Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard.
Well, this is an interesting development! The long-rumoured Starfleet Academy series has just been officially announced by Paramount, with production due to begin next year. As I said the last time we talked about the series, I think it’s an idea that has a lot of potential.
In typical Paramount style, this announcement was low on detail and badly-timed, arriving a couple of weeks after news broke that Discovery has been cancelled. Rolling these two announcements into one would have made a lot of sense, shoring up Star Trek and reaffirming Paramount’s commitment to it instead of seeming to blow hot and cold on the franchise’s future and prospects. The announcement of Starfleet Academy seemed to suggest that it may be set in Discovery’s 32nd Century – perhaps existing as a spin-off from that series. While I don’t think that would be my personal preference in terms of setting, it’s definitely another good reason for combining these two announcements.
The series’ official announcement graphic. Image Credit: StarTrek.com
I’m not 100% sure if this new series is live-action or animated, as the official announcement didn’t actually state that outright, being surprisingly threadbare. I guess Paramount would have explicitly said if it was an animated production, though, and I’ve seen a few other outlets make the assumption that this will be a live-action series. If so, that’s good! With Picard and Discovery both ending within the next twelve months, Starfleet Academy can join Strange New Worlds and keep the flag flying in live-action.
The line in the official announcement about the Academy re-opening “for the first time in over a century” is where the 32nd Century setting seems to be referenced, as it was noted in Discovery’s third and fourth seasons that the Academy had been shut down sometime after the Burn. And I’m in two minds about this, if I’m being honest.
Starfleet cadets in the 32nd Century.
On the one hand, Discovery’s 32nd Century has been an interesting experiment, and an opportunity to do what Star Trek has always done: move the timeline forward. But on the other, it’s disconnected from the rest of the franchise by a span of centuries – making it much harder for characters, factions, or even themes to cross over from one part of the Star Trek franchise to another. With other projects set in the more familiar 23rd and 24th Centuries still ongoing, it’s also a decision that keeps Star Trek as a complicated, convoluted franchise that can be difficult to get started with for newcomers or for folks who haven’t watched for a long time.
A reorganisation of Star Trek is sorely needed – and the announcement of Starfleet Academy was an opportunity to do so. Bringing all of the current and upcoming shows into a single time period makes so much sense, and I fear we may look back on this decision as a missed opportunity. As much as I enjoy what Discovery has done with its far-future setting, and as much potential as that setting has, it would not have been my first choice for a new series at this juncture.
Starfleet Academy as it appeared in the early 25th Century.
If Starfleet Academy is to be set in the 32nd Century, it’s odd that Paramount isn’t explicitly touting the series as a Discovery spin-off. The fourth season episode All Is Possible felt like a backdoor pilot for Starfleet Academy – and I wasn’t alone in saying so at the time of its broadcast. This announcement didn’t mention All Is Possible, nor did it mention Lieutenant Tilly or any of the cadets from that episode. I wonder if the reception to All Is Possible shook up pre-production on Starfleet Academy – and with Tilly seemingly involved in some capacity in Discovery’s fifth and final season, perhaps she won’t be included in this spin-off series.
If that’s the case, it would throw the setting of the series into question even more – and I come back to what I said a moment ago about the 32nd Century not being the best choice. But I suppose we’re getting ahead of ourselves! Paramount’s lack of clarity on some of these points is leading to unhelpful guesswork!
The second announcement graphic. Image Credit: StarTrek.com
One of the big advantages to Starfleet Academy should be the show’s youthful focus – and with that, an ability to reach out to a new generation of viewers. Kids who’ve cut their teeth on the likes of Prodigy could view Starfleet Academy as the next step in their burgeoning fandom, and the series could also appeal to teen viewers who are looking for something a bit different. The announcement made it sound as if youthful cadets will be a big part of the show’s focus – and that can and should lead to the series appealing to precisely the kinds of viewers that Paramount needs more of.
If the series stands somewhat apart, without being tied too closely to past iterations of Star Trek, it could be a soft landing for new viewers – and the 32nd Century might actually prove advantageous here. There’d be scope to perhaps harken back to the events of classic episodes and films through the lectures and classes that the cadets attend – and that could allow Starfleet Academy to drop exposition and re-tell classic stories in a way that feels natural.
25th Century Academy cadets.
One thing in the announcement has caused a little concern, though, and I fear that Paramount hasn’t learned the right lessons from some of Star Trek’s recent successes and failures. The announcement promised “a new enemy that threatens both the Academy and the Federation itself” – and doesn’t that sound just like the setup for another fully-serialised story?
Since returning to the small screen in 2017, serialised storytelling has been – at best – a double-edged sword for Star Trek. On the one hand, the franchise has tried to move in a more modern direction, adopting a model used by successful titles like Lost and Game of Thrones. But on the other… well, it isn’t exactly controversial to say that not all of Star Trek’s serialised stories have been successful. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve all had their moments, but taken as a whole, Star Trek and serialised storytelling hasn’t always been a good combination.
The USS Discovery at warp.
In 2022, there’s no debate that the best-received and most successful Star Trek series was Strange New Worlds. The franchise took a step back toward episodic storytelling while retaining many of the trappings of more modern shows. Strange New Worlds was the perfect blend of “monsters-of-the-week” with season-long character arcs – and it was beautiful, riveting television that quickly became the high-water mark of modern Star Trek.
In contrast, Discovery’s fourth season and Picard’s second didn’t do so well. Discovery Season 4 pulled out a creditable ending – but I’m not alone in feeling that it spent a lot of time treading water before it reached that point. And well… the less said about Picard Season 2 the better, quite frankly. It was awful.
Yup.
When Discovery’s cancellation was announced, I said that it might prove to be a net positive for the franchise – if Paramount could use it as an opportunity to refine and refocus Star Trek. Look at what’s worked and what hasn’t since Discovery’s premiere, and pick the best and most successful elements from five different productions. There’s a place for serialised storytelling in Star Trek, sure… and there has been going way back to Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War arc. But just because other made-for-streaming shows are going down the serialised road… that doesn’t mean that every Star Trek show has to as well.
A kid-friendly series – as Starfleet Academy should aim to be – is particularly well-suited to a more episodic kind of storytelling. There can be ongoing character arcs and storylines within that framework, as Strange New Worlds has demonstrated. But if the main thrust of the series is episodic it would feel accessible to a more youthful, casual audience – and it could open up a much wider range of potential storylines.
Starfleet Academy could bring in a younger audience.
If there’s time between now and Starfleet Academy entering production next year to make this case, I hope someone at Paramount will listen! Look at what Strange New Worlds achieved in its first season and try to emulate that model instead of making another fully-serialised show in the mould of Picard or Discovery. That would be my single biggest wish – and my single biggest piece of advice to Paramount and the producers of Starfleet Academy.
The announcement of any new Star Trek show should be a time of great excitement – and I do feel excited! After Discovery’s cancellation, the catastrophic failure of a proposed new Kelvin timeline film last year, and poor financial news from Paramount, there was no guarantee that Starfleet Academy – or any other new project, for that matter – would get off the ground at all. So I’m relieved that Paramount remains committed to making new Star Trek shows. With Picard and Discovery both coming to an end, there will certainly be room in the lineup!
This is good news for Star Trek.
There are concerns, though. Does the announcement of Starfleet Academy mean that a Picard spin-off is now off the table for the foreseeable future? What of the Section 31 series, which has been languishing in development hell for more than four years? Is the 32nd Century the right time period for a brand-new series? Is another serialised show in the Discovery mould really the right move in light of how well Strange New Worlds worked? Is this Alex Kurtzman’s last hurrah? I have a thousand questions like this right now!
A series that could appeal to a younger audience has a ton of potential, and I will watch Starfleet Academy’s progress with enthusiasm and as much hope as I can muster! When the show is ready I’ll do my best to review each and every episode – and between now and then, I’ll cover any big developments such as casting announcements, teaser trailers, and more. So I hope you’ll stay tuned here on Trekking with Dennis!
This was a surprising announcement in some ways, but one that has been a long time coming in others. I’m glad that Star Trek has a future beyond Discovery and Picard’s final seasons, and I’m genuinely excited to see what Starfleet Academy has to offer.
Live long and prosper!
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has just been announced and won’t enter production until at least 2024. The series will premiere on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available sometime in 2025, 2026, or beyond. Further international distribution has not been announced. The Star Trek franchise – including Starfleet Academy and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of CBS Studios and Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 and the trailers and teasers for Season 5.
We’re going to have to delay my review of the latest Star Trek: Picard episode by a day or two in order to do something that I rarely do here on the website: cover some breaking news. If you haven’t heard, let me be the bearer of what may or may not – depending on your perspective – be a bit of bad news: Star Trek: Discovery is going to end after its fifth season.
Forgive me for thinking negatively, but as soon as I heard that announcement, I felt a sinking feeling in my gut. Since filming wrapped on Discovery’s fifth season late last year, no live-action Star Trek has been in production for the first time in a couple of years. Not only that, but Picard’s ongoing third season is going to be that show’s swansong… and despite a spectacular first season, there’s been no news on a third season renewal for Strange New Worlds, at least at time of writing, even though production on Season 2 wrapped months ago. So could this be, as I fear, the beginning of the end for Star Trek in its modern incarnation?
How much life is left in the Star Trek universe?
Discovery brought Star Trek back to its small screen home in 2017 after twelve years in the wilderness. The show served as a launchpad for the Star Trek franchise as it exists today – and it’s highly likely that we would never have seen Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, or of course Strange New Worlds were it not for the trail that Discovery blazed. But with its cancellation after Season 5 – which is due to be broadcast sometime in early 2024 – is Star Trek in a better or more secure place than it was in 2017… or in 2005?
I’d argue that it isn’t.
Shortly after new year, I published a piece here on the website titled 2022: A Great and Terrible Year for Star Trek, in which I took a look at what I considered to be the highs and (considerable) lows that the franchise endured over the course of a rollercoaster year. Although there was a lot to say, perhaps my biggest conclusion was simply this: franchise fatigue is beginning to set in. It’s through that lens that I must view the news of Discovery’s imminent ending.
The final shot of Discovery’s fourth season finale.
Unlike with Enterprise in 2005, it’s my hope that Discovery’s writers will have known the end was coming well enough in advance to have planned out a conclusive ending for the series and its characters. Enterprise’s finale was divisive among fans, and the show’s final season seemed to leave more than a few characters and storylines up in the air by the time the curtain fell. If this recently-announced news had been known to the producers and creative team, hopefully they will have been able to put together an ending worthy of the show and its great cast of characters.
And as I’ve said more than once: it’s infinitely better for a show to end leaving its audience wanting more, lamenting that we didn’t get “just one more season,” rather than dragging on too long and having us regret that the end didn’t come earlier! Discovery has been an imperfect production, don’t get me wrong, but with the current state of Star Trek being what it is… maybe this is simply the right time for the show to come to an end. If there weren’t great ideas on the table for future story arcs, then I’d rather it came to a close with one last hurrah instead of dragging on ad infinitum.
Michael Burnham in the trailer for Discovery Season 5.
Star Trek can’t keep up the pace that we saw in 2022, where more than fifty episodes across five shows all debuted in a single calendar year. It’s just too much – and it risks putting off new viewers, who are precisely the people that Paramount needs to convince to tune in if Paramount+ is to have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving the streaming wars. Making Star Trek too dense, too convoluted, and just too large is what’s been happening over the last few years, so stepping back from that shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing. If anything, it should be a net positive for the franchise.
With Picard also coming to an end, there’s the potential to perhaps scale back Star Trek and refocus. Take what worked about the shows over the last few years and hone it, disregard failed experiments, and have Star Trek operate in a similar fashion to other streaming franchises – with a focus on quality over quantity.
Star Trek: Picard is also coming to the end of its run.
But is that Paramount’s goal? With two live-action shows coming to an end, there’s the potential to put more money and energy into Strange New Worlds, for example, as that show was very well-received. But with no third season having been announced so far… I can’t shake the feeling that this really could be the beginning of the end for the franchise as a whole.
