A NOTE FROM THE TEAM: Before our review, we just want to say we know how much of a blow Tuesday’s news about Discovery leaving Netflix — just on the cusp of Season 4’s beginning — was for our international readers who enjoy the show.

ALL OF OUR ‘DISCOVERY’ REVIEWS WILL BE FULL SPOILER DISCUSSIONS. PLEASE BE WARNED.

We’ll do our best to minimize spoilers outside of our reviews… but as the weeks proceed, it will be more and more difficult. Sorry, folks — we know it’s going to be a real minefield for you all for quite some time.

Set five months after last year’s finale, Star Trek: Discovery‘s fourth season opener follows the USS Discovery’s newly-minted as she continues on her mission to rebuild trust in the Federation — while facing two new challenges: natural disaster in the form of a deadly gravitational anomaly, and ideological conflict in the form of the United Federation of Planets’ new president.

As “Kobayashi Maru” begins, we catch up with Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Cleveland Booker (David Ajala) in the midst of a diplomatic mission to convince the Alshain — a people understandably skeptical of the Federation — to rejoin the alliance with a freely-given offer of dilithium mined from Su’Kal’s planet.

The Alshain’s distrust grows into outright alarm when it’s discovered that a third lifeform has been bought to the planet’s surface without their knowledge — even though it’s just Book’s cat, Grudge.

Despite increasingly unsuccessful assurances that everything’s fine, the Alshain end up under the impression that Grudge is in need of rescue. Pretty soon Book and Burnham are being chased through the forest by the Alshain delegation… but not before a bunch of glowing butterflies appear out of nowhere and form themselves into wings so the Alshain can take flight.

Honestly, it’s a lot — and the Alshain kind of look like Arthur from The Tick, but you know what? It’s fine. The thought of hundreds of little tiny butterfly feet grasping onto a grown man and lifting him aloft? It’s creative. I’m going with it!

During the chase, Burnham realizes that the Alshain are having trouble navigating — and in what will become the episode’s theme, she decides that risk to her own safety is the most responsible course of action, if the reward for that risk will benefit others.

She orders Discovery, in orbit above the planet, to repair the Alshain’s navigational satellites as a gesture of goodwill even though it will put her and Book at even more of a tactical disadvantage. Her risk pays off, and Burnham and the Alshain emperor part on good terms.

“Kobayashi Maru” — written by executive trio Michelle Paradise, Jenny Lumet, and Alex Kurtzman — then returns Burnham and crew back to Starfleet Headquarters, where the organization is celebrating the reopening of Starfleet Academy, and the ascension of a new Federation President.

This is the first official Academy class in 125 years, so it makes sense that the number of interested applicants would be small, but the mere 18 cadets present contrast oddly with the size of the room and the importance of the speakers.

Given that the Federation has grown in the last year from 38 to 59 member worlds since Discovery’s dilithium distribution mission began — and has (presumably) hundreds of billions of citizens on those member worlds — I have to think the sparse attendance is due to COVID conditions while filming more than anything else.

Burnham and new Federation President Laira Rillak (Chelah Horsdal) each briefly address the incoming cadets briefly, and the ceremony comes to an end. Other than her promise of returning Starfleet to its scientific roots, and the reveal of the new Archer Spacedock — complete with a bit of Dennis McCarthy’s “Archer’s Theme” from the Star Trek: Enterprise soundtrack, hooray! — Rillik’s speech doesn’t have much substance.

More significant than her speech, I think, is Rillak’s wardrobe. That dark suit she wears at the podium, with its red sash, severe half cape, and single metal epaulet… well, the note I’ve got jotted down is, “Why is she dressed like the main boss in a ‘Wolfenstein’ game?”

When she boards Discovery later on, however, she changes into a suit with the boxy cut, simple no-nonsense collar, and sharp shoulders emblematic of women’s fashion in the 1940s. I, uh, think something might be going on here.

But President Rillak isn’t the only character with a wardrobe to show off, as the Discovery crew, the new Starfleet cadets, and even Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) gets a chance to sport newly-debuted dress uniforms, which continue costume designer Gersha Phillips’ aesthetic of jewel tones and immaculate tailoring.

The franchise-long tradition of gold piping on dress uniforms continues as well — and in a tradition carried on from Jim Kirk through Jean-Luc Picard, she also gets to sport a special variant of the standard duty uniform, a maroon leather jacket to keep her warm on the Ashane planet’s surface.

The reopening of Starfleet Academy, while perhaps not as impressive and weighty as it could have been under different filming circumstances, does give viewers a chance to see what the new digital set can do, as the actors stand around a central platform — yet the far reaches of the Academy hanger bay, as well as the fleet outside the massive windows, are all created by the new AR wall set at Pixomondo’s facilities in Toronto, giving a seamless scale to the “location.”

After the ceremony, Discovery is tasked to respond to a distress signal from a small, isolated Starfleet repair station. Despite Burnham’s objections, President Rillak has insisted on coming along as an observer — and when the repair mission quickly escalates into an urgent rescue mission, she makes herself a significant part of the action.

