Well season 4 of Star Trek Strange New Worlds has now finished up. It’s time to give a review/recap of this crazy season of Trek.

I am going to skip all of the cancellation and added on extra episodes drama (for now) and just stick with the 4th season happenings.

Now any modern Trek fan knows Star Trek has been suffering from the critic backlash for quite some time now. But SNW has been the shiny point in that murk.

But if you paid any attention to the blab this season, you would think this was the worst TV in history. I think that couldn’t be further from the truth.

This season the show runners went with an approach where each episode was written and performed in very distinct and not subtle genre styles. Most, very shockingly so.

We had the likes of somewhat usual time travel, action/thriller, horror-esque episodes. But also had a full on comedy episode, a classic soap opera acted episode, a medieval fantasy episode, a Film Noir style episode filmed in black and white, and even an episode in Muppet mode!

I don’t know where a line in the sand was drawn, but there must have been. TNG did basically all of this stuff years/decades before and is regarded by Trek fans as arguably the best Trek.  

But here in SNW it’s “too gimmicky” or “Why aren’t they exploring Strange New Anything?”

I’m not sure we even watched the same episodes if these are their complaints. I could see these points being valid if it was just , BOOM, “we going black and white just because I want too” or “Hey lets turn into puppets just because.” 

But that was not the case. There were in-episode explanations that explained WHY things happened like they did. And every time, it was because they were encountering something completely new to them! 

Oh sure there were some goofy “c’mon man” moments, but “most” were “explained” in episode or through (which is probably where the divide came) the fans working things out for themselves. 

This whole season really channeled classic Trek moments. TNG, Voyager, DS9, even TOS and TAS had their fingerprints on this season.

This is an odd, but good season of not just SNW, but Star Trek as a whole. And I think those outlying fans who didn’t “get” what was happening in front of them, will figure things out. 

I can’t wait for the final episodes of the upcoming season 5 and see how they tie things up.