Why was the 4th season so much better than the rest?

[horatio83]

There was, of course, the outright insulting 13+ audience grabber nonsense too (decon gel orgies, "Unexpected", all the horrible stupidity in A Night In Sickbay.)

Were you also insulted by Theiss wear and the "horrible stupidity" in Trouble with Tribbles?

 

[eyeresist]

I think A Night In Sickbay contains only a moderate amount of horrible stupidity.

 

[Chen]

I thought seasons 3 and 4 were more awesome because they had a unified story arc. I know trek is "meant" to be episodic, but I really think it suited an arc. The Xindi series started off very well (maybe just had a couple too many episodes) and seeing the Federation arc in season 4 was great... right up until the last ep!

 

[K'Toska]

Personally I'm not a big fan of season long story arcs. I appreciated season 4 because it was full of mini arcs.

OpenMaw, in reference to Jolene's outfits and look, I found it very insulting in the beginning. I'd read some complaints from her about how her character was presented, and it upset me because here's this actress that's a huge fan of TOS and what do they do with her? Focus on her character's sex appeal almost constantly. By the end of the series though, I felt like T'pol had grown considerably beyond that. I think Jolene Blalock is gorgeous and I can see why they wanted to take advantage of that, but it did feel exploitative at first. Perhaps I just got used to that and came to terms with it, but it did seem that it was emphasized less later. It's not that I don't appreciate pretty women - I just like to see strong, intelligent women in sci-fi who also happen to be pretty instead of the other way around. Not sure if this makes sense to anyone but me though...