Skydance has nothing to do with CBS/Paramount+’s actions so far. All five shows cancelled/ended prematurely/written off for tax reasons/etc., one show whose future is uncertain, and zero theatrical films on the horizon. Seems pretty clear to me how they feel about Star Trek.
And if Skydance actually does buy Paramount Global, there’s no indication that they will want to continue CBS’s money-losing way of doing things.
And they ain’t making a 25 episode-per-season network Star Trek series. That’s quite a fantasy.
1. Discovery - Canceled, but ran a fairly robust five seasons
2. Lower Decks - Canceled, but ran a fairly robust five seasons
3. Picard - Ended at three seasons, as was planned
4. Strange New Worlds - “Canceled”, but given a fifth season to wrap; another case of a fairly robust five seasons, and hard to really say whether it’s ending prematurely save for the fact that the final season will have its length clipped
5. Prodigy - Canceled, and definitely a failed project relative to its aims
6. Starfleet Academy - Still to come; planned for at least two seasons, but obviously, no way of knowing anything save for the extreme likelihood that we see its first, and the fair likelihood that we see its second
My point in all of this is, simply, that I don’t think Star Trek is in total trouble. There’s so much up in the air with the Skydance deal not yet having closed, and so much more that’ll be a big question mark if and when they’re in charge.
What I
do think - and this is, of course, self-evident - is that there will be far less Star Trek on our screens in the years to come than there were for a few glorious years back there. There’s no reason to think things will get that good again in the remotely foreseeable future. But, crucially, nor am I quite so certain that it’s all coming to a close. A single ongoing show - that might be the norm again. And it could last for years and years to come.
Or not! Who knows. I’m in the “cautiously optimistic that it won’t go away completely” phase at this point.
