One of the most impressive things about the first eight episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is that there haven't been many "dud" episodes. Unfortunately, it appears that the series was due. "The Elysian Kingdom" is a bit of a diversion from the rest of the season as the crew suddenly finds themselves donning some rather garish costumes and forgetting entirely who they are. As has been the case with other episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the story is very reminiscent of the original series and for that alone, it gets some high marks. The show has done a marvelous job of capturing the feel of the original series and what made Star Trek so popular so many years ago.
However, even the original Star Trek wasn't a home run episode every single week. There were some stinkers, and it appears in even this regard, Strange New Worlds is paying a kind of homage. That doesn't mean that "The Elysian Kingdom" was a particularly bad episode. There were even some touching moments. The episode simply wasn't all that interesting, and there were definitely some rather major plotholes when it came to the science and the medicine involved in the story.
Things start out innocuously enough, as the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is checking out a spacial body that even Captain Pike believes is about as benign as can be. He even makes a comment that he's looking forward to having a nice quiet time after spending several weeks in all kinds of different missions. Of course, as is usually the case, any character that says this kind of thing is bound to jinx the issue. The show does make a rather humorous joke where Spock even comments that it appears Pike did jinx the ship when it suddenly finds that it appears stuck. That humor quickly evaporates when the ship lurches and Ortegas is injured. This leads to a call to the bridge for Dr. M'Benga.
However, when the doctor arrives on the bridge, he finds that it has instead been transformed into his royal court and he has been clothed in the outfit of a character from a book that he and his daughter often read together. That daughter has been a big part of the doctor's story as he's been hiding her from most of the crew. It turns out that the way he was hiding her even affected what happened to the crew earlier in the Strange New Worlds season. This is because he tends to house his daughter in the transporter buffer as a kind of stasis field while he tries to find a cure for her very rare disease.
It is of course always interesting when a Star Trek episode shows some sort disease that even the advanced tech of the far future can't cure. Of course, it's also no longer all that interesting in that every time this kind of plot device is introduced, it's almost a given that the story will head one particular direction. The show did indeed go in that direction this week as well, meaning that the person who was sick was suddenly well again only there was a choice that their loved ones had to make. That choice is almost always "they can be cured, or they can be sick again, but around their loved ones."
It always feels like this particular conundrum is more than a bit contrived. This particular episode certainly had that feel considering at one point, the doctor's daughter was "cured" with no sign of the disease. If that was really the case, if there was really no sign of the disease then she would indeed be all better. However, as it turned out, there was supposedly still the danger should M'Benga make the wrong decision. This is the kind of thing where it feels like the conundrum could have been written slightly different and made more sense. For the most part, the show's writers tend not to be this kind of lazy but they failed that particular test this week.
As far as the crew being engrossed in the story, there were some fun parts, including La'an Noonien-Singh appearing as the over the top princess. While her part was quite small, and she wasn't on-screen much at all, the show did allow her to stretch her wings acting wise a bit. That she walked around carrying a cute little puppy was a nice touch if only because the actual Noonien-Singh would almost certainly do no such thing. Meanwhile, Ortegas gets to be on screen and show off her chops more than she has since the series started.
Likewise, Anson Mount actually has a relatively small role this week as he plays a cowardly and eventually traitorous aide to the king. The positives of this role is that it appeared that Mount was truly enjoying the part. There were others who seemed to be loving being able to depart from their usual personalities and take on totally new. Strange New Worlds also missed an opportunity by not having Spock be one of those that totally left his usual persona behind. Instead, they simply made him a different character with the same character traits.
While it appears that there were several members of the show that truly did enjoy doing something so different from what the season had been, the episode was sadly not all that fun on its own. Whether it was because the plot was rather easily predicted once it was divulged as not being some sort of hallucination, or just because the story in the book wasn't a particularly well fleshed out or interesting one, there was just something missing in this week's episode of Strange New Worlds. The good news is that even when the show isn't putting out a top-of-the-line product, it's still pretty darn good and that's helped along by a cast that is both good at what they do and that seem to have some real chemistry when they are on screen together. That is also quite reminiscent of the original Star Trek.