Our Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 9 review: “Once La’an a Time” aired September 17, 2026 on Paramount+ and drags the Enterprise back to the sentient fairy-tale planet from Season 1’s “The Elysian Kingdom.” It gives La’an her most personal episode of the season — but with only one episode left before the finale, critics can’t agree on whether the show could afford the detour.
Spoiler warning: everything past this point discusses the plot of “Once La’an a Time” in detail, including its ending.
This desk does not have a first-hand screener for weekly Star Trek episodes. We haven’t watched this one yet; the plot facts below are cross-checked across Wikipedia’s episode entry and multiple critic outlets rather than trusted from a single recap.
So, Did “Once La’an a Time” Work?
Season 4 opened to a perfect 100% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes when it premiered July 23, 2026, and “Once La’an a Time” is the first episode this season where critics have genuinely split. Here’s the thesis: the episode’s fairy-tale conceit genuinely earns its keep as a way into La’an’s psychology — forcing the hardened, Augment-trained survivor to reconcile with the softer kid she buried — but “Once La’an a Time” is the season’s second full genre-pastiche episode in five weeks, and spending the penultimate hour of a ten-episode season on another costume-and-castle riff is a real structural cost, not just a stylistic swing. The character work lands. The timing doesn’t.
What Happens in “Once La’an a Time”
The Enterprise finds the same flat, storybook-shaped planet the crew encountered in Season 1, and beaming down recasts the landing party as medieval alter egos: La’an becomes “Princess Thalia,” Kirk is “Prince Dashing.” The fantasy versions of Pike and Spock sneak aboard the real Enterprise to escape series villain Queen Neve, who eventually transforms into a dragon. The episode uses the fairy-tale frame to externalize La’an’s internal split between her trauma-forged exterior — built out of her Augment engineering and the Gorn massacre that killed her colony — and a suppressed, whimsical inner child. She “defeats” Neve by reconciling the two selves. On the way out, Pelia chooses to stay behind on the fantasy planet with a cook named Max, and the episode ends with La’an agreeing to date Kirk.
The Fairy-Tale Frame Actually Earns Its Keep for La’an
Give the episode this much: La’an is the one character on this ship whose backstory makes a fairy-tale mirror make sense. She was engineered as an Augment, survived a Gorn attack that killed her colony as a child, and has spent every appearance since white-knuckling her way through normal social situations. Putting her inside a literal storybook — and making the dragon a stand-in for the parts of herself she’s spent the whole series keeping locked down — is a clean use of the show’s anthology format. It’s the same trick “The Elysian Kingdom” pulled for Una and Pike in Season 1, redirected at the one character who’s earned it more.
But the Timing Is the Real Problem
Where critics split is whether the show can afford this right now. Gizmodo was the harshest: the episode is “not what I want in my sci-fi show,” faulting Strange New Worlds for spending its second-to-last episode of the season on another whimsical genre riff instead of “a traditional science fiction episode” heading into the finale. AV Club landed on the opposite side, calling the hour “a really strong capstone” and admitting the reviewer was “pretty charmed by this episode in the end” — while still flagging visible post-production patchwork and “comedy fatigue” from a season that’s leaned on genre pastiche more than once. Den of Geek split the difference, calling the hour “fun” at 3 out of 5 but arguing the emotional payoff was undercooked: La’an “finally reached some sort of peace with her own identity and her reward is… a regifted puppy and an actual date with Kirk.”
| Outlet | Verdict | Key line |
|---|---|---|
| Den of Geek | 3/5 — mixed | “A regifted puppy and an actual date with Kirk” undercuts the payoff |
| AV Club | Positive | “A really strong capstone,” despite “comedy fatigue” in the season |
| Gizmodo | Negative | “Not what I want in my sci-fi show” this late in the season |
Pelia’s Exit Deserved More Room
The one beat nearly everyone agrees didn’t land: Pelia choosing to stay behind with a fairy-tale cook named Max gets maybe a scene, for a character who’s been part of the bridge crew all series. Den of Geek called it “a waste of potential,” and it’s hard to argue — in an episode already juggling La’an’s arc, the Neve threat and a Kirk romance beat, Pelia’s goodbye reads like something that needed its own episode, not a subplot squeezed into someone else’s.
Is Strange New Worlds Running Out of Runway?
“Once La’an a Time” isn’t a bad episode — it’s a well-executed idea that arrived at a bad moment. This is the ninth of the ten episodes in a fourth season that premiered July 23, 2026, and Season 4 has one episode left, the finale “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” on September 24, and spending the second-to-last hour on the show’s second full pastiche episode of the season (following an earlier genre-swap outing) leaves the finale to do all the work of paying off the season’s actual plot threads in a single hour. That’s the gamble critics are actually arguing about, dressed up as a debate over whether a fairy tale is a good look for Star Trek.
For the rest of the season, see our review of Episode 8, “Orders of Magnitude”, and the full Season 4 episode schedule for exactly when the finale drops. For the show’s full cast and every season, see our Strange New Worlds Watch Guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 9 air?
“Once La’an a Time” premiered September 17, 2026 on Paramount+.
Is “Once La’an a Time” connected to a past episode?
Yes. It’s a direct sequel setting to Season 1’s “The Elysian Kingdom,” reusing the same sentient fairy-tale planet.
Who plays La’an Noonien-Singh?
Christina Chong plays La’an, the Enterprise’s head of security, across all four seasons of Strange New Worlds.
How many episodes are left in Strange New Worlds Season 4?
One. The ten-episode season closes with the finale, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise,” on September 24, 2026.
Did critics like Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 9?
Reception was split: AV Club called it a strong hour, Den of Geek gave it 3 out of 5 calling the payoff undercooked, and Gizmodo panned the choice to spend the penultimate episode on a genre pastiche.