Depending on how things are scheduled, there’s enough Star Trek in production or post-production to coast through into the first half of 2024. But what then? A third season of Strange New Worlds – if one is to be produced – might also debut that same year… but 2025 could end up being like 2005: the end of the road.
Is this moment akin to 2005?
If that were to happen, Paramount only has itself to blame. The corporation has mismanaged both the Star Trek franchise and its streaming platform in catastrophic fashion, seemingly led by the most inept team of morons to ever assemble in a boardroom. Before Discovery had even been conceived, an ageing corporate board with no knowledge or understanding of streaming or the internet saw the success of Netflix and said “make me one of those.” CBS All Access was born – and Star Trek was tapped to be its flagship franchise.
But was Star Trek ever big enough to place such a burden upon it? Even if Discovery had been flawless and had landed with minimal controversy, pinning the profitability of a streaming platform on its success was always a bad idea. It isn’t Discovery’s fault that CBS All Access – as Paramount+ used to be known – didn’t become the “next big thing” in streaming… and it isn’t Discovery’s fault that Paramount+ remains massively unprofitable today.
Discovery was created to be the flagship series for CBS All Access.
Paramount is in the wrong business. The board is right about one thing: streaming is the future. But they jumped into that market a decade too late, unprepared, and without the technical know-how or infrastructure to really make it work. The only thing CBS All Access/Paramount+ had going for it were shows like Star Trek – but I think Paramount is belatedly learning that the Star Trek franchise simply doesn’t have the mainstream appeal to carry an entire streaming platform.
So what does all of this mean for Star Trek’s future? Maybe it’s too early to hit the panic button… but I confess that I feel echoes of 2005. It’s been surprising to me that no spin-offs or new projects have been announced, and in a way, the announcement of Discovery’s cancellation was another opportunity to do so. The tone would be very different if the press release had stated that “Discovery is coming to an end… but Starfleet Academy or Captain Seven are entering production.”
Does Alex Kurtzman have a surprise up his sleeve?
So here we are. After a creditable six-year run, and numerous cancellation scares, Discovery will be coming to an end. Its imminent fifth season actually looks fantastic – and if it makes good on its promise of telling a different kind of story, perhaps in another world that could have set the stage for the show’s continuation. Perhaps the tragedy here will be that Discovery changed tack too late – that four whole seasons of “the galaxy is in danger and only Burnham and the crew can save it!” was just too much. That would certainly be my assessment, and as enjoyable as parts of Season 4 were, maybe if a different kind of adventure had been written last time around, we could’ve gotten an extra season or two.
There are a lot of unanswered questions. What of the backdoor pilot for a Starfleet Academy series that we seemed to get partway through Season 4? If Star Trek as a whole continues, will another series pick up Discovery’s 32nd Century setting – or does Paramount consider the far future to have been a bit of a misfire? Will Star Trek continue at all after Strange New Worlds Season 2 and Discovery Season 5? Is anyone at Paramount ready for a difficult conversation about what’s going wrong?
Paramount ought to reconsider many of its recent decisions…
I’m not thrilled to learn that Discovery won’t continue. Although not every season and every character fully stuck the landing, there’s been some fantastic entertainment along the way – episodes and moments within episodes that hit all of the high notes that we know Star Trek can. Moreover, by the time the curtain fell on Season 4, I felt that Discovery had finally turned a corner. Having settled Burnham into the captain’s chair, and told a story about seeking out new life – the very core of Starfleet’s mission – it felt that the show had finally achieved its potential. Season 5 will hopefully capitalise on this – but it will be short-lived, with only ten episodes left for the series to shine.
The history of Star Trek is one of stepping-stones: series and films that lead to new, different, and often better things. Just as Enterprise and the Kelvin films led to Discovery, so too has Discovery led to Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds. Whether these shows will lead, in turn, to new things, or whether the trail will go cold for a while, Discovery played its part. It may not have always done so perfectly, but I’m confident that its place in the franchise’s history is assured – and I suspect that at least some of its critics will be won over if they give it a second chance!
I’m still looking forward to Season 5 – but it’s now a rather bittersweet feeling, knowing it will be our final outing with Captain Burnham and the crew. Not to mention that this news has massively increased concerns for the overall direction – and indeed the future – of the Star Trek franchise as a whole.
Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available, and are also available on Blu-ray. Season 5 will stream on Paramount+ in 2023 or 2024. The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the entire Star Trek franchise, including the most recent seasons of Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds. There are also spoilers for upcoming and unreleased Star Trek projects.
By almost every conceivable measure, 2022 has been a fantastic year for the Star Trek franchise. We’ve seen new projects become successful, ongoing series really hitting their stride, and more seasons and individual episodes of Star Trek than at any time in the past. Barely a week has gone by without a brand-new episode to get stuck into – and with different shows targeting wildly different audiences, it really feels like Star Trek in 2022 has had something to offer to practically everyone.
But that isn’t the whole story, and unfortunately it feels as though 2022 has also been a pretty dark year for Star Trek – one in which major mistakes have been made that could very easily lead to serious consequences in the medium-to-long term, and perhaps even premature cancellations for some or all of the shows currently in production.
Let’s look at the high and low points for the Star Trek universe over the past twelve months.
On this occasion, I want to look back at 2022 from the perspective of a Star Trek fan, and draw attention to both the highs and lows of a rollercoaster year for the franchise. And there’s quite a lot to say, so make sure you’re sitting comfortably!
My usual caveat applies: everything we’re going to talk about today is the subjective opinion of one person. There are a lot of reasons to think positively and optimistically about Star Trek, and the fact that I have some negative or uncomfortable points to raise shouldn’t be interpreted as me being some kind of “hater” of new Star Trek. I love the franchise, I want to see it succeed, and I raise these issues not out of spite but out of genuine concern. If you don’t agree with me, that’s okay. There’s room within the Star Trek fan community for polite discussions and civil disagreements!
Now that that’s out of the way, we can begin.
The Great:
A Starfleet armada as seen in Picard Season 2.
It seems only fair to allow the Star Trek franchise to put its best foot forward, so we’ll start with what went well in 2022. And there are several incredible highlights, any one of which alone would ordinarily mean we’d consider 2022 to have been a huge success for Star Trek.
Some of the best entertainment experiences that I had all year came from the Star Trek franchise, and those incredible episodes and stories weren’t limited to a single season or a single show. In fact, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that all five of 2022’s Star Trek productions had some fantastic high points; episodes or at least moments within episodes that had me on the edge of my seat, jumping for joy, or in tears.
Strange New Worlds Season 1 was fantastic:
Several of the main cast members of Strange New Worlds in a behind-the-scenes photo.
The first season of Strange New Worlds was, without a doubt, the best that modern Star Trek has had to offer – and one of the finest seasons in the entire fifty-six-year history of the franchise. A triumphant return to an older, more episodic style of storytelling that still retained many modern serialised elements represents a model that I genuinely believe every other current and upcoming project in the franchise needs to seriously consider adopting. The diversity of stories on display in Strange New Worlds Season 1 was unprecedented in the franchise’s modern era.
Strange New Worlds’ premiere was also the culmination of a fan campaign to get Anson Mount and Ethan Peck to reprise their popular and incredibly successful roles from Discovery’s second season. The show’s very existence is testament to Paramount’s willingness to take on board feedback from Star Trek fans and a wider audience, and the fact that the corporation backed up this relative gamble by awarding the series a decently high budget should be acknowledged. Paramount didn’t have to make Strange New Worlds – plans were afoot for other Star Trek shows and spin-offs, but the corporation reacted positively to feedback from fans and viewers, and the result was an absolutely outstanding season of television that has hopefully laid the groundwork for one of the best Star Trek series of the current era – if not of all-time.
The USS Enterprise.
It really is hard to overstate just how incredible Strange New Worlds’ first season really was. In my spoiler-free review I talked about how the show enthusiastically tried out different genres, managing to thread the needle of staying close to Star Trek’s roots while still feeling like a thoroughly modern production. There were ten fantastic episodes – and while I had a few story nitpicks, overall the season has to be considered the best since Star Trek returned to the small screen in 2017.
So Strange New Worlds is definitely one of the highlights of 2022 – not just for the Star Trek franchise, but in the entertainment space in general. It’s a show that should be accessible to new and old fans alike, with the potential to expand the Star Trek fandom beyond its current niche.
The Strange New Worlds-Lower Decks crossover announcement:
The announcement’s official graphic.
This is something that I genuinely was not expecting – but it’s a fantastic idea! Star Trek did a fair few crossover episodes in its heyday, and while I guess we can consider parts of Discovery and Strange New Worlds to have crossed over with The Original Series, it isn’t the same as bringing together two shows that are currently in production. With five shows occupying five different time periods and regions of the galaxy, a proper crossover felt like a remote possibility – until this announcement came along at Comic-Con in July.
I mentioned the diversity of genres that Strange New Worlds dabbled in in its first season – well, one of those was comedy! We had two episodes that had overtly comedic premises, and many other moments of humour throughout much of the season. A crossover with Lower Decks – an animated comedy series – is thus not as far-fetched as we might think!
Boimler and Mariner will soon be visiting Strange New Worlds…
As always in Star Trek, technobabble can account for most things! The crew of the Cerritos could find themselves in the 23rd Century thanks to all manner of phenomena, so there’s no real barrier to bringing the two shows together. With some creative scriptwriting, a solid foundation should be able to bring Boimler, Mariner, and perhaps other members of the Cerritos’ crew aboard Captain Pike’s ship.
This announcement has got a lot of Trekkies very excited, and that’s a great thing. Paramount needs to make moves like these to keep the fan community engaged, and while a crossover may feel very much like fan-service, there’s also a huge potential benefit to bringing together two different parts of the Star Trek franchise. Fans of Lower Decks may check out Strange New Worlds for the first time – and vice-versa. Crossover stories have the potential to benefit both shows and increase viewership, potentially turning casual viewers into fans of the franchise as a whole. If Star Trek is to survive long-term, we need to see more moves like this.
Visual effects and CGI:
A digitally de-aged John de Lancie as Q.
Although Discovery’s first season felt like it brought to the table some excellent visual effects, there were some definite disappointments thereafter. The Romulan and Federation fleets seen in the finale of Picard Season 1, for example, were pretty lacklustre; copy-and-paste starships that all looked the same and, in the case of the Starfleet vessels, didn’t even have names and NCC numbers. There were also some pretty sloppy CGI moments in Discovery’s third season – one example that comes to mind is a digital sword that supposedly stabbed a character, but just looked awful.
But in 2022, all that changed. We had a big, beautiful Starfleet armada in Picard’s season premiere and season finale. We had other CGI moments in the Confederation timeline that looked spectacular. Strange New Worlds did some incredible things with practical puppets in conjunction with CGI and visual effects to create some wonderful moments. And Discovery brought to screen one of the most “alien-looking” alien races ever seen in the franchise: Species 10-C.
Unknown Species 10-C looked fantastic.
Both Discovery and Strange New Worlds made excellent use of Paramount’s fancy new AR wall, too. When the AR wall first debuted, I felt there were definitely a few moments where its use was noticeable. But by the time we got to 2022’s Star Trek productions, the creative team and effects artists had clearly grown in both confidence and ability, taking advantage of the AR wall to craft some wonderful environments.
Finally, I’d be remiss not to mention the digital de-ageing of John de Lancie in his initial appearance as Q. That moment, which came at the end of the Picard Season 2 premiere, was absolutely fantastic!
Some of these technologies are very expensive, and Paramount doesn’t have the same resources as the likes of Disney or Netflix, so I can understand why they’re used sparingly in some cases. But overall, I’d give Star Trek’s visual effects and CGI work an A grade for 2022.
Discovery Season 4 ended on a spectacular high:
The Presidents of Earth and the Federation meet.
Although Discovery’s fourth season seemed to drag in places, there’s no denying that the way the season ended was pitch-perfect and went at least some way to making up for earlier narrative missteps. Coming Home (the season finale) was an incredible episode: deeply emotional, visually stunning, and tied up all of the season’s loose ends.
