You’re right, for my part I don’t have a distinct memory of season 4 — maybe because I haven’t rewatched it yet in preparation for s5 🙂 Season 3 felt lacklustre to me, the 32nd century was decidedly underwhelming, and my esteem for s4 may have been coloured by that Discovery fatigue.

As I recall, there was a lot of build-up before actually meeting the 10-c, and that I found the Arrival-style challenges of even communicating with them more interesting than whatever that guy from The expanse had going on? His character was as unconvincing as Jake Weber’s bored pirate in s3.

I’m looking forward to rewatching all of the first four seasons again to catch up before the last one, and hopefully on this wuewing s4 has as much kick as you describe 😉