Star Trek Discovery Season 4 episode Ratings

[shipfisher]

Discovery certainly catches a lot of hate from those who dump on anything they perceive as remotely 'woke'. I can certainly get fed up with some of the craziness out there propagated in the name of social justice and inclusiveness, but I see nothing gratuitous in Discovery's portrayal of diversity. Nothing could be more diverse than a United Federation of Planets. The UFP wouldn't rate well with xenophobics and basically anyone who doesn't like different.
Yeah, Discovery isn't your dad's Star Trek, but nor should it be. It's a big trekverse full of stories out there. I think Discovery hits the mark far more often than it misses. I wouldn't want to see it wrap up prematurely.

 

[donners22]

I was shocked by the low rating on IMDb for 3.04, and looked through the written reviews to work out why.

More than a quarter were various forms of bigotry - and those were just the ones which were honest enough to say so.

Add in those angry at the show being pulled from Netflix this season, and the low ratings aren't surprising or significant.

 

[Annorax849]

I've been looking at the IMDB ratings as well, there's a bizarre hate fest going on this season. DIS has always been controversial with fans, but the scores have been far harsher this season, even when there's no reason to think it's significantly worse this year.

 

[jackoverfull]

even when there's no reason to think it's significantly worse this year

i haven’t seen the last episode yet, but after an ok start all the episodes after the break have been basically filler, so I feel it has been significantly worse. Season 3 was by no mean perfect, but I found it mostly enjoyable and a big improvement over 1 and 2.

 

[Tuskin38]

I've been looking at the IMDB ratings as well, there's a bizarre hate fest going on this season. DIS has always been controversial with fans, but the scores have been far harsher this season, even when there's no reason to think it's significantly worse this year.

Apparently a lot of reviews are also non-US/Canada fans being upset that it was pulled from Netflix, and not actual reviews of the episodes.

 

[ananta]

There was going to be an inevitable backlash internationally for pulling it from Netflix. I was pissed, although I didn’t blame the show and it’s creators. People are so reactive online it’s not even funny. I paid to watch the season on iTunes when it was only about £12.99, which was a bargain really.

 

[saddestmoon]

Personally, from here in NZ, where Discovery isn’t available, with no Paramount l+ (and having not seen anything of season 4 yet through any other means) - I’ve been absent from this section of the forum, and unable to comment.

Having said that, I’m still enjoying reading all the comments the Discovery section of the BBS is providing!

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

There's been enough time now for the season finale to get some votes, so in case anyone's curious here's Trek BBS's season 4 episode ranking according to the rating polls:

1. …But to Connect
2. Species Ten-C
3. The Examples
4. Coming Home
5. Stormy Weather
6. Choose to Live
7. All is Possible
8. The Galactic Barrier
9. Rubicon
10. All In
11. Kobayashi Maru
12. Anomaly
13. Rosetta

It definitely seems like people were losing patience in the second half, especially by the time they reached Rosetta. But the first two episodes, Kobayashi Maru and Anomaly, were rated pretty low as well for whatever reason. On the other hand, people were a lot more impressed with Zora's own Measure of a Man and the crew's attempt to communicate with Ten-C.

Like with the IMDb ratings there were a few people giving out 1s this season on Trek BBS, with an average of 3% of voters really hating the series... so about the same percentage that hated previous seasons. Overall season 4 has ended up ranked in last place for Discovery, but not by much. It did a lot better here than it did on IMDb.

 

[Char Kais]

I don't know a damn thing about the correct way to turn votes into ratings, but I tried putting the raw IMDb numbers into a spreadsheet to see what came out:

Blue is the numbers I got out of IMDb, orange is the weighted score that IMDb calculated themselves, and grey is what happened when I copied the numbers of people who voted '2' into the '1' row to hopefully nullify the hateful 1 voters. (I did nothing to nullify all the people that voted 10 for every episode).

IMDb scores aren't perfect but it doesn't seem like they're entirely meaningless. They're still in the ballpark, and you can at least get a feel for what episodes people preferred over others within a season.

(Feel free to come up with better graphs if I've calculated this wrong).

Another interesting data point, besides how people rated a show/episode, is to look at how many people rated a show/episode on IMDB/Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic and compare it to other high-budget shows from other high-profile IPs.

More professional critics and users rated season 1 of "Discovery" than "The Mandalorian" season 1 or "The Book of Boba Fett".
The number of people who rate Discovery episodes has been on a downward trajectory ever since.
Where are all the thousands of people on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes who rated season 1 and season 2 episodes? So much for review bombing. People just don't show up anymore.

