Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x08 - "The Elysian Kingdom"

Yeah, the "you don't look sick" angle doesn't work for me, either. It creates an unfortunate knock-on effect where people who are disabled or ill in other ways don't count because "they look fine to me." There are myriad diseases that don't give much of a visual indicator that something has gone terribly wrong.

This is one of those cases, and M'Benga's behavior around her, his commentary on her condition, his expressions as he talks to her, as he works to cure her, they're far more than enough to convince me that she really is at death's door with almost no time left.

 

Exactly.

 

I think the ending would have worked better if they had done more to dramatize the stakes. If M'Benga had had a line saying something like, "Rukiya's been outside the buffer for too long. If I don't get her back into the buffer immediately, the disease will take hold. She'll almost certainly die!" then it would have made the urgency with which he acted in handing her over to the alien entity more intuitive.

 

If that's true then don't evade inconvenient points, questions and arguments. I don't know why you do that. All it does is make the conversation more adversarial for no reason.

Wouldn't it have been simpler to just say "Yes, I've seen this sort of juxtaposition before; all I meant is that I don't like it."? I mean, it's not like it's a deeply personal topic. So why the games?

Oh, really? :

Again you're so focused on contradicting me that you've completely lost track of the conversation.

There was no "message" in your response, and pointing that out to you isn't "flipping over".

 

Well, they tried to make it work (research hitting a brick wall, daughter insta-adulting to assure M'Benga he made the right call).

I might have preferred it if she'd been whisked away the only confirmation was - I dunno - some twinkly lights in the nebula.

Perhaps the entity consumed the daughter and the adult version was just a deception. Wasn't there a similar entity in Voyager's Coda that feed on your neural energy or some-such, but only with your consent? All the storybook hijinks were an elaborate trap to snare it's prey. Thanks, Dad!

Another low score for me. It's all way too cornball for my liking.

 

How cynical!

 

It's Star Trek. Cornball is part of the job.

 

The Elysian Kingdom, Part I review

The Elysian Kingdom, Part II review

The battle did not go well for King Rigby and his companions, the fellowship are captured by Queen Neve and her henchman the wizard Pollux takes much glee in their victory. There is however more to this story than meets they eye, and only two citizens of Elysia know of this; the wizard Castor and the delusional King Rigby himself who feel out of place in this Elysian world. Is King Rigby as delusional as we are led to believe after all? Perhaps he, and his loyal wizard friend Castor are the only two rational people in this fairy tale world? These two folk feel out of place in this Final Fantasy world and have known it from the start, it feels to them almost like they have been pulled from their regular lives and forced to perform in a pantomime on the whim of some unknown force. Was this a test? Is the ship in danger?

King Rigby is actually M’Benga, chief physician of the Federation flagship - the USS Enterprise. Hemmer is his Aenar friend, who also serves upon this mighty starship as it’s chief of engineering. Can these two Starfleet officers solve the puzzle before them and find out exactly what is happening to their ship and crew mates?

M’Benga however, remembers this world, he knows of these characters aswell as recognises them for who they really are. His crew mates have been trapped in an ethereal projection of ‘The Kingdom of Elysia’. Luckily, M’Benga has as good as memorised this book and can quote it word for word. This is the favourite book of his daughter Rukiya, who is currently stored in a form of stasis in the ships pattern buffer. Could he use his foreknowledge of the book to manipulate the story before him as it unfolds? Being aware of how the story ends can he use this to his advantage? Should M’Benga play along with this pantomime that he is being forced to take part in along with his crew? It can’t be *too* bad to do so, after all, it is only a children’s book?

M’Benga knew that he would be meeting the Queen, and this is why he was allowing the story to unfold as foretold in Rukiya’s book…

Queen Neve, played convincingly well By Cadet Uhura wants ‘The Mercury Stone’ - the object that is so desired by M’Benga’s King Rigby himself. Her henchman, Spock who does a really good job of playing Pollux the wicked wizard and definitely projects an air of cold menace despite his actual Vulcan cool composure. Uhura herself plays Queene Neve pretty much like a version of ‘Ming the Merciless’ from Flash Gordon and the Queen song ‘Flash’. If there is an Enterprise Emmy award after this episode, I would definitely nominate Spock and Uhura for best supporting actress/actor for their performances this week. It is also great to see Hemmer getting a really meaty role this week with substance too, he actually has a lot to do this episode to help save the day.

It is interesting to note the parallels between Spock and Pollux the dark wizard, they both have a brother locked up in prison. Whether this is an intentional parallel or not after last weeks reveal I just do not know.

