Markets changing demand adjustment. Of course, you could spend money hand over fist to relive the glory days but you'll probably go bankrupt or into austerity measures.
Oh, wait, CBS is there. Strange.
‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Renewed for Fifth and Final Season
- Thread starter Precious Tritium
- Start date
Oh, wait, CBS is there. Strange.
What you're failing to take into consideration is that despite a 25 episode season of Berman Trek where at least 15 eps were just filler, it was a 9-month long season with a 3-month break. Which means that whatever you personally may have thought about those filler eps, they kept the audience involved with the show for 3/4 of the year, and hungry for more during that 1/4 year hiatus.
Now, one season is 10 episodes shown in the span of 2 months, with a 10 month hiatus. That does not keep the audience involved. The reason why the average run of a streaming series is 3 years is because these ridiculously long gaps between seasons cause the audience to lose interest, or even forget the show is even still being produced. And sometimes even the producers of the show have no idea what's going on with their show in that regard, which is why shows have storylines that have nothing to do with other seasons, like The Man in the High Castle and Star Trek Picard. When CBSAA/P+ were producing five Trek shows at a time, this wasn't a problem, because we only had 1-2 months between productions, so even if you were a DSC fan but not a LDS fan, there was still Trek content that you could access if you chose to. Now, once SNW S3 drops, we won't see S4/5 until this same time next year (and I have a sneaking suspicion that they will be starting production on S5 not long after S4 is finished production in an effort to show 16 episodes in one sitting in July 2026 so they can end the show then.)
With Secret Hideout's contract ending in 2026, I would assume that it means they can't make anymore Trek beyond that point. So getting all of that filmed sooner rather than later makes total sense.
(The possibility of renewal exists, but nobody wants to be caught out.)
(The possibility of renewal exists, but nobody wants to be caught out.)
So, Goldsman has suggested that the 5th year is about getting Kirk into that chair. He also notes that "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is not Kirk's first or second mission as the captain of Enterprise.
trekmovie.com
Exclusive: Akiva Goldsman On How ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Will End With Kirk In Command
The executive producer also talked about his pitch for a follow-up show.
trekmovie.com
That's good to hear. Getting tired of all the tie-ins that operate under the impression that it is.
Especially over the last generation, people have come to expect "closure" from TV shows and story cycles. So you get that with series like TNG and DS9 - we meet the characters "on their first day on the job" and we say goodbye at a moment when everything is changing and folks are moving on.
Okay, not TNG because the studio thought their stories would continue with the movies. But we started at the beginning.
So people get to feel as if they need to know where the beginning of TOS was, and a lot aren't comfortable that it was never shown. Unless...the first time we saw them really was the beginning.
If SNW somehow does take Kirk and Spock right up to the edge of TOS then the entire Star Trek saga will have finally closed the circle. We've already seen the end of Kirk and Spock, after all.
Star Trek has turned out at long last to be the life story of Spock, Everyone else in it are folks in his story.
If WNMHGB is Kirk’s first command (I’ve never considered it that way), then he is incredibly good at the job—even more so than any version of his “legend” ever suggested. He’s clearly someone with notable experience when we meet him. And the story has nothing to suggest “first day on the job” in any sense.
Down the line it can be retitled as the season 5 anticipation thread.Considering Season 5 likely will not air until 2027, I suspect this will be one of those threads that gets bumped and bumped for years
All good points. I would also add that its easy to look back on old shows and point out "fillers". When those episodes were being released in real time they were not seen as fillers. Each episode was a new adventure and even if it wasnt as good as the previous episode you couldn't wait until the next week. Because of this you got almost a full year of excitement except for the brief hiatus during holidays or summer. Now with streaming its wait a year or two for what is essentially a miniseries of 10 episodes that you are done with in a couple of months. The only thing that is better is the production values, but I would gladly trade that for a 20 -25 episode season. I don't know how anyone can say what we have now is better, but then again I'm old school.
I would also argue against the claim that most were filler. Seasons 1 and 2 of TOS were top notch as was TNG season 3-6 and DS9 season 2-6. The majority of the episodes in those seasons were great. Other shows like West Wing or Xfiles were able to have many awesome seasons with few bad episodes. As long as you have a strong writing team, creating 20 or more quality episodes in a season isnt a problem.
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Considering Season 5 likely will not air until 2027, I suspect this will be one of those threads that gets bumped and bumped for years
Unless they just tack those six episodes onto the end of season 4 next year. Since Kurtzman’s contract is up in 2026, that’s quite likely.
There was a time when a season of scripted weekly broadcast television was around 35 episodes per year. Then it began to decline until it reached the now common 18-22 episodes per season of SOME shows, and often as low as 10-15. And while writing may sometimes be a component of the decline, it’s not especially high on the list. Economics, particularly production costs (including salary bumps for leads), are the main factor. And while you may be willing to trade production quality for more episodes, that ship has sailed. Moreover, deservedly or not, streaming platform series frequently aspire to the label of “prestige television” and, among the expectations of their creators/producers are bigger budgets, expansive production schedules, at least a sprinkling of “name actors”, and irregular runtimes (whatever is “needed” vs a strict time limit (the latter of which, incidentally, also shrank considerably along with episode counts)—and current Trek certainly aspires to the label, though its success at earning such a distinction is certainly an open question).
Unless a show is a medical or cop/legal/procedural drama with low fixed set costs, 20 or more episodes a year are a problem—an economic one.
Also, many fine shows have been made on short episode counts around the world. The American broadcast network 20-25 episode model is hardly the only one worth emulating.
Im beginning to expect season 5 will be more like an anthology season, conclude Pike's 5 year mission, hand over the keys to the Enterprise, get everyone else to new ships or to the great Koala in the sky and then have Pike's accident. Close all the circles. But to do so it would need to be a bit more disjointed and take place over the span of a few years.
Now if theyd given us 7 seasons we could have sailed quite organically into 2266 but hey. Tis what tis.
Now if theyd given us 7 seasons we could have sailed quite organically into 2266 but hey. Tis what tis.
I don’t think the contract determines when a show is aired, just when it’s produced. Or else shows that are cancelled wouldn’t air at all.
When would be the latest that season 5 could be produced then?
Whenever the finally decide and have everything in place to film it; and can fit it into the Studio's and Cast and Crew's production schedules.
British shows like Endeavour, Inspector Morse, Vera, and A Touch of Frost are down at around three or four episodes per season (a.k.a. series). Poirot was down to that level from 2000 onward.
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