The Star Trek: Discovery crew may have found a way to strengthen the Federation of the future, but they aren't out of the woods just yet. New dangers await Michael Burnham in Season 4 of the CBS All Access series, though showrunner Alex Kurtzman revealed the characters may face a threat unique to any they've faced before.
Kurtzman participated in an online panel on the series with Deadline (via Trekmovie.com) and teased a bit about what was in store for fans waiting on Star Trek: Discovery Season 4. Kurtzman revealed the upcoming enemy for Star Trek: Discovery may not be like anything fans are used to, and may not even be a traditional "thing" at all.
There have been many kinds of villains over the course of Star Trek. What happens when the villain is not actually any kind of living, breathing entity, but something else? How do you solve that problem?
The cryptic statement is confusing, to say the least, but it does seem to make one thing clear. The big bad of Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 is not a living being, but "something else." One could make the argument that Star Trek's greatest foes are non-living forces, though what could be so big a threat that it would be able to effectively replace an actual living big bad?
A clue may be hiding in what Alex Kurtzman had to say about the challenges Captain Michael Burnham will face in Season 4. The federation may be in a better place with her arrival, but Starfleet's efforts to reunify its once-massive alliance will not happen without struggle and conflict with its former nations.
The Federation is coming back together but it’s not fully back together. And so the continued mission of bringing other worlds in and meeting the criteria and standards of what it means to be a member of the Federation but also not to rob other cultures of their identity is something that we’ll explore.
Given that statement, it sounds like one possible enemy could be the clash between old Federation ideals and how that works in a post-Burn civilization. There's also bound to be some inter-Federation conflict over the inclusion of some species between existing members, most of which the Discovery may be oblivious to because they've only gotten the CliffsNotes on the past 1000 years of history. Speaking of The Burn, could this mysterious enemy be another potential world-ending threat? Obviously, we can only continue to speculate and trust that the CBS All Access series can live up to its challenge of constantly giving Star Trek fans something new.
Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1 through 3 are currently available to binge on CBS All Access. For more on the franchise, read up on Michael Dorn's recent thoughts about appearing on Star Trek: Picard in the near future.
