Strange New Worlds’ Final Season Is Going Back To A Classic Star Trek Formula
Back-to-basics. Again.
When Star Trek: Strange New Worlds airs its fifth and final season in 2027, it will be the conclusion of a real-life five-year mission that started when the show debuted in 2022. Then again, some might say that Strange New Worlds really began at the end of Discovery Season 1 in 2018, with the appearance of Captain Pike’s USS Enterprise. Even more so in 2019, when Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck), and Number One (Rebecca Romijn) became more central to the story, both in that season, and in a series of Short Treks, which felt like a proof-of-concept for Strange New Worlds.
So it’s either a five-year mission, a ten-year mission, or something in between. But, regardless, this version of Star Trek will conclude after Season 5, which is currently filming. And, as SNW boldly goes into Season 4 and 5, one of the showrunners has confirmed that, overall, the series won’t be taking as many detours.
“We’re making Season 5 now, we’re trending towards that, which is probably the center line of Star Trek, right?” co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman told ScreenRant as reported by TrekMovie. And the main takeaway, which TrekMovie pointed out, was that Goldsman emphasized that “the outliers are getting less and less.”
This seems to suggest that one-off holodeck episodes, or musicals, or even the upcoming Season 4 puppet episode (see the above trailer), will not be the norm among the 16 new episodes left of Strange New Worlds. Instead, Goldsman has made it clear that the outro for Strange New Worlds will consist of what most fans expect of the series. Or, as Goldsman puts it: “much more singular sci-fi, action-adventure, emotional storytelling.”
Previously, Goldsman, as well as co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers, have both already made it clear that Season 4 is the last regular season of the show, and Season 5 will serve as a six-part series to help link the canon of SNW with the world of The Original Series. “We will take the show to Kirk’s first day of command,” Goldsman said back in July. Essentially, when SNW was threatened with being ended at Season 4, with no proper finale, Goldsman fought for a proper send-off, which is why Season 5 will be six episodes.
For fans who love this classic, colorful iteration of Star Trek, none of this will ever be quite enough. But at the same time, it does seem that when the Enterprise has less fuel and less time, the crew — both on screen and off — suddenly becomes a little more focused.