Discovery:
The number of Users that rated Discovery episodes on IDMB:

S1 1x01 7,577
S1 1x15 4,113
S2 2x01 4,721
S2 2x14 4,545
S3 3x01 4,612
S3 3x13 3,371
S4 4x01 3,034
S4 4x13 1,863

The number of (Critics/Users) that rated Discovery on Rotten Tomatoes:

S1 373/9187
S2 209/3193
S3 34//1095
S4 15/774

The number of (Critics/Users) that rated Discovery on Metacritic:

S1 20/1322
S2 10/247
S3 8/105
S4 1/50

Picard:
The number of users that rated Picard episodes on IDMB:

S1 1x01 7,043
S1 1x10 4,088
S2 2x01 3,675
S2 2x10 2,346

The number of (Critics/Users) that rated Picard on Rotten Tomatoes:

S1 253/3119
S2 94/763

The number of (Critics/Users) that rated Picard on Metacritic:

S1 27/181
S2 7/71

Strange New Worlds:

IMDB 1x01 4,100
IMDB 1x10 1,988
RT S1 80/764
MC S1 14/77

Halo (another Paramount Plus show):

IMDB 1x01 7,005
IMDB 1x09 3,142
RT S1 69/3455
MC S1 20/283

Stranger Things season 4:

IMDB 4x01 18,925
IMDB 4x09 24,747
RT 178/2786
MC 29/149

The Mandalorian:

IMDB 1x01 30,769
IMDB 1x08 25,100
IMDB 2x01 25,124
IMDB 2x08 53,731
RT S1 338/9183
RT S2 450/3424
MT S1 29/276
MT D2 14/189

The Book of Boba Fett:

IMDB 1x01 18,407
IMDB 1x07 16,083
RT S1 200/3279
MC S1 19/112

Google Trends:

 

[jackoverfull]

Very interesting

 

[Ometiklan]

So I was doing some reading at Polygon of a Star Trek article "Star Trek has truly reinvented itself" and when reading and contributing to that comment section, I began to wonder what the consensus view was on the quality of DIS S4. A Google search led me to this thread.

I totally understand the issues involving IMDB ratings (falloff in number of voters, review bombing, etc), and appreciate the additional info about TrekBBS average ratings. I guess a third data point on the general consensus view would be reviews from AV Club or something (but they basically stopped halfway through S4 after having rated every episode either B or B-).

To sum up, I think the IMDB ratings largely reflect my own (in general terms): 2 ok seasons with respective highlights, followed by 2 seasons with a mix of improvements and downgrades in various show elements, but with an overall drop in quality and in my resulting interest.

Maybe it's just confirmation bias, but it is interesting to see that I am not alone in my opinions about the DIS seasons 3 and 4. (Relatedly, I seem to like LDS more than IMDB and SNW just about the same as IMDB.)

 

[Lord Garth]

There's been enough time now for the season finale to get some votes, so in case anyone's curious here's Trek BBS's season 4 episode ranking according to the rating polls:

1. …But to Connect
2. Species Ten-C
3. The Examples
4. Coming Home
5. Stormy Weather
6. Choose to Live
7. All is Possible
8. The Galactic Barrier
9. Rubicon
10. All In
11. Kobayashi Maru
12. Anomaly
13. Rosetta

Ranking the first 10 episodes, I'd have it at...

1. "Stormy Weather"
2. "... But to Connect"
3. "Rubicon"
4. "Anomaly"
5. "Kobayashi Maru"
6. "Choose to Live"
7. "All In"
8. "The Examples"
9. "The Galactic Barrier"
10. "All Is Possible"

The last three to be added after I finish re-watching the last three.

 

[Quantum21]

So apparently with star trek season 4 on IMDB, Not one single episode has scored above a 6.0/10

I must say, that is bad. very bad, I can not speak my truth to this as I stopped watching the show, although I said I will start watching it again, but seeing such low scores for every episode in season 4 is turning me off.

So the question is, just how bad is season 4 or do you think the IMDB ratings are unfair.

This means zilch. If you look at previous Discovery seasons, while the low ratings are still overabundant due to bias, they have fairly normal avg, good ratings across the board. The low season 4 ratings start right off the bat. Why? Because it was removed from Netflix almost at the same time as season 4 started. It's a protest of sorts, to a show that's already different from other Trek shows, and has that strike against it.

Look elsewhere and user ratings are mostly good. Amazon for example has it close to 5 stars. There are others, Google has a high rating too.

Another component of ratings are that only a small percentage actually do it, and if there is a reason for anger, or a grudge (not the cat...Netflix in this case) then those people are often motivated to vote, while satisfied fans possibly will not be, over and above what they normally would.

While I have voted on these before on occasion I don't make it regular habit. I daresay that's the case for most people who like Discovery on TrekBBS.

 

[fireproof78]

While I have voted on these before on occasion I don't make it regular habit. I daresay that's the case for most people who like Discovery on TrekBBS.

Indeed. I don't vote because I don't use a scale like that for episodes.

 

[Quantum21]

Indeed. I don't vote because I don't use a scale like that for episodes.

What do you use?

 

[fireproof78]

What do you use?

Like it/Neutral/Didn't like it.