and Ortegas get three months of latrine duty, and Spock erases the Magnitude formula from the ship's computer.
Sean Ferrell: For Orders of Magnitude I don't like that as a replacement episode, but for some of the gimmick episodes I do.
Matt Ferrell: Yes. Yep.
Sean Ferrell: So those lights you see, that flashing sound you hear? It's the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Memory Alpha description. Take it away, Matt.
Episode Description
Matt Ferrell: The Enterprise encounters an object in space, recreating the world of the Kingdom of Elysian, allowing the crew and their doppelgangers to experience a shared adventure.
This Time in History
Sean Ferrell: Sure, that's what it is. This episode originally broadcast on September 17, 2026. And what was the world like at the time of that broadcast? Well, Matt, you had a new entry in your karaoke machine. That's right, it was BbY WOW. By a number of people. Carol G, Judeline and Rosowski. And if you're wondering if I said those names right, I have no idea because I've never heard of any of them. That's not a judgment on them. It's just a declaration that, yes, I've reached that age where I've completely stepped outside of popular culture. Goodbye, everybody. And at the movies. Matt, I hate to break your heart, but say goodbye to Spider man in the number one spot we have. Yes, the magic returning. Practical Magic 2 was the number one movie this week with Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, and a number of returning people like Stockard Channing and Diane Weist coming back to resurrect Practical Magic for a sequel only 30 years in the making and on television. Looking around to see what are some new entries this week? September 17, 2026. And yes, it was the Return of the Traitors with Traitors New Blood, in which the American version of the UK program introduced a cast made up of complete unknowns as opposed to their celebrity casts that they've been using up to this point. I am a fan of Traitors. And Matt, if you don't watch it, I suggest you do, because ultimately it's not about the game show gimmicks and the who's gonna get voted off and are they gonna complete this mission and who's gonna win the money. It is simply a sociological experiment that just happens to be broadcast on a major network. It is fascinating stuff. And in the news on this day on the New York Times website, the major headline, the Fed raises rates in first major step to war by Warsh, the new head of the Federal Reserve to contain inflation.
Episode Discussion
The Federal Reserve's first increase to interest rates since July 2023 comes less than two months before the midterm elections. Can you believe it, Matt? Inflation. It's a thing. So on now to our discussion of this week's episode La'an upon a Time. An episode, dare we say, a gimmick episode, in which we return. How do I phrase this? We return to a setting in Strange New Worlds that I like to pretend doesn't exist. I mean, this is. Anybody who tunes into just this episode of the podcast is going to be challenged to know why we talk about a show that we dislike this much. I love Strange New Worlds. I think it's one of the best Star Trek programs they have made and they. It just feels like they went out. I'm gonna like, cut to the chase. It feels this season, and we've said this before, audience, viewers, listeners, I really don't want to beat this dead horse. It feels like they went out of their way to say, we don't really want anybody to watch this and enjoy this.
I don't know who this episode is for.
Matt Ferrell: Because we want to have fun.
Sean Ferrell: We want to have fun. I don't know who this episode is for. I don't know why they thought this episode was complete enough in and of itself to be the entire story. The gist of this is, we have one plot. It is all La'an. I appreciate that they did try to put a bow on her character arc for the season, which, while it felt at times like her character development was shoehorned into some of the episodes this season, there was clearly an attempt to say she feels destabilized and feels like she maybe doesn't have any aspect to her character beyond being angry and violent. That there have been experiences that have tapped into that so deeply to such profound effect that she has begun to wonder, am I anything else? Am I actually dangerous to people? That is a really compelling character arc to convey. It's kind of interesting to think of it in contrast to Worf, for whom there were similar undertones, but his was the am I a Klingon in a human world or am I something other? And it was his story development. His character development, I always felt like, was a little bit more akin to Data in the kind of I am singular and how do I put myself in the world with all these people around me, similar to Spock. How do I operate here without negating something essential about who I am for myself? This is a little bit different in that La'an is saying, like, I don't know what I am. I know who I thought I was. And recently I've tapped into something that seems to be so strong and powerful, it may be redefining who I am. And I'm terrified of it because it seems to be dark and angry and violent. Interesting, interesting storyline to convey. I don't even dislike this episode being the end of that. In the way they've crafted this.
