It looks as if the Federation starship USS Discovery will only have a five year mission.
Star Trek: Discovery, the series which launched a reinvigorated, multi-series Star Trek franchise for streamer Paramount Plus will be ending after it upcoming fifth season.
The news comes in the wake after the series had already wrapped production on season five. Paramount will be giving the show the chance to gear back up for some reshoots that will allow the series to be brought to a more definitive close. These reshoots have pushed the expected premier of the final season from later this year into early 2024.
The series stars Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, Wilson Cruz, David Ajala, Blu del Barrio and Callum Keith Rennie as the crew of the titular starship. Originally set a few years before the original classic Star Trek series which starred William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelly, the crew traveled a thousand years forward in time at the end of the show’s second season.
Discovery was somewhat divisive among fans, some of whom felt it strayed too far away from the franchise’s core tenants. The show was popular enough though for Paramount Plus to launch a variety of Star Trek series from the direct Discovery spinoff Strange New Voyages, the Next Generation followup Picard and the animated entries Lower Decks and Prodigy, which the streamer also has airing on the kid-oriented Nickelodeon cable outlet.
With the ending of Discovery and Picard wrapping up its three season run next month, Paramount Plus finds itself with only one ongoing live action Trek series – Strange New Worlds. The streamer has been developing two more series, one set at Starfleet Academy and one centered on Starfleet’s mysterious black ops division, Section 31, which could star Michelle Yeoh returning as Discovery character of Philippa Georgiou. However, in a time of contracting production as various streaming services are wrestling with the financial realities of subscription services, it remains to be seen how aggressive Paramount will be in replacing those programming losses with new live action series.
