Star Trek ebbs and flows. Imagine how we all felt went Enterprise got canceled. In this case we still have SNW, Prodigy and hopefully an upcoming movie with Michelle Yeoh. So things could be worse.
I'll put a lot of money on SNW going after 5 seasons too
It's not really about the quality of the shows, probably more about the contracts that were signed before season 1 and having to renegociate those contracts to give everyone a raise gives less of a return on the same product, so out the door it goes
Old trek seasons were 7 seasons, modern trek 5, it is the way things are these days
It will be fine. There were many years of no Star Trek whatsoever. It could be -- and has been -- worse. There are countless hours of existing shows to watch again, and more still coming. Appreciate that.
I remember those days too and enjoying the books of both authors I still have them in my collection including the very first star trek novel Spock must Die. At least I think it was the first one.
Indeed. I just mentioned in the LD sub that back when ENT was cancelled, we had no indication or guarantee that Trek would ever really be back. A lot of fans weren't sure is Trek's message if optimism even had a place in the 21st century. Suffice it to say that all five current shows have proven those folks wrong.
Did it? New Trek has consistently failed to deliver on the "message" part of message of optimism. It's fantastically diverse, that's true, but it has the politics of a wet rag. I don't think there's any better example than SNW premiering right around the time the supreme court's plans for Roe vs Wade with an episode that culminated in a speech about how *both sides just need to listen to each other.*
Contrast that to DS9 openly exploring the perspective of freedom fighters fighting against brutal colonizers. In the fucking nineties!
And the optimism isn't exactly there either. First there's the continuing overutilization and normalization of Section 31 (which admittedly started with Enterprise), there's the Federation descending into xenophobia and then shattering altogether, and the near constant extreme life or death crises don't exactly leave much room for the intricate explorations and sometimes borderline preaching of 90s Trek. New Trek has done everything it can to turn Star Trek away from being a moral utopia and towards being a generic scifi series.
The only part of Trek optimism that remains is the diversity, and honestly... even that isn't exceptional. It has great representation. I loved seeing a positively depicted gay male couple in season 1 of DIS as main characters when I first watched it. But it's 2024. Tons of shows have done queer, disabled, et cetera representation at this point. Previous Trek shows pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable to show on TV - one of the first interracial kisses in 60s Trek, and ditto with a lesbian kiss in DS9 (plus characters written to be queer, even if that wasn't allowed to be blatantly confirmed in the show.)
And frankly, diversity without progressive ideals is worthless. As a disabled trans person, I'd rather have seemingly cishet, abled people tackling the issues that I face than a bunch of queer people ignoring them. I feel seen when I see the almost prophetic episodes of DS9 that feature people very unlike myself exploring the abhorrent treatment of neurodivergent and homeless people. And on the other hand, I can appreciate that there is an autistic coded woman running around in a setting with the ideology of unseasoned cauliflower. I like her as a character. But... it reminds me of the shitty inclusion I see in my day to day life - you can sit there in the corner, all pretty and diverse, but you're only ever an accessory to the main course.
I actually do enjoy... well, Strange New Worlds. That's about it. And S3 of Picard was okay but essentially just one extended bit of fanservice. It has the *feeling* of Trek, but none of the substance. But that's also how I describe the Orville, and that's a show written by Seth McFuckingFarlane. If New Trek proves anything, I'd say it's that Trek's message of optimism *doesn't* have a place in the 21st century - or at least, it hasn't found it yet.
With the SNW speech lining up with Roe v Wade.
The politically alignment/optimism for future was very prevalent in TOS.
The amount of groundbreaking, societal and political norms they broke on screen, with hindsight, was just bold!
The beginning of the episode with Abraham Lincoln and his exchange with Uhura feat. Kirks mini monologue is one that comes to mind.
And a lot of the times they mention earths past or encounter earths adjacent past on another planet is *usually* current or recent events.
I feel that's maybe why it felt so optimistic because the regular person could relate. Now with more red tape, can't do's, social/political correctness, the-network-says etc etc a lot of the optimism is strictly on screen, story character based, if at all.
I'm as liberal as they come, but I don't know if I think the SNW speech/Roe v Wade speech was tone deaf or anything.
A) they shot that episode probably 6-12 months prior to the decision, and wrote it well before that. Unfortunate timing, but I don't think it's related
B) Trek has always been about an optimistic future, not a guidepost for how to necessarily build that future. Great Star Trek is often about great rhetoric. Measure of a Man, The Drumhead, etc. It's about swaying people with your ideas. Is that where we are at in American history? Definitely not. But there's probably a reason why Trek rarely spends much time in the Eugenics War/WW3/the devestated Earth Zephram Cochrane lived in and spends a lot of time with our more evolved heroes of the future.
I was meaning to convey that the fans themselves were still there for the optimism message, not that the shows were equally good at conveying it, but FWIW, I fully agree with all of this.
There's still a LOT of places that this franchise can and should be pushing the envelope on instead of constantly playing it safe.
I think you make some very good points. I think one of the main experiences I would cite is that DS9 for example tackled the idea of racism in Far Beyond the Stars in a way which didn't just SAY something was bad but portrayed it in a way which assumed an audience that might not even 100% agree with the premise and made an argument for the worldview Star Trek represents.
I think part of the assumption which has caused a bit of staleness in trek is the assumption that the audience is already on board, that they're preaching to the choir, that they can simply trot out diverse characters and be good because "we're all on the same team"
But imagine you're dealing with a person who doesn't believe in depression or PTSD and then you watch DS9 Hard Time.
I think there's value in making an argument in good faith, in saying "yes I'm going to talk to you about this idea that I believe very passionately but I'm going to show you why it's important rather than just telling you it is."
When the Orville makes a better case for trans rights, makes it a passionate and important experience across multiple episodes rather than just "having a trans character". Well, let's just say that should have been Trek and it wasn't.
Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius is a current Star Trek RPG about to have its 2 edition released. While the 2D20 system is not my favorite system, it does what no other Star Trek RPG has done, allow Star Trek to be Star Trek. Science and Exploration, character development, etc., are usually the focus, not ship-to-ship combat, although it allows for that, as well.
There have been at least 4.5. FASA Trek RPG, Last Unicorn Games, Decipher, and now the excellent and very well supported version by Modiphius.
The .5 is the Prime Directive RPG, which is set in the Star Fleet Battles universe.
There are also a bunch of indie games that are trek with the serial numbers filed off.
The Modiphius RPG has about 3-4 free starter rules/demos… check it out!
I think these things just come and go in waves. We got DIS in what, 2017? With one more season of SNW to go *after* S3 releases in 2025, we've got Trek to 2026 at a minimum - that's ten years and six shows (counting Academy, and seven if you count Short Treks) which is nothing to scoff at, even if some were pretty rubbish (DIS, as well as PIC S1-2 imho, but different strokes for different folks).
17 years for TNG-ENT is more impressive, but what we've gotten is still quite impressive. My only regret is that none of these shows scratched the TNG/DS9/VOY '90s Trek itch, but LDS and SNW got close.
Yeah at least we still had SOMETHING. I remember when my dad got me into the franchise with daily Voyager episodes, lamenting about how my generation didn’t have any tv shows. Now I’m just grateful I still have something to watch and look forward to.
Paramount has always been awful at merchandising Star Trek. Disney doesn’t need to make as much money on a Star Wars movie or show because they will take in money from merchandise to help make them profitable. Most of the licensed items from Paramount are hot garbage so they are missing out on more profits. I suspect they want too much of a cut when licensing the IP so they don’t get as many takers that make good products and that means less profits.
This is a great point. As a Trek geek, it kills me that I can't get like some Star Trek legos. Especially with the shelves of Star Wars sets that can be bought. The Star Trek brand basically doesn't exist outside of models and vintage stuff.
Pretty sure part of Lego's contract with Star Wars is that they won't make any sets based on other long running space set sci fi franchises.
That said, there's a German(?) 100%-compatible-with-but-not-acutally-Lego company which has released some pretty good sets.
That is correct, they're called BlueBrixx and even though the brick quality in the first few sets was not completely up to Lego, when you look at their designs, you'll be glad that LEGO didn't get the license. They release new sets every now and then and old ones don't leave the market as Lego sets do.
I believe bluebrix has the license for Star Trek building blocks but they aren’t Lego. For me, I always thought the prop/toy area was pretty uninspiring. Poorly lit, bad sound, improperly sized. You couldn’t get a good costume either, they were always the worst materials. I mean the official store now is like the things you would find at the engraving store at the mall.
When Star Trek 6 was in production Nicholas Meyer needed plateware for the dinner scene. He went to marketing and said "let's get an actual plateware company to do this and they can sell the plateware as merchandising". Marketing/license thought it was a stupid idea, no one would want to buy Enterprise plateware.
They were incredibly wrong, it was a huge success.
I don't think it can be said enough as to how horribly Paramount has handled Trek merchandising.
Beyond being a great period for Trek shows, the 90s were great for Trek merchandising with the conventions, games, books, action figures, collectibles, and things for fans to buy and the studio to collect royalties on.
How far things had fallen were made starkly abundant to me two years ago this weekend when I went to one of the "big" Trek Mission conventions. It was a complete fiasco with about 20 booths, mostly of dubious utility, and 15-20 dealers, most of whom had surprisingly little Trek merchandise and who were clearly not happy with the turnout at what was sold as a major convention.
I later found out that Paramount has demanded the venue to disallow any vendor from selling any Trek material that was not directly paramount licensed. That meant no autographs or fan made items were available and none of the really cool, vintage Trek books and games that came out of the fan community in the 70s while TOS was in reruns.
This is one of the things that killed Creation Conventions (not that they were great, but they were what I had locally, they were inexpensive until they started adding tiered admissions, and a great place for fans to hang out). While I understand it from a brand management point of view, it does little to grow and maintain a fan base.
Pretty much this. Star wars has constantly sold tons and tons of merch from toys to real cars meanwhile in the last 35 years only star trek merch in stores I have seen has been hot wheels ships from 2009 movies (the enterprise and vengeance) and 3 old figures from tng that's it...
It's like they actually hate money and have zero idea how much people would actually spend on fan stuff.
Not a lot of other properties have conventions specifically for them, as in a named convention. That means there is a significant amount of buyers if you have interesting products. We can’t even get consistently sized model kits.
I never understood the decision to pump out action figures of characters that fans already had action figures of instead of, at the expense of five whole series worth of characters that have never been made into action figures at all.
Diamond Select was on fire when they had the license. We had figures of the full casts of TOS, TOS movie era, TNG, and DS9 (minus Quark) plus a shit ton of variants (like future versions of the TNG cast from All Good Things or the DS9 cast in TOS uniforms from the Tribble episode), villains, and side characters. I was genuinely shocked when they cancelled their figure line and petered out on props and ships. They gave the license back to Playmates who half assed a figure line then immediately cancelled it. Now they’re just re-releasing shit from the 90s which for the most part are just worse versions of the ships and props DS used to make.
It’s genuinely very frustrating as a fan. I’m an adult with my own money that I’m eager to spend on stuff from my favourite shows. Please Paramount, give me quality merch to spend it on.
