Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-4, and minor spoilers for Season 5. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series, The Animated Series, and Discovery Season 2.
So Season 4 has come to an end – the final ten-episode season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. There’ll be a measly six episodes next year (well, I assume it’ll be next year), because apparently those extra four episodes were really just fucking up Paramount’s budget. I sound disappointed by that… but after Season 4 brought more misses than hits to the table, and went *all-in* on some pretty poor genre spoofs and parodies – at least one of which feels genuinely bad-natured the longer I’ve sat with it – maybe the truncated, shortened season will be a blessing.
Ahead of Season 5 – and before we’ve seen anything by way of trailers, teasers, or marketing material – I wanted to get my thoughts in order. Where does Strange New Worlds find itself ahead of its final few episodes? What might Season 5 potentially look like? What do I want it to look like – and, just as importantly, what do I want it *not* to look like? Is the series badly-damaged after episodes like Level-Five Writing Accident with its “but it was all just a dream” ending? And more fundamentally… is Strange New Worlds still the series that I’d call “the high-water mark of modern Star Trek” after all’s said and done?
Those questions and more are what we’re going to get into today.
I say this a lot, especially in pieces like this, but it bears repeating: everything we’re going to discuss is the *subjective, not objective* opinion of just one old Trekkie. If you hate my take on Strange New Worlds, think I’ve completely got things wrong or misunderstood something, if I praise episodes and storylines you despise or shit all over ones you enjoyed, or if our views on Star Trek’s latest outing just don’t align… that should be okay! It’s also worth keeping in mind that I have no “insider information.” I’m not claiming that I know for a fact what Season 5 will look like or what kinds of stories it will tell – these are my preliminary thoughts and some speculation, and that’s all.
There ought to be room enough in the Star Trek fan community for differences of opinion and respectful disagreement that don’t descend into name-calling and general toxicity, and I share my thoughts on Strange New Worlds with the internet in that spirit. However, if you aren’t in the right headspace for opinions on this wonderful sci-fi franchise that you might not agree with… no hard feelings. Consider this a final “content warning” before we get into the potentially controversial stuff!
Okay, with all of that out of the way… let’s take stock of where Strange New Worlds finds itself.
There were probably four episodes out of ten in Season 4 that I could put my hand on my heart and say I thought were either “good” or “great.” The rest… well, as disappointing as this is to say… they kinda sucked. And the part of that that has me genuinely anxious for Season 5 is that several of them doubled-down on the exact same mistakes – mistakes, in some cases, that the series has made before.
Because Seasons 4 and 5 went into production back-to-back – and before Season 3 had even finished airing – there wasn’t time to take on board feedback; to gauge what worked well and what didn’t after Season 2. With Season 4 having so many issues in multiple episodes… I’m deeply concerned that Season 5 is gonna repeat those problems. And with fewer episodes next time, there isn’t room for even a *single* bad one.
Maybe Strange New Worlds’ writers got all of the dog shit ideas out of their system in Season 4, and Season 5 is gonna be stronger and more tightly-curated. I felt, at times, as if Season 4 was kind of a “let’s throw everything at the wall” batch of episodes; the writers and producers may genuinely have wanted to get all of these “creative” ideas made before the show came to an end. And it’s possible, I believe, that Season 5 might be more of a Discovery/Picard-inspired serialised story rather than a collection of episodic adventures. And if that’s the case… well, it’d better be a good story, right? But that could explain why so many of the episodes this season were these headfirst dives into parodies and spoofs, and why so many episodes seemed to pair up stories that didn’t really work well together; the writers and producers were getting all of their ideas out of the way before locking in for one final push to the finish line.
I don’t really want Season 5 to be serialised – though I’m about 99% certain that the finale, at least, will be a two-parter! But given how many weak episode ideas the team seem to have had this year… maybe a serialised story, if it’s a strong one, would be better. It might be an “emergency brake,” shutting down some of the writers’ stupidest ideas before they even get to the concept stage.