The way in which Season 4 ended showed off the Federation at its very best, racing in to help a planet that had left the organisation simply because they needed assistance and it was the right thing to do. I still get chills just thinking about it, and the way Admiral Vance led the charge, bringing Federation HQ to Earth in its hour of need… it’s one of the best story beats in the season.
The arrival of the USS Mitchell at Earth.
After the drama with Unknown Species 10-C was resolved, an epilogue saw Earth coming back into the fold, rejoining the Federation, and this has set the stage for what promises to be a different kind of story in the show’s upcoming fifth season. I would challenge any Discovery-avoider to watch Coming Home and not feel that the show has grown spectacularly since its premiere almost six years ago.
By expanding its cast with some genuinely interesting secondary characters, Discovery is starting down the Deep Space Nine road, where characters outside of the main headliners could be just as important to stories. Although it’s still “the Burnham show” in some ways, there’s movement away from a laser-focus on one character, with others being given moments in the spotlight. That’s all to the good – and as Season 5 approaches, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic.
So that’s what Star Trek got right.
Spock, Pike, and Sam Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise.
There are some really amazing highlights, and were it not for some of the things we’re about to discuss, they’d have meant that the year 2022 would’ve gone down in history as one of Star Trek’s finest; the beginning of a new “golden age” that would rival the franchise’s 1990s heyday. Strange New Worlds truly excelled, Discovery did some bold and interesting things, and Picard put together a Starfleet armada that was big, diverse, and beautiful. And that’s not even mentioning solid seasons from both Lower Decks and Prodigy that continue to branch out in very different directions.
But that isn’t all there is to say, and now I’m afraid we have to consider some of the ways in which Star Trek went wrong in 2022.
The Terrible:
It must be some kind of visual metaphor…
Paramount did serious, almost catastrophic harm to Star Trek in 2022, and I genuinely fear for the franchise’s longer-term prospects. I had felt all but certain that we’d make it to the 60th anniversary in 2026 with new seasons and perhaps even new films being created… but that goal feels pretty far away right now, even with the promise of unannounced projects being worked on behind the scenes.
The simple truth is this: I have no confidence in the leadership team at Paramount. It seems as if they don’t know what they’re doing; they leap from disaster to disaster, damaging trust and confidence in the Star Trek brand, harming the Star Trek fan community, and above all, it feels as if 20th Century thinking is trying – and desperately failing – to lead Paramount into the 21st Century. Without a major change in direction at the top and a serious rethink of the corporation’s attitude and approach, Star Trek will not succeed and will not survive.
The international rollout of Paramount+:
The Paramount+ logo.
If you’ve been a regular reader here on the website, you may remember that I’ve had a lot to say on this subject. The fact that Paramount was unable to speed up the painfully constipated rollout of its streaming platform – and crucially, the corporation’s unwillingness to broadcast Star Trek on other channels or streaming platforms in countries and territories where Paramount+ isn’t available – has been a dead weight around the neck of the Star Trek franchise, pushing Trekkies away… or into the arms of piracy.
Paramount sits atop a global media empire, and owns television channels in dozens of countries around the world. If the rollout of Paramount+ was so slow, the corporation had months or years in which to make other arrangements to broadcast Star Trek. Prodigy, for instance, is produced in part under Paramount’s Nickelodeon brand – and there are Nickelodeon channels available in more than 100 countries around the world. Why was Prodigy not broadcast on any of them until months after its first season had gotten underway? And why was Strange New Worlds not made available here in the UK on one of the dozen or so channels that Paramount already owns?
The real Paramount+ tagline, apparently.
These decisions hit the Star Trek fan community hard. But more than that, they greatly harmed Strange New Worlds and Prodigy in particular. In a 21st Century media landscape, word-of-mouth on social media makes all the difference – and Paramount has consistently failed to learn that cutting off a huge portion of the potential audience for its shows means that posts get fewer likes, hashtags don’t trend, and the resulting lack of online chatter harms these shows in the United States as well. The blinkered, short-sighted “America First” approach that the corporation has adopted may have worked fine in the 1980s… but it isn’t the ’80s any more. The internet is one single worldwide audience, and by denying a huge portion of that audience access to Paramount+ and the Star Trek franchise, Paramount has done immeasurable harm to Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, and the entire franchise.
At time of writing, Paramount+ doesn’t even have the faintest idea about a launch in countries like Japan or South Korea, and even in western Europe, coverage is spotty. And you can forget about the hugely growing markets in places like China or Africa – Paramount doesn’t even acknowledge their existence. If there were plans afoot to get Star Trek shown on other networks in those regions – whether Paramount-owned or not – at least that would be something. But no such plans have been forthcoming, so the option Trekkies have in much of the world is to either pirate Star Trek or miss out. There’s no prospect of bringing on board new fans as long as this attitude persists.
Scheduling problems:
Why did Picard Season 2 premiere before Discovery Season 4 had ended?
Why did Discovery Season 4 overlap Picard Season 2 by three weeks in the spring of 2022? And why was the Picard finale shown the same day (the same minute, in fact) as Strange New Worlds’ premiere? Paramount’s scheduling decisions were pathetic in 2022, as there was simply no need for the shows to overlap like this.
Had Picard Season 2 been delayed and not run alongside Discovery, and Strange New Worlds also been delayed a mere four or five weeks so as not to overlap Picard, that would have lined up almost perfectly with Paramount+ launching here in the UK. There would have been the option for Trekkies in the UK to join in with fans in the USA, watching Strange New Worlds together. This bizarre rush saw several weeks with two different shows on at the same time, and while that did also happen during The Next Generation era, in an age of ten-episode seasons and on-demand streaming… it just shouldn’t be happening any more.
…and why did Strange New Worlds premiere before Picard Season 2 had ended?
You don’t see Disney+ having The Mandalorian and Andor overlapping one another – Disney makes sure that the Star Wars shows have room to breathe. I genuinely don’t understand how a decision was taken to have these shows clash. At the very least it should have been possible to spread out the release of episodes so that they weren’t on the same day, but Paramount even failed to consider that possibility, apparently.
Were it not for the rushed scheduling meaning that Strange New Worlds debuted in the USA weeks before Paramount+ arrived in the UK, I’d still find the whole thing pretty stupid. But when a slightly more spread out schedule could have allowed Paramount+ to land in the UK the same week as Strange New Worlds premiered… I honestly can’t forgive it. Whichever idiot at Paramount (and there’s no shortage of those, clearly) signed off the scheduling decisions for 2022 needs to be fired.
A premature announcement:
It turns out we aren’t going back to the Kelvin timeline after all…
One of the most basic, entry-level rules of the entertainment industry is this: you don’t officially announce anything until all of the pieces are in place. Paramount became a laughing stock in 2022 by announcing a sequel to 2016’s Star Trek Beyond… before trying to quietly un-announce it only a few weeks later.
Whatever you may think of the merits of a new Kelvin timeline film, it should be patently obvious that this was not the way to handle it. It seems as if no main cast members had been so much as offered a contract, let alone been in a position to sign one and start work on a film that had a very ambitious release date of July and then December 2023. Paramount’s failure in this regard was spectacular, and practically unheard of for a big corporation in the modern entertainment industry.
This was a catastrophic failure from Paramount.
Whether a new Star Trek film gets underway in the months ahead or not, this total own-goal from Paramount’s team of corporate morons has already damaged the film – and arguably the wider franchise, too. To make an official announcement, put a film on the schedule with an expected release date, and then have to walk it all back and try to quietly brush it aside is a bad look. It makes Paramount and the Star Trek franchise look disorganised, unprofessional, and chaotic. Who’d want to go to work for a corporation like that the next time they’re hiring?
I can’t even believe we have to say this, but here we go: if you don’t have all the contracts signed, don’t announce your film. If the executives at Paramount don’t understand that, then they need to be removed immediately.
Star Trek Day:
Nicholas Meyer at Star Trek Day.
Oh, I feel bad about putting this on the list – but I’m afraid we must. Star Trek Day was hyped up as a celebration of all things Trek… but it was a spectacular let-down. Despite promises of “announcements and reveals throughout,” nothing major was actually announced at Star Trek Day… unless we count a scripted podcast. Which we don’t.
The live broadcast was also pretty amateurish, with hosts who seemed unprepared, guests who couldn’t answer the most basic of questions about their shows, and panels that were either cut too short or that went totally off the rails and fell apart. There were a couple of teaser trailers, but even then, Paramount seems to have been saving the biggest and boldest of those for Comic-Con a couple of months later.
The less said about the Lower Decks panel the better…
By some accounts, Star Trek Day didn’t bring in much of an audience, which is a shame in a way. But if Paramount isn’t going to make this kind of celebration of the franchise and its fans a big blow-out, perhaps it’s better just to skip it next year – or at least make sure that expectations are properly set in advance.
I hoped for better things from Star Trek Day, and while I don’t want to be too critical of the main figures involved, it was a pretty big disappointment.
Social media failures:
A selection of social media apps.
We’ve already touched on this in a couple of places, but Paramount and the Star Trek franchise really need to get a better handle on social media. The way in which they used social media in 2022 was poor, and we need to see Star Trek becoming much more engaging and interactive with fans and viewers. Social media isn’t merely a billboard on which to paste an advertisement or show off a teaser trailer; Paramount needs to start treating social media platforms as spaces to engage with fans.
To just give a couple of examples, Star Trek’s social media pages could showcase fan art, highlighting the real passion that many Trekkies have for the franchise. And they could run competitions, with giveaways of merchandise or Paramount+ subscriptions as rewards. Take a look around at other big corporations and see what they’re doing; social media is a gateway that Paramount could open, giving new, especially younger fans a first look at Star Trek.
Star Trek and Paramount are not adept at using social media.
At the very least, Paramount and Star Trek need to be more active on social media. They need to respond to genuine questions from fans as much as possible, especially concerning things like release dates and availability. Frankly they also ought to curate their social media posts better, deleting hateful comments about some of the new Star Trek shows and especially about some of the actors. LGBT+ actors and actors from ethnic minority backgrounds are particular targets, and it’s a bad look when a post has comments of that nature.
Look at television shows as diverse as Game of Thrones, Tiger King, and Squid Game. What helped them blow up and break out of their original niches to attract massive audiences? Social media! Well-timed promotions and social media teams that actively leaned into the discussion, the jokes, the memes, and everything else helped those shows – and many more. Star Trek could have that too – if only Paramount could get someone competent to manage its social media operation.
Quentin Tarantino:
Quentin Tarantino. Photo credit: Georges Biard via Wikimedia Commons.
When a director with the undeniable talent of Quentin Tarantino says that he wants to make a film for you, serious consideration of the proposal is warranted. For whatever reason, higher-ups at Paramount decided not to go ahead with a film that had been pitched by the famed director of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill. No explanation has been given – and I really do fear that this could be a huge missed opportunity.
Here’s the short version: you may not like Tarantino personally or his filmmaking style. That’s okay. Maybe you’d hate his take on Star Trek. That’s okay too. Because what someone like Tarantino has that no one else who’s come anywhere close to Star Trek has is star power and pull. Tarantino’s films are on a different order of magnitude to anything else that Star Trek has ever done, and what that would have meant for the franchise is millions of new viewers turning up for the very first time. At least some of those folks would have stuck around, gone back to watch other Star Trek films and shows, and the fan community would have grown.
Tarantino’s pitch reportedly involved a return to the episode A Piece of the Action.
The very worst possible outcome for a collaboration with Tarantino would have been a mediocre film that made a decent profit. But beyond that, the potential for legions of viewers taking a first look at Star Trek – or a second look from folks who’ve not seen it in a while – is immense. To squander such an opportunity when it was seemingly presented on a silver platter may turn out to be an unforgivable mistake.
A standalone Tarantino film need not have impacted any ongoing series or project. It could have been a one-and-done thing occupying its own little piece of the Star Trek universe, inoffensively ignoring everything else in the franchise and doing no harm. Sure, there are potential pitfalls to working with someone like Tarantino… but the gains Star Trek could have made were massive.
Where are the Prodigy toys?
Playmates toys have started beaming down… but none for Prodigy yet.
It’s been well over a year since Prodigy premiered, but there are still no toys, no dolls, no dress-up costumes, no replica phasers or combadges, no teddies… nothing. Prodigy must be the only kids’ show in the world to have zero tie-in products even after its entire first season has come and gone.
