Star Trek: Discovery: Season 4

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Generally unfavorable reviews based on 51 Ratings

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2.9	User Score Generally unfavorable reviews based on 51 Ratings

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Star Trek: Discovery: An Alien Assembly

Now Playing: Star Trek: Discovery: An Alien Assembly

Season Details & Credits

CBS | CBS All Access | Paramount+ | Season Premiere Date: November 18, 2021

Summary: Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery face a threat to both Federation and non-Federation worlds in the fourth season of the sci-fi series.

Genre(s): Drama, Action & Adventure, Science Fiction

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Season 4 Episodes

4.9
S4:E13. Coming Home
Air Date: March 17, 2022
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S4:E12. Species Ten-C
Air Date: March 10, 2022
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S4:E11. Rosetta
Air Date: March 3, 2022

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

Alex Zalben

Nov 18, 2021

With the crew established and the characters beloved, the series is now taking the time to lead boldly not with surprises, but with tremendous amounts of heart. Read full review

IndieWire Christian Blauvelt

Nov 18, 2021

Star Trek: Discovery” Season 4 has reached that level of eye-tickling worldbuilding and has done so seamlessly. ... But if depth of character — other than Burnham — is still sorely missing from “Discovery,” at least there’s a lot of dazzle to feast on. Read full review

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Rob Owen

Nov 18, 2021

Episode four suggests this new threat might be an allegory for Earth’s response to covid-19, but more concerning for fans will be how the show handles a beloved character’s growth. Read full review

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2.9

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User Reviews

RADErX4

Nov 22, 2021

Discovery moves from strength to strength with a confident, frenetic but also personal season premiere. This also happens to be the best looking show on TV. This may as well be playing at your local multiplex.

Fantastic

1 of 3 users found this helpful12

sirkelas

Jan 15, 2022

Really enjoyed this first half of season 4!
I'm no die hard Star Trek fan... so I just take it for what it is, a really enjoyable sci-fi show to watch.

1 of 3 users found this helpful12

FlippyHam

Dec 6, 2021

Most Trek shows don't fully hit their stride until Seasons 3 or 4, and Discovery is no exception. Now that the new setting has been fully established in Season 3, this new season begins with a sense of confidence and certainty that hasn't existed in the series before now. The show no longerMost Trek shows don't fully hit their stride until Seasons 3 or 4, and Discovery is no exception. Now that the new setting has been fully established in Season 3, this new season begins with a sense of confidence and certainty that hasn't existed in the series before now. The show no longer feels the need to prove it deserves to be Trek and simply knows that it is. The actors know their characters and play to their strengths to provide classic societal allegory for modern times. This season's "big bad" and resultant "popular uprising" due to the increased stress is the perfect story for humanity of 2021. Finally, Star Trek has left behind its dependence on 60s or 90s era Trek nostalgia and crafted its own set of tech and political configurations while maintaining the philosophy and hopefulness that is always at Trek's core. The slower scenes this season between Saru and Michael or Culber and Tilly exemplify the same exploration of humanity and feel as if they could be conversations between Kirk and Spock or McCoy and Kirk. If you let yourself open up to strange new tech and new ideas, you will see this is great Trek, and pretty darn good television.… Expand

1 of 6 users found this helpful15

khos77

Dec 10, 2021

Very disappointing after 4 episodes...die hard fan of star trek and lived the first 3 seasons however acting is sub par this season and story line is plain

3 of 4 users found this helpful31

Sveinbjorn

Dec 20, 2021

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The 4th season has done away with all characters that created friction or drama. While such characters are maybe not typical for later star trek (Shatner was no diplomat), they were the tentpoles of Discovery.
So far we have a menace that is random and uncomfortable, a mystery that is given little progress and no definition to add interest.

And the crew have the air of a crowd of people that have very recently started therapy. Everyone makes their boundaries everyone elses problem, leading up to a shark-jumping scene in episode four, where a group of cadettes in imminent mortal danger from some boring space monsters feel entitled to stop, in an undefensible open area, to shout racism at each other(!), at a point where they should be running tovards a defendable position close by. While the show is painfully trying to be in touch with feelings, the moral lessons are terrible: Book deals with trauma with a space mindmeld, and learns that... If you suffer great loss, find the nearest Vulcan.

The moral clarity is fundementalist, no tough choices here, not really. No train track conundrums, just the everpresent fantasy, moral certainty is good, nothing is really complicated, you just need to break free from the shackles of moral relativity.

The subplot with the genderfluid Gray seeking a body is dreadful. They and their body co-occupant Adira seem to be an avatar for charmlessness, all dour, cowardly and pretty ok with it. In season 3 they had arcs and gravity, in s04 they just whine.

Its all so on the nose.

Star Trek made us all more open minded by meeting us half-way, and playing little tricks, that piqued empathy.

Discovery has done away with that, its moral world alien to anyone over 35, anyone who never got help or support, anyone who never got their feelings validated this much.

I’ve done a ton of therapy, but I’m still a 42 year old child of the old world, and these characters are unnerving. They just seem so entitled, like they’d all suck up all the energy in the room, and none seem to have picked up even a whiff of humility from their lives, except Saru, who’s a fantasy father-figure, a masculine sponge of everyone elses bullsh*. I want the world more open-minded. However I hate when the “open-minded” set close ranks. And thats the problem. The series has done away with “evil”, by writing out any characters that had oppurtunity to grow.