Even though Season 4 only wrapped up a short while ago, the longer I’ve sat with it and had time to process these ten episodes, the more convinced I am that it’s done a lot of harm to Strange New Worlds’ overall reputation. Is the series still the “high-water mark of modern Star Trek,” as I’ve repeatedly claimed? Probably… but now that claim comes with an asterisk, and it almost feels like Strange New Worlds is only at the peak by default. Discovery was worse overall, basically a full one-third of Picard is unwatchable garbage, Starfleet Academy was a teen drama with some Star Trek haphazardly stuck to it, and Section 31 was a B-movie. So if you want live-action Star Trek in the 2020s, Strange New Worlds basically wins by default.
But that caveat is a big and growing one, and I would genuinely rank both Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass and Level-Five Writing Accident (as I’ve taken to calling it) as among the absolute worst stories that the franchise has told in this modern era. They’re right down in the sewer with Picard’s second season and some of Discovery’s godawful melodrama and failed “mental health” storylines. They truly were *that* bad.
Something you may have noticed, if you followed my reviews this year, is that I did something I very, very rarely do and genuinely do not enjoy doing: I called out an individual writer by name. Strange New Worlds’ Dana Horgan is responsible for writing (or co-writing) not only Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass and Level-Five Writing Accident, but also A Case of Chiaroscuro, Four-and-a-Half Vulcans, A Space Adventure Hour, and Subspace Rhapsody… basically every episode of the series that I detest or dislike. Horgan does have a couple of semi-redeeming episodes in her repertoire: Ad Astra Per Aspera and New Life and New Civilizations. But neither of those are what I’d call “all-time classics;” they’re not bad, but they’re not spectacular, either.
And I don’t like to call out individuals on the creative side, I think that’s a pretty weak thing to do most of the time. And I especially don’t like to come across as being one of *those* Trekkies, either – the folks who hyperfixate on “the minutiae of canon” or who seem to have absolutely no sense of humour. But honestly… if there’s one positive to Strange New Worlds wrapping up, and to a new batch of creative folks potentially joining Skydance-Paramount to work on Star Trek, it’s that people like Dana Horgan will be on the way out. “But it was all just a dream” is, in my view, the single worst ending to any Star Trek episode ever, and Horgan and co-writer Henry Alonso Myers deserve *all* of the criticism they’re getting for that – and then some.
Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass was the “soap opera episode,” but more so than with any other parody or spoof (or “big swing,” if you want to use their terminology) this time around… it felt pretty mean-spirited and bad-natured. Say what you will about A Case of Chiaroscuro or Human Best Friend; stories like those fully embraced the genres they were part of and went for it in an earnest and honest way. Results will vary when you so openly attempt to take a series to such extremes, I guess… but at least stories like that felt good-natured.
But the longer I’ve had to sit with Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass, the more genuinely mean-spirited, aggressive, and nasty it seems. Rather than respectful homage, the episode crossed a line, seeming to point and laugh at soap opera tropes and clichés – and, by extension, the folks who make those kinds of shows and the audiences that love them. Given that Deidre Hall, a famous American soap actress, was invited to have a guest-starring role, I think that feels even worse. I can only imagine what she (and her co-stars on Days of Our Lives) made of the finished product.
Captain Pike spent much of the season relegated to a supporting role, which is not something I wanted to see from “the Captain Pike show” that many of us were pestering CBS to make a few years ago. And unfortunately, his two major moments in the spotlight – in the season premiere and the aforementioned soap spoof – came in weak, muddled stories that didn’t have enough time to do anything serious with his character.
If there’s one thing I want to see fixed in Season 5, it’s Pike’s disappearing act.
Strange New Worlds has now had two episodes which I think we can argue were “backdoor pilots” for the failed Year One spin-off idea: Season 3’s The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail and Season 4’s Tomorrow’s Enterprise. So can we *please* check that item off the bucket list? We don’t need to spend even more time with Kirk as he prepares to take command; as fun and enjoyable as Paul Wesley has been in the role… this isn’t his show. It was Anson Mount’s Captain Pike that people were most eager to see more of – he’s why this series even exists. But Pike has been repeatedly sidelined and ignored, even in stories where he could’ve had more to do or a bigger role to play, in order to turn Strange New Worlds into the prequel show that it was never meant to be.