There’s more to merchandise than just raw sales and profit. The way children engage with a franchise like Star Trek, especially in the moments where they aren’t sitting down to watch the latest episode, is all about play. Seeing exciting toys on shelves will literally get kids to check out the show for the first time, and seeing their friends dressed up for Halloween or playing with Star Trek dolls has the potential to expand the show’s audience.
The first batch of Prodigy toys are still not available at time of writing… even though the show’s entire first season has come and gone.
The Star Trek franchise may be new to making a kids’ show, but Paramount isn’t. Paramount owns Nickelodeon, and has made many other films and TV series for children in the past – and knows how to make toys and merch for them. Moreover, the Star Trek franchise used to be much better at this, even giving Star Wars a run for its money in the ’90s with figures of practically every guest character, costumes for dressing up, prop replicas, and much more.
I waited and waited for Paramount to address this as Prodigy’s first season went on, then took an extended break. I hoped that we’d have gotten something before the first season finale aired… but it didn’t happen.
Most of Picard Season 2:
Picard visited modern-day Los Angeles in Season 2.
Now we’re getting into narrative decisions, which I admit is something quite subjective – but I’m certainly not alone in considering most of Picard’s second season to have been a disappointment. After a truly spectacular premiere (that I gushed over in my review, calling it “one of the best episodes of live-action Star Trek that I’ve seen in a long time”) the second season took a nose-dive, spending eight-and-a-half episodes wandering aimlessly in a modern-day setting that didn’t feel inspiring, exciting, or even interesting much of the time.
There were some highlights, and by the time the action returned to the 25th Century in the second half of the finale, things did improve. But by then it was almost too late; the damage was done. This was an experimental season, and it’s to the Star Trek franchise’s credit that the creative team are given leeway to try out different ideas. But this one didn’t work, and considering it was one of only three seasons that Picard is going to get, its failure feels all the more egregious and disappointing.
Raffi and Rios.
Picard Season 2 felt muddled, bloated, and unnecessarily long. Yet by the time it ended, there were still huge unanswered questions about key storylines and characters, questions that I feel all but certain the series has no answers to and no plans to even pay lip-service to in Season 3. A meandering, confused batch of episodes gave way to a rushed finale that didn’t have time to bring everything to a satisfactory conclusion.
Some storylines in Season 2 just felt confused, as if there were two writers working against one another. Rios’ story, for example, saw him experience the worst of the 21st Century, being incarcerated and deported. But a couple of episodes later, Rios was raving about how much he loves the 21st Century for the cigars and the food on offer at a fancy party. There were clearly ideas on the table that, had they been executed better, were potentially interesting. But the way the season as a whole came to screen was poor – and it’s a concept that I hope won’t be repeated any time soon.
Prodigy isn’t gaining much traction:
The wrecked Protostar…
Right now, Prodigy is being watched mostly by existing Trekkies and some of their kids. It doesn’t appear to be finding much of an audience of its own, and there are a few reasons why that may be the case. The situation with toys and merch that we just talked about is definitely harming the show’s prospects, preventing it from reaching out beyond existing Trekkies for the reasons laid out above. But there’s more to say.
Prodigy hasn’t been marketed particularly well, with relatively few ads for the show cropping up online. Kids shows need to advertise where kids are – on apps like TikTok, for instance. Also, the show remained a Paramount+ exclusive until very recently, when a belated broadcast on Nickelodeon was announced. While I understand that Prodigy was made as a Paramount+ show, the platform itself is mostly being marketed at an adult audience.
The crew of the Protostar don’t seem happy…
Unlike something like Disney+, which clearly has a lot of content made for kids, Paramount+ just doesn’t have that reputation yet. As a result, I doubt most kids even know that Prodigy exists a full year and a full season later.
The question is this: who is Prodigy really made for? Is it for Trekkies who want to see more Captain Janeway and Chakotay? Is it for children of Trekkies as a way for their parents to get them into the franchise? Or does it have the ambition to bring in completely new viewers? The answer should be “all of the above,” but the way the show has been handled from its marketing and scheduling to its place in the wider franchise, it feels like a show that won’t succeed at growing Star Trek’s audience much beyond its current fans and viewers.
The Picard cast being unceremoniously dumped:
The cast of Picard Season 1.
It was profoundly disappointing to me to learn that all but one of the new characters who had been introduced in Picard would not be returning for the show’s third season. That disappointment was compounded because most of them didn’t even get an ending to their character arcs/stories in Season 2.
There were some really interesting characters in the mix when Picard debuted, and over the course of two full seasons I feel that we didn’t really get to know all of them very well; after twenty episodes we’d barely spent any time with Elnor, for example, and Soji was absent for all of Season 2 bar a tiny cameo in the premiere. There was vast potential in these characters – but it’s potential that the show has now thoroughly wasted.
The crew of La Sirena at the end of Season 1.
If the Star Trek franchise is to survive long-term, fans and viewers need to be given the opportunity to fall in love with a new generation of characters, because it’s these people who will drive the franchise forward in the years ahead. As much fun as I hope it will be to go on one last adventure with the crew from The Next Generation, it will be their final mission. That show is now more than thirty-five years in the past, and while there’s definitely still ways to bring back legacy characters, it isn’t exactly indicative of a franchise trying to move forwards.
It was my hope when Picard premiered that a new generation of fans would be just as excited in thirty years’ time to see Elnor or Rios make a return to the Star Trek franchise as we had been to see Picard come back. These new characters could and should have picked up the torch, taking Star Trek into the 2020s and beyond. Although I adore The Next Generation and will be happy to see its main characters make a return, it’s a bittersweet moment because of who had to be booted off the show to make it happen. And it’s a decision to double-down on nostalgia that I fear could have long-term ramifications for the entire franchise.
Paramount+ lost the Star Trek films. Twice:
The search for the Star Trek films is ongoing…
On two separate occasions in 2022, all or most of the Star Trek films disappeared from Paramount+. Let’s restate that: Paramount lost most of the Star Trek films from its own streaming platform, sending them to Hulu or Peacock or one of those other second-tier streaming services for a number of months. Then, after getting them back, it happened again!
From the point of view of a Trekkie, we’re told that Paramount+ is going to be the place to get all things Star Trek. But that’s demonstrably not true, as some of the best stories in the franchise – and the projects which had the highest production values – have arbitrarily disappeared. If I’d been a paying subscriber to Paramount+ at that time I’d have been livid.
It seems as if the Kelvin films are still available.
But it’s not just about Star Trek. It’s about Paramount as a whole, and what these mistakes say about the corporation and the platform it hopes to convince folks to sign up for. Losing parts of Paramount’s own back catalogue is something that simply should not be allowed to happen. It makes Paramount+ look inconsistent, cheap, and like a bad deal. The lack of communication about this – the announcement of the recent loss of the Star Trek films was made with just days to spare – also makes Paramount look chaotic, and Paramount+ look like a very poor relation indeed to the likes of Disney+ and Netflix.
Can you imagine logging into Disney+ and seeing a message that Beauty and the Beast, The Aristocats, Snow White, and more would no longer be available? Can you imagine Disney leasing the exclusive rights to those films to any other streaming platform? Of course not, because it undermines the entire concept of owning a streaming platform. Paramount+ is already on very shaky ground as a second-tier streaming platform in a massively competitive market. Mistakes like this cannot be repeated.
Was it simply too much?
Was there simply too much Star Trek in 2022?
2022 was a bumper year for Star Trek. In fact, the franchise barely had so much as a week’s break all year long – and as already noted, some weeks had two episodes at once. There were ten episodes each of Lower Decks, Picard, and Strange New Worlds, six episodes of Discovery, and fifteen episodes of Prodigy taking the total number for 2022 to a whopping fifty-one episodes of Star Trek. Is that too much for one franchise in a single calendar year?
There’s a danger, I fear, of “franchise fatigue” beginning to set in. Even the most ardent Star Trek fan would struggle to keep up with all the different productions, and I think there’s a case to be made that Paramount needs to take a foot off the accelerator and slow things down. The last thing we need is for fans and viewers to get burned out on Star Trek – or for the franchise to begin to look too complicated and too difficult to keep up with.
We should have an honest, difficult conversation about this…
There is a balance somewhere that Paramount needs to find. After years in the wilderness with no Star Trek at all it may seem odd to be complaining about there being too much, but it feels as though the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. It’s good and healthy for franchises to take breaks and not to be constantly on the air, and for both the creative teams and fans, I don’t think the level of Star Trek we saw in 2022 can be maintained.
And that’s a worry because if burnout sets in, it could prove fatal to the entire franchise. Take a deep breath, slow things down, and try to spread out some of these shows a little more. Taking breaks of a few weeks in between each series would be a good start – and this really ties in with what we said about scheduling. Paramount blitzed through fifty-one episodes of Star Trek in 2022… but there’s now nothing for at least six weeks. Had things been better spread out, we could have had short, consistent breaks in between each show that would have meant the entire franchise would be more balanced.
So that’s what went wrong.
I know it’s a lot…
In 2022, Star Trek premiered more episodes than at any other point in its history… but the franchise was massively harmed by decisions on the corporate side that prevented millions of fans from even being able to watch any of it. The glut of episodes was arguably too much, and poor scheduling decisions saw shows overlapping one another, and too many episodes arriving all at once.
Paramount’s failures behind the scenes have seen Strange New Worlds denied to most of the world, massively harming the show’s reputation and killing much of the online chatter. On social media, Star Trek not only ignored fans, but in some cases actively attacked them, using outdated copyright laws to get fan accounts suspended. The lack of toys for Star Trek’s first kids’ show more than a year after its launch and after its entire first season has finished its run is pretty pathetic – and is just another way that Paramount has harmed its prospects.
Conclusion:
What lessons should Paramount and Star Trek learn?
2022 was, as the title of this piece states, a great and terrible year for Star Trek.
I can’t overstate how much I enjoyed Strange New Worlds, and how that show’s first season has to be one of the strongest debuts in the entire history of the franchise. After three seasons that were of varying quality, Discovery finally seems to be hitting its stride, too. Season 4 wasn’t perfect, but it was the best the show has had to offer so far. Lower Decks continues to do its thing and do it well, though it isn’t really reaching out beyond the existing Star Trek fan community in a big way. Prodigy is also a fun series, continuing to build up its characters. Even in Picard Season 2 there were fun moments; highlights in practically every episode even if the overall story itself wasn’t stellar.
But I can’t shake the feeling that 2022 could be both the zenith and a turning point for modern Star Trek. The sheer number of episodes and the way in which they were scheduled was enough to start the process of burnout, and one of the key lessons for Paramount has to be to better schedule the Star Trek franchise and spread it out more.
Are viewers going to get burned out on the Star Trek franchise?
Moreover, on the production side of things, Paramount had an absolutely atrocious year. Failing to bring Paramount+ to fans around the world is a weight around the neck of the Star Trek franchise and will continue to be for years to come. The lack of communication with fans, and Paramount’s piss-poor “America First” corporate attitude is also doing considerable harm to the Star Trek fan community and the wider brand.
In a difficult economic climate, it’s hard to see Paramount+ breaking into the top tier of streaming platforms, and on current form I would be surprised if it survives the decade. When Disney+ and Netflix – platforms with many more subscribers backed up by far bigger and more successful corporations – are struggling to turn a profit, one can only imagine how much money Paramount+ is losing and will continue to lose. If Paramount+ fails, will it drag Star Trek down with it?
I have significant worries about Star Trek’s future after 2022.
Pull back the curtain and I’m afraid it was a tough year for Star Trek. I don’t see anything changing in the immediate term, either, as Paramount looks set to keep doing what it’s been doing for the past few years. No major changes seem to be coming on the horizon, and teases of unannounced projects came and went in 2022 with no major announcements for new shows. And of course the Beyond sequel had to be rapidly un-announced as it became clear that Paramount had completely screwed things up.
If you enjoyed having fifty-one Star Trek episodes in a single year, I guess what I’d say is this: don’t get used to it. For all manner of reasons, I doubt we’ll see another year quite like 2022. And maybe that’s for the best.