Deep Space Repair Beta 6 was hit by a gravitational anomaly, and by the time Discovery arrives is, in an uncontrolled tumble. Artificial gravity is also malfunctioning, so the recently-promoted Lieutenant Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and just-commissioned Ensign Adira Tal (Blu del Barrio) transport over to effect repairs.

(It’s unclear if the regular duty uniforms are made of programmable matter — or if part of the transport process includes swapping into away mission gear — but either way, Tilly and Adira have a mid-transport costume change into their new black hazard suits.)

Before repairs can be completed, however, debris from a nearby Oort cloud — likely displaced by the gravitational anomaly — comes swooping in, bombarding Discovery and the station with dangerous chunks of frozen methane. Matching the starship to the station’s rotation gives us some beautiful effects shots, but more importantly, it allows Discovery to extend its shields over the vulnerable and now irreparably damaged station.

Of course, Discovery’s transporters have been knocked out — yes Heisenberg compensators are still a thing in the 32nd century, and yes they still break down at the worst possible time — so the repair station’s lifeboat becomes the only choice for rescue.

The first load of passengers makes it over to Discovery without much incident, but before the lifeboat can return for Tilly, Adira, and the repair station’s commander Nalas, a large chunk of debris slams into the station’s hull will need to be removed.

As the most experienced small-craft pilot aboard (established back in “Brother”), Burnham volunteers to take a worker bee — a new version of the vintage original that shares the same general shapes and lines of its predecessor, but executed with 32nd century technology — and complete the removal herself. This draws sharp criticism from the president, but after a tense exchange she leaves the ship and gets to work.

The worker bee is almost immediately destroyed by a debris strike, but thankfully the programmable matter in Burnham’s suit springs into “Iron Man mode” just in time, and she’s able to complete the task through the unplanned EVA.

Nalas, who had been growing increasingly erratic under the stress of the situation, finally snaps, points his phaser at Tilly, and tries to make an escape through a decompressed section of the station. Rillak jumps onto the open communications channel and defuses the situation by waxing eloquent about the beauty of Nalas’ home planet.

It’s a nice moment that humanizes Lara (er, for lack of a better term at least, as she has mixed Cardassian-Bajoran heritage) and shows that she’s more than just a thorn in the mission’s side. But not everyone is convinced. Burnham, still working outside the ship, asks if the president had really been to Nalas’ planet or if she simply read his personnel file.

In other words: was her whole monologue a lie?

I understand the purpose of the exchange — to give Burnham and Rillak a moment that could either bring them together or further wedge them apart — but I found the placement of it within the episode to be odd.

First, Burnham is still in the middle of doing dangerous, delicate work outside the ship, and second, the conversation seems to take place over the open channel that the entire bridge crew can hear rather than a private conversation. This was an exchange that would have fit much better into the excellent closing scene between the two characters, instead of as a potential distraction in a room full of people all working intently on resolving an emergency.

I really hate to agree with Rillak on anything, but I think she’s right on this one — it doesn’t matter if she lied! She was describing a natural feature on a planet, not fabricating a deep, personal story, and made a connection with a homicidal stranger who was about to make the situation worse.

Who cares while lives are on the line if she’d only read the proverbial Memory Alpha article about the guy’s home planet? As far as reasons for us to distrust Rillak’s motives — and there are quite a few — this one fell flat for me.

That said, any points she may have won during her hostage negotiation were wiped out — and then some — by the conversation with Burnham that closes the episode. The rest of the episode was fine, but this scene was truly fantastic. And infuriating.

I’m not going to recap it here because it really should be watched to get the whole experience — the writing is nimble and sharp and the performances are excellent — but in short, Lara and Burnham fundamentally disagree on a captain’s duty to their crew. Burnham “leads to bring everyone home,” while Rillak insists that “leadership is about balance.”

At first glance her statement about balance seems reasonable, but it quickly takes on an unpleasant undertone of “don’t rock the boat.” Rillak’s preoccupation with not taking too many risks — that captains should be comfortable with maintaining the status quo because it’s good enough for most people — has me wondering if she’s even seen Star Trek.

Or, to put it more accurately: is she aware of Starfleet’s own history? She invokes the Kobayashi Maru test — the infamous and at this point nearly thousand-year-old training exercise — to make the point that no-win situations should be accepted as a fact of command, but is seemingly unaware that the test is famous precisely because the rejection of its premise is the stuff of Starfleet legend.

The president isn’t wrong that captains must sometimes send people to their deaths, or proceed knowing that they won’t always be able to save everyone, but can you imagine a Star Trek universe where that mindset was the norm? Where captains routinely chose not to respond to a distress call, or help a group of strangers in need, because it would be too dangerous — and anyway, above all else they have to look out for their own?