The original appeal of Strange New Worlds wasn’t that it would be a TOS prequel. In one of my first-ever posts discussing the series – before we’d even gotten so much as a teaser, a logo, or casting announcements – I said that I’d encourage the team to tread carefully when it came to introducing too many TOS characters in main roles. And it’s really unfortunate that most of the show’s unique and original creations – Hemmer, Pelia, Ortegas, and La’an – have been sidelined or seen their screen time reduced. Even the likes of Dr M’Benga, Una/Number One, and Sam Kirk have played second fiddle to characters who have major roles in The Original Series, a trend that has only accelerated in Season 4.
I would have been happy if Strange New Worlds didn’t do much of the prequel stuff outside of one or two characters – Spock, obviously, and I’ve enjoyed Uhura’s prequel arc, too. The final episode of a series like that could’ve been the handover from Pike to Kirk – something I think we’re still likely to see in Season 5 – but the rest of the show could’ve been much more of a standalone thing. However, looking back on it, the decision to bring in characters like Uhura and Chapel, and later Kirk and Scotty… well, it speaks to a production team that never really understood what it was fans wanted to see, or what the appeal of a series like this was in the first place.
But okay, rather than lamenting decisions taken years ago, let’s consider where Strange New Worlds actually is today – and what its final episodes can and should look like.
I want to set out a major red line right now: Pike’s accident, disability, and the subsequent mission to Talos IV (as depicted in The Menagerie) should be completely off the table. Between TOS and Discovery Season 2 we’ve seen all we needed to see of that, and although we know Pike’s ultimate destination, we don’t need a re-hashing of it with only six episodes left.
There are bound to be complications and explosions along the way, but for me, I still want the final scenes of Strange New Worlds to show Pike in command, on the bridge, ordering his crew – Ortegas, La’an, Una, and so on – to set course for parts unknown one final time.
Do I think that’s remotely likely, though? Well… that’s a different question!
The Season 3 epilogue – which was created before a fourth season renewal had been greenlit – gives me a flicker of hope. The very end of Season 3 saw basically what I’ve just described: Pike in command, the crew ready for orders, and the Enterprise warping away to a new, unseen adventure. That, I think, is how a series like Strange New Worlds needs to end… and I’m at least a little encouraged by the fact that the creative team seem to have agreed with me, at least as of Season 3.
But given that the end of the show was known in advance, I expect Season 5 to be structured quite differently. My gut instinct is still to say that it’ll basically be a “six-hour movie;” six fully-serialised episodes building to an explosive conclusion. But even if it’s more episodic than that, I still think we’re gonna get a lot more Kirk, a lot more TOS characters, a lot more “foreshadowing” and prequel storylines… and a lot less of Pike and the show’s original creations.
Moreover, I really fear that Season 5 is going to try to re-tell some (or perhaps even *all*) of The Menagerie, beginning with Pike’s accident.
I don’t want “The Menagerie, Part III” or any other kind of Menagerie redux. After we saw in Discovery’s second season – and re-emphasised in the brilliant Season 1 finale, too – Pike’s accident and the disability that followed, we simply don’t need to do that again. It would be repetitive, it wouldn’t add anything to the character or his arc on the series, and while it remains Pike’s ultimate destination, we’ve already seen what that looks like in different ways – going back some sixty years.
Given the weaknesses on the writing side, though… I’m genuinely worried that Season 5 will end by re-telling the accident aboard the J-class ship that ultimately crippled Captain Pike. For writers of this quality level, there’s surely gonna be a temptation to say “oh, that’s where the character’s storyline ends up, so let’s just… do it again.” And given everything we’ve just been saying about TOS characters taking over major roles and pushing out the show’s original creations… that storyline could be the *only* one that Captain Pike gets in the entire season.
After Tomorrow’s Enterprise purportedly showed us a time-jump of just one year into the future, I also can’t help but wonder whether Season 5 is basically gonna pick up *there* instead. The very first scene could be Pike relinquishing command, with Kirk taking over – and Pike’s main (or only) story in the entire season could be that re-telling of parts of Discovery and The Menagerie. That would be… well, I think that would just be awful.
