Star Trek: Discovery (2017) Season 4 Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be reviewing the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery as the season finale aired last night here in Canada, and dropped yesterday morning in the U.S. There will be spoilers for the season so if you're not caught up yet, don't read this review until you have caught up. Unless you're not watching the show, or don't care about spoilers. Let's get into it.

Season 4 is not only my favourite season of the show so far, but it is by far the BEST season of Discovery out of all of them. I honestly feel like the writers and showrunner of this show have really taken the criticisms fans have had with the first three seasons and fixed them. They've definitely addressed most of, if not all of, the issues my parents and I had with the show during it's first three seasons, which is awesome.

An example of this is the fact that the entire season was about exploration and diplomacy, with the use of violence only being used as a last resort. Much how the crews did it in the original shows. Which is great to see, because I felt that Star Trek is the kind of show that doesn't need a singular antagonist or a universe breaking situation every single season the way the first three seasons of Discovery and the majority of the other modern Star Trek shows have done or are doing if they're still airing their season like Prodigy is right now. 

This season was also full of hope, even in the face of great tragedy such as at the beginning of the season when Book's planet, Kwejian, was destroyed by the DMA. Instead of going in phasers blazing, our characters took the time to learn about what they were dealing and how to deal with them best. Which was very refreshing to see.

Burnham has come a long way from the person who incited a war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire back in the show's pilot episode. And I think that's because she's the captain of the ship now, and she knows she has a responsibility to her crew, whereas before, she had a responsibility for her duties, first on the Shenzhou, and then aboard the Discovery. And looking back, it makes sense that the writers chose to make Burnham the captain, since that was the track she was on before she performed the ancient Vulcan Hello in the pilot. 

Another thing that I enjoyed about this season is that there's more focus on the ship's bridge crew beyond Burnham, Tilly, and Saru. So much of the first three seasons were focused on those three, that when Airiam was killed in season 2, I didn't care, because we didn't know her. This season Owosekun had several great moments, as did Detmer. Though Nilsson, Christopher, and Rhys still weren't used all that much, though they did have bigger roles in the back end of the season, leading up to last night's finale. There are several things I didn't like though.

The biggest is that Gray was written off the show entirely. Before season 3 started, CBS/Paramount hyped both Adira and Gray up as important characters as they were the first non-binary character (Adira) and the first transgender character (Gray) on Star Trek ever. Which is great, I was really happy to see that. But then they did absolutely NOTHING with them all season, following the official sanctioning of Adira as the host of the Tal Symbiont by the Trill early on in the season. Again, that's fine, because this show tends to introduce characters over the course of a season so they're in place for the following season. 

Season 4 came along, and again, the showrunner, Michelle Paradise, said they were doing awesome things with both Adira and Gray this season. And then they didn't, beyond Gray helping Discovery's sentient A.I., Zora, adapt to her new sentience in one episode, which was actually a great episode. Even Adira got shafted once again this season, not even appearing for two or three episodes in the middle of the season. I don't know if that's because of limited availability of Blu del Barrio, who plays Adira, and Ian Alexander, who plays Gray, or what. It could be any number of things, but it is disappointing when a network/studio/streaming service places actors/characters front and center in press releases, and then do nothing with them. It's not fair to the performers, who work more than 12 hours a day on the set. It's also not fair to the audience, because we want to be invested in new characters, but we can't if they don't do anything. It goes back to what I said about Airiam before. I wanted to feel something when the crew was forced to kill her, but didn't because all she was was a face on the Bridge, with no personality or backstory to her until the episode where she was killed. So Discovery Writers' Room, please do better next season.

Don't get me wrong though, I did enjoy what we did get of both Adira and Gray this season, I just wish we'd gotten more. But, I understand all too well why they didn't get much to do. And it's not because there are too many characters on the show, because there really isn't. The reason neither character got much to do is the same reason that Nia Nal hardly had anything to do on Supergirl after her initial episodes. It feels like they were added to the cast as an act of Tokenism. Which is really weird because Stamets and Culber have never felt that way. Even in the first season. So I don't really understand why Adira and Gray do feel that way even though I'm hoping that wasn't the producers's intention when they created the characters last season as that would be very unfortunate. Alrighty, so let's move on to the other two things that I didn't like about this season.

The first is the character of Tarka. Shawn Doyle did a wonderful job playing the character, but he was completely unnecessary. We had enough with Booker being devastated by the destruction of Kwejian in the season opener, that we didn't need Tolian Soran Lite as well. And that's basically what he is because he is employing similar tactics to get into an alternate universe to reunite with his friend Oros that Soran used in Star Trek: Generations in order to return to the Nexus so he could reunite with his family. In relation to Tarka we didn't all of those flashbacks to his time in the Emerald Chain prison with Oros. Why? Because it's unnecessary backstory. He mentioned it to Booker a few episodes earlier and that's all we needed to know. We didn't need to see any of it.

The problem with television these days is that they feel the need to show us everything, even though telling us would be better in terms of making the story flow better. The Book of Boba Fett did it with Fett's escape from the Sarlacc and then his time with the Tusken Raider, when a few lines to Fennic, Mando, or whoever would've been enough. Hawkeye did it with Echo, which we definitely didn't need. Even movies do it quite a bit too these days. And I don't know if that's because the flashbacks on Arrow did so well during it's first five seasons, or if it's because of the success of several prequel shows and movies to the big franchise films and shows in the late '90s through to the mid-2010s. Either way, it's an unnecessary plot device in most instances that isn't necessary.

The last thing I didn't like was the roller coaster ride we went on with the president of the Federation, Laira Rillak. She seemed like she was going to be yet another corrupt politician, brought into the show as a foil for both Admiral Vance and Burnham. But then she wasn't. Which I'm glad about, but it wasn't even treated as a red herring, and the switch from antagonistic to best friends with both Vance and Burnham was a bit jarring. So much so that when Rillak's original assessment of Burnham from the season opener was brought up again in the finale, I had completely forgotten about it. And that's just because it wasn't the central focus of their relationship during this season, even though the season opener set it up to be that way. It just didn't happen.

All of those things are just minor things in this season. As I said at the beginning of this review, it is the best season of Discovery out of the four we've had so far. The writers and producers have taken the constructive criticism and used it to make the show better. Which should be done on shows like Star Trek. And they did so, within reason. They didn't change the foundation of the show, they simply tweaked it. Which is great to see.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I will be back tomorrow though because I'm watching the 2022 version of Cheaper by the Dozen, which dropped on Disney+ today and I plan on talking about it tomorrow. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.