Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4
Season of television series
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The fourth season of the American television series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follows Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the starship Enterprise in the 23rd century as they explore new worlds and carry out missions during the decade before Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969). The season is being produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout, Weed Road Pictures, H M R X Productions, and Roddenberry Entertainment, with Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers as showrunners.
| Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | |
|---|---|
| Season 4 | |
Promotional poster | |
| Showrunners |
|
| Starring | |
| No. of episodes | 1 |
| Release | |
| Original network | Paramount+ |
| Original release | July 23, 2026 – present |
| Season chronology | |
Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn respectively star as Pike, Spock, and Number One, along with Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, and Martin Quinn. Many of the regular actors and several guest stars portray younger versions of characters from The Original Series. A fourth season of Strange New Worlds was ordered in April 2024. Filming took place at CBS Stages Canada in Mississauga, Ontario, from March to August 2025. The showrunners continued the series' episodic storytelling approach, giving each episode a different genre and tone. This includes a puppet episode, with puppet work by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.
The season premiered on the streaming service Paramount+ on July 23, 2026. The rest of the 10-episode run is being released weekly until September 24. It received generally positive reviews from critics. A fifth and final season was ordered in June 2025.[1]
Episodes
| No. overall | No. in season | Title [2] | Directed by | Written by [3] | Original release date [4] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 | 1 | "Valles Marineris" | Chris Fisher | Teleplay by : Akiva Goldsman & Henry Alonso Myers Story by : Henry Alonso Myers & Alan B. McElroy | July 23, 2026 | |
|
Captain Christopher Pike is offered a promotion to Commodore. The USS Enterprise is caught in a solar storm which sends them back 65 million years to the Cretaceous period on Earth, where crew members encounter dinosaurs. The Enterprise is captured by Martians who are at war with the Dol'drm, an insect-like species from a planet between Mars and Jupiter. Pike offers to help end the conflict peacefully, but their leader Cassell learns that Mars is a barren wasteland in the future and decides to use the Enterprise's antimatter fuel cell as a weapon. The crew race to stop Cassell from using it against the Dol'drm planet, but Pike makes a last minute decision not to interfere. The planet is destroyed, creating the asteroid belt and shifting Mars's orbit enough to cause its eventual wasteland state. A fragment from the explosion becomes the Chichxulub asteroid that causes the dinosaurs' extinction. The Enterprise uses the explosion's energy to return to their own time, where Pike declines the promotion and instead has first officer Una Chin-Riley / Number One promoted to Commander. | ||||||
| 32 | 2 | "The Griffin Incident" | TBA | Kathryn Lyn | July 30, 2026 | |
| 33 | 3 | "Human Best Friend" | TBA | Skylar J. Ojeda & Dana Horgan | August 6, 2026 | |
| 34 | 4 | "A Case of Chiaroscuro" | Axelle Carolyn[5] | Robbie Thompson | August 13, 2026 | |
| 35 | 5 | "Level Five Transporter Accident" | Jordan Canning[6] | Henry Alonso Myers & Dana Horgan | August 20, 2026 | |
| 36 | 6 | "Off-Hour" | TBA | Bill Wolkoff | August 27, 2026 | |
| 37 | 7 | "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass" | TBA | Dana Horgan & Bill Wolkoff | September 3, 2026 | |
| 38 | 8 | "Orders of Magnitude" | TBA | Alan B. McElroy | September 10, 2026 | |
| 39 | 9 | "Once La'An a Time" | TBA | Onitra Johnson | September 17, 2026 | |
| 40 | 10 | "Tomorrow's Enterprise" | TBA | Henry Alonso Myers & Robbie Thompson | September 24, 2026 | |
Cast and characters
Main
- Anson Mount as Christopher Pike[7]
- Ethan Peck as Spock[7]
- Jess Bush as Christine Chapel[7]
- Christina Chong as La'An Noonien-Singh[7]
- Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura[7]
- Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas[7]
- Babs Olusanmokun as Joseph M'Benga[7]
- Martin Quinn as Montgomery Scott[7]
- Rebecca Romijn as Una Chin-Riley / Number One[7]
Notable guests
Production
Development
Executive producer Alex Kurtzman envisioned Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, a spin-off from the series Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2024), as an ongoing series that could cover the seven years between Discovery's second season (2019) and the accident that seriously injures Christopher Pike in Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969).[11] Co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman hoped Strange New Worlds would continue until it caught up with the events of The Original Series.[12] Following the success of Strange New Worlds's second season, Paramount+ ordered a fourth season in April 2024 while the third season was in production.[13]
Writing