Regardless, it’s Rillak’s insistence that Burnham is “eminently qualified” to be a captain — while also being “not ready” because she “cares too much and too deeply” — that makes this scene so potent. Her objections aren’t about qualifications or skill, they’re about ideology. Burnham strives for the better, which in Rillak’s view recklessly endangers the ‘good enough.’

The question the president doesn’t seem concerned with is: good enough for whom? Their conversation is cut short — for now, at least; I suspect this will be a recurring theme throughout the season — when Book signals for help.

During a coming-of-age ceremony for his nephew back on his home planet, he’d felt some strange behavior in the forest and wildlife, and had taken his ship up into orbit to investigate.

After flying through an ominous flock of dead birds he was hit by debris from the sudden breakup of Kwejian’s moon, blasting him across his own bridge — but by the time he is rescued by Discovery, the gravitation anomaly rears its head and causes the first major blow to the quadrant by utterly destroying Kwejian itself.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• The leader of the Alshain ‘butterfly people’ society is named “Lee’u,” which just happens to be the real-life name of one of the two cats who portray Grudge.
   
• Adira pulls knowledge about birds from Jovar Tal, the symbiont’s second host.
   
• Tasked to repair the ship’s transporter systems, Paul Stamets seems to be expanding his responsibilities into a more traditional engineering role — more than just spore drive stuff.
   
• Stamets also makes a reference to Romulan Whiskey, a blue alcoholic beverage first seen in the Star Trek: Lower Decks series premiere.
   
• Burnham smiles at a tribble seen roaming the corridor — is this tribble someone’s pet, or a new member of the Discovery crew?

• There’s something really nice about seeing Adira openly talking to “invisible” Gray (Ian Alexander) in public settings, even on the bridge. It feels comfortable and accepting — both in the sense that the crew isn’t bothered to Adira talking to “no one,” and that Adira is comfortable enough to unselfconsciously do so.
   
• Admiral Vance is reunited with his wife and daughter at Starfleet Command; his family was first mentioned in last season’s finale.
   
• Members of Starfleet Academy’s new class includes a Tellarite, a Ferengi, humans, and a few other new unnamed alien species.
   
• If Starfleet Academy was closed for the last 125 years, how were they staffing Starfleet this whole time? Perhaps “remote learning” made a comeback after the Burn.

• Given the preponderance of leather coats and heavy, brushed wool costumes, I have to assume that Federation starships must be kept at a brisk 55 degrees at all times.
   
• Lt. Christopher (Orville Cummings) is a new gold-shirt bridge officer who will be filling in for Bryce at communications occasionally this season, a necessity due to Rowe’s commitment to the upcoming BET+ series The Porter.
   
• Lt. Commander Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) is addressed by her full last name several times this episode, hopefully winding down use of the awkward “Owo” abbreviation.
• Sara Mitich (Nilsson) seems to be wearing a very noticeable blonde wig this season.
   
• Commander Nalas is an Akoszonam, finally giving a name to the species which was first seen in the Short Trek “Children of Earth.”
   
• Last seen in “The Sound of Thunder,” the once-villainous Ba’ul now live in peace with the Kelpien people on Kaminar.

• Addressing the big question many fans asked last season, Starfleet is developing a ‘next generation’ spore drive based on Discovery’s tech, though it will apparently take some time to be ready for practical application.
   
• In addition, the Voyager-J is being retrofit with something called a “pathway drive,” another new type of propulsion technology.
   
• Michael Burnham was delivered to the USS Shenzhou from Vulcan, where she served for seven years under Captain Georgiou — so it’s likely she never personally took the Kobayashi Maru test since she did not attend Starfleet Academy.
   
• Trek has always kept things vague as to where Starfleet and the Federation overlap and inform each other as organizations; still, it seems odd a political leader like Rillak — someone who has never even served in Starfleet — would be making personnel assignments.
   
• Burnham’s ready room features a Vulcan kir’shara, introduced in the Enterprise episode “Awakening.”

• After its major refit last season, the Discovery opening credits sequence now reflects the updated design of the USS Discovery-A.
   
• Other new visuals in the credits sequence include a waveform graphic of an energy signal, Kwejian and its moon (mid-breakup), and the Discovery as it approaches the gravitational anomaly.
   
• The production credits now include an entire roster of COVID-19 related staffers.

Next week’s episode will likely see Discovery beginning to investigate just what’s going on in this sector of space, the destruction of Kwejian, and Book’s reaction to the loss of his homeworld — and perhaps the events of “Kobayashi Maru” will also draw Saru back to Discovery after his time on Kaminar.

We see him only briefly this week, participating in council sessions, and it’s clear that a return to space — not just for Kaminar, but for himself — is on his mind. With the crisis just beginning to unfold for the reinvigorated Federation, Saru’s calm voice is one we definitely need to hear.

Star Trek: Discovery returns with “Anomaly” on November 25 on Paramount+ in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada; further availability will follow as Paramount+ expands into additional international territories sometime in 2022.