You're meeting your shadow self aspect because the kind of the fairy tale element, the final moments of them realizing that they each were picking up on aspects of the other, she and her shadow. And the fact that they developed this, like, wait a minute, we need to work together. We are complete in and of ourselves. This is accepting your shadow self. And the question of which one of them is truly the shadow self is unanswered, as it should be. But I felt like if they had. If they had the tool, the story development tool of the existence of the holodeck, this would have been a holodeck story where she, by herself would have been trapped in the holodeck and other people would have been doing other things. And that would have been, to me, a more intriguing episode because everybody else having their shadow self experiences, it just. I felt like this was, again, felt like the puppet episode to me. It felt like a parody that you'd see on Saturday Night Live. And it was a skit. It was over in 10 minutes, as far as I was concerned. Because we saw them present something and then the punch lines, and then they just kept repeating the punchlines. I don't need to see Shadow Pike and Shadow Spock on the Enterprise. I don't need to see. Like, I felt like they completely misused and then apparently threw away Pelia in this episode with a Princess Bride joke. I found myself, like, just completely like, what. What are they suggesting here? Like, it felt. It felt a little bit like the. The gimmick in Gilligan's island when the castaways would be like, hey, let's put on a show. And then suddenly they would just have all of this stuff to put on, all this theatrical musical theater stuff.
And then they run around on stage and it's like, are we supposed to interpret this as genuine and real, or are we just watching people who think that we're going to love watching them have fun? And I couldn't find myself. I saw what they were doing with the characters and I couldn't make myself feel intrigued or connected to it. I was bored. I was just like, str. That was the only. I didn't even have the energy to actively dislike it because I found myself sitting there being like, I see what they're doing with La'an. I see the conclusion they're heading toward. Ah, they did it. They built this bridge where she could reconnect with herself and say, like, I am more than the sum of my parts. Okay? And I felt like I was on my phone through the entire thing. It just didn't hold my interest. And before you leap off into whatever your thoughts are, and I, for the audience of this podcast, for their sake, I hope you loved this episode because that'll be a more compelling, interesting conversation. But I went quickly to IMDb because when I went to Memory Alpha, Memory Alpha has an interesting thing which is on Memory Alpha, their synopsis of the episodes. They will then go into all sorts of things around Easter eggs and production and. And reception and Reviews and all that sort of stuff. Zero of that about this episode. It feels like the Wiki community in Memory Alpha was basically like, no. So I went to IMDb to see if they had anything regarding reception of this, and IMDb does have the viewer vote on giving it a score. And I mentioned on the puppet episode that it was about a 4.5. That was the audience score for that episode, which was one of the low points. This episode is the low point. It is a 4.2 out of 10. We've just ended the season. The season has just ended. Strange New Worlds had previously made it into the top 10 for its runs when it would be during its.
During the release of the new episodes, previously broke into the top 10. This season did not do that. For a show that's headed toward its climax, and everybody knew it was headed toward its climax. What a damning statement about this season. I think I'm done. I think I'm done.
Matt Ferrell: So we're watching a very talented group of people just tank themselves on this show. So to kind of summarize my feelings about this episode, Sean, I'm going to mirror a lot of what you said, except I'm going to be a little more passionate about it, and I'm going to start it by saying, Sean was just in my house a week ago and we watched the movie Clue. Love that movie. Tim Curry, Chef's Kiss, Madeline Kahn, about to quote Madeline Kahn from Clue. I hate her so much. Flames. Flames. That's how I feel about this episode. This is. I didn't know I could hate an episode more from Strange New Worlds this season than this one. I thought we had hit rock bottom with the dinosaurs and the puppets, and then this one came, comes along. I despise this episode. This is some of the worst TV I've seen in years. I was bored out of my gourd because, like you said, I had zero connection to the character. Nothing about this episode made me care about anything that was happening. It felt all plot, no character. And the character stuff they were trying to do with lan was falling so hard on its face because of the way they were portraying it. And they cut themselves off of the knees right at the beginning, Sean, when in the first three minutes, they're doing like the most rapid exposition dump of, oh, here's this Planet ship thing again from that world that we had before from when the doctor's daughter went to the big beyond. And they're clearly, somebody needs some help with something, right? La'an. It was like they said, it they, like, literally said it out loud.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: You have to complete this mission because this is for you at the very beginning. How the hell did they come to that conclusion? Makes no sense. It would have been far more compelling for them to go to this planet and discover, oh, my God, it's this fantasy world again. What the hell's going on here? And then they end up going through it, and we discover, with La'an, with her, as she's going through her journey, and don't do the crazy stuff with Spock and. And Spock going to the ship and all that plotline gets cut. It should have been 100% following La’an and then you would have been able to spend time with her. You would have let those scenes sink in. You could have seen her growth over the course of the episode if you distilled every La'an scene down to just, like, a super cut. This episode is probably, like, eight minutes long. It is ridiculous. They're basically telling you kind of like what Discovery did. These characters are so awesome. You care about them, right? They didn't let us care about them. They didn't show us how to care about them. We didn't grow with them. They just told us, oh, no, you love this character. It's like, I don't know if I love this character. I don't even know that character. I just found out this character's name at the end of season two. You know what I mean? It's like that's what Discovery did, and that's what this episode was doing. It was some of the worst storytelling. And it's so frustrating that this same group of people made some of the best Star Trek I have seen in years. The swings that we're seeing are just so absurd. And I hate to say this, I'm so glad they fired this showrunner's ass. I'm so glad he's out of here because he let this happen. He let this happen. It's like he lost complete sight of what show he was actually tasked to make. It's just absurd to me what they did.
