11 Mistakes That Pulled Strange New Worlds Season 4 Away From Good Star Trek

I like Strange New Worlds, and that is exactly why season 4 frustrated me the way it did. Across its 10 episodes, I count 11 big mistakes that pulled the show away from what makes good Star Trek. When the series started, it felt like we were getting the Enterprise back: a crew, a mission, a strange situation, and people smart enough to talk through it.

This season had flashes of that. But over 10 episodes it felt increasingly interested in showing me what other kinds of television it could imitate. If you are a fan of season 4 and you enjoyed it, I am very happy for you. I truly am. These are the 11 places where I think it went wrong.

11. Season 4 treated every episode like it needed a gimmick

I am okay with the occasional unusual episode. We have always had them, right from the beginning. The problem is the ratio. This season gives us prehistoric Earth, a drunken shore leave world, black and white noir, puppets, a disaster movie, a soap opera and a fairy tale planet.

At some point, I stop wondering what the Enterprise will discover next and start wondering what genre the writers picked this week. "Those are different kinds of anticipation." I want the premise to grow out of a strange new world and its people. Too often this season, it felt like the world was built to justify the premise.

10. The puppet episode became the sales pitch

I know a lot of work went into the puppet episode, and I am not going to pretend that Jim Henson's Creature Shop making puppet Enterprise officers isn't impressive, because it is. But look, "they're puppets. It's an idea you can explain in 5 seconds." What does it reveal about this crew that a regular episode couldn't?

The transporter changes almost everyone except Spock, and then pirates attack the ship. That should be a pressure cooker about a crew adapting to a genuine crisis. Instead, the transformation is so enormous that it becomes the thing you remember. If you loved it, fair enough. I just wanted to come out talking about a decision Spock made rather than the production achievement. And now the puppets are a meme.

9. The soap opera episode pushed its joke too far

I guess the soap opera episode has a real emotional point. Pike is mourning the life he lost with Batel, and that could have been one of the season's strongest hours. Instead, the Enterprise becomes a soap opera, complete with all the heightened behaviour that entails.

I get the joke. Trek characters already have complicated relationships, so exaggerating them could expose something honest. But when I am waiting for Pike to deal with his grief, another wink at the format starts to feel like an interruption, and I don't like it. Let the character be vulnerable, without constantly reminding me how clever and how witty the episode is.

8. The fairy tale planet went back to the Elysian Kingdom instead of somewhere new

This season takes us to a real fairy tale planet and uses it to force La'an to face parts of herself she has buried. Christina Chong could carry the material. My issue is that we have already done this kingdom. Bringing it back in a bigger, more literal form makes the season's problems impossible to ignore: even its strangest world is a return visit.

La'an's pain and the distance she keeps from other people have been part of this character for years. I would rather see a new culture challenge her in a way she can't escape by defeating a fantasy version of herself. That could have been both a character episode and an exploration episode.

7. The noir episode had a strong occupation dilemma and didn't trust it

I actually kind of like this one. The occupied world, the Klingons, and Una having to decide how far to involve herself in a resistance: that, to me, is substantial Trek material. The black and white presentation was cool, and it looked great. That is why I wish the episode had trusted the conflict more. It didn't.

The noir, the disguises and the visual references are fun. But the question that stayed with me was whether Starfleet could walk into an occupation, change people's lives, and then fly away. That question didn't need help from a genre tribute. When the moral dilemma is already that strong, and it was, I want the episode to spend more time on its consequences than on looking like another movie. Once again, it was trying too hard to be witty, fresh or maybe cute.

6. A shore leave episode took the place of a mission the season needed

One episode sends the crew to a planet with an atmosphere that gets them intoxicated. As a change of pace, sure, you can get a character moment out of that. But season 4 only had 10 episodes, and several of them were already bending reality around the crew for comedy or spectacle.

This was a real chance to put the Enterprise in front of a society with a problem. Let the officers disagree, and make them live with whatever choice they made. A shore leave episode isn't automatically bad, but in this season it contributed to the feeling that exploration had become the thing we do in between our little witty concepts.

5. Pike's grief never became a steady thread

The season began with Pike carrying the loss, and the soap opera episode returns to his grief. On paper, there's an arc. In practice, so many episodes needed him to serve their weekly style that I didn't always understand or feel his loss changing the way he commanded.

Grief could make Pike more protective, or honestly more reckless, or even more willing to listen when an officer tells him he's making the wrong call. Show me that in a first contact decision, or even a confrontation with Starfleet. Anson Mount doesn't need the show to pause for a speech; he can do a lot with a quiet moment on the bridge. I wanted Pike's experience to shape the season, not just resurface when an episode was ready to address it. I feel like that was a big swing and a miss.

4. Kirk pulled focus from Pike's Enterprise

I don't mind Paul Wesley's Kirk, and I know a lot of people have their opinions on that. I understand why you bring him in, and the episode where an admiral commandeers the Enterprise to hunt an invisible alien ship has a compelling situation.

But every time Kirk steps closer to the centre of the show, I become more aware that this is the handoff to the original series. Pike, Ortegas, all of them have limited time left with us, so I want this crew to finish its story. Kirk's future is guaranteed; it has already happened. He doesn't need this series to keep proving he'll eventually be the most important person in the room. We already know he will.

3. The prequel leaned on danger it can't quite sell

The real time disaster episode traps the Enterprise in a catastrophic situation, and the approach gives it some urgency. It's one of the season's better ideas, because everyone has a job and the ship feels like a working ship. But season 4 still leans on the possibility of losing familiar characters whose futures we already know.

I'm not saying a prequel can never create suspense. It can. You just have to put the suspense somewhere else. What will this cost them? Will the captain make a choice he regrets? Will someone survive by breaking a principle? Will an unknown person pay for the crew's rescue? That can hit harder than asking me to worry that Scotty might not make it onto Kirk's Enterprise.

2. Tomorrow's Enterprise used the finale to sell tomorrow

Tomorrow's Enterprise finally puts Uhura in the middle of a major story, and I'm glad it does. Her connection with her future self is a good way to ask who she becomes. But the episode also shows us Kirk's Enterprise and puts Scotty's future in danger. I get the appeal; those images are going to make Trek fans sit forward and lean a little closer.

My frustration is that most of the exciting promise at the end of season 4 seems to be the familiar crew waiting around the corner. We have one short final season left, six episodes. I want to be excited about what this Enterprise and this crew are going to do next, not just how neatly it hands over the keys, which aren't even being handed over, because we're not getting Year One.

1. Season 4 forgot that strange new worlds were the show's best idea

The funny thing is, season 4 proves the show can still do what I'm asking for. The episode where an admiral commandeers the Enterprise gives us a Starfleet order worth questioning. We get the crew placed near a Klingon occupation and asked what intervention costs. Even the real time disaster episode, without a planet at its centre, remembers how good this cast is when they solve a problem together.

That's what I miss: curiosity, competence, disagreements, no easy answer, and the sense that the galaxy is bigger than the Enterprise crew's personal lives. I don't need Strange New Worlds to be humourless, and I don't need it to pretend old Trek never did a strange episode, because it sure did. But the strange episodes used to stand out because there was a strong foundation underneath them. Season 4 kept showing me its range while leaving me hungry for that foundation.

I know I'm probably just dreaming, but with only six episodes left in the final season, I'm hoping the writers give Pike's crew a chance to boldly go somewhere, meet people we haven't met, and leave us arguing about what the right thing to do was. That's the version of this show I fell for in the beginning, and I'm hoping that's what they'll course correct back to in order to finish it off.

Should the final six episodes go back to pure exploration, or did the season 4 experiments earn their place?