I also expect to see several characters shuffled off-stage pretty early on in Season 5. We’ve already seen that Ortegas departs the Enterprise to take up a teaching role – along with a promotion to the rank of Captain – and that Dr M’Benga is diverting more of his time away from the Enterprise, with Drs Boyce and McCoy stepping up to replace him. We already know of two TOS re-casts for Season 5: Thomas Jane as Dr McCoy and Kai Murakami as Sulu. I adored Thomas Jane in the sci-fi series The Expanse, but Dr McCoy and Sulu being present could indicate that both Dr M’Benga and Ortegas won’t be a big part of the show next time around.
Then we have Pelia. In the episode Once La’an A Time, Pelia apparently chose to remain behind aboard the Elysian Kingdom’s flying planet-ship… but we didn’t see that for ourselves, we got no goodbye from Pelia, and I really hope that very poor exposition dump won’t be the last we see or hear of her. But, again, given Scotty’s rise to prominence… well, I can’t help but feel he’s going to be taking over for any and all engineering storylines. Re-introducing Pelia for an episode or two, only to have her leave again arguably doesn’t make a lot of sense… but her departure was so pathetically lacklustre that almost *anything* would be better than another character just telling us, in a throwaway line, that she’s gone away to live on a farm upstate.
I’ve said several times across Season 4 that La’an is the top of my “death watch” list going into Season 5, and that hasn’t changed. If anything, the finale – particularly Kirk’s reaction to her name being mentioned and his subsequent refusal to discuss her – ramped up the idea that, if anyone isn’t gonna make it all the way to the end, it’s gonna be La’an. There are multiple ways this could go, though I think the “latent augment DNA” angle that Season 4 introduced may have been as resolved as it’s gonna get. A heroic death of some kind, perhaps in a fight against the Gorn, could be on the agenda for her.
Una is another character who I think could realistically be killed off. She was absent from the future timeline in Tomorrow’s Enterprise, but more significantly, perhaps, she played no role in helping Pike in The Menagerie. You could make the exact same case for several of Pike’s friends and shipmates, of course… but Una seems like someone willing to bend the rules enough to help. I guess I’d rank her just below La’an on my “death watch” list.
Una is also the main character who I feel Strange New Worlds has done the least with. After we learned in Season 1 that she’s an Illyrian, Season 2 put her on trial… and then she’s mostly been confined to smaller roles ever since. Her big outing in Season 4 came in A Case of Chiaroscuro, the noir-inspired episode, and although it wasn’t really “my thing,” I can appreciate that it was a solid spotlight for her. But look back at past iterations of Star Trek: the ship’s XO would usually have a bigger role in more stories. Una is basically Strange New Worlds’ Chakotay!
Chapel’s storylines have been increasingly tied to Dr M’Benga, and I think we’re gonna get something from the two of them as the doctor prepares to scale back his role. We could see, perhaps, Chapel’s first run-in with Dr McCoy – or there could be history between them that they’ll have to work through. That kinda thing is what I’d expect to see from Chapel in Season 5.
Uhura, as I’ve noted more than once, got the best and most complete prequel arc. We saw her go from an uncertain cadet to a confident officer – the embodiment of Nichelle Nichols’ character. And honestly, after *two* major spotlights in the second half of Season 4… I kinda feel like we don’t need any more from Uhura, to be blunt about it – especially if Season 5 has fewer episodes to play with. Her arc was basically complete as of Orders of Magnitude; Tomorrow’s Enterprise was the cherry on top.
Spock… is a tough one, to be honest.
Strange New Worlds’ writers seem to have settled on one idea for Spock, and one only: “hey, aren’t these autistic-coded Vulcans all stuck-up, repressed, and weird? That’s just hilarious!” The result of that has been four seasons of “Spock comedy,” with very little by way of serious storylines for one of Star Trek’s most beloved and iconic characters. *Some* of that has been okay – I liked, for example, seeing Spock hallucinating plants in Human Best Friend. But it’s undeniably been too much of the same thing, as well as too much out-of-character stuff for Spock in these forty episodes.
