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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S4E9 'Once La'an a Time' airs

tvSep 18, 2026661,025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 9, "Once La'an a Time," centers on Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) as the Enterprise visits a flat planet populated by fantasy doppelgangers from the Elysian Kingdom. The episode frames La'an’s doubts about her identity as a fairy‑tale test orchestrated by a sentient nebula and tied to M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and his daughter’s vanished storyworld, but the review calls that explanation an "electron‑thin hand wave." Paul Wesley’s Kirk appears as the werewolf Prince Dashing and Celia Rose Gooding’s Uhura has a dragon doppelganger, with the episode leaning into genre play and novelty transformations. Critics at TrekCore say the installment is mostly pointless, revisiting Season 1’s Elysian Kingdom for the cast to reprise alternate roles while doing little meaningful work on La'an’s emotional arc. The review argues the episode wastes a penultimate slot that could have advanced La'an’s season‑long turmoil more directly, leaving the character thread underdeveloped with one episode left in the season.

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