Does Season 4 of Discovery finally have the sauce?

 So I love Episode 4 Season 4 of Discovery, and last night I watched Episode 5 of Season 4, and it feels like the show has finally hit its stride. And honestly, that probably shouldn’t be surprising. Most people think Next Gen doesn’t get good until somewhere between Seasons 2 and 4, same with DS9, to the point its become a generalization about all Star Trek, even though its plainly not true of the Original Series and I’d argue Season 1 of DS9 is actually quite good, just not as good as later seasons. Since Discovery has half the episodes of less that TNG and DS9 did, it makes sense that it would take at least as long or longer for it to find its voice, and its beginning to feel like it has.

Episode 5 was nearly as good as episode 4. Its A plot is about Burnham and Booker saving some refugees from the path of the BIG PLOT of this season, the DMA. Quick side note, I hate they call it the DMA, call it the fucking Dark Matter Anomaly. DMA sounds like a government regulation. Whatever amount of playtime they save by saying DMA they lose in audience clarity and understanding and atmosphere from using the actual science terms/technobabble in my opinion. But thats a minor issue and I’m sure someone out there vociferously disagrees, but what was great about this episode was that even though Burnham was the main character most focused on, she was not the focus of the episode, the refugees were. It was their story, something which honestly is usually the case in older Star Treks - the star of the story is the guest star that week, and all the characters are serving supporting roles in solving their problems. This really felt like that, with the leader of the prisoner refugees legitimately being the main character and incredibly impactful throughout. The actor did a great job, and I cried, which although not a super high bar - something about how me and my autism and alexithymia process emotions means I cry whenever I feel any strong emotion of any kind I cry, and because I rarely can identify my emotions easily I increasingly do not hold back in an effort to learn to better identify them, but still. If a show makes me cry, with whatever emotion, I usually mark it as a good episode.

The B plot with Stamets and risky scientist McGee was also fun. I was a bit worried whether the show wanted us to like Mr. Risky, but by the end it was clear we are not supposed to like him, even if nothing disasterous happened this episode. I just in general am not a fan of serialization in Star Trek, and early seasons often drip fed plot points across entire seasons before getting to the point, but here even though there was no payoff this episode, they did make it clear that this guy was bad news, and I appreciate that. Star Trek is a show that deals with deep philosophical points, and its easier to digest when those points are made in forty five minutes, not 450 minutes, so I appreciate they made it clear that even if we don’t know what bad thing will come of this guy taking risks, that he is a certifiable untrustworthy dude.

Inside the Star Trek fandom Discovery at least seems to be widely disliked, but it was a big commercial and critical success and spawned a renaissance of Star Trek content, so me saying its only good at Season 4 might hit some people as confusing, and to be honest it likely is at least somewhat informed by me being a Star Trek fan. When I watch Star Trek I am looking for a very specific experience, and while early seasons of Discovery might be a quality serialized scifi show, it did not scratch the right itches for me for a Star Trek show. The serialization undermined and watered down the political messaging, as did the darker tone, the single main character felt very different than the usual ensemble cast, and the focus on effects and fight sequences are not what I come to Star Trek for, even if I can appreciate them in other works - when I put on Star Trek, I want to see a bunch of friends solving social problems in space with diplomacy, science, and unwavering devotion to social justice, not by disintegrating space monsters or punching out aliens. Discovery still has a lot of the latter, but its beginning to have enough of the former that it feels like Star Trek to watch. If every episode going forward is this good, it might even stop being my least favorite Star Trek, although I honestly don’t know what its competition is. Probably Voyager? Anyways, I hope it does, even if its cancellation means I won’t ever get more of it.