Moderate spoilers ahead.
I've been more or less enjoying "Star Trek: Discovery" so far, through all of its format changes and its constantly shifting cast. This year sees Michael Burnham finally take the captain's chair, and help the rebuilding Federation deal with their latest threat - a mysterious anomaly that is destroying planets and causing chaos. Characters like Federation president Rillak (Chelah Horsdal) and Vulcan leader T'Rina (Tara Rosling) come to more prominence, but we also see the departures of Tilly and Gray as regulars, and the Discovery roster is starting to feel awfully sparse. Once minor crewmembers like Owo and Detmer are getting spotlight episodes, but are still so thinly drawn that they feel like placeholders. The only regular who feels like they have an actual character arc this season is Adira Tal, awkwardly working through more new kid jitters.
The big threat this year is pretty dull, an unknown alien species that is inadvertently causing destruction throughout the galaxy. Eventually, the Federation has to decide whether to go to war, or figure out a first contact plan to thwart them. Burnham wants to find a peaceful solution, while the show's latest mad scientist, Tarka (Shawn Doyle), manages to convince Book to join him on a revenge quest to annihilate the threat. "Discovery" has generally been pretty good about balancing its season-long stories against its individual episodes, but this year the big anomaly doesn't offer much to work with. It honestly feels like the kind of issue that would have taken a single episode to deal with in a previous iteration of "Star Trek." In addition, while I like that "Discovery" isn't afraid of exploring its interpersonal relationships, we don't get much on this front either. Burnham, Stamets, and Adira Tal all feel pretty static by this point, and Saru's new love connection is so basic. It's also getting very, very obvious that they only bring out Tig Notaro for season finales.
Another show with a mediocre fourth season is "Killing Eve," and unfortunately it's also the final season. Laura Neal takes over as showrunner from Suzanne Heathcote, jumping ahead in time to find Villanelle in hiding as a pious church lady, Eve working in private security with a new partner Yusuf (Robert Gilbert), Carolyn still searching for the Twelve and Kenny's killers, and Konstantin somehow now the mayor of a small town in Russia. And initially, the setup isn't bad. I like that Eve is back on her feet as a professional badass, in the thick of the action again. It's good to see Villanelle struggling with her impulses in a novel way, and Carolyn being more proactive. The season's major villains, Helene (Camille Cottin), and a new assassin in training named Pam (Anjana Vasan), are also pretty strong. Pam in particular has probably the best story of the whole season, working out whether she wants to be a player in the espionage game.
Sadly, this doesn't add up to much. Eventually Villanelle and Eve cross paths again, and this time the right confluence of circumstances mean that a relationship is possible, though very tenuous. Taking down the Twelve becomes a shared goal, but our major POV characters rarely interact. For far too long, Eve, Villanelle, Carolyn, and Pam essentially exist in separate storylines, and when they finally come together it's often anticlimactic. Frankly, everything in this season is anticlimactic. The romance is very low key, which is fine, but a dull choice after the fireworks that have resulted because of relationships in the past. Major deaths are given little fanfare, and the show seems to lose track of the stakes and relationships as it barrels toward the arbitrary, unsatisfying ending. Loose ends are left everywhere, the sides clearly don't matter and never did, and nobody is happy. Well, except Pam, who mostly gets away unscathed.
The recent news that a spinoff is being planned around Carolyn Martens fills me with deep dismay. Fiona Shaw is great, and Carolyn Martens is a fun character, but watching "Killing Eve" go from its riveting first season under Phoebe Waller Bridge to such a depressing shadow of itself after thirty-two episodes has been lousy. All the major talent involved has clearly moved on to better things, and it's time to stop. The show honestly would have been much better served by a long break and a follow-up movie in a couple of years, whenever Waller Bridge was ready, to close things out.
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