Strange New Worlds Season 4 Review: Wild Adventures, Peak Star Trek

Posted in: Paramount+, Review, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: star trek, strange new worlds

Strange New Worlds Season 4 is some of the best “Star Trek” we’ve had in some time. Dinosaurs, ghost ships, puppets, and more – and it works!

Published Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:37:10 -0500 by Tom Chang

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Article Summary
Strange New Worlds Season 4 delivers peak Star Trek, blending sci-fi wonder, horror, comedy, and bold genre swings.
Episodes like “Valles Marineris” and “The Griffin Incident” showcase dinosaurs, ghost-ship terror, and standout cast work.
“Human Best Friend” and the puppet-filled “Level Five Transporter Accident” prove Strange New Worlds can be wildly funny.
With strong turns from Pike’s crew and only minor weak spots, Strange New Worlds Season 4 ranks among Trek’s best.

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If there’s one clear negative about the streaming era, it’s that you have to be content with less than typically around half the episodes in a standard season, which is why seasons four and five of Strange New Worlds feel more like a true final season with a considerable gap in between. As we inch toward the finish line for this Star Trek series, the latest outing from showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers makes you wonder how they could have thrived in the syndication/UPN/CW era. As the saying goes, “You play with the cards you’re dealt,” and they’re coming up aces starting season four. At least for now, we should enjoy what we’re given with these 10 episodes and the hard-working cast led by Anson Mount, and what they bring us. The following contains minor spoilers for the beginning of the fourth season.

Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Explores the Genre Spaces Hard

In light of Sam Neill’s passing and it being a sheer coincidence, the first two episodes, “Valles Marineris” and “The Griffin Incident,” feel like a tribute to him, despite how the series filmed season four during season three’s release back in 2025, with his signature works in Jurassic Park (1993) and Event Horizon (1997). When you look at TV budgets and how far special effects have gone, you can see why “Valles Marineris,” written by Myers and Alan B. McElroy, probably wouldn’t have been able to be pulled off by any other series in previous eras. It’s an amazing technical feat, and the sense of wonder and danger really make that episode. The A-story alone makes it worthwhile, while the B-story aboard the Enterprise creates an existential crisis for the crew and most viewers.

“The Griffin Incident”, written by Kathryn Lyn, is peak horror even as a standalone feature if you didn’t attach Star Trek to it. The story focuses on the Enterprise coming across a derelict ship and finding out why it’s been abandoned. Like the Paul W.S. Anderson classic before it, it’s a haunted house type of story where the characters start getting hallucinations of their darkest fears. A few of the standout performances come from Paul Wesley, Ethan Peck, Celia Rose Gooding, and Christina Chong as Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and La’an. We get to see a side we seldom ever see from Kirk that we don’t get aside from the later canon of his adventures.

The last two episodes I’ll mention here are “Human Best Friend” and “Level Five Transporter Accident.” The first, written by Skylar J. Ojeda and Dana Horgan, focuses on the Enterprise’s shore leave and the crew’s receptive mind-altering adventures. “Human Best Friend” felt like a callback to The Original Series and its 1960s culture from when it came, considering the crew’s respective decision-making from Una Chin-Riley’s (Rebecca Romijn) karaoke singing of the late Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart…in Klingon and Pike’s face tattoo. The crux of the episode falls on Martin Quinn’s Scotty and Melissa Navia’s Ortegas trying to get along when they’re at odds with each other since the former is a stickler for parameters, while Ortegas tends to want to challenge and break them. It’s the kind of buddy comedy I never knew we needed.

STRANGE NEW WORLDS (Cr: Paramount)

“Level Five Transporter Accident,” directed by Jordan Canning (Fraggle Rock), and written by Myers and Horgan, is the halfway point of the season; it’s about as silly as it gets, and it represents a prime example of why one would want to get into the entertainment industry. As the title suggests, this is the puppet episode, and yes, we must specifically say “puppet” because a certain company owns the rights to “Muppet,” even though it all comes from the exact same Jim Henson Company. This is certainly NOT an episode for the anal-retentive continuity sticklers, but then again, you’re dealing with an entire universe of hypothetical interstellar interspace travel that’s SCIENCE FICTION. Also, they’re puppets; suspend your disbelief, strap in, and have fun. As the bulk of the cast gets to have fun doing voiceovers of their counterparts, Ethan Peck probably had the best of times or the worst, because he didn’t get to play a puppet counterpart. This is arguably one of the funniest episodes the franchise has ever offered, and the ending is just pure blissful joy.

Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+

Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+

As far as the day-to-day with the crew, if you’re expecting some invested love triangle between Spock-Lian-Chapel and similar drama, you’ll probably be disappointed. Most of the cast have a chance to shine. In the episode “Off-Hour,” we will see another blast from Trek’s past that will help fuel some of the most powerful, intense scenes by Babs Olusanmokun and Jess Bush as Dr. M’Benga and Chapel. The one surprise I saw was how little Carol Kane’s Pelia has been involved creatively. It’s certainly not the fault of Kane for what she has to work with, but it feels like she was pretty underutilized. That’s to be expected if we’re to get Quinn more involved and see Scotty more front and center on these engineering problems, as he will eventually be the Enterprise chief engineer by the time of The Original Series. Overall, it’s been a fun experience so far this season, and you’re in for a ride, and I’d definitely stack up this season with the best of the pre-Paramount+ era shows. Strange New Worlds streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4

Review by Tom Chang

10/10

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 accomplishes the rare feat of giving every member of the cast a chance to shine while delivering a lineup of diverse storytelling that pulls from adventure, horror, drama, and comedy. Everyone involved is committed and in the moment, and it shows. In addition, many of the episodes would make worthy features on their own (like “The Griffin Incident”), and deserve to be in the conversation when it comes to best “Star Trek” episodes – Paramount and pre-Paramount eras.

Showrunners

Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman

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