So, as I’ve said more than once, if the writers really can’t think of anything else for Spock to do… it’s okay to use him in smaller roles. Don’t put him front-and-centre if another slapstick farce is the only thing they’re willing to write (or are capable of writing). I’d rather not see Spock at all than see more “Vulcan comedy” in Season 5.
There are a couple of secondary characters I’d like to see get some kind of story beat or sendoff. Sam Kirk, sadly, was relegated to playing second fiddle to his brother in stories where a Kirk was present – even though his scientific role could (and should) have been used more often. I’d like to see him get some kind of goodbye, even if it’s just a short scene as he departs the Enterprise to be with his family.
Then we have Mitchell, who was absent in Season 4 for some reason. It would be nice to see her back on the bridge – perhaps alongside Sulu, just to get another of those threads of continuity. Now that we know her step-brother is Where No Man Has Gone Before’s Gary Mitchell… maybe there’s something the series could do with that. I doubt we’ll see transporter chief Kyle or other secondary bridge characters; most of those haven’t been seen since Seasons 2 or 3, and didn’t play major roles anyway.
Finally, we have T’Pring and Admiral April. T’Pring is a Spock-centric character, and I’d argue that they’ve basically gone through every possible relationship drama storyline that Strange New Worlds might invent. A short, minor role for T’Pring could be okay, but I don’t think it’s really necessary at this point. And, again, the writers’ love for “Spock comedy” is not something we need more of!
We know that Admiral April will be present in Season 5 in some form – I’d expect it would be him to offer Pike a promotion, perhaps paving the way for the changeover at the top of the Enterprise’s crew. Whether that’ll come at the end, the beginning, or in the middle… who can say? But we seem to have at least one more adventure with Admiral April on the agenda before the series wraps up.
If I were to lump all of Season 4’s episodes into categories… here’s how I’d do it.
In the category I’m calling “irredeemably awful,” we have Level-Five Writing Accident – largely due to its atrocious ending, an ending that would’ve made a primary school teacher roll their eyes and that should’ve been nowhere near a big-budget TV production. And the second episode in this category is Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass, not only for squandering a genuinely relatable and emotional story for Captain Pike (and wasting Anson Mount’s best performance of the season), but also for how mean-spirited and *nasty* it was in the way it targeted the genre it was spoofing.
In the “boring, mid, and just generally not great” category, we have three episodes: Valles Marineris, A Case of Chiaroscuro, and Once La’an A Time. I will re-watch none of these episodes, probably – certainly not for a very long time – and they’re all some combination of forgettable, overstuffed, uninspired, or simply disappointing in various ways. I was particularly upset that the “dinosaur episode” that had been teased in a lot of pre-season marketing material turned out to be such a dud.
That leads us to the category titled “fun but flawed,” which contains a single episode: The Griffin Incident. Another episode let down by its ending – or, in this case, the absolute lack of an ending. The Griffin Incident is genuinely one of Star Trek’s best-ever horror stories… for the first fifty minutes or so. Then Captain Pike comes in, sits down with La’an and basically says “who cares what happened, maybe someone else can figure it out, but I honestly don’t give a shit.” And you know what? If that’s how the writers wanted the episode to “end,” I guess I don’t give a shit either.
The next category is “solid B-plus.” And this category also contains just one episode: Tomorrow’s Enterprise, the season finale. It was a bit unnecessary to do a second Uhura spotlight, given that her arc already felt complete, and I don’t think Strange New Worlds needed a *second* backdoor pilot for its failed spin-off. But it was a rare unicorn of an episode insofar as it’s a time travel/time loop paradox… that I didn’t hate. I enjoyed it pretty much the whole way through, and while it’s not the best of the series or the season… it was pretty good for what it was.
Finally, we come to the “cream of the crop.” These three episodes – Human Best Friend, Off-Hour, and Orders of Magnitude – hit all of the right notes for me personally, and I think all three did what they set out to do exceptionally well. Human Best Friend was a send-up of “stoner comedies” like Dude, Where’s My Car and The Hangover, and even though I know I’m in the minority here… I thought it was great fun for what it was. Star Trek doesn’t always need to be 100% serious, and when it fully leans into comedy – and the comedy doesn’t get in the way of anything else – it can be fantastic.