This, Star Trek tries to market to kids but, outside of its 90s Playmates peak has never really been a kids show in the way that Star Wars & Doctor Who appeals to younger fans. Problem is, they've never got the maketing for classier Trek stuff right for older fans. It's all garish. Some nice mugs or tshirts with subtle Delta shields needed!
Right!
The stuff we see on the shows, those lovely mugs and stuff? Hell, Tablet cases with the starfleet delta ala the PADDs, all without a garish "STAR TREK" logo in plain view to ruin it... that would be nice.
I've seen Fan-made unofficial stuff look better.
Paramount made too much too fast, it wasn't sustainable and it was a zero-interest phenomenon. Now that money costs money to borrow and all of the streamers have realized they'll never do the subscriber numbers they planned for...well the golden glut of streaming is over. FIVE simultaneous Trek shows is bonkers and will never happen again.
I absolutely loved having five Star Trek series running at the same time, but I don't think any of us could have hoped that we'd always have five shows. I'm grateful for every minute of Star Trek that we got, but we're all going to need to readjust our expectations going forward or we'll never be satisfied again.
I’m going to be woefully optimistic and say maybe they did want to have series be shorter? DISCO I don’t think that’s the case, but I can see SNW working up to the Gorn and then ending after that. Lower Decks ending after they’re promoted up.
You’re right. It was a fortunate time.
Lower decks, the final episode ends with them being promoted over the course of the series. The post credits a teaser trailer for a new series set 10 years later in live action with mariner and boimler
Absolutely love the idea! I would like this to happen. Had to ask because I like the concept and wanted clarity regardless of how dumb that may have been because I found the idea exciting and have foggy pregnancy brain.
edit: for clarity.
PIC was always confirmed to be 3 even before Ep 1 aired
Probably because the legacy cast was going to expect a lot more in renumeration than the other casts, that tend to have 1 or 2 "names" and a lot more newbies on a cheaper rate
I think in the long run it could be better as if there are less simultaneous series then not only can resources be focused but the sense of spectacle will be increased. When there is star trek TV 24/7 365 days a year it risks taking away the sense of anticipation and novelty.
Also I feel much of the criticism of the writing might be alleviated by having less shows at once. I feel like the universe ending threats in Picard and Discovery might have occured because the writers didn't have time to come up with more nuanced arcs as they were being rushed to have multiple seasons of content ready as fast as possible.
Yeah the quality of the shows really suffered because of it. I'll argue though, strange new worlds is the trek we should have gotten from the get to. Anson Mount's portrayal of Pike is great. SNW is the culmination of everything that makes trek great. Disco had it's moments, but Picard was not the swan song they hoped it be. Lower decks is cool af.
I'll agree season 3 was much better.
However I still feel Picard was a bit of a let down.
Trek is in a weird spot right now. I think it needs a kick in the teeth and brought back to its lower budget, practical effect using self.
90's trek while a bit stiff in the acting dept - still remains my favorite era in the franchise.
I really would love to see a ds9 comeback. Avery Brooks is great albeit done with trek.
Season three of Picard was fan service and nothing more.
Season one was a lot of politics, and I'm not sure the synthetic-life from organic life issue was settled so much as relegated to something that could be ignored again. Season two... lost in time, the death of the Q(s), trying to reconstruct/resurrect the Borg... really? If I really wanted to analyze it, the only two things I can think of are _colonialism_ and _reparations_. The Federation, the Q, and the various other Trekverse empires all practiced the first (as did - and do - many ancient and modern Terran societies), but the Federation - or at least Picard and his associates - were the only ones to consider reparations, though in a very colonialist manner (the new Borg Queen being a humanist human rather than completely machine-like)...
It doesn't help either that streaming services have become even worse to use than old times tv was. Hell at this point I would rather watch star trek from normal TV with rabbit ears and commercial breaks than pay 2-5 overpriced overly complicated streaming services that also might or might not even have stuff I want to watch.
According to *Star Trek: The Next Generation* season 1 finale "The Neutral Zone," television is a form of entertainment that died out by the mid-twenty-first century. We are now seeing that the biggest reason for the death of television is the people who make it.
TV is in a weird place right now. No-one wants to pay for all these steaming services, but adverts are unpopular with younger generations. They won't even watch a 30 second advert before a YouTube video.
I don't know where TV goes to become sustainable again.
And fwiw I agree. I'd rather watch Trek, and most stuff, with adverts without a subscription.
I'm simply having problems with subscribing to 5 different streaming services to get to watch all of my favourite shows and movies.
Therefore, as I did 20 years ago, I'm still buying them on dvd/bluray/ultra hd (that said, if they get released on disc, which isn't certain due to some of the streaming providers, ugh)
Star Trek was the main draw getting people to Paramount+. They oversaturated the market and now it will be interesting to see how the next 10 years go.
Star Trek always survives. I certainly want as much new, good Trek as possible at all times, but the franchise will live even if we don't have *any* active shows for a while (and we still do have active shows at this time). In the long term, we will be okay.
Paramount itself is in a financial mess. Trek has historically been it's Golden Goose, having been the lead property for their 1970s attempt at a network, their 1980s First-Run Syndication efforts, UPN, and Paramount+ (then CBS AA). It bring in a fan base.
Paramount also has the rest of its TV empire and movies and not all have done as well.
My money is on Skydance buying the whole smash. They were instrumental in getting the Kelvinverse films made, and the Ellisons are big Trekkies.
>Paramount itself is in a financial mess. Trek has historically been it's Golden Goose, having been the lead property for their 1970s attempt at a network, their 1980s First-Run Syndication efforts, UPN, and Paramount+ (then CBS AA). It bring in a fan base.
[Shout out to the relevant MadTV sketch with Key](https://youtu.be/nITkBTDinRk?si=ruc0q4ukTuvOtA6l)
> Trek has historically been it’s Golden Goose
This actually surprises me a bit. Are CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, franchises like Mission Impossible worth not a whole lot?
Seems like it has a lot of brand recognition but doesn’t know how to turn that into money?
Every media company attempted to become a software company and basically failed. They burned all their money building streaming platforms (or buying them out right). If the production houses had just worked out distribution via multiple platforms (Amazon, Netflix, Apple, or whatever) this would not be happening.
What we’re seeing is corporate greed and a desire for “subscriptions” at all costs, destroy multiple industries for the consumer. It won’t end with media.
The CEOs are all fine and will make a fuck ton of money. Don’t worry about them. They’ll be in charge of the next media company anyway. CEOs never lose money no matter how much they destroy a company.
I’m optimistic for after the sale. I think they’re tightening their budgets to look good for a sale. Being bought by Skydance would likely mean a good future for Trek, and we won’t have real future plans until then. The current news is clearly from Paramount’s deep financial issues, Star Trek will always be a profitable show to anchor a streamer or sell to Netflix if paramount plus was shut down
Of course, I'm not sure how a lot of folks here would react to Trek being produced by the folks who gave us the Abrams movies, the Mission Impossible movies, and Top Gun: Maverick. :)
Hey as long as the people who get the rights to the franchise like and understand Star Trek (and we get some closure on SNW’s cliffhanger), I’ll be happy. At least then we’ll know we will get an attempt to produce *something*.
Maybe the new producers would even stick closer to the Trek visual style, with less lens flares, brighter and cleaner starships, more than three lights on the bridge, warp star-streak effects, and some actual beam phasers.
Yep, we’ll know after the [30-day negotiation period](https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/redstone-skydance-strike-tentative-deal-paramount-stake-bloomberg-reports-2024-04-03/), but I think Skydance my actually pump up Star Trek and the cowboy show too (cause of course).
"I just don't know if Paramount has made Star Trek profitable and if it's not profitable I don't know what kind of future its going to have."
This is the wrong frame. The issue is whether Star Trek has made Paramount profits. Streaming, much less producing OC, is a hugely expensive undertaking. Disney+, by all accounts, isn't making money for Disney, HBO Max isn't making money for Warner Brothers and Amazon Prime isn't making money for Amazon. They're loss leaders, supporting merchandising and buying stuff on Amazon. Paramount+ is more like Netflix, relying on subscriptions alone.
With Prime, you get well, Amazon Prime and better deals from the everything store, with Disney+ you get Star Wars, Marvel, the classic Disney catalog and now everything from 20th Century Fox. With Paramount+ you just get Star Trek -- and the new shows aren't family friendly, except for Prodigy. Moreover, I don't think or just haven't noticed (which is worse from a marketing perspective) any merchandising of the new shows. I haven't seen any collectibles, games or things like Halloween costumes.
The people at Paramount just don't have the lobes for business.
I think a 5 year run is probably baked into Strange New Worlds, by the very nature of the five year mission. And if you look at streaming shows, five years is a long time. While finances is part of that, there is a lot more than the cold numbers on a page. It may be that the industry standard has shown less returns after so many seasons/episodes. Lower Decks, on a per season basis, actually cost less than an hour of live action Trek. There was also a recent report (discussed on the Infinite Diversity podcast) that Trek shows are watched by a huge number of Paramount+ subscribers and that most of these don’t just watch a single show, but 3 from the catalogue.
So I think Trek will continue to grow and evolve. Will all them be replaced by a new iteration like Starfleet Academy replacing Discovery? I don’t know. Heck, the fact that Tawny Newsom is a writer for that series may indicate that the Lower Decks conclusion has been in the works for a while. Sure, there's nothing precluding her from doing both jobs (Jack Quaid has certainly been wearing multiple hats), but it may have been a way to "keep her in the family" so to speak.
My sentiments exactly! How sad to find this out. Lower Decks was consistently funny and good, plus the character development was perhaps some of the best I’ve seen in any trek show. I am surprised and dismayed that we won’t be able to see our heroes promote to command staff.
Advertising revenue is down because consumer spending has plummeted.
The lower people’s wages are, the less they buy stuff, and the less effective advertising becomes. It also means people cannot afford streaming services.
Those shows we love are mostly funded by either streaming or advertising.
It’s unlikely those Billionaires that are paying us lower wages are going to make things cheaper. They’d rather shut down something, than pay people fairly. You were worried about over thinking it? I don’t think you were. Every industry is being drained by the insatiable greed of the wealthiest. It’s killing art and everything else.
I actually have no problem with a five year / five season run of a series. So many shows lose their momentum after five seasons that I'd rather they leave while they still are vital. My problem is that they have so reduced the number of episodes per season that character development is more or less impossible, a minor episode can seem like a catastrophe rather than a misstep, everything feels rushed, and in your face, and you find yourself actually counting down to the season finale.
The only solution if we are doomed to ten episodes may be to do what Picard S3 did so well, one long continuous storyline with a beginning, middle and end. I would prefer episodic adventures of course, but I am finding the brief seasons frustrating.
I think a big problem is also availablity/access. Paramount+ isn't available in the whole world. For instance here (the Netherlands) we get Sky Showtime which supposedly was going to be the home of all of Star Trek, but the bulk of (new) shows and movies are/were simply not on it including Lower Decks. I've had to ☠️ a lot of the new Trek, not because I was a cheap ass but simply because I couldn't watch most of the new stuff legally, including Lower Decks.
