Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has built its reputation on a looser, more episodic format than the franchise’s recent Paramount Plus era, mixing standalone adventures with longer character arcs. But according to the review, season 4 continues a frustrating pattern: the show can be funny, moving, and inventive, yet it often puts high-concept episode ideas ahead of real development for parts of its ensemble.
One of the biggest examples is the season’s noir-style black-and-white episode, which centers Una Chin-Riley in a story about doppelgängers. The review says the premise is odd to the point of making little sense, and that it does not add much to Una beyond what earlier episodes already established. Similar issues are noted for other crew members, including Nyota Uhura, whose season 4 storyline is tied to mentoring a dismissive Vulcan cadet, and La’An Noonien-Singh, who is pushed back into brooding over her connection to Khan. Erica Ortegas also remains underwritten, with her main role reduced to pushing the Enterprise too far and irritating Montgomery Scott.
That said, the review argues that Strange New Worlds still works best when the weekly concept and the characters reinforce each other. A tense real-time episode uses its pace to land emotional payoff for Chapel and M’Benga, while a body-horror-leaning story gives the cast room to confront their fears. The strongest of the early episodes, according to the review, is the one where almost the entire Enterprise crew is turned into puppets, a ridiculous setup that still manages to reveal more about Spock’s inner conflict than some of the season’s more serious plots.
Overall, season 4 is described as a mix of the series’ best and worst instincts. It can still deliver the kind of identity, duty, and ethics stories that have long defined Star Trek, but the review concludes that the showrunners have not solved the problem of what to do with several members of the cast, leaving the season feeling at times more like a collection of genre exercises than a fully satisfying character-driven drama.
Source: polygon.com