Pike puts on quite a ‘hammy’ performance this week and shows his ability to act in a more ‘playful’ and flamboyant way when the need arises as he plays the treacherous Amand Rauth. This Captain will have quite the backlog of ‘side character persona’s’ by the end of this seasons run. He seems to be playing as many characters as Jeffrey Combs - can he beat his record over this 5 year mission? By the looks of it though, I think that Pike will need to try his very best to be a *real* Captain next week. It looks like he will definitely need to step up to the mark and show some solid leadership next week as the peril and stakes look quite high.

M’Benga and Hemmer are outnumbered by Uhura’s guards’s, but luckily enough Sir Adya, played wonderfully by Ortegas, begins to fight her way through the Queen’s guards. Just in time to help turn the tide of the battle, none other than the Archer/Red Mage Z’ymira aka Una appears to help sway the battle in M’Benga’s favour.

Our fellowship, complete with a new party member already leveled up and maxed out make their way back to engineering to investigate further….

M’Benga and Hemmer realise that something connected to the nebula must be causing this ‘mass hallucination’ that the crew are under the grips of. They speculate that this is possibly the result of a theoretical concept called a ‘Boltzmann Brain’ - a spontaneous ignition of consciousness on a massive scale. The random creation of a conscious entity as a result of random quantum physics and metaphysical reactions occurring deep inside the Jonisian nebula. Could this consciousness somehow have interfaced with Rukiya in the USS Enteprise computer buffer and taken her memories of the book which her father is reading her to create this imaginary world? Is the entity connected to Rukiya or to M’Benga? Hemmer wants to find out by torturing M’Benga to see if the pain is also felt by the entity in order to break it’s hold on the ship and it’s crew.

Back in ‘the bay’ which is actually the Enterprise sickbay, M’Benga discovers that Rukiya is no longer in the ships buffer! His daughter has been missing from this protective stasis bubble for several hours. We now begin to worry that her health is deteriorating and this could be an unhappy ending, but we know that Rukiya can not have an unhappy ending so there must be more going on. M’Benga discovers that the entity has taken Rukiya, but to what ends?

Rukiya is found by M’Benga in his quarters, free of cygnokemia, living happily as a princess - the entity has been preserving her outside of the ships buffer, looking after her and allowing her to experience life through the projected fantasy of her book.

Meanwhile, a ‘fantasy ship’ is developed between Ortega and Una which ticks a box in the ‘Who will you ship for’ thread. M’Benga notices through this that here are ever so subtle changes to this story as these two characters do not actually meet in the book; Rukiya had decided to subtly change the parts that she did not like in order to make a better overall story and ending where more people are happy. We now learn that ‘the Mercury Stone’ is in fact Rukiya herself, and after Spock overhears our heroes discussing the stone he reports his finding back to Queen Neve who decides that she wants to steal Rukiya from M’Benga. We know that the entity has created this fantasy though so obviously there is no real threat here, the entity is looking after Rukiya so surely would not allow her to fall in to the hands of the evil Queen? Or are there two entities at play here? One good and one bad? I think that if so, the ‘good’ entity is helping Rukiya here? It appears that both Rukiya and this entity are lonely, and have found companionship for each other. Should M’Benga allow for this to happen, if all hope of her ever recovering has been exhausted on a scientific level? In the story, King Rigby knows that he can not keep the Mercury stone as if he does so it will ‘die’, almost like a parallel to M’Benga’s situation with holding on to his daughter indefinitely in the ships buffer… had the author of this book foretold M’Benga’s plight? I think that this author also wrote Deep Space Nine ‘in verse’.

The treacherous Sir Rawth/Pike gives The Queen his loyalty in return for his life, As foretold in the story. He betrays King Rigby/M’Benga and captures him for the Queen. M’Benga has read the book so should have know that this would happen, or is he just continuing to let it all play out, seeing this story through until the end?

Hemmer uses his Aenar telepathic powers to communicate with the entity from the nebula - it takes possession of his body in order to communicate in a corporeal form. An agreement is reached which is mutually beneficial to all playing out this enforced fantasy, including Rukiya.

After an emotional goodbye between M’Benga and his daughter, M’Benga decides that it is in the best interests of his daughter to let her go and have some form of companionship and happiness with the entity instead of keeping her in the buffer indefinitely. He reluctantly says what he thinks is his final goodbye as his daughter is spirited away from him in a bittersweet farewell. I think that M’Benga must have realised that this was her best hope, through it is unfortunate that a scientific solution could not be found. All hope is not lost though, as M’Benga is visited by an adult version of Rukiya - she has now transcended time and space becoming almost like a ‘Traveller’. Perhaps we shall see Rukiya again over the coming seasons, she might even join with Wesley Crusher and the Traveller’s on their adventures protecting all of time and space. It would have been nice for Rukiya’s situation to have been resolved with the intervention of the First Servant, they had a true friendship and bond too, but perhaps the First Servant ‘steered’ the ship this way in order for this adventure to happen and for Rukiya to be saved? After all, he was *very* clever. Rukiya also names the entity Debra, in honour of her mother and M’Benga’s love. I wonder what happened to Rukiya’s mum? It sadly sounds like she is no longer with us either but I could be wrong.