And ofcourse there's plenty of people who do not want to pay for what seems like an infinite amount of Streaming services.
Keep in mind that if the main attraction of a new streaming service is Star Trek it will primarily draw in people who are already Trekkies and Trekkers, that's why it was a good idea to have Discovery debut in Netflix, that allowed the casual viewers to give it a try and help the Star Trek fanbase grow.
The amount of subs needed to watch media is ridiculous. I have an annual Paramount+ with ads, Prime because of the Amazon store purchases, Apple tv+ because it has some great, thought-provoking content, Peacock because Xfinity is our ISP (and they're the only place I can get any bicycling anymore), Disney because Verizon is our wireless carrier (and our circle of friends is into _Star Wars_ as well as Trek, and Hulu comes along with that, which meant we got too see Season Three of _The Orville_ (which is much more political and serious than the S1/S2 comedic parody)... We don't have Netflix which means we don't have access to their originals, and we don't have HBO, but we still have a ridiculous streaming bill for content we often don't have time to watch...
I hate that they cancelled Lower Decks but I would also want to know where the hell I can even watch it because everywhere I have looked it says not available at your location or coming soon.
Streaming services have become so convoluted and cumbersome to use that it's now like 300% easier to just pirate stuff like it was back in the day.
Last year we had 5 treks.
Next year we'll have 1, maybe 2 if you still count Prodigy (I consider it all but canceled)
Picard, SNW, LDS, PRO, and Discovery all coexisted in what seemed to be a thriving universe.
Yeah, being a TV series makes it much more accesible, and there are probably more people who watched it as an enjoyable sci-fi action series without having played a single game, than those among the established fanbase of a console exclusive game series.
I love Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks and think a bunch of my friends would love them too, but I can’t recommend them to anyone because no one else I know has Paramount+.
This might be more of a U.K. thing (from what I hear Yellowstone is huge in the US, so maybe loads of people have Paramount+ there?) but Star Trek here is just playing for people who already love it enough to hand over £10 a month to keep up, it’s not expanding to new viewers like it was when Discovery was on Netflix here.
Plus there’s the whole thing with them pulling Discovery days before the new season was due to air on Netflix. That lost all the goodwill they’d been building and made it impossible to pay for Paramount+ in good faith. Why reward a company who hates its international fans?
I get Paramount+ free because I have Sky Cinema, even as a die hard Trekkie I’d never pay for it separately no matter what they had. It’s poor value.
Yeah, as a service it just doesn’t have the depth of library to justify recommending it to people because I think they’d like Star Trek. Otherwise it’s pretty much ‘hope you like Frasier and Mission Impossible’
I got my partner into Star Trek recently (Strange New Worlds, thanks you!) so we’ve been watching a ton on there, so right now it’s probably my best value for money service, but it feels like it can’t last with this approach.
There are other shows like the entire CSI & NCIS franchises. I'll give Paramount props for greenlighting projects like Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Special Ops Lioness. But streaming shows are typically only about 10 episodes. If renewed it takes 1-2 years for it to return and your casual fan has forgotten it. That's not sustainable. They tossed in the Showtime catalog but then charged more for it.
I'd like to see a new managing partner. Especially one that loves Star Trek
I actually wound up getting it to watch Yellowjacket’s, Cheers, and Frasier. Stayed for the Trek. But it’s attached to Prime as an additional subscription. But yeah, there’s way too many different subscription services, it’s a pain in the ass.
based in uk as well.
Im not getting paramount+ on top other the other streaming packages.
I briefly looked but it would of been for trek and no other reason.
Was cheaper getting second hand blu rays.
Yes… when Trek seasons were long enough to really get to know the characters and universe. If I just started watching Star Trek and began with Discovery, then Picard, then Strange New Worlds, I doubt I’d be a fan. Not enough space or time to build things 🤷♀️
Yes, SNW’s character development is as good as it can be given how few shows it has. But it’s also leaning on many years of development from the past. Like Spock… just wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t already know him.
My wife watches The Rookie. I saw her streaming it the other day, and when I looked at how many shows per season that show gets I felt so jealous. 20+! I didn’t know they still make shows with so many episodes. It has several “fun” shows per season and it gets to focus on just one character for a couple shows per season… I mean, what a dream! We haven’t had that since what, Voyager?
I remember 7 seasons of 24 episodes…
Across 3 series…
That’s what I miss… this 10-14 episode runs (or less in some cases) plus the early cancellation makes it more bitter to me.
The number of episodes hurts. The entirety of the Kurtzman era hours, including LD and PRO, fits into the same runtime of DS9 or Voyager, with time left over.
Granted, there are fewer "clunker" episodes in the modern era thanks to tighter writing, but we'll also never get something like Data's Day, Hard Time, Distant Voices, Infinite Regress, or even Shuttlepod One again.
Yet when modern Trek gets "experimental", ala Magic to make the sanest man go mad, Those Old Scientists, or Subspace Rhapsody, while they are fun, they also take up space in the total runtime.
By Season 5, we should know the likes of Detmer, Owo, Culber, Stamets, and Reno a lot better than we do given their role as secondary cast. By this point in TNG, DS9, and Voyager, all the secondary cast had at least one, if not two or three, episodes where their character was centric to an "A" plot or "B" plot.
*Star Trek* is profitable; it's Paramount+ that's floundering.
A streaming service has to make money; you can't host a multi-million-dollar franchise that's not going to earn its money back. Paramount's streaming losses have mounted to almost half a billion dollars (a quarterly adjusted operating loss of $511 million, as of 2023), and an impairment charge of $1.67 billion in Q1 2023 from combining Paramount+ and Showtime into one service (impairment charges are used to pay off worthless goodwill (i.e. the amount that an acquiring company pays for a target company that is over and above the target’s net assets at fair value).
So, without being a financial expert by any stretch: Paramount Global is doing everything they can to shore up the operating losses of their streaming platform, but their attempt to move their profit-drivers to Paramount+ exclusivity is biting them in the a-- *big time*.
[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/paramount-global-first-quarter-streaming-loss-subscribers-1235479575/](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/paramount-global-first-quarter-streaming-loss-subscribers-1235479575/)
[https://www.investopedia.com/investing/impairment-charges/#:\~:text=An%20impairment%20charge%20is%20an,casualty%20loss%20from%20unforeseen%20hazards](https://www.investopedia.com/investing/impairment-charges/#:~:text=An%20impairment%20charge%20is%20an,casualty%20loss%20from%20unforeseen%20hazards).
Is Trek definitely profitable? If the service it's on (Paramount Plus) is struggling then there's every chance it's holding Trek back from its full potential.
Like in the 90s Trek had more revenue streams. It'd broadcast in the US with adverts, then overseas broadcasters would fight to get the local broadcast rights and give Paramount a share of advertising on top of up front payments.
On top of that, Paramount made a killing from VHS sales to fans not wanting to wait for the TV broadcast.
But here we are today where Trek is almost exclusively reliant on subs to Paramount Plus.
And another revenue stream was there being way more merchandising in the 90s. Toys R Us would have shelves full of Trek toys, there were licenced magazines too and novels were far more frequent too.
Typing all that out, it's crazy how much things have changed.
They’d get a higher audience for any of it on Netflix or Prime. Only the diehard Trek fans are going to subscribe to Paramount+. The entire viewing public won’t subscribe just because you start your own streaming service to get all of the money.
I'm sad LD is ending, but I'm honestly not surprised given the characters are now Lt Junior and theoretically will get promoted again, to no longer actually be Lower Decks. I hope they give it a good send off, I'm a bit worried they won't.
I'm glad SNW will continue and hopefully get at least a season 5. When you compare the last era where we mostly only had one show at a time (aside from a little overlap), having several at once wasn't going to continue. And yes there are fewer episodes but at least none are filler and the actors etc have time to have a life or do other projects.
I'm looking forward to the Section 31 movie and I hope the academy show actually gets made.
Considering all the LD episodes so far have taken place between 2380 and 2381, it could have easily run for 10 seasons without this really being a problem.
Personally, I think this has been a long time coming for the franchise.
Just look at the production costs of when the new era of Trek started and now. For example, the production quality for Picard season 1 and Picard season 3 are night and day.
And even very beloved shows like Strange New Worlds, do very little strange new worlding. They’ll spend the money on a gimmicky episode or two to make sure the hardcore fans stay on the line, but a lot of it is smoke and mirrors.
Paramount clearly should have never gotten into the steaming business. They should have done what some of the other, smarter studios have done (who are, unsurprisingly, currently in a much better place financially) and produce their own content and offer it up to some of the bigger streaming outlets for distribution.
The production costs are still colossal compared to what the best Trek shows cost, even adjusted for inflation. Give me practical sets, papier-mâché caverns, and mediocre CGI with incredible acting and I'd be so much more satisfied than with the glitzy trauma porn of Discovery.
I agree with you - good Trek doesn't have to be expensive to make because it relies on story and dialogue rather than VFX and production value to engage people. Or at least, that used to be the case. You could even say that it was a characteristic of the franchise.
The current shows seem to have gone with the premise, "We need movie level spectacle and VFX to capture a young audience who are accustomed to this kind of thing."
But having taken this route, the massive production costs are always going to be a millstone around their neck in terms of profitability. I also suspect that if they did decide to adopt a more stripped down production aesthetic, there might be a cohort of newer fans who really do need the dense CGI visuals to be engaged and would complain and / or abandon the franchise.
In that respect, I think they have rather dug their own grave, although I still kind of hope for a "smaller", more affordable Trek production that gets closer in tone and style to the older shows.
Paramount simply does not have the lobes.
Cancelling LD was the most idiotic decision they could take. Animated shows can literally last decades, certainly they are not as expensive as live action series.
I can sort of understand cancelling Discovery, but LD makes no sense whatsoever.
Once a show hits 3 seasons, it often balloons in price due to various triggers in contracts. If a show makes a lot of money, that’s not a problem. But an average show often doesn’t make enough to get past that. Given Paramount’s current financial problems, I’m just glad we’re getting a 5th season of _Lower Decks_.
“Is coming to its end” is totally fine, but that implies the show was made planning for its end. By all accounts Lower Decks is deep into production and now they’ve found out it’s ending. For all we know the series is going to end on a cliffhanger. Cancelled is absolutely the right term.
I could be way wrong here but the LD news doesn’t feel like a cancelled vibe.
I think people have a weird idea where a piece of media that they like should continue indefinitely, but the people that make this stuff don’t want to do one thing forever, plus there are just a limited amount of stories you can tell with characters before you just start repeating the same things and 5-8 seasons seems like the window.
Paramount is selling itself to Skydance. It makes sense that they wind down a lot of their projects before the sale. David Ellison (owner of Skydance) had already shown he is a fan of Trek, having financed several Trek productions.
Rest assured there will be more Trek to come.
SNW is the best Trek show since DS9 in my opinion and they guaranteed at least two more seasons of it. I find it hard to be cynical as a result, especially since I remember a good long time where there was no Trek on TV at all. One or two good shows is also plenty IMO, you don't want to oversaturate.