The writers' room was underway and had settled on the ideas for all 10 episodes of the season by the end of July 2024,[14] including an episode where the crew are portrayed by puppets.[15] Goldsman had teased such an episode in March 2024, when he expressed doubt that there was a genre or story that the series could not include: "Could it do Muppets? Sure. Could it do black and white, silent, slapstick? Maybe!"[16] When the season's puppet episode was announced in July 2025, Goldsman explained: "There might have been an unexpected and terrible transporter accident which might have had some unexpected felt-like effects."[17]
Casting
Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn star in the series as Captain Christopher Pike, science officer Spock, and first officer Una Chin-Riley / Number One, respectively. Also starring are Jess Bush as nurse Christine Chapel, Christina Chong as chief security officer La'An Noonien-Singh, Celia Rose Gooding as communications officer Nyota Uhura, Melissa Navia as helmsman Erica Ortegas, Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. Joseph M'Benga, and Martin Quinn as engineer Montgomery Scott.[7]
Paul Wesley, who replaced The Original Series star William Shatner as James T. Kirk for the series, said in September 2024 that he would again have a role in the fourth season.[10] After filming began, Adrian Holmes and Dan Jeannotte confirmed that they were reprising their recurring guest roles as Robert April and George Samuel "Sam" Kirk, respectively, in the fourth season.[8][9] In October 2025, Carol Kane was confirmed to be returning in her recurring guest role as Pelia.[7]
Filming
After completing work on the third season in May 2024, Mount said filming for the fourth season was expected to begin in Canada in early 2025.[18] Filming began on March 3, 2025,[19] at CBS Stages Canada in Mississauga, Ontario,[20] under the working title Lily and Isaac.[21] Director Axelle Carolyn was in Toronto by March 18,[5] and began filming the fourth episode on March 31.[22] In the week of May 5, filming took place at the Cotton Factory, an historic industrial complex in Hamilton, Ontario. Filming took place inside the complex and in an alleyway, and made use of two 1930s-style trucks with alien writing on them.[23] Jordan Canning was directing the fifth episode by June 26, and was halfway through the episode on July 7.[6] Canning directed the puppet episode, with puppet work provided by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Canning previously worked with the company on the series Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock (2022–2024).[15] Filming for the season took place until August 29.[21][24] Frequent Star Trek director Jonathan Frakes was originally expecting to direct an episode,[25] but was unable to due scheduling conflicts with his work on the series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (2026–present).[26]
Marketing
During a "Star Trek Universe" panel at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2025, a short teaser was shown which revealed that an episode of the fourth season would portray the crew with puppets.[15] Several commentators suggested that the series was again copying the Buffyverse franchise following the second season's musical episode "Subspace Rhapsody", pointing to Buffy the Vampire Slayer's musical episode "Once More, with Feeling" (2001) and spin-off series Angel's puppet episode "Smile Time" (2004).[27][28][29] William Hughes at The A. V. Club felt the idea of a puppet episode had lost its impact after several other series had done the concept.[27] The season was also promoted at New York Comic Con in October, at another "Star Trek Universe" panel featuring Kurtzman, Goldsman, Myers, Peck, Gooding, Navia, and Quinn. A first-look clip for the season was released during the panel.[7] Gizmodo's James Whitbrook said the serious first-look clip was in stark contrast with the previous puppet announcement, and felt it may have been chosen as a response to criticisms of the third season.[24]
Romijn, Peck, Gooding, and Wesley promoted the season at CCXP Mexico in April 2026, announcing the release dates and debuting the first trailer.[30] Whitbrook said the trailer, like the first-look clip, was trying to "strike a more serious balance" than the third season did, despite the inclusion of cowboys and dinosaurs. He noted that there were indications in the trailer that some main characters could die in the season.[31] Lacy Baugher at Den of Geek similarly felt that the trailer was trying to show a pivot away from some of the "more out-there" elements of the third season that proved divisive among fans, with a focus on more traditional Star Trek adventures and setting up the end of the series. However, Baugher also acknowledged the dinosaur and the previously announced puppet episode, and said the series "will still march to the beat of its own drummer in its fourth season".[32]
Release
The season is released on the streaming service Paramount+ in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Latin America, Australia, South Korea, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.[13][33] The season premiered on July 23, 2026. The rest of the 10-episode run will be released weekly until September 24.[30] The series is released in New Zealand on TVNZ, in India on Voot,[34] and in other European countries on SkyShowtime (a combination of Paramount+ and the streaming service Peacock).[35]
Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 14 critics reviews were positive and the average of rated reviews was 7.5 out of 10.[36] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 72 out of 100 based on 9 reviews, indicating a "generally favorable" response.[37]