So the other thing I wanted to point out was in my notes, I thought this was so funny. I wrote, oh, God. A second part of an episode that was meh. Like, they did this. They said to do a sequel on an episode that is not a fan favorite.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: So it's like, why would you do an episode, a sequel to something that was kind of like, not a fan favorite in the first place? Yeah, I understand why they did, because they were trying to have La’an fight herself, see herself, see her loving side versus her angry “I want to kill everybody side” and have them fight each other. And they don't have a holodeck. And I understand the concept of why they did what they did, but the execution of that was completely shanked. They completely screwed it up. And it's just. It's so appalling to me that usually in a season, you get better as you go, and you're building to a climax of the course of a season so that the finale lands with a massive thud, like, in your face. And this is the exact. It's like the show started awful and then got better, and then kind of, like bad, and then a little better than now. It's just, like, completely plummeting right before the finale. And I put that comment in earlier.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Of like, it sounds like they shanked the finale, too, which I'm not looking forward to talking about now because I was hoping they would have done good with the finale.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: But just overall, it's like my. My takeaway is I just don't understand why they decided to get so. They got so focused on, wouldn't it be fun if Spock and Pike, their doppelgangers, went on the ship? That'd be so much fun. Right. Like, I could see them in a writer's room, like, on a whiteboard, on index cards, saying, what would be fun? And that's not how you write an episode, because then you end up with an episode like this, which is just a hot mess. And the emotional impact of La'an's transition and coming to terms with herself was completely shafted. So I feel awful for that actress. I feel bad for this character because the resolution that they told us they gave her, they didn't actually deliver. So it's like there was no emotional catharsis for me at all watching this. And I'm right. I didn't play on my phone. I stayed focused on this, Sean. I felt like I was in Clockwork Orange with those metal things, holding my eyelids open, being forced to watch this. It was. I just watched the whole thing, and I was just appalled at the end. I was furious. I was angry. I was disappointed. It's like I wanted to see them and shake the showrunner's shoulders and go, I'm so disappointed in you. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, you're better than this. Why are you delivering this crap to the fans? You're basically giving middle fingers to all of us. It just. It makes me very angry. So were you being very diplomatic? I'm not on this. This is just some of the worst TV period.
Sean Ferrell: I think part of my diplomacy, and I won't go into the details. This podcast is not the place to get into the details of why. But, yeah, my muted response in this moment is partially exhaustion. It's just. It's. There's just like a lot going on in my life that is just like, oh, I don't have the energy to bring the. The bile in the. To the level that I actually want to. Like, I'm. I said it in. In my way before you started talking, which was how disappointing for La'an. How disappointing for that actress. They were planting seeds throughout the entire season. Sometimes it felt shoehorned in, but it was there and it was like, oh, we're heading to a conclusion. We talked about that. Do you remember? We actually had a discussion on the podcast in which we were saying they could do something really cool with La'an where there's gonna be. There's gonna be a comeuppance, and instead we got a fart in a bag and it was just like, it with like. Like, this is it. This is it. This is what we get.
Matt Ferrell: They tell us, don't you love this scent?
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, just like on the outside of this brown paper bag, it says sniff me. And it's just like, you know, they're gonna love it.
Matt Ferrell: It's gonna be so fun.
Sean Ferrell: Oh, boy. Like, no, it's not fun. It's not fun. It's not fun to see Carol Kane as Pelia make a miracle Max joke. Like, you didn't earn that. You didn't earn it. Like, if this, if this, if this setting was a fan favorite setting, I would be one of the first to jump in and say, like, are they suggesting that the Princess Bride, like, is connected? Like, not in a literal sense, but it's an homage to it. A tip of the hat. Like, is that. Oh, that's. That's fun and funny. They didn't earn it. They didn't earn it for this episode. And then they had. They basically wrote her out of the show. They said, oh, she stayed on that thing to meet. To meet the chef. And I was just like, are they. They have the audacity. They have the audacity to take Carol Kane and they've only had her in a handful of episodes this season, which, you know, she's Carol Kane. So, yeah, she. You probably can't have her in every episode. So fine, you put her in where you can. You make good use of her. This wasn't good use of her. Like, making a joke. Almost like. Like, wink, wink. This fantasy land is the Princess Bride. I'm like, no, it's not. No.