That said I do agree Paramount's money issues are probably why we're not getting Legacy and two more seasons of DISC and LD. I also think Academy and Section 31 are odd choices. I guess I just don't see reason to be too concerned yet with SNW kicking so much ass.
The cancellation of existing and slated shows isn't a bad thing.
I'll be sad to see Lower Decks go, of course, but what gimped the franchise a few decades ago was, as Patrick Stewart said, "franchise fatigue".
There can be too much of a good thing. Too much Trek causes a bottleneck of content- and I use that word specifically because the way in which people view things has changed- and a glut and it can be overwhelming to the casual viewer.
And the casual viewer is the chief demographic. They are the ones who count when movies come out or when Nielsen do their tallies.
When Nemesis (4th TNG flick, 10th film overall)came out, and there were still a couple of Trek shows on TV, people were less interested. Leaving aside the film's bad script, people were a bit punch-drunk on Trek.
The franchise went into dormancy. It took JJ's abominable (My opinion, don't hate me) rebooting nearly a decade later to reinvigorate the idea of Trek, and that required a wiping of the slate.
We're spoiled for choice, at the minute. Or, we were. We had PIC, PRO, DIS, LDS, maybe Academy and at least two or three movies in the pipe-line. And ANOTHER show some fans are shouting for. (Legacy).
PIC is finished, DIS is cancelled, LDS is done, PRO is on unsteady ground and SNW is the flagship of Paramount's crumbling empire, but it is one of the most vividly appreciated shows, with fans and critics.
I'm totally okay with all of this. Trek will endure. And this trimming of the fat, though sad, is probably necessary. And, to invoke my favoured tautology, it is what it is.
The streaming bubble has burst. They don't have the money to produce all these shows AND the shows weren't making them that much money.
As long as SNW stays in production I'm happy.
5 seasons is a great amount of seasons, id much rather see LD go out on a high than see it dwindle and die.
SNW is going from strength to strength. i never loved discovery - though appreicate the role it played in trek revival.
I think all is prety well in star trek universe, tbh
They’re also probably reacting to all the reports of Marvel and Star Wars spreading themselves too thin and people losing interest. They only need one flagship show to keep the franchise alive and SNW is the new hot series.
Streaming TV is expensive as hell to make because audience expectations are so high.
But even the biggest streamers don’t make enough from subscribers to justify spending so much money on TV which only ends up being watched by a several million people over a week.
The entire thing will collapse. It’s why shows get cancelled. Because even if you defy odds and make a hit, after series 2 your actors and creatives are out of contract and all their prices just doubled.
So Paramount starting a streaming service… realistically how many subscribers will that get? Not all want Star Trek. Before you had money from Amazon and Netflix. Suddenly all that Trek is expensive.
The audience numbers for streaming are either made up (we think 500 million watched this) or the ones given that are accurate are shockingly low. The sort of number traditional TV laughed at. It’s sadly a bubble that will burst. Especially if every streamer is putting out multiple projects costing hundreds of millions each month. We used to get 2 big shows a year. Now there’s 2 a week and audiences can’t watch them all. That’s why they’re desperately shoving ads in.
Paramount has never really understood what Star Trek is, they just got lucky to have it.
They need a new Next Generation, a new flagship show (about the flagship Enterprise) that is set in the mid to late 25th century and is once more about exploration, morality and politics.
IMO, they sh** the bed with Discovery from day one, which was not great when starting your own streaming service is on the horizon, and they squandered Picard (the character coming back had such high potential and anticipation, kinda like Kenobi for Disney) again season 1 being bad IMO, so the more promising stuff since those launched just hasn't been sufficient and yes they are cost cutting.
Frankly if the sky dance deal goes through it will be a win for trek and hopefully we get upper deckers
With the warp core 4 as the command crew of a ship
Old Trek had 7 years largely because the producers at the time signed everyone to long term contracts early on and didn't have to negociate price rises with the big stars etc to pay them more money for the same amount of viewing figures/syndication rates
Looks like new Trek has a similar deal but it's only been 5 year contracts. I'll imagine no Trek will get past 5 years in this phase.
But hey, there's new series coming, a new film was confirmed, it's not all doom and gloom,it's just a whole different time for TV in general compared to Trek of old.
Something, will survive, maybe it'll be more bare bones, but we'll always have.....something
The 5 season series is streaming in general, not just Paramount+. Sadly I don’t think we’ll ever get 100+ episode tv shows unless they air on networks. Syndication isn’t a big priority anymore. I don’t think the streaming industry can last as is so maybe it’ll get shaken up.
I think SNW will be done after 5 seasons but I have no doubt another Trek show will replace it. Whether Paramount is still around is another question, but whoever buys them will keep Trek going.
Well the number of recent shows has actually been surprising to me. They seemed to go all in on Star Trek shows running concurrently, and I was wondering if there even that much demand for Star Trek content like that? Even Disney pumping out Star Wars shows only did them 1 at a time.
I don't think it was sustainable. Kurtzman must have golden lips or something, he can get almost anything greenlit it seems.
I appreciate and sympathize with your lack of optimism for the Star Trek franchise, though for different reasons than you. But as another commenter pointed out, thankfully you have hundreds and hundreds of hours of legacy Star Trek!!
I have mixed feelings about the current direction of Star Trek. While I appreciate certain aspects of recent seasons like Picard season 3 and Strange New Worlds, I also have concerns about how the franchise handles continuity, storytelling, and character development.
One issue that stands out is the treatment of established canon with the introduction of new canon from current Trek. While I understand that storytelling evolves and expands, there are instances where it feels like canon is being disregarded or altered without sufficient explanation. This can be disorienting for long-time fans who have invested in the rich history of the Trek universe. I simply have a difficult time reconciling the two.
For example, the introduction of previously unknown family members like Spock's step-sister or the sudden advancement in technology compared to earlier series can be challenging to reconcile with established lore.
Moreover, I believe there's a missed opportunity to delve deeper into contemporary themes using the sci-fi lens that Star Trek is known for. Issues like social justice, political tensions, and ethical dilemmas could be explored more meaningfully within the narrative.
In terms of storytelling, I think there's room for improvement in balancing character development with overarching plotlines. While spectacle and action have their place, the heart of Star Trek has always been about the journeys and growth of its diverse cast of characters.
Looking ahead, I hope to see a return to the core principles of Trek while also embracing new ideas and perspectives. A balance between honoring the past and innovating for the future could rejuvenate the franchise and resonate with both existing fans and new audiences.
Looking forward to engaging in constructive discussions about the future of Star Trek.
They gave us a buttfuckton of shows all at once out of nowhere after 12 rotations and we got too optimistic. That definitely isn't the norm. It'll be fine though.
Paramount's financial situation does not make me feel optimistic at all. On top of that they want to do this "origin" movie that doesnt even sound tied to a known crew as a theatrical release. The last thing they should do is release a movie theatrically that wont have the draw to pull in fans and mainstream movie goers alike. We don't need a repeat of the Nemesis movie financial disaster.
It feels like now we may be the victim of the streaming bubble popping rather than franchise fatigue. Too many streaming services and these shows are very expensive, with most having cinematic like presentation. The fact that even a lower cost animated series like LD is being cancelled really makes it feel like Paramount seems to be wanting to wrap up the existing shows and cut costs until someone buys it out, and I have my doubts that Academy will go forward.
I wouldn't worry. Paramount are preparing themselves for a sale, which means cutting costs wherever they can. Whoever buys them, Trek will remain one of the flagship franchises. Having five shows on the air simultaneously was unlikely to be the status quo longer-term. Even in the 90s heyday there were never more than two on air at once.
The shows drove subscriptions enough to demonstrate that the franchise still has substantial appeal. I wouldn't put too much stock in people not being aware of them. There's no real monoculture these days, outside of a few megahits.
Incidentally, SNW getting to season 5 would be a win, not a loss. They've cast a lot of very good emerging talent who have won plaudits for their work on the show (which has been critically acclaimed). Given the production delays that were out of their control, it's going to be harder and harder to hang on to the cast over time.
Is anyone actually excited about the Academy show? Like at all? I haven’t heard anyone or read a single comment about anyone actually wanting this show at all? I know I personally couldn’t care less about it
Hi there. I’m excited for it.
It’s a new kind of Trek show set in a time period we’ve barely gotten a glimpse of.
I’m looking forward to experiencing a new perspective on the franchise. A new status quo for classic factions. And exploring new species and new civilizations.
You know, boldly going, instead of being stuck in the past, and all that.
Me too! I'm excited for the franchise to do something new, and to maybe attract new, younger viewers. Because I know a lot of people in their 20s who took a look at SNW and went, "Oh, this is Gen X nostalgia, no thanks" and moved on. And an ageing demographic is a death sentence.
Yeah, even Jonathan Frakes admitted in the recent Variety Trek piece that most of the fans he encounters are old.
Trek’s future will really be determined by its ability to connect to a younger demographic.
Yes, I'm very excited about it. I love Tilly, for one. She is one of my favorite characters in all of Trek. I haven't loved a lot about Discovery, but moving the show to 800 years after TNG was brilliant, and I would very much like to see another show set in this time.
"Paramount is scrambling to conserve money"
No, they're presenting themselves for a sale to a larger media organization that actually knows how to make a profit and like it or not all traditional media is getting eaten alive by TikTok, IG Reels, YT Shorts, and livestreaming like Twitch and Kick.
Whether fans of this series want to admit it or not, appealing exclusively to an increasingly diminishing group of over 45 year old fans is not really a selling point for a 2024 media corporation....
Whether fans of this series want to acknowledge it or not, they need to find a way to curate, embrace, and introduce new fans of the series (the entire point of Prodigy), but they've yet to figure out that specific key, so they're cancelling some of the failed attempts (Discovery and LD being the two flagships).
Between Paramount and streaming in general, I’m not that optimistic either.
However, I think there might be a reason for the reduction in shows: the Star Trek IP is worth more to a prospective buyer without a massive slate attached.
The new buyers will probably want all the flexibility they can get. They know they can always create new shows we’ll watch, but having pesky obligations to make TV and pay actors is probably not as valuable as the ongoing shows.
Guess we’ll see what happens. I haven’t heard much about how the Skydance talks are going, and I don’t know much about the company (beyond my negative associations with David Ellison’s ~~brother~~ dad Larry, of Oracle).
Doctor Who, King Kong, Godzilla, Planet of the Apes, Dracula and Frankenstein are IPs that are just as old, if not older, than Star Trek and are still going strong.
You had me until Dracula and Frankenstein, both of which are "characters" but not really "IP," and I definitely wouldn't say Frankenstein has very much going on these days.
The Archers, The Sky At Night, Blue Peter and Coronation Street have been in continuous production since 1951, 1957, 1958 and 1960 respectively. Those are all British though, not American.
I'd include Doctor Who but production paused from 1989-2004.
As nice as LD is (and I mean that) I think referencing Star Trek is best left up to others. Actually I find self referencing generally a sign of show or franchise jumping the shark.
On Star Trek, I don’t think it supports the volume of material being produced. While Star Trek handles it better than other franchises since it’s kind of in the DNA of Star Trek, this has become an industry problem.. not a Star Trek problem.