The Star Trek franchise – including all films and television series discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I’ve written longer articles and columns about several of the subjects discussed above, and you can find links to them here:
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 and the trailers, teasers, and announcements for Season 5. Minor spoilers are also present for The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.
At New York Comic-Con in October, we caught another glimpse of Star Trek: Discovery’s fifth season. The news earlier this week that filming has officially wrapped makes it seem like a great time to take a look at the teaser trailer and see what – if anything – we might be able to glean about the new story!
So to begin with, filming has just wrapped on Discovery Season 5 at time of writing. With Picard Season 3 and Strange New Worlds Season 2 both also well into post-production, there’s now no live-action Star Trek being worked on… at least, nothing has been officially announced. So that’s definitely something interesting – and while I’m expecting a Season 3 announcement for Strange New Worlds at literally any moment considering how well Season 1 was received, it’s definitely noteworthy that, at least in terms of live-action production, Star Trek seems to be entering a quiet period.
Sonequa Martin-Green on the set of Discovery Season 5.
At Star Trek Day back in September, we were treated to a set tour with Wilson Cruz, but I was a little surprised that the set tour and a single still photo were all that there was to show for Discovery at that point. I guess Paramount was saving this teaser trailer for Comic-Con, though, which came barely a month later. I’m glad we finally have something to get stuck into, even though I would guess that Discovery Season 5 may not hit our screens until after Picard and Strange New Worlds, potentially meaning it could be up to a year away.
Earlier in the year I wrote a piece about my “biggest wish” for Discovery’s fifth season. If you missed it, I can summarise it thusly: I don’t want Discovery to try to tell another “the galaxy is in danger and only Burnham and the crew can save it!!!” type of story. We’ve had four of those across the show’s first four seasons, and I know I wasn’t the only one in the weeks leading up to Season 4 to say that it was already beginning to verge on the repetitive. Trying to cram another story into that same creaking framework would be too much… and I’m pleased to say that, based on both this teaser trailer and the official synopsis of Season 5, Discovery seems to be trying something different this time around.
Here’s to a different kind of story in Season 5!
The teaser trailer certainly contained a lot of action – explosions, fire, injuries, weapons, masked alien adversaries, and a fair amount of running away. But these disconnected moments seem – if the voiceover and selected clips can be believed, at any rate – to be in service to a new and different kind of story, possibly one about… treasure hunting!
I know that we don’t have a lot to go on in a teaser trailer that was less than a minute long, so I hope I’m not being misled or getting too excited based on a single line that could, I admit, be open to other interpretations. But I really think that the idea of a treasure hunt could be a good one for Discovery if that’s the route that the new season will go down. At the very least it represents a change from what the show has done before, and as I’ve said previously, Discovery doesn’t need to keep re-using the same “horrible galactic disaster” narrative in order to tell stories that are exciting.
I hope that this rather desolate location isn’t indicative of another galactic-scale threat or disaster.
As viewers, our investment in a story is not inexorably tied to a sense of scale. On the contrary, some of the best films and television shows of all time have told character-centric stories that were a million miles away from civilisation-ending disasters – and some of the worst and most boring works of entertainment have tried and failed to compensate for lacklustre storytelling by going too big on the scale of the threat.
Past iterations of the Star Trek franchise also used the “galaxy is in danger” story archetype very sparingly, when you think about it, and some of the most well-remembered films and episodes don’t focus on villains or disasters on anywhere near that scale. If Discovery really is willing to set aside this framework for Season 5 – a framework that I would argue it has pushed to the limit – I think that can only be to the show’s overall benefit. Based on this teaser I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re going to get a main story that goes in a different direction. Fingers crossed, anyway!
President Rillak in the new trailer.
Some of the clips in the teaser tie into this theme of an “epic adventure across the galaxy,” to quote the official synopsis released by Paramount. We saw a slightly different look at Burnham on her speeder bike from the previously-released photo, and it seems as though Stamets will be joining her for that part of the quest! Stamets was relegated to a minor role in Season 4, missing out on key storylines, even those which involved Gray, Adira, and Dr Culber – so seeing him back in action will definitely feel good!
We also briefly saw two characters who may be competitors or adversaries as Captain Burnham and the crew race to solve this mystery. The characters’ names have been given as Moll and L’ak, and their official descriptions read somewhat like a 32nd Century Bonnie and Clyde! Their backgrounds as couriers could give them a connection to both Book and Burnham – the latter having spent roughly a year as a courier after arriving in the 32nd Century before the ship and the rest of the crew joined her. There’s scope for some drama there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one or both characters were known to Book, at least.
Promo photo of L’ak and Moll.
I can’t tell what planet L’ak hails from, though his design feels at least somewhat familiar. There’s something Kelpien about his look, but at the same time I don’t think he is a Kelpien. I can’t put my finger on why he looks so familiar, though! Perhaps some kind of connection to an established Star Trek race or character will become apparent once we meet him. Moll, on the other hand, is giving me flashbacks to Farscape’s Chiana – I think that’s just the hairstyle, though!
There were a few clips of ancient-looking statues and ruins that seem to connect with this theme of ancient mysteries and treasure-hunting. I’m reminded of episodes like Captain’s Holiday, The Chase, and Gambit from The Next Generation, and the archaeological sequences set in the ruins of the Bajoran city of B’hala in Deep Space Nine. Jean-Luc Picard studied archaeology, and set off to uncover more than one ancient mystery in his time! Perhaps the story of the season will play out in a similar fashion – and there could even be references to some of the individuals or events in some of those earlier archaeological stories. Discovery hasn’t been big on drawing these kinds of connections, but some smaller references have made it to screen, so it’s possible at least!
Captain Burnham exploring a ruin.
It seems that the enigmatic Dr Kovich will be back for Season 5 – and after an occasionally frustrating time with this character, I have to say I hope that we’ll learn a little more about him. I haven’t forgiven Discovery’s writers for Kovich’s line in Season 4 that he had “more important things” to do than join the mission to contact Unknown Species 10-C; the fact that that line wasn’t paid off in any way at all wasn’t great. Despite appearing in seven episodes across two seasons, Dr Kovich’s role within the hierarchy of Starfleet and the Federation is still unknown.
I like the idea of Dr Kovich being the one to set Captain Burnham on the right path to begin this quest, as I think he’s the kind of character who could conceivably know something about whatever this mystery is that needs to be unravelled. But I hope that we learn more about Kovich himself, including how he seems to know so much about some of the subjects that he’s an expert in. What rank does he have, for example? Is he, as I’ve suspected since Season 3, an operative of Section 31? Dr Kovich is in danger of become a bit of a joke; a character used only for exposition and whose ambiguous background grows to accommodate anything a story needs – teacher, administrator, psychiatrist… I think we need to pin down who he is and what his official role is!
Dr Kovich in the trailer.
One character who we barely glimpsed in the trailer is new series regular Captain Rayner. This Romulan or Vulcan (at least by appearance) is described as a “gruff, smart Starfleet Captain” who had a “track record of wartime success,” but struggles in peacetime. Rayner sounds like he’s being set up to be a kind of antagonist for Captain Burnham to butt heads with; perhaps a Starfleet officer who doesn’t appreciate her lax attitude to rules nor her style of command.
We had a similar setup, in some respects anyway, with President Rillak last season, and I was on tenterhooks waiting to see if she’d betray Burnham and the crew – or if she was involved in some way with the DMA. Since arriving in the 32nd Century, senior Starfleet and Federation personnel haven’t fallen into the Star Trek trope of being the “bad admiral,” so I wonder if there could be more to this Captain Rayner that his official description might suggest. It does raise an interesting question, though: what ship will Captain Rayner command? The USS Discovery already has two officers on board who hold the rank of captain: Burnham and Saru. Surely Rayner can’t also be assigned to the USS Discovery – but if he isn’t, how could we expect to see him as a series regular?
Captain Rayner.
Sticking with characters, let’s talk about Tilly. I talked about this after Star Trek Day, when Mary Wiseman appeared during the behind-the-scenes look at Season 5, but I hope that Tilly’s apparent return to the USS Discovery doesn’t undermine the emotional story she went through in Season 4 – a storyline that led to her leaving the ship for a role at Starfleet Academy.
We didn’t see a lot from Tilly in the trailer, but she was present for several clips, including aboard the USS Discovery. She could be “just visiting,” of course, or accompanying one or more of her cadets, but I’m not sure. I get the impression that something has changed for Tilly behind the scenes (yet again) and a reversal of a previously-established arc could be coming. As much as I love Tilly and want to see her continue on the show, her departure in Season 4 felt final… but moreover, it felt right for her character. Undoing that would not be my choice. I wonder if plans may have changed regarding the rumoured but still unannounced Starfleet Academy series – a series which could potentially have included Tilly. If last season’s All Is Possible (an episode that felt like a possible backdoor pilot) wasn’t as well-received as hoped, perhaps a rethink of that series and which characters it might include is underway. That’s something we’ll have to consider in more depth on another occasion!
Is Tilly back?
We saw members of the bridge crew at their posts and on an away mission in the teaser, and I’ll repeat what I said in the run-up to both Seasons 3 and 4: there’s still scope to do more with some of these characters. With the return of characters like T’Rina, Admiral Vance, and President Rillak, Discovery is definitely building up a good roster of secondary characters, so it would be neat to see at least one of the bridge crew given a storyline or sub-plot this season.
And that raises another question: will Season 5 retain Discovery’s heavy plot armour for all of the named characters? After so many disasters, conflicts, and dangerous assignments since the crew arrived in the 32nd Century, it’s a miracle that everyone has survived! As I wrote in the run-up to last season, audience expectations are changing in the aftermath of shows like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, so giving every character heavy plot armour to survive deadly situations doesn’t really work any more. As sad as it would be to lose anyone – even one of the secondary characters that we don’t know so well – I think it’s something Discovery’s writers ought to at least consider doing.
Burnham with Rhys and Owosekun.
One thing that I found interesting in the trailer is the puzzle box. The markings on the apparently wooden box were unfamiliar to me, but they look suitably “alien.” They could be Vulcan, perhaps, or Ferengi, or even from a planet like Risa. Whether the puzzle box will be an important macguffin in the story – or whether it was little more than a fun visual metaphor for the trailer – isn’t clear at this stage. Will it be an important artefact that the crew spend much of the season chasing down or trying to figure out?
The mysterious puzzle box…
But there is something more to say about the sequences in which the puzzle box is prominently featured. Look at the fingers that are moving the pieces into position. Do they look familiar at all? They absolutely could belong to an alien – like the new character of L’ak, for instance. But something about those fingers says “android” to me; they remind me a lot of how Data’s hands looked in The Next Generation. Could this mystery connect in some way to Data, Lore, or the Coppelius synths from Star Trek: Picard? Maybe that’s a complete overreach… but you never know!
…and a closer look at the fingers of whoever is using it.
It’s hard to know what else to say at this stage, really. Some of the clips in the trailer were very short, and without more context it’s hard to say more other than all of the characters from Season 4 seem to be returning. I’ll be curious to see more from President Rillak, who was a fun addition last time, and it’s my firm hope that Discovery will find a way to settle the relationship between Book and Burnham – their relationship drama was not one of the better aspects of Season 4. Book seems to be aboard the USS Discovery in the trailer, so there’s hope in that regard!
For a first look, the teaser trailer did a good job at getting me interested for Season 5. I like the idea of the show striking out and trying something genuinely new and different as it enters its fifth season – giving a bit of a refresh to a show that’s been running since 2017 and is quickly approaching its sixty-fifth episode is no small feat, and I’m rooting for Discovery to succeed.
Although there’s a lot of post-production work to be done, I’m hopeful that we’ll see Discovery Season 5 on our screens in 2023. If I had to guess, I’d say that the show could be targeting a broadcast next autumn, with Picard Season 3 and Strange New Worlds Season 2 going first. If we get any more big news or another trailer (which we surely will before the season arrives) I hope you’ll check back as I daresay I’ll have more to say. For now, I hope this was a fun look ahead to Season 5!
Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available, and are also available on Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the entire Star Trek franchise, including recent and upcoming seasons of Picard, Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, and Lower Decks.
The 8th of September is Star Trek Day! That’s the date in 1966 when The Original Series premiered in the United States with the episodeThe Man Trap, and Paramount chose to mark the occasion with a live broadcast for the second year in a row. I tuned in with some degree of excitement; the press release promised “announcements and reveals throughout,” and with Picard finishing up its run next year there was hope, I felt, for some kind of big announcement of a new series.
Star Trek Day was overshadowed this year by the death of Queen Elizabeth II. I wasn’t entirely sure whether the event would go ahead as it became clear throughout the afternoon here in the UK how serious things were, but with the official announcement of her death coming mere minutes before Star Trek Day was due to start (and after most of the guests had already arrived), there wasn’t time to do anything about it. As someone who is categorically not a monarchist, this didn’t bother me in the slightest! But I hope that Star Trek Day proceeding as it did, with light-heartedness and humour, didn’t upset anyone in light of such an historic event.
Hosts Paul F. Tompkins and Tawny Newsome on the main stage at Star Trek Day 2022.
There were some fun chats with stars of all of the present Star Trek shows, but Star Trek Day lacked any major announcements or reveals, in my view, to fully justify a two-hour live broadcast of this kind. It was fun – up to a point – but there were expectations that Paramount had placed on the event through its promise of “announcements and reveals” that weren’t met, at least not for me.
I’m not just talking about brand-new projects, either. We could have seen announcements for things like Lower Decks Season 5 or Strange New Worlds Season 3, the latter of which is surely being worked on at this stage with filming having already been completed on Season 2. But no such announcement was forthcoming at Star Trek Day, and really the only big news (if we can call it that) was the announcement from Nicholas Meyer that his Ceti Alpha V pitch is going to be turned into a podcast.
All of the guests took to the stage stage at the end of Star Trek Day.
As the event’s hosts and guests gathered together on the stage to bid farewell to Star Trek Day, I was thinking to myself “surely that can’t be it!” Some kind of final announcement to wrap things up, like last year’s Picard Season 3 revelation, felt like a possibility. But then the live stream ended and, as it turned out, that really was it.
So I confess to feeling a little disappointed that we didn’t get any of the major announcements that I had been half-hoping to see. As I said a few weeks ago when previewing Star Trek Day, though: Paramount hasn’t been shy about making announcements and revealing details about upcoming projects this year, with news being made at events like Comic-Con. In a way, it’s a testament to how broad Star Trek’s base is as the franchise continues to enjoy its renaissance that so much news has been made so far in 2022. Still, a part of me feels at least a little sad that this made-for-fans event couldn’t have included some kind of big announcement.
Alex Kurtzman on stage at Star Trek day.
But that’s enough about what didn’t happen at Star Trek Day! Let’s talk about what we did see, because there were some trailers and teasers, some fun conversations, some fan-focused moments, and some trademark Star Trek weirdness thrown in for good measure.
First up, to get this out of the way, there were some technical hitches that definitely didn’t go unnoticed. Hosts Tawny Newsome and Paul F. Tompkins both struggled with their teleprompters at different points in the event, leading to some awkward moments as they didn’t know what to say or how to fill the space.
Also on the technical side, at least on YouTube the live stream cut out at least half a dozen times. This only happened for a few seconds at a time (and thankfully not during any of the teasers or trailers), but it’s something that really shouldn’t be happening at this level. Paramount is a massive corporation with a big budget and with lots of experience in running live broadcasts. This wasn’t an issue at my end, either, as I saw a lot of people making similar comments on social media about the quality of the stream itself. This didn’t happen last year – and if Star Trek Day is to return in 2023, I hope it won’t happen again.
The YouTube live stream cut out multiple times.
Last year, Star Trek Day felt rehearsed and choreographed. The hosts (Wil Wheaton and Mica Burton) felt confident, and everyone involved seemed to know where to go, what to say, and what was coming up next. This year… let’s just say that the whole thing felt a lot more “casual.”
Hosts Tawny Newsome and Paul F. Tompkins had great chemistry together and both brought a lot of energy to the stage, but neither of them seemed to have the faintest idea what they were doing, who they were about to talk to, or what was coming up next during the entire broadcast. There was chaos on stage at several points as one or both of the hosts got distracted, forgot what to say, or because of the aforementioned teleprompter issue. One or two instances of this could feel charming, but for two hours of occasionally cringeworthy viewing… I felt it rather outstayed its welcome. While I like both Newsome and Tompkins, and they definitely had great chemistry, I think a dress rehearsal of some kind would have been to their benefit. They didn’t have that many lines to learn, and several of the panels only consisted of a couple of questions, so it just feels as though on that side of things, Star Trek Day wasn’t as polished or rehearsed as it might’ve been or as it was last year.
Paul F. Tompkins and Tawny Newsome (both of whom star in Lower Decks) were on hosting duties.
This also applies to the DJ who was present throughout the event and the stand-up routine that took place partway through. Musical taste and comedy are both very subjective things, of course, but I felt that neither DJ Reggie Watts nor comic Brian Posehn excelled. Neither appeared well-rehearsed or coordinated, and I think that’s such a shame. Had a bit more effort or at least practice gone into their acts, Star Trek Day might’ve been a bit more enjoyable. As it was, both were pretty forgettable, with the only points of note being jokes that appeared to fall flat in the auditorium and a DJ who didn’t know what buttons to press and whose music didn’t seem to start on time.
Aside from big announcements of new projects, I was hoping to get news of Prodigy’s first season, Picard’s third, and Strange New Worlds’ second. We got a few tidbits of information about these projects, which was great, and in a moment I’ll break down the trailers and teasers that we saw. But first, a word about the live panels themselves.
Brian Posehn performed a short stand-up act.
Only Strange New Worlds felt fully-represented, with the majority of the main cast making an appearance. The Strange New Worlds panel was also probably the least cringe-inducing to watch, as host Tawny Newsome managed to get in a few interesting questions that prompted the cast to talk about both their experiences of Season 1 as well as drop a few teases about Season 2.
The other panels, however, were pretty lacklustre. Sir Patrick Stewart was present along with Michelle Hurd and Jeri Ryan to talk Picard Season 3, but the truncated panel only had time for a couple of questions before rolling the new teaser trailer. The Lower Decks panel completely fell apart, and while I don’t like to be too critical of performers who come down with a case of what seemed to be stage fright, Noël Wells and Tawny Newsome were not at their best as they seemed to have no idea what questions to ask or how to answer them.
The Lower Decks panel went completely off the rails.
The Prodigy panel was so short as to basically amount to nothing; Brett Gray, who plays Dal, barely got to say two words before a teaser clip for the second half of Season 1 was shown. I’m glad that Prodigy finally has a release date for those episodes, and I’m happy to see that Picard Season 3 will be on our screens in Feburary next year, but the panels were one of the parts of Star Trek Day that I was most looking forward to, and it’s just a shame that they were cut short. Better preparation from the hosts and some of the guests would have improved things, too.
The announcement of Ceti Alpha V as a podcast, that I mentioned earlier, is an interesting one in some ways. I’m glad that the Star Trek franchise hasn’t committed television or film money to this project, as it wasn’t one that I was desperately interested to see. But an audio drama of some kind is something different, and if Paramount markets it well it could become something of a sleeper hit. I won’t go into my full critique of the Ceti Alpha V concept again; suffice to say that I feel the chapter of Khan’s life in between Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan may not be the most interesting one to revisit. But if Nicholas Meyer was dedicated to it, perhaps an audio drama is a good compromise. I would say that Meyer didn’t seem thrilled to be making the announcement and specifically mentioned that he wrote it for television; perhaps there’s some degree of sour grapes there! You can read my full thoughts on Ceti Alpha Vby clicking or tapping here.
Nicholas Meyer announced the upcoming Ceti Alpha V podcast.
The teaser we saw from Prodigy seems to pick up fairly shortly after the events of the most recent episode, with the crew of the Protostar on the run. It looked tense and exciting, and really like more of the same; a continuation of the story and events of the first half of Season 1. I’m hopeful that Paramount will start to support Prodigy more strongly as I really feel that the show has so much untapped potential to convert a whole generation of kids into Trekkies for the first time. But if that’s going to happen, Paramount is going to have to do more to promote and assist the show. Toys would be a good start; we’re still months away from the first batch of Prodigy toys, and despite showing off some new merch at Star Trek Day, Prodigy was once again conspicuously absent from the lineup.
It’s good that Prodigy will be returning in late October, though – as soon as Lower Decks Season 3 wraps up, Prodigy can fill that slot. It means there’ll be new Star Trek on our screens all the way to the end of the year, which is fantastic. Although the clip that was shown seems to be from the first new episode, there’s scope for the crew of the Protostar to have lots of new adventures – and perhaps connect their story to Voyager in a significant way. I can’t wait to see what’s in store!
Prodigy is coming back in seven weeks’ time!
Strange New Worlds also showed a single clip from Season 2 in lieu of an edited and composed trailer, with the action focused on Lieutenant Ortegas as she prepared for an away mission. The planet Rigel VII was mentioned, which was a location first glimpsed in flashback sequences in The Cage and The Menagerie; Rigel VII is a planet Captain Pike has visited before and it’s home to fierce Kalar warriors.
The clip itself was interesting. We learned a little about the relationship between Ortegas and Spock as the latter’s analysis of information caused Ortegas to be dropped from an away mission she was excited for. We also learned that Captain Pike had once been a “test pilot” which made him confident enough to pilot a shuttle under what sounds like difficult circumstances. I’m getting a Gallileo Seven vibe from this story setup; perhaps the shuttle will crash in Kalar territory and the crew – led by Ortegas aboard the Enterprise, maybe – will have to mount a rescue! Am I over-interpreting a short scene? Well that’s a possibility!
Spock and Ortegas in our first look at Strange New Worlds Season 2.
A second announcement for Strange New Worlds’ second season introduced a brand-new character: Commander Pelia will become the Enterprise’s new chief engineer, taking over from poor Hemmer. I’m still sad about Hemmer’s departure from the series, but I can’t tell you how relieved I am that the writers managed to resist the temptation to replace him with Scotty! There’s scope to do more with legacy characters in Strange New Worlds, don’t get me wrong, but I want to maximise the time we have with some fantastic new characters, too.
Commander Pelia will be played by veteran actress Carol Kane, who you might know from Taxi, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, or the original stage production of Wicked. Landing someone of her calibre feels like a real coup for Strange New Worlds, and I’m hopeful that Commander Pelia will be a wonderful addition to the crew. I’m excited to see more scenes set in engineering in Season 2, as well!
Promo photo of Commander Pelia.
We caught a glimpse of a new Lower Decks episode during Star Trek Day, too. The clip seemed to feature an aggressive Romulan adversary attacking the USS Cerritos, so I guess we should stay tuned for the Romulans to make an appearance later in the season! Maybe this is a controversial point, but I think Lower Decks may be in danger of over-using the “starship swoops in at the last second and saves the day” trope. It worked so well with the Titan in Season 1, and the Cerritos getting to be the saviour in Season 2 was poetic symmetry. But I think big, emotional moments like this should be used sparingly, so to see another starship doing the same here was… I don’t know. Maybe a little less impactful than it could have been.
However, all of this could be a moot point! It seems possible that the events we saw in the clip are taking place in an alternate timeline, a holodeck simulation, or something like that – because how else do we explain a Boimler clone with a different name in command of the other vessel? It was an exciting clip, though, and I’ll be fascinated to see that episode when it’s broadcast! Stay tuned for a full review!
What could be going on here?
The promised Discovery set tour was a bit of fun. Season 5 seems well underway, and it’s always nice to catch a glimpse behind the scenes. Wilson Cruz was a great guide, and although we didn’t get to see any brand-new sets, we got to see some of the details in Burnham’s quarters that are often overlooked. Cruz also drew attention to the dedication plaque at Federation HQ; again this is something I hadn’t seen up-close.