Off-Hour felt like “Strange New Worlds does TNG’s Disaster,” and while I argued there might’ve been more creative ways to use some of the characters (and that the drama was dialled a notch or two too high in places), it was a tense, exciting, and just plain fun ride all the way through. Orders of Magnitude had that great Uhura spotlight, as mentioned, and I also enjoyed the “badmiral” on Kirk’s side of the story, too.
As we look ahead to Season 5… well, I see some glimmers of hope, but quite a few reasons to be pessimistic, I’m sorry to say. A generally disappointing fourth season had basically four watchable episodes, four pieces of fluff, and two level-five writing accidents that should never have made it even halfway through the production process. If Season 5 is to be an improvement… we need some pretty major changes. And unfortunately, production has already wrapped. There’s no time for the team to take on board *any* feedback.
And that leaves me worried.
I am, however, crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. At its peak, Strange New Worlds can still be a fantastic series, full of that spirit of adventure and that elusive “Star Trek-ness” that Trekkies like you and I love to see. A few episodes this season managed to absolutely nail that feeling… and I still want more.
I’m concerned that Season 5 is going to double- and triple-down on turing Strange New Worlds into “The Original Series Season 0,” with Kirk in command, the show’s original characters taking a back seat, and perhaps even trying to replay Pike’s accident as a way to end his arc. But that isn’t what I want to see – or what I *ever* wanted to see from this series.
I’m glad, despite some misfires in Season 4, that Strange New Worlds has tried to take Star Trek back to its episodic roots. This franchise – more than any other, really – needs the freedom that only episodic television can bring. The Enterprise needs to be able to warp away to a new planet, a new alien, and a new adventure pretty much every week. And after seasons of Picard, Discovery, Starfleet Academy, and even Prodigy were forced into a modern, serialised streaming TV mould… it’s been a breath of fresh air to get a Star Trek show that embraces that more episodic style.
Unfortunately, that freedom has led to some silly – and some downright moronic – story ideas. Season 4 seems to have brought the worst of these to the fore… which I *hope* is indicative of the writers and production team getting their more “creative” ideas out of their systems ahead of Season 5! But that might be a plain and simple “cope,” and the truth is… I’m not especially optimistic, at this stage, that Season 5 won’t go even harder on the “big swings,” spoofs, and parodies.
I’m also concerned that Season 5 might end up being wholly serialised – perhaps akin to a “six-hour movie” to round off the series. If that happens, the single story being told will have to be exceptional, and if there’s one word I would *not* use to describe most of the writing in Season 4… it would be “exceptional.” So, again, that’s a big concern.
Serialised stories can work in Star Trek, don’t get me wrong… but my confidence in the writers is shaken right now, and if Strange New Worlds just kind of fizzles out with an unspectacular (or outright *bad*) six-episode finale, that’ll be a major disappointment.
So that’s how I see things as Season 5 looms on the horizon!
If and when we get more information about Season 5, or if we see a trailer or a teaser clip at next month’s Comic-Con, for example, I’ll do my best to break it down here on the website. I may revisit some of these points, revising or even rescinding them if pre-season trailers and marketing material look better than ever. And I never *want* Star Trek to be bad – especially not a series like Strange New Worlds, which has been my favourite show of the current streaming era. I just can’t shake some of these concerns and worries right now, given how badly large parts of Season 4 landed.
Thanks for joining me for this look ahead, and I hope this has been interesting. I know it hasn’t been “fun,” but sometimes that’s the way it goes in the Trekkie community, eh? Stay tuned, because I’m hoping to write up re-watches of Strange New Worlds Season 1 between now and when Season 5 airs, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the show soon, too. If you missed my Season 4 episode reviews, you can find all of them on my dedicated Strange New Worlds page right here on the website. Click or tap here to check it out. There are reviews for all of Seasons 2 and 3, as well, along with other commentary, theories, and discussion pieces. Thanks again for reading, and as always… Live Long and Prosper, friends!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-4 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available. The first three seasons are also available on DVD and/or Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of the Skydance-Paramount corporation. Behind-the-scenes set photos courtesy of Skydance-Paramount/Paramount+/Star Trek on social media. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