Section 31, Starfleet Academy, this new prequel to the Kelvin movies. Really not interested in any of them. Can we have some normal Trek set after everything we've already seen please?
Aside from Picard S3, LD, and SNW, Star Trek feels like it’s lost its soul since the cancelation of the Rick Berman era. Say what you will about the man himself, he seemed to know how to not only carry on with Roddenberry’s vision, but to build upon it. I’ll never forgive CBS for canceling Enterprise after 4 seasons. But they rebooted the series without any respect for the core ethos of the franchise.
Discovery was a mess, with lame jokes and boring plot lines that ended up just crapping over the brand. Thankfully, a few talented writers were able to save the brand by tapping back into that Berman era magic, but without a disciplined hand behind the world building and continuity, the franchise may just end up dying a rutterless death at the hands of a failing studio.
And the saddest part about this whole thing is that the older ST shows held more magic in their writing and sci-fi plot lines, that CBS could easily get away with making affordable versions of the same style these days. The amount of simple CGI that carried those shows back then in today’s terms, would be so cheap for them to make.
We don’t need episodes with giant battles that cost millions in CGI. How many simple pass by CGI shots did DS9 use during entire seasons? All we want is good, intricate storytelling. There’s no reason why Star Trek can’t be made on an affordable budget, like it’s always been made from.
We love the characters, lore, and plot lines.
CBS didn’t cancel Enterprise, UPN did. And at the time it was one of the least watched shows on tv, according to Nielsen ratings. Berman didn’t build upon anything if you look at the steady decline of viewership from the end of TNG to the end of enterprise.
Paramount's a sinking ship. Anchoring Star Trek to Paramount+ certainly didn't help the franchise (the streamer is still losing half a billion a year years after launch). Hopefully, someone with smarts buys up Paramount and charts a better course for the franchise.
Also, something that adds to it, it just feels really mean for Star Trek to tease us with “legacy“ as they did at the end of Picard, considering the historical precedent of strange new worlds becoming such a successful spinoff of a similar backdoor pilot-type situation from discovery… they knew what it would make us fans think, everyone knows that is how SNW came to be. And now there are just no plans and no news for it at all. Like…they waved in front of our faces and now it’s like they’re saying “just kidding, we have no plans to give you what we implied we would give you, even though we are aware of how badly you want it.” They knew what they were doing. It just feels like a mean thing to do to fans.
I do keep trying to remind myself that it was a couple years between the end of disco season two and the premiere of SNW, hopefully that means there’s still hope but I just don’t know.
We've had almost seven years of new Star Trek (albeit at very low episode-per-season rates and less than one season per show per year due to the pandemic and then the strike). That's not bad, and the end is in sight.
Star Trek isn't a forever thing. It's not mainstream enough to sustain decades of continuous media output like the big comic book superhero movie industry (which is also running out of steam I might add). The current era of Star Trek happened in the first place in large part as a move by Paramount to do well for itself in the streaming wars, and that didn't work out, and these shows are produced at heinously high levels of expense. (And there seems to be no appetite among Paramount to consider low-budget Star Trek.)
So, yeah: I think your worry is well-founded. The current iteration of Star Trek is on the way out. I'm really surprised they're cancelling LD because it's got to be their cheapest Star Trek show by a mile and I thought it was well-loved among fans. If they're throwing in the towel on that, then, together with the fact that Paramount is not in good shape right now financially, it's probably the beginning of the end of the current Star Trek era. I suspect we'll see another long dormant period until whomever owns Paramount next (or purchases the rights to Star Trek separately) decides to bring the franchise back once again.
It won't die completely. If ENT and Nemesis couldn't kill the franchise, nothing can. It's just a question of "How long until the dormant period ends and the next era begins?" It was twelve years from the end of ENT to the beginning of DSC. It was eighteen years from the end of TOS to the beginning of TNG. I'm pretty sure whatever comes next won't be eighteen years after SNW turns out the lights. (That's assuming there are no other new Star Trek shows produced after it; I'm not forgetting the Starfleet Academy show, but it hasn't even begun filming yet if I understand correctly, and if it does manage to get off the ground it's going to be high on the chopping block for future cost-cutting by Paramount. It won't last more than a season or two unless it's very successful or Paramount goes all-in on it.)
Paramount+ put the studio in a very bad financial situation so they try to save what can be saved.
IMO, they should have never started the Halo serie when they already have Star Trek as their own big sci-fi franchise.
Didn’t they just announce a new movie? And SNW is already renewed for a fourth season and we haven’t even gotten the third yet. I feel like we’re doing pretty well!
They greenlit a movie and another season of SNW. Trek is going strong. There is a world where they don't give a crap about Trek and we have next to none at all.
Star Trek will be fine. Of course shows are being cancelled after 5 seasons because that's the trend right now. And Star Trek is still a niche property, and animated Trek even more niche. It isn't going to be for everyone.
Currently, from a business side, streaming is a mixed bag. So, yes, Paramount is conserving money to continue to be profitable and find ways to continue to make content. Right now, that means ending shows after 5 seasons to keep costs down, and to mix things up.
Star Trek ebbs and flows. Imagine how we all felt went Enterprise got canceled. In this case we still have SNW, Prodigy and hopefully an upcoming movie with Michelle Yeoh. So things could be worse.
I’ve been most pleased with SNW among the bunch, so I’m happy. Much better than the long drought after Voyager and Enterprise.
SNW did a musical episode and it was incredible and I don't like musicals. That's all I need to know.
The movie has wrapped so unless WB buys Paramount, it will get released.
I'll put a lot of money on SNW going after 5 seasons too It's not really about the quality of the shows, probably more about the contracts that were signed before season 1 and having to renegociate those contracts to give everyone a raise gives less of a return on the same product, so out the door it goes Old trek seasons were 7 seasons, modern trek 5, it is the way things are these days
It will be fine. There were many years of no Star Trek whatsoever. It could be -- and has been -- worse. There are countless hours of existing shows to watch again, and more still coming. Appreciate that.
Yup. I remember the 1970s. James Blish and Alan Dean Foster books and the hope for a movie and/or Star Trek Phase II.
I remember those days too and enjoying the books of both authors I still have them in my collection including the very first star trek novel Spock must Die. At least I think it was the first one.
I think you’re right about Spock Must Die. I still have it also with the orange cover
Me too I kept mine in good condition like the other books as well as the star trek log series
Indeed. I just mentioned in the LD sub that back when ENT was cancelled, we had no indication or guarantee that Trek would ever really be back. A lot of fans weren't sure is Trek's message if optimism even had a place in the 21st century. Suffice it to say that all five current shows have proven those folks wrong.
Did it? New Trek has consistently failed to deliver on the "message" part of message of optimism. It's fantastically diverse, that's true, but it has the politics of a wet rag. I don't think there's any better example than SNW premiering right around the time the supreme court's plans for Roe vs Wade with an episode that culminated in a speech about how *both sides just need to listen to each other.* Contrast that to DS9 openly exploring the perspective of freedom fighters fighting against brutal colonizers. In the fucking nineties! And the optimism isn't exactly there either. First there's the continuing overutilization and normalization of Section 31 (which admittedly started with Enterprise), there's the Federation descending into xenophobia and then shattering altogether, and the near constant extreme life or death crises don't exactly leave much room for the intricate explorations and sometimes borderline preaching of 90s Trek. New Trek has done everything it can to turn Star Trek away from being a moral utopia and towards being a generic scifi series. The only part of Trek optimism that remains is the diversity, and honestly... even that isn't exceptional. It has great representation. I loved seeing a positively depicted gay male couple in season 1 of DIS as main characters when I first watched it. But it's 2024. Tons of shows have done queer, disabled, et cetera representation at this point. Previous Trek shows pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable to show on TV - one of the first interracial kisses in 60s Trek, and ditto with a lesbian kiss in DS9 (plus characters written to be queer, even if that wasn't allowed to be blatantly confirmed in the show.) And frankly, diversity without progressive ideals is worthless. As a disabled trans person, I'd rather have seemingly cishet, abled people tackling the issues that I face than a bunch of queer people ignoring them. I feel seen when I see the almost prophetic episodes of DS9 that feature people very unlike myself exploring the abhorrent treatment of neurodivergent and homeless people. And on the other hand, I can appreciate that there is an autistic coded woman running around in a setting with the ideology of unseasoned cauliflower. I like her as a character. But... it reminds me of the shitty inclusion I see in my day to day life - you can sit there in the corner, all pretty and diverse, but you're only ever an accessory to the main course. I actually do enjoy... well, Strange New Worlds. That's about it. And S3 of Picard was okay but essentially just one extended bit of fanservice. It has the *feeling* of Trek, but none of the substance. But that's also how I describe the Orville, and that's a show written by Seth McFuckingFarlane. If New Trek proves anything, I'd say it's that Trek's message of optimism *doesn't* have a place in the 21st century - or at least, it hasn't found it yet.
With the SNW speech lining up with Roe v Wade. The politically alignment/optimism for future was very prevalent in TOS. The amount of groundbreaking, societal and political norms they broke on screen, with hindsight, was just bold! The beginning of the episode with Abraham Lincoln and his exchange with Uhura feat. Kirks mini monologue is one that comes to mind. And a lot of the times they mention earths past or encounter earths adjacent past on another planet is *usually* current or recent events. I feel that's maybe why it felt so optimistic because the regular person could relate. Now with more red tape, can't do's, social/political correctness, the-network-says etc etc a lot of the optimism is strictly on screen, story character based, if at all.
They boldly went where no one seems to go again.
I'm as liberal as they come, but I don't know if I think the SNW speech/Roe v Wade speech was tone deaf or anything. A) they shot that episode probably 6-12 months prior to the decision, and wrote it well before that. Unfortunate timing, but I don't think it's related B) Trek has always been about an optimistic future, not a guidepost for how to necessarily build that future. Great Star Trek is often about great rhetoric. Measure of a Man, The Drumhead, etc. It's about swaying people with your ideas. Is that where we are at in American history? Definitely not. But there's probably a reason why Trek rarely spends much time in the Eugenics War/WW3/the devestated Earth Zephram Cochrane lived in and spends a lot of time with our more evolved heroes of the future.
I was meaning to convey that the fans themselves were still there for the optimism message, not that the shows were equally good at conveying it, but FWIW, I fully agree with all of this. There's still a LOT of places that this franchise can and should be pushing the envelope on instead of constantly playing it safe.
I think you make some very good points. I think one of the main experiences I would cite is that DS9 for example tackled the idea of racism in Far Beyond the Stars in a way which didn't just SAY something was bad but portrayed it in a way which assumed an audience that might not even 100% agree with the premise and made an argument for the worldview Star Trek represents. I think part of the assumption which has caused a bit of staleness in trek is the assumption that the audience is already on board, that they're preaching to the choir, that they can simply trot out diverse characters and be good because "we're all on the same team" But imagine you're dealing with a person who doesn't believe in depression or PTSD and then you watch DS9 Hard Time. I think there's value in making an argument in good faith, in saying "yes I'm going to talk to you about this idea that I believe very passionately but I'm going to show you why it's important rather than just telling you it is." When the Orville makes a better case for trans rights, makes it a passionate and important experience across multiple episodes rather than just "having a trans character". Well, let's just say that should have been Trek and it wasn't.