Of particular note during this segment was Mary Wiseman’s appearance. Lieutenant Tilly’s departure from the USS Discovery early in Season 4 was an unexpected move, but one that actually felt right for her character. Tilly got an emotional send-off before making an appearance in the season finale alongside Admiral Vance, and it felt possible that her departure could have set her up for a role in the long-rumoured Starfleet Academy series. That may still happen, but for now it seems that Tilly will be back aboard the USS Discovery in some form in Season 5. I’ll be glad to welcome her back – but I hope her return doesn’t detract from her wonderfully emotional departure in Season 4.
Wilson Cruz with Mary Wiseman and Blu del Barrio.
As the tour continued we saw a scene being prepared on the bridge set, with several characters in uniform. The bold primary colours that were reintroduced in Season 4 remain in place – something I’m pleased to see! A conversation with Stamets actor Anthony Rapp and one of the show’s costume/wardrobe artists was also interesting, and we saw Stamets’ familiar blue tunic in that segment.
Finally, a single promotional photo was shown off for Discovery’s upcoming fifth season – featuring Michael Burnham riding some kind of Star Wars-inspired speeder bike across a dusty or desert landscape. The image looks like it’s taken from an exciting sequence, and Burnham seemed to be out of uniform which could suggest she’s on an away mission or undercover assignment. But there’s only so much speculating we can do based on a single image! There was no release window for Discovery Season 5, but filming is well underway and I’m a little surprised that we didn’t get some kind of teaser trailer.
Captain Burnham looks like she’s having fun!
Star Trek Day paid tribute to Nichelle Nichols in very touching fashion. In fact, the pre-recorded segment was my favourite at the event, all things considered. Nichelle Nichols, who passed away earlier this year, made a huge impact on the Star Trek franchise – but more importantly in many ways, on the world beyond Star Trek and entertainment, too.
Performers Dawnn Lewis, Sonequa Martin-Green, Celia Rose Gooding, Wilson Cruz, Michelle Hurd, and more all contributed to the beautiful piece, and it really was the perfect way to salute a unique individual, someone who made a real difference not only on screen and within the Star Trek franchise, but far beyond the world of entertainment. As we discussed when I paid my own tribute to Nichelle Nichols, she played a huge role at NASA in getting more people from diverse backgrounds involved with the space programme. For Star Trek Day to take the time to salute her and recognise her legacy was important, and it was handled beautifully.
Nichelle Nichols at NASA as seen in the Star Trek Day tribute.
Picard’s third and final season now has a release date, and it’s nice to know that we’ll be having one last adventure with Admiral Picard in the early part of next year. The teaser trailer was interesting, and we got to see another new starship: the USS Titan! Spacedock also made a return to the franchise, which was beautiful to see. Sir Patrick Stewart told us that he and the crew are going back to space for Season 3 – after Season 2 spent most of its time on Earth in the 21st Century – and if the teaser is anything to go by, the crew’s return to the stars will be epic!
It was great to see Seven of Nine in uniform, and she seems to be playing an important role in whatever mission Admiral Picard will have to pick up. During the brief panel, Michelle Hurd mentioned that Season 3 will feature some kind of storyline involving the “criminal underworld” of the Star Trek galaxy, a premise that sounds interesting – and perhaps a little Star Wars-y!
The USS Titan leaving spacedock.
The teaser trailer showed clips of all of the returning cast members from The Next Generation, with the notable exception of Brent Spiner. Spiner will be playing a role in Season 3, but who his character will be is still unknown. It could be a member of the Soong family, such as Altan Inigo Soong who was part of the story of Season 1. Equally it could be an android like Lore or B-4. We don’t know at this stage, but clearly Paramount is keeping that under wraps for now!
Aside from seeing the USS Titan up close, the teaser trailer played its cards close to its chest! The brief glimpses that we caught of the main characters were fun and exciting, but didn’t really communicate anything significant about the plot. At this stage, we really don’t know where the story will go or whether it will connect with anything from Seasons 1 or 2. I hope that it does, and that maybe some of the dangling story threads from those earlier seasons could be tied up… but my gut says we’re probably going to get something brand-new.
Geordi La Forge as seen in the Season 3 teaser trailer.
So that’s about all there is to say this time. Star Trek Day was… okay. There were no big announcements, no replacement for Picard, no season renewals for the current shows, and only two release dates for seasons that we already knew were coming. I think it would be unfair to call an event like this that was made for Trekkies “underwhelming,” but I really wasn’t blown away by this year’s Star Trek Day. A combination of technical issues, hosts and guests who felt unprepared, most of the panels being shorter and less-detailed than expected, and the lack of any major announcements or news all came together to put a bit of a downer on what should have been a fun extravaganza of all things Trek.
I felt that last year’s Star Trek Day event – which had a few issues of its own, don’t get me wrong – was better. Last year the hosts and guests felt better-prepared and rehearsed, there were none of the technical hiccups that impacted this year’s event, there were longer and more detailed panels featuring more guests, and there were bigger and more interesting announcements for all of the current shows. This year’s event just feels smaller and less exciting in comparison.
Hosts Paul F. Tompkins and Tawny Newsome with Wil Wheaton (who hosted last year’s event).
Despite that, I had a good time for the most part with Star Trek Day. I’m glad that Paramount put this together and I’m especially glad that it wasn’t locked behind a Paramount+ paywall and was thus accessible to all Trekkies. It’s no one’s fault that there weren’t any major announcements; that’s just the way it goes and if things aren’t ready, it’s infinitely better to wait than to jump the gun and announce something prematurely! Star Trek 2023 and the untitled Section 31 series stand as cases in point to that!
That’s just my take, though, and I sincerely hope that everyone in attendance and the legions of fans who watched from all across the globe had fun. We’re very lucky that the Star Trek franchise is going through a renaissance right now and that events like this still draw huge audiences! Long may that continue!
The Star Trek franchise – including all properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. Star Trek series and films are available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries and territories where the platform is available. Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Lower Decks are available on Amazon Prime Video outside of the United States. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise, including recent seasons of Picard, Discovery, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds.
The 8th of September is Star Trek Day! On that date in 1966, The Original Series premiered in the United States with the episode The Man Trap, kick-starting a franchise that’s still going strong fifty-six years later. Last year, Paramount organised a major broadcast to mark the occasion, hosted by Wil Wheaton (The Next Generation’s Wesley Crusher and host of The Ready Room) and Mica Burton (daughter of Geordi La Forge actor LeVar Burton). It was a fun event – albeit one that probably went on a little too long – that celebrated all things Star Trek. With Star Trek Day coming back this year, I wanted to look ahead to the event and consider what we might see when it arrives in just under three weeks’ time.
My usual caveat for these sort of things applies: I have no “insider information,” and I’m not trying to claim that anything discussed below will definitely be included in this year’s Star Trek Day broadcast. This is speculation from a fan – and an opportunity to talk Trek – and nothing more! With that out of the way, let’s get started!
George Takei at last year’s Star Trek Day.
First of all, I think it’s worth talking about some of the big announcements we’ve seen over the past few months, because Paramount hasn’t been shy when it comes to making headlines for the Star Trek franchise. We’ve had major announcements about Picard Season 3, including who will be part of – and excluded from – the main cast, we’ve seen trailers, clips, and teasers for Lower Decks, which will be a couple of episodes into its third season by Star Trek day, we’ve had plenty of news about Strange New Worlds Season 2 – including the surprising return of a fan-favourite character… and much more besides. Events like last month’s Comic-Con saw big panels featuring main cast members and major announcements, like the Strange New Worlds crossover with Lower Decks.
In short, I’m not so sure that we should expect a glut of trailers and teaser clips and a plethora of massive announcements! Paramount could’ve saved things like the Picard Season 3 teaser and posters that were shown off at Comic-Con for Star Trek Day, but in a way it makes sense to use an event like that – where all eyes are on the world of entertainment – to make waves and show off Star Trek’s renaissance. Star Trek Day itself, at least based on what we saw last year, is more of a celebration for Trekkies and the Star Trek community.
Star Trek already dropped some big announcements at Comic-Con just last month.
But that doesn’t mean there won’t be anything of substance, and the official press release for Star Trek Day promised announcements, reveals, and surprises! With Season 3 being Picard’s last, and principal photography already having been completed, I can’t help but wonder whether we might get an announcement of what could replace it in the lineup. When Picard disappears from the schedule next year, there will be a gap – and as Alex Kurtzman (head honcho of Star Trek for Paramount) has previously told us, there won’t be any new Star Trek until one of the current shows has ended its run. Well, something’s going to have to fill the Picard hole in late 2023 or 2024… so could the announcement of a new project be imminent?
I note that the official press release for Star Trek Day specifically mentioned that Michelle Hurd (Raffi) and Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) will be present to talk about Picard. I know I’m not the only one who’s talked up the possibility of a “Seven and Raffi Show” as a spin-off from Picard, so it’s interesting that these two actors will be present together at Star Trek Day. Sure, they could just be there to talk about Picard Season 3… but maybe, just maybe, there’s more to it than that!
Seven of Nine and Raffi in Picard Season 2.
There are at least two unannounced Star Trek projects in the works at Paramount, again according to Alex Kurtzman. I don’t think we’d get two massive announcements like that at Star Trek Day, and if I had to put my money anywhere I’d say that a Picard spin-off or at least another show set in that same 25th Century era is the most likely. But you never know! There are rumours of a Khan-focused project and a Starfleet Academy series, the latter of which may (or may not) be a Discovery spin-off set in the 32nd Century with Mary Wiseman reprising her role as Lieutenant Tilly.
Does the untitled Section 31 series still count as having been “announced,” given that there’s been no official news for almost four years at this point? We could finally hear something about that project, too, I suppose. But I’m not holding my breath on that one.
So there are a few different possibilities for a major announcement. A brand-new series would be a heck of a way to celebrate Star Trek Day, especially if the announcement came along with things like concept art or maybe even casting information.
Are we going to get an announcement about… Khaaaaaaaan?!
The other big project that’s currently up in the air is the untitled feature film Star Trek 2023. As we recently discussed, I seriously doubt whether the film will make its intended December 2023 release date given that most of the main Kelvin timeline cast don’t appear to be on board yet, but Star Trek Day could surprise us with some more information about the project.
So those are the potential projects that I think we could hear something about. As I said, my money would be on some kind of 25th Century Picard replacement if you forced me to make a bet… but there are definitely cases to be made to hear something about a Starfleet Academy series or perhaps a some kind of Khan project, too.
The new USS Stargazer.
This year’s Star Trek Day will be hosted by Tawny Newsome (Ensign Mariner on Lower Decks) and Paul F. Tompkins (Dr Migleemo on Lower Decks) who co-host The Pod Directive, Star Trek’s official podcast. I’m sure they’ll make a great presenting duo – though part of me feels a little sad that Wil Wheaton won’t be on hosting duties. His energy and passion for Star Trek really elevated last year’s event.
I’m curious to see what may be teased about Discovery Season 5. Filming is currently underway in Toronto, and a behind-the-scenes tour hosted by Wilson Cruz (Dr Culber) promises appearances by some of the cast members and a look at new sets. I’m not sure when Discovery’s fifth season will make its debut; it seems right now as if Picard and Strange New Worlds will be ready first, even though Discovery Season 4 wrapped up back in March, so we could see one or both of those arrive before Season 5 is ready. Still, it’ll be neat to catch a glimpse behind the curtain – and maybe there’ll even be a teaser of some kind!
Dr Culber in Discovery Season 4.
We’re edging closer to the first anniversary of Prodigy’s premiere, and we’ve been promised a second batch of ten episodes to round out that show’s first season before the end of this year. With a Prodigy panel on the agenda for Star Trek Day, I have to assume we’ll get some more details about those episodes – hopefully including a premiere date. If I had to guess, I’d say that the second half of Season 1 could directly follow on from Lower Decks, which could mean a premiere date in late October or early November.
Prodigy has not been particularly well-supported by Paramount, in my view, at least not so far. Splitting up its first batch of episodes into chunks of four and five respectively with a long gap in between is not a great way for a new series to gain traction – especially with its young target audience. There’s also a lack of toys and tie-in products, and while there are plans in place to address that, at time of writing none of those items are available for purchase. Paramount has a lot of work to do to really sell Prodigy – and I really hope they get on with it, because it’s a unique project within the Star Trek franchise and one that could turn a whole generation of kids into Trekkies if handled better.
