Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 will feel a bit different from the past seasons of the series, at least in terms of storytelling.
Describing the upcoming season as “very pure Strange New Worlds,” Season 4 will continue to experiment with genre and tone. Unlike previous seasons, however, the overall arc will reportedly focus less on a singular “big bad” like the Gorn in Seasons 1 and 2 or Vesta in Season 3, and instead place a greater emphasis on character-driven stories centered on the crew aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise.
“Season 4 is what I would call very pure Strange New Worlds,” showrunner Akiva Goldsman told Polygon, reaffirming the season will strongly reflect the show's identity and formula of mixing classic Star Trek exploration with different storytelling styles, character-focused episodes, humor, action, and drama.
“We move around in terms of tone, we move around in terms of genre," Goldsman added, "and then we drive it to the last six episodes, which is pretty singular.”
It sounds like the season's initial episodes will mostly exist as standalone stories, with Goldsman emphasizing a focus on crew members who don't appear on Kirk's Enterprise in The Original Series, such as Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) and La'An Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong).
However, the latter of half of the season will seemingly build toward one larger storyline, perhaps connecting to Season 5, which will serve as the show's final season and likely mark the hand-off of the Enterprise from Captain Pike to Captain Kirk.
“It was an interesting handoff narratively and really emotional, weirdly, because we've been making the show for the better part of a decade,” Goldsman said.
While Strange New Worlds is largely about Captain Pike helming the Enterprise, the series has done an incredible job establishing the relationships of the crew featured in The Original Series. Season 3 gave us our best look yet at the growing relationship between Kirk and Spock, ending with the two mindmelding — a connection that is said ot have big consequences for both characters moving forward.
“It is one of the more iconic relationships in modern entertainment, for us and for genre fans certainly, and the joy is we can keep building that,” Goldsman added.
“We know what they're like in The Original Series, but we don't know how they got there,” Kurtzman explained. “You don't want to just come in and give people exactly what they expect at the end. It would get really boring. We wanted to give each of them something to strive for as a character, something to learn about each other, something to be surprised by. That continues this season in a big way.”
Kurtzman's comments echo that of Paul Wesley and Ethan Peck who, last month at CCXP in Mexico City, promised fans more of the Kirk-Spock "bromance."
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will premiere on Paramount+ this summer on July 23. The series is confirmed to be ending with its fifth season, which has already been filmed but does not yet have a release date.