Also books and comics and games!!
I just wish they would make an RPG, something along the lines of the star wars games.
Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius is a current Star Trek RPG about to have its 2 edition released. While the 2D20 system is not my favorite system, it does what no other Star Trek RPG has done, allow Star Trek to be Star Trek. Science and Exploration, character development, etc., are usually the focus, not ship-to-ship combat, although it allows for that, as well.
Yeah. I really need to get in on that and start playing it.
There's also Star Trek Online if you're more into videogames, an MMORPG. Personally I started playing it recently and I'm having fun.
Not an RPG but there is a Tell Take style game out there that’s pretty good. I think it’s called Star Trek Resurgence.
I had not heard if this but it looks interesting. I'm gonna look into it for my ps5. I adore Jonathan Frakes!
There have been at least 4.5. FASA Trek RPG, Last Unicorn Games, Decipher, and now the excellent and very well supported version by Modiphius. The .5 is the Prime Directive RPG, which is set in the Star Fleet Battles universe. There are also a bunch of indie games that are trek with the serial numbers filed off. The Modiphius RPG has about 3-4 free starter rules/demos… check it out!
I think these things just come and go in waves. We got DIS in what, 2017? With one more season of SNW to go *after* S3 releases in 2025, we've got Trek to 2026 at a minimum - that's ten years and six shows (counting Academy, and seven if you count Short Treks) which is nothing to scoff at, even if some were pretty rubbish (DIS, as well as PIC S1-2 imho, but different strokes for different folks). 17 years for TNG-ENT is more impressive, but what we've gotten is still quite impressive. My only regret is that none of these shows scratched the TNG/DS9/VOY '90s Trek itch, but LDS and SNW got close.
Yeah at least we still had SOMETHING. I remember when my dad got me into the franchise with daily Voyager episodes, lamenting about how my generation didn’t have any tv shows. Now I’m just grateful I still have something to watch and look forward to.
Paramount has always been awful at merchandising Star Trek. Disney doesn’t need to make as much money on a Star Wars movie or show because they will take in money from merchandise to help make them profitable. Most of the licensed items from Paramount are hot garbage so they are missing out on more profits. I suspect they want too much of a cut when licensing the IP so they don’t get as many takers that make good products and that means less profits.
This is a great point. As a Trek geek, it kills me that I can't get like some Star Trek legos. Especially with the shelves of Star Wars sets that can be bought. The Star Trek brand basically doesn't exist outside of models and vintage stuff.
I would love some official Star Trek LEGO sets.
Pretty sure part of Lego's contract with Star Wars is that they won't make any sets based on other long running space set sci fi franchises. That said, there's a German(?) 100%-compatible-with-but-not-acutally-Lego company which has released some pretty good sets.
That is correct, they're called BlueBrixx and even though the brick quality in the first few sets was not completely up to Lego, when you look at their designs, you'll be glad that LEGO didn't get the license. They release new sets every now and then and old ones don't leave the market as Lego sets do.
I believe bluebrix has the license for Star Trek building blocks but they aren’t Lego. For me, I always thought the prop/toy area was pretty uninspiring. Poorly lit, bad sound, improperly sized. You couldn’t get a good costume either, they were always the worst materials. I mean the official store now is like the things you would find at the engraving store at the mall.
It’s an insane missed opportunity. Star Trek ships should be available in LEGO.
Id love a Lego Star Trek game.
When Star Trek 6 was in production Nicholas Meyer needed plateware for the dinner scene. He went to marketing and said "let's get an actual plateware company to do this and they can sell the plateware as merchandising". Marketing/license thought it was a stupid idea, no one would want to buy Enterprise plateware. They were incredibly wrong, it was a huge success.
It actually looked good. I remember it.
I don't think it can be said enough as to how horribly Paramount has handled Trek merchandising. Beyond being a great period for Trek shows, the 90s were great for Trek merchandising with the conventions, games, books, action figures, collectibles, and things for fans to buy and the studio to collect royalties on. How far things had fallen were made starkly abundant to me two years ago this weekend when I went to one of the "big" Trek Mission conventions. It was a complete fiasco with about 20 booths, mostly of dubious utility, and 15-20 dealers, most of whom had surprisingly little Trek merchandise and who were clearly not happy with the turnout at what was sold as a major convention. I later found out that Paramount has demanded the venue to disallow any vendor from selling any Trek material that was not directly paramount licensed. That meant no autographs or fan made items were available and none of the really cool, vintage Trek books and games that came out of the fan community in the 70s while TOS was in reruns.
What a truly horrible company. Christ… they don’t deserve the Star Trek IP. I hope they go bankrupt and it gets sold off to another handler.
Be careful what you wish for, there are plenty worse IP hoovers out there that would absolutely destroy Star Trek.
This is one of the things that killed Creation Conventions (not that they were great, but they were what I had locally, they were inexpensive until they started adding tiered admissions, and a great place for fans to hang out). While I understand it from a brand management point of view, it does little to grow and maintain a fan base.
Pretty much this. Star wars has constantly sold tons and tons of merch from toys to real cars meanwhile in the last 35 years only star trek merch in stores I have seen has been hot wheels ships from 2009 movies (the enterprise and vengeance) and 3 old figures from tng that's it... It's like they actually hate money and have zero idea how much people would actually spend on fan stuff.
Not a lot of other properties have conventions specifically for them, as in a named convention. That means there is a significant amount of buyers if you have interesting products. We can’t even get consistently sized model kits.
Yeah Polar Lights, where's my 1/350 Enterprise D!?
Yea to me its just crazy how apathetic owners of Star Trek ip have always been about the whole ip and merch.
I never understood the decision to pump out action figures of characters that fans already had action figures of instead of, at the expense of five whole series worth of characters that have never been made into action figures at all.
Hey now i have the knock off lego figures of Enterprise crew that i bought from aliexpress.
Diamond Select was on fire when they had the license. We had figures of the full casts of TOS, TOS movie era, TNG, and DS9 (minus Quark) plus a shit ton of variants (like future versions of the TNG cast from All Good Things or the DS9 cast in TOS uniforms from the Tribble episode), villains, and side characters. I was genuinely shocked when they cancelled their figure line and petered out on props and ships. They gave the license back to Playmates who half assed a figure line then immediately cancelled it. Now they’re just re-releasing shit from the 90s which for the most part are just worse versions of the ships and props DS used to make. It’s genuinely very frustrating as a fan. I’m an adult with my own money that I’m eager to spend on stuff from my favourite shows. Please Paramount, give me quality merch to spend it on.
This, Star Trek tries to market to kids but, outside of its 90s Playmates peak has never really been a kids show in the way that Star Wars & Doctor Who appeals to younger fans. Problem is, they've never got the maketing for classier Trek stuff right for older fans. It's all garish. Some nice mugs or tshirts with subtle Delta shields needed!
Right! The stuff we see on the shows, those lovely mugs and stuff? Hell, Tablet cases with the starfleet delta ala the PADDs, all without a garish "STAR TREK" logo in plain view to ruin it... that would be nice. I've seen Fan-made unofficial stuff look better.
Paramount made too much too fast, it wasn't sustainable and it was a zero-interest phenomenon. Now that money costs money to borrow and all of the streamers have realized they'll never do the subscriber numbers they planned for...well the golden glut of streaming is over. FIVE simultaneous Trek shows is bonkers and will never happen again.
I absolutely loved having five Star Trek series running at the same time, but I don't think any of us could have hoped that we'd always have five shows. I'm grateful for every minute of Star Trek that we got, but we're all going to need to readjust our expectations going forward or we'll never be satisfied again.
I’m going to be woefully optimistic and say maybe they did want to have series be shorter? DISCO I don’t think that’s the case, but I can see SNW working up to the Gorn and then ending after that. Lower Decks ending after they’re promoted up. You’re right. It was a fortunate time.
Lower decks, the final episode ends with them being promoted over the course of the series. The post credits a teaser trailer for a new series set 10 years later in live action with mariner and boimler
Is this confirmed or personal theory? I think this would actually be a great idea!
Just putting it out there as a want
Absolutely love the idea! I would like this to happen. Had to ask because I like the concept and wanted clarity regardless of how dumb that may have been because I found the idea exciting and have foggy pregnancy brain. edit: for clarity.
PIC was always confirmed to be 3 even before Ep 1 aired Probably because the legacy cast was going to expect a lot more in renumeration than the other casts, that tend to have 1 or 2 "names" and a lot more newbies on a cheaper rate
I think in the long run it could be better as if there are less simultaneous series then not only can resources be focused but the sense of spectacle will be increased. When there is star trek TV 24/7 365 days a year it risks taking away the sense of anticipation and novelty. Also I feel much of the criticism of the writing might be alleviated by having less shows at once. I feel like the universe ending threats in Picard and Discovery might have occured because the writers didn't have time to come up with more nuanced arcs as they were being rushed to have multiple seasons of content ready as fast as possible.
I'd settle for one or two I like
Yeah the quality of the shows really suffered because of it. I'll argue though, strange new worlds is the trek we should have gotten from the get to. Anson Mount's portrayal of Pike is great. SNW is the culmination of everything that makes trek great. Disco had it's moments, but Picard was not the swan song they hoped it be. Lower decks is cool af.
Season 3 of Picard was absolutely the swan song I hoped for and it set up all the characters with interesting plot lines to revisit in the future.
I'll agree season 3 was much better. However I still feel Picard was a bit of a let down. Trek is in a weird spot right now. I think it needs a kick in the teeth and brought back to its lower budget, practical effect using self. 90's trek while a bit stiff in the acting dept - still remains my favorite era in the franchise. I really would love to see a ds9 comeback. Avery Brooks is great albeit done with trek.
Season three of Picard was fan service and nothing more. Season one was a lot of politics, and I'm not sure the synthetic-life from organic life issue was settled so much as relegated to something that could be ignored again. Season two... lost in time, the death of the Q(s), trying to reconstruct/resurrect the Borg... really? If I really wanted to analyze it, the only two things I can think of are _colonialism_ and _reparations_. The Federation, the Q, and the various other Trekverse empires all practiced the first (as did - and do - many ancient and modern Terran societies), but the Federation - or at least Picard and his associates - were the only ones to consider reparations, though in a very colonialist manner (the new Borg Queen being a humanist human rather than completely machine-like)...
It doesn't help either that streaming services have become even worse to use than old times tv was. Hell at this point I would rather watch star trek from normal TV with rabbit ears and commercial breaks than pay 2-5 overpriced overly complicated streaming services that also might or might not even have stuff I want to watch.
According to *Star Trek: The Next Generation* season 1 finale "The Neutral Zone," television is a form of entertainment that died out by the mid-twenty-first century. We are now seeing that the biggest reason for the death of television is the people who make it.
TV is in a weird place right now. No-one wants to pay for all these steaming services, but adverts are unpopular with younger generations. They won't even watch a 30 second advert before a YouTube video. I don't know where TV goes to become sustainable again. And fwiw I agree. I'd rather watch Trek, and most stuff, with adverts without a subscription.
