The fourth season premieres on July 23.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is returning for its fourth and penultimate season on July 23 and we have a new trailer to prove it. The footage should please fans of Star Trek: The Original Series and its follow-up movies, as there looks to be plenty of connectiions.

For instance, there's a scene of Spock and Kirk further cementing their friendship. There also looks to be a scene in which Scotty and Uhura kiss, which is a callback (or call forward) to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Incidentally, Uhura is rocking her 1960s hair in this scene, a first for the character in Strange New Worlds. 

The showrunners promise a slightly more serious season than the last batch of episodes, which were hit or miss. However, the trailer does show the crew exploring some kind of medieval-type planet and there will be a puppet episode, so it won't be entirely joyless.

For the uninitiated, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a direct prequel to the 1960s series. It stars Captain Pike, who led the Enterprise prior to Kirk. It's been renewed for a fifth and final season which will likely end with Kirk taking the captain's chair, setting up the original show.

This show airs on Paramount+, so you'll have to decide if Star Trek is worth a subscription, especially when considering the company's recent behavior. In any event, this won't be a moral quandary for long. Paramount is essentially sunsetting the franchise for the time being.

There's currently no Star Trek in production for the first time in over a decade. The fifth season of Strange New Worlds and second season of Starfleet Academy will be the end of it. Incidentally, Starfleet Academy is pretty dang good and didn't deserve most of the hate it got from the very online anti-woke brigade.