I think a lot of people enjoyed S4 quite a bit, and would agree with you in saying it's best of the series so far (I personally prefer S3, but they're both pretty solid IMO).
S5 should be an interesting project - based on what they've said so far, it's still going to be a single arc, but with more of a scavenger hunt/adventure tone.
Yeah, and those sorts of whimsical designs could even point to exactly where the Federation was before the Temporal Wars and Burn happened and put them into survival mode.
I don't know if this makes me a radical, but I personally think that the truest sign of an advanced civilization is if they're building these things because they can.
Art on equal footing with science, y'know?
“Programmable matter” was really just techno babble for hand held replicators, or 3D printers really
From what we've seen so far, I don't think that's quite true. For example, there's no indication that programmable matter is edible. It also seems to be able to assume its forms with little-to-no power input, once it's been programmed to do so. I hope we get to see its advantages and limitations more in the future (heh), but I really do think it's a unique technology.
detachable nacelles, how does that even work?
Superconductors, according to "That Hope Is You, Part 2".
I will rewatch the show before the final season, and I look forward to another peek at the pre-Burn ships you mention. As I recall we barely saw them before they exploded but your description definitely makes me want to revisit those scenes!
I should clarify, then, that I'm talking mainly about the ships we saw clustered around Federation Headquarters in season 3. Maintaining the cloaking field around HQ sadly kept them out of the action, but some of them are gorgeous. My personal faves (and I'm going to unabashedly pull from outside sources like STO to get the best possible images):
Eisenberg-class:
Courage-class:
Saturn-class:
Angelou-class:
And of course, it turns out that Federation HQ itself is a fully-capable starship:
I'll disagree with a couple of points here.
the time jump into a future that absolutely does not feel like it’s a thousand years ahead of the previous season. The jump in technology should be proportional to a Viking longboat rocking up to the ISS, but it felt like a step back.
This presumes that technology always develops at the same pace (it doesn't), and also ignores the two major cataclysms that the Federation endured, in the form of the Temporal Wars and the Burn. And even then, we see that the technologies we're used to are faster and more efficient (the transporters are absolutely nuts), and we've seen new developments such as programmable matter. The pre-Burn Starfleet ships we've seen look like abstract art installations, and I think they absolutely look like they're well beyond anything we saw 900ish years prior.
As for Burnham...while it's indisputable that she's the main character of the show, the entire principal cast gets plenty to do - much more than they tend to get credit for, which is a shame. They're a great ensemble.
You know what, I misinterpreted your comment.
Though I do think "hated" is a bit much - DS9 certainly was the least popular of the 90s shows, but...it ran for seven years.
~~Maybe you should consider the possibility that it's not as "hated" as you think, considering it spawned three direct spinoffs and generally revitalized the franchise.~~
I'm a big ol' dummy.
You could try watching the show and learning their names, if that won't interfere too much with your lazy hot taeks.
All we really know about him so far is
spoiler
He's a Starfleet captain, his name is Rayner, and he's poised to be some kind of curmudgeonly frenemy to Burnham.
And because Callum Keith Rennie is always great, I could not be more excited.
They picked a fairly average-seeming clip, but hit damn it's nice to see an actual ensemble cast photo.
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