Matt Ferrell: What's funny about the Pelia thing was, in the beginning, even though it was not earned, and I was very angry about all the plotty storytelling here, I did enjoy the Pelia scenes for the humor of it. Like, when she gets taken in and is being forced and threatened to do the Queen's deeds because she's put everybody else in the paintings. And Pelia's kind of like, okay, I'll play along. And it's playing along, and then it cuts away, and then when it comes back, she's just gorging herself, eating.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: And they're like, you're not doing anything. And she's like, the food is so good. I thought that was really funny. To show how she is so, like, it's so in her character just to be kind of, like, blindly kind of going through things in a way that's just, like, not normal. I love that.
Sean Ferrell: Why aren't you freaking out?
Matt Ferrell: But then it was like, right? But then at the end of the episode, when they said that whole thing of, like, she decided to stay behind, I was like, are you joking? This is how you're getting her off the show? Like, no big fanfare of her leaving. It's just like leaving with a whimper. Will she be back in the final season? Are you just trying to get rid of her for a few episodes? Like, what the hell is going on here? That is so stupid. It was just a little aside saying, she's not with us anymore. What the hell? What the hell?
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Come on.
Sean Ferrell: I'll go. I'll go one step further than that. After she has her joke about I'm gorging myself. Max is a miracle worker.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: I don't recall her being in the episode after that.
Matt Ferrell: No, she wasn't.
Sean Ferrell: There was no. There was no point for the Queen in saying, like, you've got to write the next chapter to my story. And then she didn't appear again, and everything was being fed to her by the doppelganger of Nurse Chapel. And it was like, theory. Did Carol Kane literally say, like, this is dumb. I'm leaving?
Matt Ferrell: I have a feeling that they cut stuff out of this episode.
Sean Ferrell: Oh, yes. Yes.
Matt Ferrell: So I wouldn't be surprised if they actually filmed those scenes with her. And they may have filmed stuff with her saying, I'll help you out. I'll stay here. They may have filmed all of that. But then when they were editing the episode together for time and pacing, they may have cut entire sections out because it felt weird that they had this thread and then they just like snipped it right in the middle and it didn't have a conclusion. I bet it did have a conclusion on paper. And it wouldn't surprise me if they actually did film it.
Sean Ferrell: It's. We're going to get a little meta now. I'm going to get a little meta. I don't want to beat this dead horse anymore. No, neither do I. I don't, I don't see a value in even like we sometimes fall into our like rewriter mode. There's nothing here. There was nothing here. This was an. This was such a donut. Like I said, like I said. I guess the big headline, the quote for the movie poster is like a fart in a bag. It's just, this is not. This is. This wasn't Star Trek. This wasn't even good television. This was just like Matt said, a bunch of people under some kind of self interested spell in saying, like, people enjoy watching us do this. And it goes back, I've mentioned this before. The Gene Siskel statement from when he and Ebert had their movie review show. Siskel would say, is this episode more interesting than an episode of watching the people eat lunch? I think that eating, I think watching these actors and writers and producers eat lunch would be more interesting. They'd have a more engaging convers and reveal more truths than this episode does. So I think that we should just leave it at that. This is a big skip.
Matt Ferrell: Yep. I will never watch this one again.
Sean Ferrell: I will not only never watch this episode again. I don't, I, I don't want to. Like, there's a handful of episodes from this season that I would want to rewatch and I'm just in my mind, I think I'm considering those. All of episode, all of season four. It's going to be like season four is like three episodes and that's it. And those episodes were amazing. They were so good. Those three. Like, it's not. You weren't going to get saved. Like there was always the rumor of like, will there be a spin off from this where we'll follow Kirk as the captain of the Enterprise and we'll move into the original series timeline in that way. And then they made this and Kurtzman was like, fingers crossed. They keep me on. No, no. Anyway, thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen to this program. What were your thoughts about this, please jump into the comments. And I've said it before, I'll say it again. If anybody genuinely likes this episode, we would love to hear your countering of our statements. I really genuinely would love to hear from somebody who's just like, look, you're missing the point, Sean. Yeah, so if you're that person, jump into the comments. Let us know. As always, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends and commenting. Those are the easiest ways for you to support this podcast, and we greatly, greatly appreciate that support. If you'd like to support us more directly, you can click the button at trekintime.Show. Joining not only allows you to throw coins at our heads, but it allows you to be a subscriber to our spin off podcast Out of Time, in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program. We are hopeful that you'll be interested in checking that out. As always, thank you for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.
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