‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Takes a New Tact to Combat an Old Prequel Problem

Halfway through the rollicking, tumultuous fourth season of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” one guest onboard the U.S.S. Enterprise is fed up.

“I’m sorry, but I have stood by this lunacy long enough,” she says to the unblinking crew gathered around her. “I am aware that pandemonium is the status quo on this Starship, but just this one time, could you please acknowledge that this entire situation is absurd?”

After a considerate beat, Ortegas (Melissa Navia) states the obvious — or what’s obvious to everyone except their aggravated guest: “Absurdity is kind of baked into the premise.”

While perhaps not its formal mission statement, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” has only grown more comfortable embracing absurd scenarios. Outrageous one-offs like the body swap episode, the musical episode, the murder-mystery episode, and more populate the first three seasons of the prequel to “The Original Series.” Season 4 keeps ’em coming, despite recent grumblings from select factions of Trekkies (who may or may not be represented by the aforementioned guest): There’s a drug-trip episode, a noir episode, a puppet episode, and what to me will always be (perhaps because I watched it shortly after Sam Neill’s passing) the “Event Horizon” episode.

Granted, the crew stumbling upon a ghost ship is more in line with classic “Trek” than the crew mutating into muppets, but therein lies the charm to “Strange New Worlds”: It’s all “Star Trek.” It’s science-fiction that’s pushing the fiction a little harder than the science, but — in line with the captain’s credo — it’s exploring the strangest worlds it can dream of, and it’s doing so with an invigorating gusto.

Sure, sometimes the tonal shifts get away from co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, or their attempts at genre storytelling miss the mark. But aren’t those intermittent slip-ups better than more of the same? Isn’t a fun “Star Trek” that’s willing to take risks on being goofy better than those previous, steadfastly serious Paramount+ programs that felt like any other streaming-era science-fiction shows? Shouldn’t we get our priorities in order before the new regime at Warnermount decides on the franchise’s future?

“Strange New Worlds” is still the best “Star Trek” we’ve seen in a long time, and many of its issues might be solved if it wasn’t running out of runway. Season 5, at only six episodes, is slated to be the final season, and there’s no word on whether Paramount is interested in “Year One,” the team’s pitch to bridge the gap between “Strange New Worlds” and “The Original Series.” In the here and now, Season 4 suffers from many of the same setbacks as Season 3: namely, the character arcs just aren’t strong enough.

Rebecca Romijn in ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘Jan Thijs/Paramount+

Through six of the 10 episodes, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is suddenly recycling old dilemmas: Christine (Jess Bush) is once again torn between staying at her challenging post or leaving for greener pastures. La’An (Christina Chong) is still worried she’ll break bad (like her ancestor, Khan). Joseph (Babs Olusanmokun) is still haunted by his past. Una (Rebecca Romijn) revisits her core paradox: when to break the rules and when to follow them.

It’s as if they’ve all reached the end of a race ahead of time, and rather than cross the finish line, they’re just politely running in circles. And that, my friends, is a prequel problem. Now, no one prevented Goldsman and Myers from creating more substantial personal matters for the cast to work through, and previous prequels have proven there are ways to complicate and progress characters without invalidating the people they’re destined to become. “Strange New Worlds” should be better here, plain and simple.

But the show’s episodic structure actually softens the impact of these blunders. The premiere strikes a note-perfect balance between a ludicrous adventure and ethical thought experiment. The “Event Horizon” entry is a fresh approach to mining personal demons through spooky (even gruesome) atmospherics. The drug-trip episode and black-and-white noir bite off more than they can chew (with the former choosing poor guides through an intoxicating company retreat and the latter capturing a shadowy rebel uprising with a fuzzy, cluttered visual palette), but Season 4 bounces back in a big way with “The Muppets Take Over the Enterprise” followed by a real-time ticking clock thriller.

Never without spirit and repeatedly inspired, the new episodes continue to push the boundaries of what audiences expect from a “Star Trek” series, while honoring the franchise’s past through its reimagined characters and world-of-the-week framework. Even as it builds toward the original series’ starting point, those absurd premises better distinguish “Strange New Worlds” within the established universe, while helping to distract us from any persisting serialized hang-ups.

In a perfect world, “Strange New Worlds” would have six more seasons instead of six more episodes to explore the crew’s depths and experiment with genre, tone, and style. In the real world, Goldsman and Myers might feel like they don’t have time to start the crew down new paths before their race wraps. Instead, they’re leaning into the old “Star Trek” ideals of being culturally curious, communally supportive, and strangely fun — all of which help set the series apart from its Paramount-era predecessors.

Perhaps the most telling example of Season 4 character development (or lack thereof) happens in the first episode. After spending the dramatic hour contemplating a promotion — one that would take him away from his ship and his crew — Captain Pike relays his final decision. “I want to focus on my now,” Pike says. “And that’s here. With the Enterprise.”

“Strange New Worlds” is living in the now, too — choosing to boldly stay true to itself, even as it approaches exactly where “Star Trek” began.

Grade: B

“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” Season 4 premieres Thursday, July 23 on Paramount+. New episodes will be released weekly through the finale on September 24.