Watch: New Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Trailer Beams Online

Just three months after its third run wrapped up, we’ve already got our first look at Star Trek: Discovery season 4. To mark First Contact Day this April 5th, Paramount Plus has been hosting a virtual celebration that’s already supplied us with the first preview for Star Trek: Picard‘s return and it’s been quickly followed by this sneak peek at the next outing of Discovery. 

When we last saw the U.S.S. Discovery, Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham had finally been appointed captain of the ship. And her leadership skills will be tested right off the bat as this trailer reveals a new threat to the galaxy. Burnham and her crew, including Saru (Doug Jones) and Tilly (Mary Wiseman), will work together with the newly introduced Federation President (a half-human, half-Cardassian) to investigate the spatial anomaly that’s causing cosmic havoc.

Here’s how the official synopsis for the season reads:

“Star Trek: Discovery Season Four finds Captain Burnham and the U.S.S. Discovery crew facing a threat unlike any they’ve ever encountered. With Federation and non-Federation worlds alike feeling the impact, they must confront the unknown and work together to ensure a hopeful future for all.”

As well as having a new captain at the helm, season 4 will also deck the Discovery crew out in fresh uniforms, which are red (command), gold (operations) and blue (sciences) for those on the bridge. The medical officers’ white uniforms have also been redesigned. In other words, the color scheme has reverted to the Next Generation era status quo.

The best part about the trailer, though, is the promise that the next batch of episodes will be with us this very year. That’s thanks to production beginning on season 4 in 2020, before season 3 had even begun airing. This means that we’ll have two runs of Star Trek: Discovery in the time between seasons 1 and 2 of Picard, which is scheduled to return in 2022. A specific date wasn’t revealed in the promo, but we can presumably expect the show to be back with us in the last quarter of the year.