This episode sure was something. In many ways, the conflict in it wasn't as large as the conflict in other episodes, yet I have a lot to say about it.
M'Benga is once again reading a story to his daughter. We get a bit more of the story this time and hear about the Elysian Kingdom that the story is about. Rukiya says that she wants to change the ending. My first time watching this episode, their talk about how she could change the ending when she got older seemed to hint at her getting better, and I honestly thought that was what was going to happen in this episode. Boy was that wrong.
The first sign that there's a problem comes when Enterprise suddenly can't warp. When M'Benga goes to the bridge, he suddenly finds that everyone has become characters from the story he was reading to Rukiya.
At first, I thought he was hallucinating because of his experiments, as earlier it had blown up in his face. Turns out, that's not what's happening. Everything around them is real but the minds of the crew have been alterred, and even though the concept of the crew being stuck in the story is kind of funny, there are real life consequences. (Plus, the idea of messing with people's minds that much is also straight up creepy. The entity is ultimately portrayed as a good entity, but if you think too much about what she did, then it gets really creepy really fast.)
The characters each of the crew members becomes have little to do with their actual personality, so it was pretty amusing to see them in character. La'an as Thalia was the most hilarious. It's probably a good thing that none of the crew (except M'Benga) remembers what happened because I'm pretty sure La'an would be mortified about it.
Pike was also hilarious because of how his character contrasted with his real personality, and Spock was another favorite.
It turns out that Hemmer is the only person besides M'Benga who hasn't been affected by the entity, so he and M'Benga work together to figure out what's going on. As far as I can remember, this episode marks the first time we've seen the two of them interact much, and I enjoyed it, especially how sympathetic Hemmer was about Rukiya. As a character, he's a little standoffish at first, and it's nice to see moments like this where he bonds with his crewmates and we can see that he does care.
M'Benga and Hemmer figure out that there's a consciousness who's doing all of this, and it seems like the consciousness is using Rukiya somehow, as the story is following the ending that she wanted. Unfortunately, Spock overhears this and comes to believe that Rukiya is the mercury stone, which is supposed to be a powerful weapon.
When M'Benga and Hemmer do find Rukiya, she says that she's playing with her friend, who turns out to be the entity controlling everything. Honestly, thinking too hard about the entity and how it got there is rather terrifying. I'm not a huge fan of those implications, but at least this one seems to be friendly? But then she's also manipulating the entire crew, so...
The entity ends up speaking through Hemmer and saves Rukiya's consciousness even though her body dies. Except it doesn't really. Her body kind of just disappears, and she's able to reappear as if she's older a few moments later, which kind of implies that her body is living on in someway. After all, the entity couldn't form a body herself and had to speak through Hemmer. If Rukiya doesn't have a body anymore, it's also odd that she would have aged at all even if time had passed. Theoretically, she would probably appear at the same age that she always was if she was going to reappear in a body at all. But I also get that her reappearing was more about assuring M'Benga that she was fine and showing us as an audience that time had passed for her.
Rukiya dying did surprise me a bit because other hints so far had given me hope that she'd survive, but I also wasn't incredibly shocked when she died instead. Still, it was very sad, and I was tearing up at the ending.
Overall, this episode was a fun one despite having a sad ending. I enjoyed seeing everyone out of character.
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