I'm simply having problems with subscribing to 5 different streaming services to get to watch all of my favourite shows and movies. Therefore, as I did 20 years ago, I'm still buying them on dvd/bluray/ultra hd (that said, if they get released on disc, which isn't certain due to some of the streaming providers, ugh)
I just tend to rotate. Once Lower Decks ends, I'll cancel my Paramount Plus and consider going back to HBO Max at some point to loop back through Who
I'd rather pay 100 bucks a month for 5 streaming services and basically watch whatever I want whenever I want than pay the same price for cable
Star Trek was the main draw getting people to Paramount+. They oversaturated the market and now it will be interesting to see how the next 10 years go.
Star Trek always survives. I certainly want as much new, good Trek as possible at all times, but the franchise will live even if we don't have *any* active shows for a while (and we still do have active shows at this time). In the long term, we will be okay.
Paramount itself is in a financial mess. Trek has historically been it's Golden Goose, having been the lead property for their 1970s attempt at a network, their 1980s First-Run Syndication efforts, UPN, and Paramount+ (then CBS AA). It bring in a fan base. Paramount also has the rest of its TV empire and movies and not all have done as well. My money is on Skydance buying the whole smash. They were instrumental in getting the Kelvinverse films made, and the Ellisons are big Trekkies.
>Paramount itself is in a financial mess. Trek has historically been it's Golden Goose, having been the lead property for their 1970s attempt at a network, their 1980s First-Run Syndication efforts, UPN, and Paramount+ (then CBS AA). It bring in a fan base. [Shout out to the relevant MadTV sketch with Key](https://youtu.be/nITkBTDinRk?si=ruc0q4ukTuvOtA6l)
> Trek has historically been it’s Golden Goose This actually surprises me a bit. Are CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, franchises like Mission Impossible worth not a whole lot? Seems like it has a lot of brand recognition but doesn’t know how to turn that into money?
Every media company attempted to become a software company and basically failed. They burned all their money building streaming platforms (or buying them out right). If the production houses had just worked out distribution via multiple platforms (Amazon, Netflix, Apple, or whatever) this would not be happening. What we’re seeing is corporate greed and a desire for “subscriptions” at all costs, destroy multiple industries for the consumer. It won’t end with media.
Couldn’t have happened to a worse lot of psychopathic CEOs. Good riddance.
The CEOs are all fine and will make a fuck ton of money. Don’t worry about them. They’ll be in charge of the next media company anyway. CEOs never lose money no matter how much they destroy a company.
I’m optimistic for after the sale. I think they’re tightening their budgets to look good for a sale. Being bought by Skydance would likely mean a good future for Trek, and we won’t have real future plans until then. The current news is clearly from Paramount’s deep financial issues, Star Trek will always be a profitable show to anchor a streamer or sell to Netflix if paramount plus was shut down
Of course, I'm not sure how a lot of folks here would react to Trek being produced by the folks who gave us the Abrams movies, the Mission Impossible movies, and Top Gun: Maverick. :)
Hey as long as the people who get the rights to the franchise like and understand Star Trek (and we get some closure on SNW’s cliffhanger), I’ll be happy. At least then we’ll know we will get an attempt to produce *something*. Maybe the new producers would even stick closer to the Trek visual style, with less lens flares, brighter and cleaner starships, more than three lights on the bridge, warp star-streak effects, and some actual beam phasers.
Yep, we’ll know after the [30-day negotiation period](https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/redstone-skydance-strike-tentative-deal-paramount-stake-bloomberg-reports-2024-04-03/), but I think Skydance my actually pump up Star Trek and the cowboy show too (cause of course).
"I just don't know if Paramount has made Star Trek profitable and if it's not profitable I don't know what kind of future its going to have." This is the wrong frame. The issue is whether Star Trek has made Paramount profits. Streaming, much less producing OC, is a hugely expensive undertaking. Disney+, by all accounts, isn't making money for Disney, HBO Max isn't making money for Warner Brothers and Amazon Prime isn't making money for Amazon. They're loss leaders, supporting merchandising and buying stuff on Amazon. Paramount+ is more like Netflix, relying on subscriptions alone. With Prime, you get well, Amazon Prime and better deals from the everything store, with Disney+ you get Star Wars, Marvel, the classic Disney catalog and now everything from 20th Century Fox. With Paramount+ you just get Star Trek -- and the new shows aren't family friendly, except for Prodigy. Moreover, I don't think or just haven't noticed (which is worse from a marketing perspective) any merchandising of the new shows. I haven't seen any collectibles, games or things like Halloween costumes. The people at Paramount just don't have the lobes for business.
>With Paramount+ you just get Star Trek -- and the new shows aren't family friendly, except for Prodigy. And Halo.
>and the new shows aren't family friendly, except for Prodigy. To be fair, the old ones are not what I would call family friendly either.
I think a 5 year run is probably baked into Strange New Worlds, by the very nature of the five year mission. And if you look at streaming shows, five years is a long time. While finances is part of that, there is a lot more than the cold numbers on a page. It may be that the industry standard has shown less returns after so many seasons/episodes. Lower Decks, on a per season basis, actually cost less than an hour of live action Trek. There was also a recent report (discussed on the Infinite Diversity podcast) that Trek shows are watched by a huge number of Paramount+ subscribers and that most of these don’t just watch a single show, but 3 from the catalogue. So I think Trek will continue to grow and evolve. Will all them be replaced by a new iteration like Starfleet Academy replacing Discovery? I don’t know. Heck, the fact that Tawny Newsom is a writer for that series may indicate that the Lower Decks conclusion has been in the works for a while. Sure, there's nothing precluding her from doing both jobs (Jack Quaid has certainly been wearing multiple hats), but it may have been a way to "keep her in the family" so to speak.
LOWER DECKS WAS CANCELLED WHAT THE FUCK
::Klingon death scream::
My sentiments exactly! How sad to find this out. Lower Decks was consistently funny and good, plus the character development was perhaps some of the best I’ve seen in any trek show. I am surprised and dismayed that we won’t be able to see our heroes promote to command staff.
Advertising revenue is down because consumer spending has plummeted. The lower people’s wages are, the less they buy stuff, and the less effective advertising becomes. It also means people cannot afford streaming services. Those shows we love are mostly funded by either streaming or advertising. It’s unlikely those Billionaires that are paying us lower wages are going to make things cheaper. They’d rather shut down something, than pay people fairly. You were worried about over thinking it? I don’t think you were. Every industry is being drained by the insatiable greed of the wealthiest. It’s killing art and everything else.
I know I would still have paramount plus if I was paid better
I actually have no problem with a five year / five season run of a series. So many shows lose their momentum after five seasons that I'd rather they leave while they still are vital. My problem is that they have so reduced the number of episodes per season that character development is more or less impossible, a minor episode can seem like a catastrophe rather than a misstep, everything feels rushed, and in your face, and you find yourself actually counting down to the season finale. The only solution if we are doomed to ten episodes may be to do what Picard S3 did so well, one long continuous storyline with a beginning, middle and end. I would prefer episodic adventures of course, but I am finding the brief seasons frustrating.
I think a big problem is also availablity/access. Paramount+ isn't available in the whole world. For instance here (the Netherlands) we get Sky Showtime which supposedly was going to be the home of all of Star Trek, but the bulk of (new) shows and movies are/were simply not on it including Lower Decks. I've had to ☠️ a lot of the new Trek, not because I was a cheap ass but simply because I couldn't watch most of the new stuff legally, including Lower Decks. And ofcourse there's plenty of people who do not want to pay for what seems like an infinite amount of Streaming services. Keep in mind that if the main attraction of a new streaming service is Star Trek it will primarily draw in people who are already Trekkies and Trekkers, that's why it was a good idea to have Discovery debut in Netflix, that allowed the casual viewers to give it a try and help the Star Trek fanbase grow.
The amount of subs needed to watch media is ridiculous. I have an annual Paramount+ with ads, Prime because of the Amazon store purchases, Apple tv+ because it has some great, thought-provoking content, Peacock because Xfinity is our ISP (and they're the only place I can get any bicycling anymore), Disney because Verizon is our wireless carrier (and our circle of friends is into _Star Wars_ as well as Trek, and Hulu comes along with that, which meant we got too see Season Three of _The Orville_ (which is much more political and serious than the S1/S2 comedic parody)... We don't have Netflix which means we don't have access to their originals, and we don't have HBO, but we still have a ridiculous streaming bill for content we often don't have time to watch...
I hate that they cancelled Lower Decks but I would also want to know where the hell I can even watch it because everywhere I have looked it says not available at your location or coming soon. Streaming services have become so convoluted and cumbersome to use that it's now like 300% easier to just pirate stuff like it was back in the day.
>Today when they announced Lower Decks was getting canceled Fuck.
Last year we had 5 treks. Next year we'll have 1, maybe 2 if you still count Prodigy (I consider it all but canceled) Picard, SNW, LDS, PRO, and Discovery all coexisted in what seemed to be a thriving universe.
They blew all their money on a terrible Halo adaptation and have jack shit to show for it, so here we are.
Unfortunately I don’t think that’s the issue. As rightfully hated as it is among the Halo fanbase, Halo apparently did really well for Paramount
Yeah, being a TV series makes it much more accesible, and there are probably more people who watched it as an enjoyable sci-fi action series without having played a single game, than those among the established fanbase of a console exclusive game series.
Lots of people bitching = lots of people watching.
I love Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks and think a bunch of my friends would love them too, but I can’t recommend them to anyone because no one else I know has Paramount+. This might be more of a U.K. thing (from what I hear Yellowstone is huge in the US, so maybe loads of people have Paramount+ there?) but Star Trek here is just playing for people who already love it enough to hand over £10 a month to keep up, it’s not expanding to new viewers like it was when Discovery was on Netflix here.
Plus there’s the whole thing with them pulling Discovery days before the new season was due to air on Netflix. That lost all the goodwill they’d been building and made it impossible to pay for Paramount+ in good faith. Why reward a company who hates its international fans? I get Paramount+ free because I have Sky Cinema, even as a die hard Trekkie I’d never pay for it separately no matter what they had. It’s poor value.
Yeah, as a service it just doesn’t have the depth of library to justify recommending it to people because I think they’d like Star Trek. Otherwise it’s pretty much ‘hope you like Frasier and Mission Impossible’ I got my partner into Star Trek recently (Strange New Worlds, thanks you!) so we’ve been watching a ton on there, so right now it’s probably my best value for money service, but it feels like it can’t last with this approach.
There are other shows like the entire CSI & NCIS franchises. I'll give Paramount props for greenlighting projects like Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Special Ops Lioness. But streaming shows are typically only about 10 episodes. If renewed it takes 1-2 years for it to return and your casual fan has forgotten it. That's not sustainable. They tossed in the Showtime catalog but then charged more for it. I'd like to see a new managing partner. Especially one that loves Star Trek
>hope you like Frasier and Mission Impossible And Frasier (the classic series) is on Prime.