The crew all eventually wake up from their shared collective dream, the passive illusion created by the entity for Rukiya. The crew have no memory of the events that have just transpired. Only M’Benga can remember the adventure, though strangely enough Hemmer can not remember? The only evidence that the crew have that something has transpired is a shared hangover. Even the surveillance logs have all seemingly been wiped, so there is no recording of this event, but perhaps the transphasic/interdimensional nature of the illusion was not perceivable by technology anyway, with events taking place slightly outside of our visual spectrum so it would not have been recorded by standard surveillance equipment anyway. The tech probably had not been invented yet.

Maybe M’Benga should read the crew his book?

I give Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode 8, ‘The Kingdom of Elysia, part I’, 7/10. ‘The Kingdom of Elysia, Part II’, 10/10.

Overall grade: 9/10

 

Watched this a 2nd time with family yesterday. I was just OK with it the first time, but it really crumbles on repeat viewing. There are sooooo many scenes of only the mind-controlled crew playing out the book with each other. M'Benga is often just standing there being a bystander, there are huge chunks of the episode that are completely inert dramatically, unless you're actually invested in the kingdom as it's own plot. Most ridiculous were the scenes that cut away to just "Queen Neve" scheming, without Hemmer or M'Benga being present -- truly, who cares? Why give screen time to villain cutaways like the actual plot of the book is the main point of the episode? We don't need to see any of this to conjecture the evil queen is off somewhere being diabolical.

There are so many ways they could have restructured this to make it more satisfying. Add a clearer jeopardy element, bring in Rukiya earlier, have more of the crew break out of mind-control so you get the comic tension of the characters we know having to play these roles, all of the above...

It feels like the creative team got so infatuated by the idea of fun costumes and silly performances that they imagined that would be enough to carry the day, and they didn't need to work this story structure more. But they really did.

 

The discussion around Rukiya's decline not being more explicitly indicated is interesting, in that I thought it was just working around a casting issue -- the girl playing Rukiya was adorable, but acting-wise she was pretty limited. I don't think she could have played "deteriorating health" effectively, so M'Benga had to do it all.

This also struck me as being a possible genesis for adult Rukiya at the end. "Well, this girl can't carry all the weight of a big good-bye scene, what are we going to do instead..."

I do remain surprised it wrapped up so quickly. When this story was introduced in "Ghosts Of Illyria", I had thought Rukiya would be a series arc for M'Benga.

I'm not exactly unhappy to have this plot resolved -- her existence rapidly started to feel like a "Black Mirror"-level nightmare, having the same book she hates re-read to her for eternity -- just surprised.

 

In this case, Number One is filling that role to perfection for him. She's the 'hardass XO' when the situation calls for it, leaving him to be the relaxed one. Even in this episode, she brought M'Benga into line, reminding him of his duties as CMO.

 

At first I wasn't sure where this episode was going, but Babs Olusanmokun's and Bruce Horack's acting, along with the tear-jerker of an ending, really elevated this episode to a 10.

 

Hemmer and M'Benga are my favorite characters so far.

 

Same here, so I was glad to see them team up.

 

M’Benga seems like he has a tragic background story, has it ever been padded out before in canon or literature? I *think* that he might have lost his wife as well as his daughter which is quite heart breaking if you think about it. I wonder if we will find out more about his family? Hopefully we will see Rukiya again now that she is an omnipotent ‘Traveller’ like being. Regardless, I hope that he has a happier ending like in a true fairy tale. Maybe his ending is foretold in the book ‘The Kingdom of a Elysia’ seeing as it seemed to run so parallel with his own life in regards to the Mercury stone and his daughter, that is too much of a coincidence is it not? Perhaps if we had a copy of the *real* book we would know what happens to M’Benga in the long term? Or it could just all be coincidence which was convenient to the plot? Maybe this book will be released as a piece of merchandise one day for us fans to buy in a similar way as to how they released the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition and Neelix’s Cookbook?

Maybe the episode title also gives us a ‘clue’?

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Elysium-Greek-mythology

 

It was just me, or the actors and actresses appeared to be a bit unconfortable in their feets in episode 8?
To my eyes, just Ortegas and Uhura appeared to be confortable in this episode.

 

And you can't like/enjoy/be a fan of BOTH right?

 

It’s a spoiler thread, it has a spoiler tag in the title. They know what they’re getting into when they enter it. Dozens of people have already posted full spoilers in here already going back to the night it aired.

It’s their own fault if they get spoiled.

 

Saddle Up! is out!

 

Just you.