![]() ![]() ![]() New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 4 beam onto Paramount Plus on Thursdays in the US and Crave in Canada. With Georgiou having also left for pastures new, there could be a humor deficit in a show that’s now in serious danger of becoming a lot less fun. While the writing team has carefully seeded the character’s disillusionment and desire for change – the scene where she tells Michael that her promotion to lieutenant was the worst day of her life is emotionally powerful stuff – they’re also losing one of Discovery’s most likeable and engaging characters. Now one of the most important questions facing the crew is how Burnham is going to find time to fit in her new role on the Ni’Var/Federation oversight committee, on top of her regular captaining, exploring, universe-saving, and – almost definitely – a bit more Die Harding.īut an even bigger challenge for the show is how it fills the void Tilly’s departure leaves behind. Discovery has now reached the point where its core characters – particularly Burnham, Saru, and Culber – are more solutions to problems than actual people. Still, if we’ve learned anything from Discovery’s one-and-a-bit seasons in the 32nd century, it’s that the Burnham and her crew are significantly better at, well, everything than even the best and brightest they meet on their travels, and she rapidly comes up with a ‘third way’ that nobody else had thought of over the course of months of negotiation. The Federation president’s rather leftfield approach to the talks is to draft in Burnham and Saru to “remain silent and look official” as observers during the talks, clearly forgetting that it’s just a few short weeks since she told the captain she was “not ready” to command a prototype ship. (For anyone who’s been paying attention throughout five years of planet Earth’s real-life Brexit saga, a lot of the dialogue used will feel incredibly familiar – another example of Trek’s long history of bringing contemporary allegory to a distant-future setting.) The Federation’s negotiations with Ni’Var have hit a bureaucracy-shaped brick wall, and with the big bad BMA (Black Matter Anomaly) inexplicably sidelined – where did the urgency of season 4’s opening episodes disappear to? – its most significant involvement is prompting the Vulcans and Romulans to demand a get-out clause be added to their treaty with Federation. While Tilly is busy course correcting her life, Captain Michael Burnham is further expanding her impressive but increasingly implausible resumé – now she can add "diplomat" to traitor, scientist, savior of the universe, and Die Hard-style action hero. ![]() The experience is all the catalyst Tilly needs to rethink her career and, come the end of the episode, she’s requested a transfer to work at Starfleet Academy. She even comes close to sacrificing herself for her protegés, but the USS Armstrong arrives just in time to beam them out of trouble. Tilly, meanwhile, is her usual engaging self, gradually persuading them to work together despite impossible odds, and some scary ice that freezes your legs in real-time. It’s no surprise, then, when one of the cadets dies within seconds of impact, or when the survivors let pre-conceptions about their colleagues get in the way of functioning as a unit – these rookies will do anything they can to have the last word. ![]() What goes down on the moon’s surface plays out like an episode of Lower Decks, only with most of the gags surgically removed, and none of the cartoon’s knowing sense of irony about Trek’s occasional forays into cliché. ![]()
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