I can't be the only one not a fan of these flash-forwards and the way things are set up in those, with all the major changes they imply to happen over the years...
Good gods, I hope they stop making movie-length episodes, because they seriously don't add anything to the experience. Rather just detract from it. Two hours and seventeen minutes for a season finale? Bloody hell, that's almost a LotR movie, that would be too long even for a series finale. And this is supposedly a series. Not a movie serial. And from Netflix, who has a habit of releasing things all at once anyway, so people would binge. There's no rhyme or reason to keeping the episodes this long, especially when there's so much fluff and filler. Editing is a tool, for cryin' out loud - USE IT. More than enough points in every episode where they could've chopped them up without sacrificing anything. And the absolutely lopsided release made it feel even stupider. Just... stop, please. Get back to sensible episode lengths and sensible amounts of episodes.
I'm kind of conflicted about this, in all honesty.
I get the high ratings: on its own, a return to a purely episodic format is great, most of us do have those pink-tinted glasses through which to look back on the older series; what we do get is great in terms of visuals and writing/direction (mostly); and generally speaking, this enterprise, these characters will never be uninteresting.
But here's the thing. When this episodic format was a thing last time, a single season meant 20+ episodes, on average I think 26. And while the original series did have the approximately 50 minute runtime too, in subsequent series it went down to an average 42ish, but even that wasn't much of an issue due to the number of episodes. Now, what do we have here? 10 episodes that do make an effort to go on for 50-52 minutes each... and that is all. I feel like the exact thing the series fails to deliver on is the titular concept: while we do get to meet a few interesting characters, and we go to a few weird places... each and every episode turns out to be extremely character-heavy. One way or another, there's a reveal that's some big part of someone's Tragic Background:tm: or Complex Personality:tm:, something that defines or changes them at the core - because, ofc, everyone's got to have that right from the start. We spend like, what, three episodes on Spock - I love the guy, but come on, he's like one tenth of the crew. We're introduced to the doctor, then the next thing we learn is that he has a Big Secret:tm:, we get a lolnope resolution dangled in front of us, then - boom, she's gone, can practically be written off as dead. Dunno about others, but it's such a short time for a brand new character to even grow on me enough to care about, much less to have something that dramatic about them to deal with, it just doesn't work at all. (And as an extra, the bighuge plot twist comes in an episode that starts off as something that could be season's "unhinged fun" chapter... yeah, no.) Or take Hemmer: arguably the most interesting new character, we get to hang out with him maybe, what, two times? He becomes a great substitute-dad for Uhura, and right after - oops, sorry, he's dead. We have Rebecca Romijn, for cryin' out loud, she has her secret revealed so she can have her 15 seconds of fame saving everyone, and then - oh she's gotta go because Starfleet laws.
The point is we never get to have fun. We don't go on adventures just for the sake of going on adventures. We don't explore. What we get is characterisation and character development(?) - great in themselves and certainly appreciated when organic parts of a greater whole. But that whole doesn't exist: with the modern day constraints of a series, there's simply no time for any kind of self-contained adventure or story. Those episodes aren't here. Everything is a scaffolding or window dressing or some kinda props or set decoration element to serve characterisation and character building. And yet, even then, at times it's hard to care, especially when every episode does go on for so long, relatively speaking.
I think season 4 tried too hard to be "different", when I'm not even sure the series needed that, and ended up just being all sorts of weird. From the "spruced up" theme song that is beyond obnoxious, through the weird pacing, to the writing that's shoehorning unnecessary drama in everywhere by trying to force romances that we'd already been shown too many times just can't work. Poor Luka especially gets the short end of the stick, as he finally gets more screentime, but it comes off as his only reason to exist is to be miserable - which he doesn't even deserve, being such an all-around sweetheart.
Isn't even worth mentioning how everyone's now a superhero while villains are being real eco-friendly (read: recycled after recycled).
