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

I have to give these producers credit for trying hard, but this episode only partially works. It's really hard to take a retro-fanciful TOS episode that seriously. The rationale is a bit tenuous too, and the resolution just doesn't ring true for any fathers out there that I can think of. So ultimately just a 6/10.

 

I could understand it happening much later, after many failed efforts, no other solution forthcoming, and with Rukia's hourglass down to its last grains of sand (transporter or no). But having the subplot resolve so soon after it was established never quite sat right with me.

 

It almost felt like they didn't know if they were getting a season 2 when they decided it.

 

This is the kind of thing that gets left unresolved when a show is canceled suddenly, which SNW would have been in such a case.

 

Sort of like the B5 sequel series, Crusade. With nobody ever finding out how the Drakh plague was dealt with (and yet it obviously had to have been dealt with, given the B5 series finale).

Thankfully, SNW lives on. Indeed, the only ST series to date that haven't been allowed to run to either planned completion or to self-cancellation have been TOS, TAS, and ENT.

Kind of surprising, the fate of Crusade: JMS had loaded B5 with every possible contingency plan for early cancellations, non-renewals, and actor departures, but he must have gotten overconfident with Crusade.