On the Star Trek front, while Star Trek: Discovery is now currently airing its fifth and final season, Paramount have announced that Lower Decks fifth season will also be its last when it airs later this year. Discovery kicked off Trek’s current TV era and at one point Paramount had 5 Trek shows airing, with Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds, debuting in that order. With Discovery and Lower Decks ending this year, Picard having already ended, and Prodigy in the hands of Netflix now, it does seem like this era has quietly comes to an end, the “Discovery era” has ended whilst the new era shall be the “Strange New Worlds” era, as SNW is filming its 3rd season and will get a 4th season.
In many respects, the streaming era of Trek is a testament to Paramount’s hubris. They wanted Trek to be this big tentpole franchise for the streaming, clearly a mirror to something like Disney+'s constant Star Wars content. But Trek, arguably, has never been a franchise as big as Star Wars despite its large impact on culture. Most of the movies have never done massive numbers, and while Trek would enjoy a 16 year continuous run through the last '80s to the mid-2000s with The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. But even then, only 2 shows at most were airing at the same time (Deep Space Nine would air at the end of TNG’s run and most of Voyager’s run.) So to think that they could have 5 shows going at the same time, even with different styles and demographic targets, was just pure hubris.
Still, I really enjoyed Lower Decks, it has been running strong. I’m hopeful the Season 5 finale can be a good send off, the showrunner for Lower Decks had said previously he had hoped for more seasons but that it would be up to Paramount, so I’m hoping they were at least given time to prepare for a series finale, rather than it just be a season finale. I’m not really keeping up with Star Wars content but considering from what I know that Star Wars animated shows have had continuity and characters appear with each other and even in live action, hopefully this won’t be the end of the Lower Decks characters. I’d love to see what happens to Boimler and co in the future, see if they ever make captain in the future.
Still, this isn’t the end of Star Trek by any means. On Paramount’s end, the next big thing is the Section 31 TV movie starring Michelle Yeoh. I guess we’ll see how that pans out, it’s actually a first for Trek to get a TV movie like this (barring times where 2 TV episodes were aired together as a 90 minute movie in the past.) One of movies or mini-series could be the way forward to emulate something like Picard’s success without the commitment of a new series, and now that Trek has such a wealth of a material to pull from, with so many characters and settings and the like, it could be a good way forward. How about an Enterprise reunion?
Besides Section 31, Strange New Worlds will continue on with Seasons 3 and 4, and for all intents and purposes, will be the “main” Trek show of Paramount. I’m enjoying SNW a lot, it’s fun, it can be serious, and it’s not afraid to be a bit experimental, so I hope the show gets a long future. Finally we know that there is Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which is in pre-production and will start being filmed soon. From what little we know, it sounds like it will follow Starfleet cadets as they are trained into becoming Starfleet’s best, aimed at teens and young adults. I don’t know, seems a bit weird to do this after both Prodigy and Lower Decks focus on characters who are essentially being taught how to be Starfleet, and how much excitement can academy life be without being a sci-fi soap opera?
The final Trek is Prodigy which is in the hands of Netflix now after Paramount dropped it. Season 2 actually aired in France through another distributor due to some kind of weird legal deal and miscommunication. Netflix themselves are still yet to announce a date when they will start airing Season 2, and whether or not they will greenlight a Season 3. Hopefully not too much longer, and we can only hope Prodigy gets the numbers it needs to keep going. Prodigy Season 1 is really great, definetly not just a “kid’s show”, a great introduction to Trek for anyone, and if Season 2 can build upon the first, it should really excel.