Paramount+ today announced that the fan-favorite original series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been renewed for a fifth and final six-episode season ahead of the third season premiere this summer.
Huh…
So a half season + a one-hour series finale?
Having only 5 seasons seems the new normal since they haven’t been able to actually produce one season per calendar year and actors’ contracts run 7 years.
But having a short season seems weird, like some kind of negotiated compromise.
This is just going to feed the ‘Kurtzman is done when his contract expires …’ speculation.
Agreed, seems weird. But I’m optimistic when a series ending is announced well in advance. It means they’ll have time to finish it properly instead of hedging their bets, uncertain if they’ll be renewed.
We have to keep in mind that we’ve only seen 20 of 46 episodes, less than half the full run.
I believe that the new benchmark for selling a licence for reruns on other streamers and linear has dropped from over 70 episodes to a bit over 40 based on various industry reports. So this definitely puts SNW above that threshold.
This does raise the question though whether there is a plan to morph this into some kind of TOS continuation past year 5 and TAS.
I mean, I think the Kurtzman era has been quite successful, but he’s had the job for quite a while now. It’s possible he’ll choose to move on once his contract is up.
But yeah, with Paramount in such a state of upheaval…nothing surprises me any more.
I’ve been hearing about how Kurtzman is days away from being fired since Discovery’s first season. If he does choose to step down, there’ll still be no convincing those people that he wasn’t forced out in disgrace.
I say this as someone who generally liked all the new shows, but since the premiere of Disco in 2017 this whole era of Trek has felt unstable.
Again, I liked everything that was produced, but I also feel that these “premiere TV” styled, $5 million+ budget/episode series are clearly not sustainable business model for these shows that are also only on air a couple of weeks out of the year.
Think positively. We all knew this had to come to an end eventually. This is a prequel that leads into TOS.
Seán Ferrick of TrekCulture has pointed out that Game of Thrones’ final season was six episodes, half which were longer length. So there is a possibility that these episodes will be longer.
EDIT: I misspelled Seán’s name earlier.
Risky comparison. There are some who feel the final season of Game of Thrones was a rushed mess.
I was hoping for some news on this after I noticed them filming season 4 at my work this week. Shame they’re ending it at 5 with a half season. Its the only live action trek I’ve thoroughly enjoyed since the Rick Berman days.
