Review-Season Four Of Star Trek Discovery Is In A Brilliant League Of Its Own

With its graceful images and deeply-seated storylines, season 4 of Discovery is a work that Gene Roddenberry would be proud of. Episode 5 sees the crew deeply embedded in all things personal and professional (Tilly’s departure, Dr. Culber‘s work/life/its ok to feel guilty about being alive because of what happened in the past but you have to move on so you can help yourself and then others balance, both which are inextricably intertwined with the Dark Matter anomaly) and its a lot for all involved.

The DMA is now thought to be some form of weapon created by an enemy of the Federation, with the Metrons, the Nacene, the Iconian Empire, and the Q Continuum high on the list of suspects. Discovery can, at least for now, predict when and where the DMA will appear, and currently, the new trajectory is the Radvek asteroid belt when a colony of over 1200 Akaali has taken up residence and will be destroyed in less than 2 hours. As Captin Burnham, Booker, and Lt. Cmdr. Gen Rhys set about rescuing the Akaali, Cmdr. Saru and Lt. Cmdr. Paul Stamets team up with the incredibly brilliant but highly irritating (to everything including your own soul) Ruon Tarka onboard Discovery to figure out what the DMA is exactly and while Tarka nearly destroys the ship (like a narcissist does) by trying to create a mini DMA he does figure out the power source needed to run the anomaly is something they’ve never encountered before, no matter how they do the math, and that’s a massive, massive problem.

That’s as close to I don’t know either as you’ll get from a narcissist which makes the research even more alarming.

There are more than a few moral dilemmas addressed on the show, including what to do with the colony’s prisoners (should they be rescued, since they were almost all non-violent offenders, should they be imprisoned onboard or confined with the rest of the colonists), Dr. Culber’s burnout and Lt. Cmdr. Paul Stamet’s moral conflict of how far to take the DMA research, but the most conflicting seemed to be allowing the prisoner known as Felix to stay behind to die on the planet when the anomaly appears. Felix was the only violent offender and wanted to die with the planet because he once took a life and destroyed a family in the process. Felix had kept an intimate family heirloom from the home he robbed, an heirloom he then gave to the Captin, hoping Micheal could return it to the daughter whose father he killed. Captin Burnham respected Felix’s request, much to the frustration of Booker who wanted to take Felix on board the ship, against his will. Felix died at peace, the family was made a bit more whole with the return of the heirloom, but what an arc to the story.

New episode airs December 23rd on Paramount +

All images courtesy of Star Trek Discovery IMDb