We’ll hear something about Prodigy at Star Trek Day.
Either Lower Decks or Strange New Worlds stars could go into more detail about the upcoming crossover, and although it’s still early days we could get some kind of teaser for Strange New Worlds’ upcoming second season. I don’t expect to see any clips from the crossover at Star Trek Day – that’s just a hunch, of course, but something tells me it’ll be kept under wraps until much closer to the episode’s premiere. But we could learn more about Season 2, including whether any new cast members will be coming on board. There’s at least one and perhaps two spots open if the producers wanted to make additions, although I hope they don’t go overboard and try to cram in too many new characters – especially not characters from The Original Series.
Season 1 managed to strike a good balance between legacy and new characters, and I’d hope that would continue in Season 2. There must be a temptation to add characters like Scotty, for example, in engineering, but I hope that the show’s writers can resist – at least for now. There may be scope to bring in more legacy characters in later seasons, but for now I’d like to spend more time with some of the newbies who we’re just getting to know.
Behind-the-scenes with Captain Pike and the Enterprise bridge crew.
There’s also a decent chance, in my view, that we’ll hear about a Season 3 renewal for Strange New Worlds. Season 2 has already finished its main production phase, and with Discovery Season 5 well underway, it’s definitely time for those conversations to be happening behind-the-scenes. It seems utterly unfathomable to me that there won’t be a third season (and a fourth…) given how well Season 1 was received. Pre-production may be already happening, so it wouldn’t shock me at all to get a formal announcement at Star Trek Day.
In a similar vein there could be announcements for a fifth season of Lower Decks, a third for Prodigy, and perhaps even a sixth for Discovery – though the latter may be premature at this stage. As Discovery has been running since 2017 (and in production since 2016), it’s not an absolute certainty that we’ll get more after Season 5, but at the same time the 32nd Century feels like a really interesting setting to spend more time in, so I’m hopeful that there’ll be more to come from Captain Burnham and the crew.
Captain Burnham in Discovery Season 4.
So those are my main thoughts/predictions. I’m also looking forward to some of the other events that will be part of the live broadcast, including a tribute to Nichelle Nichols, as well as a couple of fan-focused events, some music, and even some stand-up comedy. Star Trek Day’s stated runtime is two hours, and that feels about right for something like this. As mentioned, last year’s event may have dragged just a little – at least for me – so it seems as though some lessons may have been learned from that. But as they say, live events have the potential to take unexpected turns, so I won’t be shocked if Star Trek Day ends up running a little over that time limit!
I guess that’s about all there is to say. I’m glad Paramount is doing this, and I’m glad the event will be free to stream on the official Star Trek website instead of being locked behind a Paramount+ paywall. It’s a nice way to celebrate all things Star Trek, and even if there are no massive announcements about brand-new shows or films, I still think it’ll be a fun time. There’ll be glimpses behind-the-scenes, chats with cast members, and hopefully a lot of positivity and excitement about the Star Trek franchise.
I’m looking forward to Star Trek Day, and when the event is over I’ll be sure to share my thoughts on the broadcast, as well as perhaps take a longer look at any major trailers, teasers, or announcements. Stay tuned here on the website in the next few days because I have a list of a few potential upcoming Star Trek projects currently in the works – and who knows, we may hear about some of those at Star Trek Day!
Star Trek Day will be live-streamed on the official Star Trek website and social media channels on the 8th of September 2022 beginning at 3:00pm Eastern Standard Time/8:00pm British Summer Time. The Star Trek franchise – including all shows and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4.
With Picard Season 2 ongoing, Strange New Worlds Season 1 hot on its heels, and Prodigy and Lower Decks still to come this year, it might seem premature to be thinking about Discovery Season 5 already! But as I was writing up the final part of my Season 4 theory list, it got me thinking. Season 4 wasn’t bad, all things considered. It had some storylines that disappointed or underwhelmed, but there are some genuinely outstanding episodes in the mix as well – and it ended on a very emotional and exciting high note.
It’s never too early to look ahead, and before production gets fully underway on Discovery’s next outing, I wanted to share my thoughts and opinions about where the show could go from here, and what I’d like to see next. That’s what this article will be about – but stay tuned for a more in-depth look at Season 4 and some of its story elements in the weeks and months ahead.
The USS Mitchell in the Season 4 finale.
For me, the single biggest wish I have for Discovery Season 5 is that it steps away from the “apocalyptic, galaxy-ending threat” story archetype that has been used in different ways across all four seasons of the show so far. We’ve gone through the Klingon war in Season 1, Control and the Red Angel in Season 2, the Burn and the Emerald Chain in Season 3, and finally the DMA and Unknown Species 10-C in Season 4. It’s time to give Captain Burnham and the crew a break, and for the series to try using a genuinely different formula instead of slapping a new coat of paint on the old one.
Just because a story is smaller in scale doesn’t make it any less emotional, exciting, tense, or dramatic, and I think that’s a lesson some of Discovery’s writers and producers could do with taking to heart. How we as the audience respond to a work of fiction is guided not by how massive the monster is or how big the explosions are going to be, but by how the characters we’re rooting for react. Their emotions become our emotions, their investment in the world around them becomes our investment, and so on. A story about a group of people working in an office, friends going on a road trip, or star-crossed lovers from rival families aren’t smaller, less exciting, and worse because they don’t have the backdrop of a world-ending disaster spurring them on. And conversely, some of the worst and least-exciting films and TV shows I’ve ever seen went over-the-top with the size and scale of the disaster the characters were facing.
The Burn was the driving force for much of Season 3.
Past iterations of Star Trek used these kinds of apocalyptic stories pretty sparingly, when you look back on it. It’s only Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War arc, which lasted for three seasons, that comes close to being as long and drawn-out an affair, and even within the framework of the Dominion War, DS9 found ways to tell very different and fun one-off stories. Things like the Borg incursions that Captain Picard and his crew had to deal with were either two-parters or one-off films, and they work well in that format.
Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D still found other ways to be entertaining, and many of The Next Generation’s standalone episodes have gone on to be considered iconic, even those that had a far smaller focus than blockbuster outings like The Best of Both Worlds. This doesn’t mean ditching the season-long story arcs or returning to an episodic format, because I think Discovery has done some interesting and neat things with its serialised stories. But it does mean choosing season-long storylines and narrative arcs that are different in a fundamental way to what the show has tried already.
The DMA was the big threat in Season 4.
Practically any format can become bland and unexciting when overused, no matter how much fun it might’ve been in its original incarnation or at its best moments. It’s a challenge to keep any television series feeling fresh as it enters its fifth season and races toward its sixty-fifth episode, and there are many examples of shows that ran out of steam somewhere along the way. Heck, I have an entire list of television shows that either ran too long or wore out their concepts, and I can think of many more that I could’ve included.
Even Star Trek has hit the wall in the past, running out of energy and failing to keep audiences engaged. By the time Enterprise was willing to try new things in its third and fourth seasons, for example, the franchise was already in such a steep decline that cancellation was inevitable. To Paramount’s credit, lessons have been learned from what happened in 2005 in terms of the way the franchise as a whole operates. Different series are telling stories in their own ways, appealing to broader audiences, and Star Trek as a whole feels varied and diverse. But Discovery on its own doesn’t… and it’s right on the verge of becoming repetitive.
The USS Discovery in Season 4.
I was far from the only commentator to make the point prior to Season 4 that another “galactic threat” storyline felt samey, coming off the back of three similar narrative frameworks, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one to say that re-using that format a fifth time will be a bridge too far. Making use of the newly-established 32nd Century in different ways, and telling a story that may be smaller in scale but that’s just as impactful, emotional, and entertaining, will be the key challenges that I’d like the writers to tackle in Season 5.
The theme of rebuilding in the aftermath of a disaster was something we only saw Season 4 tackle in the briefest and barest of ways right at the beginning of the season, but this could be a concept that the show puts to much better use next time around. Discovery could follow Captain Burnham as she and the crew jump to different worlds, delivering dilithium, solving problems, flying the flag for the Federation… and most importantly, bringing hope to a galaxy that’s been through a lot.
The flag of the Federation…
This is what I’d hoped Season 4 would do, to be honest. The idea of restoring the Federation from the incredibly weakened state it was in when we encountered it is far too important and interesting to be relegated to something that happens off-screen, and I felt even before Season 4 had aired a single episode that this concept offered so much scope for emotional, exciting, and varied storytelling. Discovery could hop to different planets, combining the inclusion of new and visually different alien races (like Season 4’s “butterfly” aliens) with the reintroduction of classic races.
Catching up with some of the factions we remember from past iterations of Star Trek is also something I’ve been wanting Discovery to do for two seasons now. We’ve caught glimpses of races like the Ferengi and Andorians, and heard others mentioned in dialogue and log recordings, but we haven’t actually spent a lot of time with practically any of them. Finding out what became of fan-favourites not only in the years after the Burn, but in the centuries before that event took place, is something that I think a lot of Trekkies would be interested in.
We caught glimpses of familiar races… but Discovery didn’t find time to explore most of them in any detail.
If the 32nd Century is going to be a major setting for the franchise going forward, this kind of world-building is important. Just like how The Next Generation laid the groundwork for Deep Space Nine through its introduction of the Cardassians and Bajorans, so too could Discovery introduce us to planets, races, and technologies that future spin-offs and Star Trek projects could expand upon.
Part of that world-building can be done in a serialised story that looks at how the Federation can be rebuilt in the aftermath of the disasters it has already faced; introducing another new disaster to avert or recover from is simply not needed at this point. From the point of view of the characters, throwing them into another extreme situation would also be problematic, and would take the storytelling close to soap-opera levels.
Owosekun, Saru, and Detmer.
Discovery has, to its credit, attempted to show how some of the events that its characters have gone through have impacted their mental health. Some of these stories have been underdeveloped – Detmer’s in Season 3 and Dr Culber’s in Season 4 being the most egregious examples. But even with this kind of attempted mental health focus, there’s a limit on what we could expect characters to go through and still be alright when they come out the other end.
To be fair, that’s a line that the Star Trek franchise has crossed in the past with characters like Miles O’Brien, for example, who seemed to survive a lot of traumatic events only to be back to normal the next week! But as shows like Picard have demonstrated with characters like Seven of Nine and Jean-Luc Picard himself, it can be incredibly cathartic to revisit some of these characters and give them meaningful, lasting development. But we’re drifting off-topic!
Captain Burnham in Season 4.
Star Trek’s galaxy is vast, and as we saw in Season 4 with the inclusion of races like the Abronians and Unknown Species 10-C, even in the 32nd Century there’s still a heck of a lot that Starfleet doesn’t know about it. There’s scope for Captain Burnham and the crew to get back to exploring for its own sake, as well as using their Spore Drive to reach parts of the galaxy that it would be difficult for the Federation to do otherwise. There’s the potential for the crew to bring hope to far-flung Federation outposts after the Burn, the Emerald Chain, and the DMA have had such a devastating impact… and it’s worthwhile telling stories like that.
Even if Season 5 doesn’t do much of that rebuilding or exploring, I’m still hopeful that whatever stories it chooses to tell won’t feel repetitive and won’t recycle the same basic story framework that we’ve seen throughout the show’s entire run to date. Discovery could do so much to expand our understanding of the Star Trek galaxy; even more so in a 32nd Century setting that is wholly unconstrained by prior canon. Shooting this far forwards in time was a great way for the show’s writers and producers to give themselves new opportunities to play in the vast sandbox that we call the Star Trek galaxy – so now would be a great time to take advantage of that.
As I look ahead to Season 5, I feel hopeful and optimistic. Season 4 had some problems, but generally it was an improvement over Season 3 and it ended in truly spectacular fashion. There’s potential for what comes next to build on that, and if the series can avoid retreading too much old ground, Season 5 could be Discovery’s best outing yet.
Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are available to stream now on Paramount+ where the platform is available and via a patchwork of video-on-demand and pay-to-view streaming platforms in the rest of the world. The series is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 