Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (season 4)
{4.5/5} “‘Are you going to try to take over the galaxy now?’ ‘I don’t know.'” — Dr. M’Benga & La’an
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, aired in 2026
Captain Christopher Pike and the Enterprise are witnessing a stunning stellar storm when they get an unexpected distress call. When they go into the storm they get thrown into an unknown area. Una takes a small landing party to get some fuel, and an unknown alien species grabs the damaged Enterprise as salvage. Una, La’an, and Erica are startled to find dinosaurs on the planet they landed on.
With three less-than-great episodes in a row, this season is a bit disappointing.
“The Griffin Incident” is so gruesome I couldn’t believe it was a Star Trek episode. The black and white episode and the puppet episode didn’t work as well as previous outside-the-box ideas. Kor shows up in “A Case of Chiaroscuro” but I’m not sure why — he is in no way reminiscent of the Kor we know.
However, that still leaves lots to like — the rest of the stories are brilliant. The conversation between M’Benga and Chapel in “Off-Hour” is stunning. Kirk and Uhura have superb roles in “Orders of Magnitude.” And Uhura has another big role in the season finale — two roles, actually.
One of the many beautiful things about the show is Celia Rose Gooding has taken Uhura from a raw cadet to the Uhura we know in TOS. Another is Jess Bush fleshing out the character of Chapel who didn’t really have much to do in TOS. Of course, in both cases the writers contributed in a big way.
Joe Morton shows up as a distinguished admiral.
Stars Babs Olusanmokun, Martin Quinn, and Dan Jeannotte.
I previously reviewed season 3.