"The Collapse of Nature" is the fourth season premiere of the Canadian science fiction television series Orphan Black.

The series focuses on a number of identical human clones, all of whom are played by Tatiana Maslany: Sarah Manning, Beth Childs, Alison Hendrix, Cosima Niehaus, Rachel Duncan, Helena, MK and Krystal Goderitch.

[1] As with all episodes this season, the episode title, "The Collapse of Nature," comes from Professor Donna Haraway's 1991 book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, being a specific excerpt from the essay entitled "The Biological Enterprise: Sex, Mind and Profit from Human Engineering to Sociobiology.

As she hides behind a tree, she witnesses a white man, Frank (Ian Matthews), and a black woman, Roxie (Miranda Edwards), who are wearing paramedics uniforms, burying a body in the dirt.

Before the two can come after her, the young woman places a teddy bear sticker on the tree she was hiding behind and runs away from the scene.

She goes there to investigate and meets Trina (Allie MacDonald), a body-mod Neolutionist who informs Beth about the body modification and surgical alteration indicative of Neolution.

She trains Alison in gun defense, Cosima enrolls in college and begins studying biology at Beth's request in order to find out more about the clones.

in a junkyard trailer, who communicates with her over the internet, warning her not to trust anybody, alluding to the fact that Art, or even Paul are potentially watching her as part of an experiment.

Beth is woken up by a phone call from Trina, who is concerned about her boyfriend, saying that he was abducted by a couple of "dentists" who implanted an experimental mod worm in his cheek.

She does, and eventually spots Frank and Roxie inside a room, cutting away Aaron's cheek and removing a worm.

Once the worm is removed, Beth becomes startled and motions to leave the scene, but then knocks into boxes on the fire escape, alarming the Neolutionists inside.

He then arrives at the scene, inserts a cell phone into Maggie Chen's hand, and tells Beth, "You saw a gun... now get your story straight".

The victim they bury at the beginning of the episode with the cut out cheek was the production team's first experience with "negative" make-up.

Make-up designer Stephen Lynch created the outside of the wound and the cut flesh, while the VFX team later filled in the middle with special effects to make the inside of the mouth visible.

[4] In regards to the body-mod worms featured in the episode, Casey Griffin and Nina Nesseth of The Mary Sue offered two scientific explanations.

Citing examples of the Schistosoma mansoni, a parasitic worm whose eggs release a protein which can bind to DNA and replicate alongside it, and Helminths, parasitic worms which have been used to treat autoimmune disorders, as possibilities for effectively introducing new genetic material into a host in order to garner a desired gene alteration.

Club gave the episode an A− grade, writing that "Tatiana Maslany’s acting justifiably gets endless kudos for this show, but it’s always worth giving credit to the makeup and costume department as well.

As Beth, she looked haunted, exhausted, and ill, with tangled hair and a wardrobe that suggested a Type A personality that’s collapsed in on itself.

[7] Den of Geek critic Marc Buxton praised "the absolute brilliance of Tatiana Maslany" and the "ballsy move" of crafting the season premiere as a flashback episode.

You may think you’ll be disappointed that your favorites are nowhere to be seen, but relax, five minutes of watching Maslany playing Beth in the cop’s final days, you will be riveted.

She wrote, "it's so promising that the fourth season premiere takes a deep breath and a significant step back from Orphan Black's preexisting, overlapping stories.

If this fourth season can sweep aside some of the clutter and find its surreal, fiercely intelligent core again, there's no reason to believe it will be anything other than great.

"[9] Noem Cohen of The New York Observer praised the episode saying, "Orphan Black uses the unique qualities of its narrative, and especially Maslany's tremendous performance, to play with our expectations, to make us question ideas we take for granted.

While he praised the Beth-centric plot that allowed viewers to see key moments leading up to her suicide, the intriguing Neolutionist mystery, and the "back to basics" storyline which offered ties to the first season, he also felt that too much of the plot was retread of moments already experienced, and he decried many of the episode cameos, such as Olivier and Felix, as "pointless and fan-servicey."