Strange New Worlds S4 review: style over substance, gimmicks over characters

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiered in 2022 as a spin-off of Star Trek: Discovery offering a throwback approach to the franchise that focused on episodic storytelling and serialized character growth, rather than the season-long plotlines that had defined the franchise's Paramount Plus era. But while showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers have delivered some hilarious and poignant stories over the course of the show’s run, they’ve also focused too much on gimmick episodes while letting some of their core cast stagnate. As season 3 made some progress on the main arc leading up to Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) taking command of the U.S.S. Enterprise from Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), it rushed some of its character-driven stories in favor of turning everyone into Vulcans, doing a holodeck murder mystery, and having omnipotent aliens put enemies in a terrarium. Unfortunately, that scattered approach continues to be a problem in season 4.