The new characters are either blobs of jelly like the Admiral, demigods like Ma’ Burnham, or exposition printers like David Cronenberg’s character.

The pressure for moral purity has dumbed the series down. And it was never smart to begin with.

But it hade a core, “constant evolution”

But now its found its final form, tv comfort food for people who are returning to america’s christian fundementalist roots, that there is clear good, clear evil, and you need church, where you are fed moral clarity.

I was so pissed off after episode 4, that I decided to take another run at The Orville. O is unabashedly mediocre TV, but by making the most of Trek tropes, plus Bro idiot side characters for comedy, it gives its writers space to explore ideas. We have a reversal of trans issues episode, when Bortis, who’s male like all of his race, hatches a female, and cultural mores call for gender re-assignment surgery. Female characters taking offense to the lethal misoginy, males looking at the cultural norms, a flawed outcome and its effect on the relationship. And dick-jokes to boot.

While Orville is teaching us to accept loss, be modern men like the captain, who has to rein in his feelings and respect his ex wife and xo’s new relationship… Discovery is all “my way or the highway”. Stranded in space, having lost all connection to all she’s ever been or known, Tilly’s main goal is to “move out of the comfort zone”. Must be nice.

The writers’ absolute lack of experience with any real hardship becomes so blisteringly clear. The problems of Discovery’s crew are all of their own making, and they intend to learn nothing, and reject growth.

And when the Family Guy guy has you beat on maturity, don’t you need to reconsider your priorities?

Some of what I’ve written is clearly hyperbolic. There are exceptions, and I’ve over-generalised. But I will not have an unconditionally loving saru-dad in my life, I have to love my cranky one with all his flaws.
I will never live in Discovery’s fantasy world, I’ve tried to be their characters and gotten rejected for it.
Most of the trolls that hate this have similar experience, but no emotional language to express it. Often they live in worlds with Discovery-like characters, oppressive, smug, monopolising their feelings as the only valid ones.

The ship was steered into the center of the culture wars, and left there.

Its an unwelcoming place. And in reality, you always get eaten by the boring space monsters.… Expand

4 of 5 users found this helpful41

choochookid

Dec 31, 2021

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I'm sad to rate a Star Trek series so low. I've seen every episode of every series multiple times and love the various ideas and ideals, even when I don't agree with the premise of a particular show or episode. Discovery is such a waste of the talents of its actors. Warning, spoilers ahead. I understand that each ST series usually reflects the issues of their time, and the various anxieties, stresses and mental/psychological health issues that the characters have to deal with in Discovery continue this tradition. But we're being bombarded, constantly, with everyone's troubled mental and psychological states. Episode 6...I've had it. Everyone jump in the pattern buffer so you don't die. But wait, if we can store everyone in the pattern buffer, why can't we just print you out again if you DO die...like a file we stored on a hard drive?! A woke, sentient ship that has somehow evolved and has to deal with emotions and choices. If I was the ship, I'd cut oxygen and give all of the characters a merciful ending to this dreadful series created by so-called "Star Trek fans" who increasingly miss the point of Star Trek's mission to explore and make us think. We the audience are apparently too stupid to consider the plots and ideas to draw our own conclusions and instead must be told what is right and wrong, and our attention is too poor to deal with plotlines that don't have some existence-threatening problem every season. too bad.… Expand

4 of 5 users found this helpful41

Morgrain

Mar 21, 2022

It's not good. Dialogues are, well, bad (incoherent, simplistic, often make little sense, do not advance the story) and the plot is not executed in a coherent way. In the end, one 2 minute speech "THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP AND EMOTIONS COMPELL YOU", and kaboom, everyone is happy, and theIt's not good. Dialogues are, well, bad (incoherent, simplistic, often make little sense, do not advance the story) and the plot is not executed in a coherent way. In the end, one 2 minute speech "THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP AND EMOTIONS COMPELL YOU", and kaboom, everyone is happy, and the mighty alien species is instantly ceasing all hostile activity. Of course.… Expand

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

SEE ALL 21 REVIEWS

Seasons & Episodes

73

Series Overview
Season 4

tbd
- Season 4 Overview
  Air Date: November 18, 2021
- 4.9
  S4:E13. Coming Home
  Air Date: March 17, 2022
- tbd
  S4:E12. Species Ten-C
  Air Date: March 10, 2022
- tbd
  S4:E11. Rosetta
  Air Date: March 3, 2022
- tbd
  S4:E10. The Galactic Barrier
  Air Date: February 24, 2022
- tbd
  S4:E7. ...But to Connect
  Air Date: December 30, 2021
- tbd
  S4:E6. Stormy Weather
  Air Date: December 23, 2021
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  S4:E5. The Examples
  Air Date: December 16, 2021
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  S4:E4. All Is Possible
  Air Date: December 9, 2021
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  S4:E3. Choose to Live
  Air Date: December 2, 2021
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  S4:E2. Anomaly
  Air Date: November 25, 2021
Season 3

75
- Season 3 Overview
  Air Date: October 15, 2020
Season 2

72
- Season 2 Overview
  Air Date: January 17, 2019
Season 1

72
- Season 1 Overview
  Air Date: September 24, 2017