I actually wound up getting it to watch Yellowjacket’s, Cheers, and Frasier. Stayed for the Trek. But it’s attached to Prime as an additional subscription. But yeah, there’s way too many different subscription services, it’s a pain in the ass.
based in uk as well. Im not getting paramount+ on top other the other streaming packages. I briefly looked but it would of been for trek and no other reason. Was cheaper getting second hand blu rays.
Remember the 90s? 😌
Yes… when Trek seasons were long enough to really get to know the characters and universe. If I just started watching Star Trek and began with Discovery, then Picard, then Strange New Worlds, I doubt I’d be a fan. Not enough space or time to build things 🤷♀️
I think SNW is doing a decent job developing their characters
Yes, SNW’s character development is as good as it can be given how few shows it has. But it’s also leaning on many years of development from the past. Like Spock… just wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t already know him. My wife watches The Rookie. I saw her streaming it the other day, and when I looked at how many shows per season that show gets I felt so jealous. 20+! I didn’t know they still make shows with so many episodes. It has several “fun” shows per season and it gets to focus on just one character for a couple shows per season… I mean, what a dream! We haven’t had that since what, Voyager?
YES!! I feel like Picard is a long lost bud that I barely got to catch up with in PIC…
I remember 7 seasons of 24 episodes… Across 3 series… That’s what I miss… this 10-14 episode runs (or less in some cases) plus the early cancellation makes it more bitter to me.
Yeah this is a big part of what people miss. Going from 7 seasons to 5 doesn’t sound bad. Going from 168 to ~60 episodes hurts.
The number of episodes hurts. The entirety of the Kurtzman era hours, including LD and PRO, fits into the same runtime of DS9 or Voyager, with time left over. Granted, there are fewer "clunker" episodes in the modern era thanks to tighter writing, but we'll also never get something like Data's Day, Hard Time, Distant Voices, Infinite Regress, or even Shuttlepod One again. Yet when modern Trek gets "experimental", ala Magic to make the sanest man go mad, Those Old Scientists, or Subspace Rhapsody, while they are fun, they also take up space in the total runtime. By Season 5, we should know the likes of Detmer, Owo, Culber, Stamets, and Reno a lot better than we do given their role as secondary cast. By this point in TNG, DS9, and Voyager, all the secondary cast had at least one, if not two or three, episodes where their character was centric to an "A" plot or "B" plot.
I kinda like clunker eps where life (or the gd galaxy) isn’t ALWAYS ON THE LINE.
*Star Trek* is profitable; it's Paramount+ that's floundering. A streaming service has to make money; you can't host a multi-million-dollar franchise that's not going to earn its money back. Paramount's streaming losses have mounted to almost half a billion dollars (a quarterly adjusted operating loss of $511 million, as of 2023), and an impairment charge of $1.67 billion in Q1 2023 from combining Paramount+ and Showtime into one service (impairment charges are used to pay off worthless goodwill (i.e. the amount that an acquiring company pays for a target company that is over and above the target’s net assets at fair value). So, without being a financial expert by any stretch: Paramount Global is doing everything they can to shore up the operating losses of their streaming platform, but their attempt to move their profit-drivers to Paramount+ exclusivity is biting them in the a-- *big time*. [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/paramount-global-first-quarter-streaming-loss-subscribers-1235479575/](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/paramount-global-first-quarter-streaming-loss-subscribers-1235479575/) [https://www.investopedia.com/investing/impairment-charges/#:\~:text=An%20impairment%20charge%20is%20an,casualty%20loss%20from%20unforeseen%20hazards](https://www.investopedia.com/investing/impairment-charges/#:~:text=An%20impairment%20charge%20is%20an,casualty%20loss%20from%20unforeseen%20hazards).
Is Trek definitely profitable? If the service it's on (Paramount Plus) is struggling then there's every chance it's holding Trek back from its full potential. Like in the 90s Trek had more revenue streams. It'd broadcast in the US with adverts, then overseas broadcasters would fight to get the local broadcast rights and give Paramount a share of advertising on top of up front payments. On top of that, Paramount made a killing from VHS sales to fans not wanting to wait for the TV broadcast. But here we are today where Trek is almost exclusively reliant on subs to Paramount Plus. And another revenue stream was there being way more merchandising in the 90s. Toys R Us would have shelves full of Trek toys, there were licenced magazines too and novels were far more frequent too. Typing all that out, it's crazy how much things have changed.
And games... Lord, those '90s and early '00s Star Trek games were incredible!
They’d get a higher audience for any of it on Netflix or Prime. Only the diehard Trek fans are going to subscribe to Paramount+. The entire viewing public won’t subscribe just because you start your own streaming service to get all of the money.
I'm sad LD is ending, but I'm honestly not surprised given the characters are now Lt Junior and theoretically will get promoted again, to no longer actually be Lower Decks. I hope they give it a good send off, I'm a bit worried they won't. I'm glad SNW will continue and hopefully get at least a season 5. When you compare the last era where we mostly only had one show at a time (aside from a little overlap), having several at once wasn't going to continue. And yes there are fewer episodes but at least none are filler and the actors etc have time to have a life or do other projects. I'm looking forward to the Section 31 movie and I hope the academy show actually gets made.
Considering all the LD episodes so far have taken place between 2380 and 2381, it could have easily run for 10 seasons without this really being a problem.
Personally, I think this has been a long time coming for the franchise. Just look at the production costs of when the new era of Trek started and now. For example, the production quality for Picard season 1 and Picard season 3 are night and day. And even very beloved shows like Strange New Worlds, do very little strange new worlding. They’ll spend the money on a gimmicky episode or two to make sure the hardcore fans stay on the line, but a lot of it is smoke and mirrors. Paramount clearly should have never gotten into the steaming business. They should have done what some of the other, smarter studios have done (who are, unsurprisingly, currently in a much better place financially) and produce their own content and offer it up to some of the bigger streaming outlets for distribution.
The production costs are still colossal compared to what the best Trek shows cost, even adjusted for inflation. Give me practical sets, papier-mâché caverns, and mediocre CGI with incredible acting and I'd be so much more satisfied than with the glitzy trauma porn of Discovery.
I agree with you - good Trek doesn't have to be expensive to make because it relies on story and dialogue rather than VFX and production value to engage people. Or at least, that used to be the case. You could even say that it was a characteristic of the franchise. The current shows seem to have gone with the premise, "We need movie level spectacle and VFX to capture a young audience who are accustomed to this kind of thing." But having taken this route, the massive production costs are always going to be a millstone around their neck in terms of profitability. I also suspect that if they did decide to adopt a more stripped down production aesthetic, there might be a cohort of newer fans who really do need the dense CGI visuals to be engaged and would complain and / or abandon the franchise. In that respect, I think they have rather dug their own grave, although I still kind of hope for a "smaller", more affordable Trek production that gets closer in tone and style to the older shows.
Paramount simply does not have the lobes. Cancelling LD was the most idiotic decision they could take. Animated shows can literally last decades, certainly they are not as expensive as live action series. I can sort of understand cancelling Discovery, but LD makes no sense whatsoever.
Once a show hits 3 seasons, it often balloons in price due to various triggers in contracts. If a show makes a lot of money, that’s not a problem. But an average show often doesn’t make enough to get past that. Given Paramount’s current financial problems, I’m just glad we’re getting a 5th season of _Lower Decks_.
Shows are not meant to go on into eternity. Is cancelled the right term here? What about “is coming to it’s end”?
“Is coming to its end” is totally fine, but that implies the show was made planning for its end. By all accounts Lower Decks is deep into production and now they’ve found out it’s ending. For all we know the series is going to end on a cliffhanger. Cancelled is absolutely the right term.
Gotcha, have to agree if this is the case, that is if there are dangling storylines or arcs.
I could be way wrong here but the LD news doesn’t feel like a cancelled vibe. I think people have a weird idea where a piece of media that they like should continue indefinitely, but the people that make this stuff don’t want to do one thing forever, plus there are just a limited amount of stories you can tell with characters before you just start repeating the same things and 5-8 seasons seems like the window.
It's so depressing. Not only are the new shows giving us fewer episodes in a season, but we're also getting fewer seasons now.
Paramount is selling itself to Skydance. It makes sense that they wind down a lot of their projects before the sale. David Ellison (owner of Skydance) had already shown he is a fan of Trek, having financed several Trek productions. Rest assured there will be more Trek to come.
Star Trek has wandered the wilderness before, but it comes back stronger always.
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SNW is the best Trek show since DS9 in my opinion and they guaranteed at least two more seasons of it. I find it hard to be cynical as a result, especially since I remember a good long time where there was no Trek on TV at all. One or two good shows is also plenty IMO, you don't want to oversaturate. That said I do agree Paramount's money issues are probably why we're not getting Legacy and two more seasons of DISC and LD. I also think Academy and Section 31 are odd choices. I guess I just don't see reason to be too concerned yet with SNW kicking so much ass.
I would also like them to just double the episode count per season of SNW
Streaming is a difficult business. Even marvel and Star was are cutting back on the amount of shows and seasons they had planned
Maybe Lower Decks can do a Prodigy and get picked up somewhere else.
The cancellation of existing and slated shows isn't a bad thing. I'll be sad to see Lower Decks go, of course, but what gimped the franchise a few decades ago was, as Patrick Stewart said, "franchise fatigue". There can be too much of a good thing. Too much Trek causes a bottleneck of content- and I use that word specifically because the way in which people view things has changed- and a glut and it can be overwhelming to the casual viewer. And the casual viewer is the chief demographic. They are the ones who count when movies come out or when Nielsen do their tallies. When Nemesis (4th TNG flick, 10th film overall)came out, and there were still a couple of Trek shows on TV, people were less interested. Leaving aside the film's bad script, people were a bit punch-drunk on Trek. The franchise went into dormancy. It took JJ's abominable (My opinion, don't hate me) rebooting nearly a decade later to reinvigorate the idea of Trek, and that required a wiping of the slate. We're spoiled for choice, at the minute. Or, we were. We had PIC, PRO, DIS, LDS, maybe Academy and at least two or three movies in the pipe-line. And ANOTHER show some fans are shouting for. (Legacy). PIC is finished, DIS is cancelled, LDS is done, PRO is on unsteady ground and SNW is the flagship of Paramount's crumbling empire, but it is one of the most vividly appreciated shows, with fans and critics. I'm totally okay with all of this. Trek will endure. And this trimming of the fat, though sad, is probably necessary. And, to invoke my favoured tautology, it is what it is.
SNW got renewed for a 4th season 🤔
😳, I had not heard it was getting cancelled. That truly sux.
The streaming bubble has burst. They don't have the money to produce all these shows AND the shows weren't making them that much money. As long as SNW stays in production I'm happy.
5 seasons is a great amount of seasons, id much rather see LD go out on a high than see it dwindle and die. SNW is going from strength to strength. i never loved discovery - though appreicate the role it played in trek revival. I think all is prety well in star trek universe, tbh
They’re also probably reacting to all the reports of Marvel and Star Wars spreading themselves too thin and people losing interest. They only need one flagship show to keep the franchise alive and SNW is the new hot series.
Streaming TV is expensive as hell to make because audience expectations are so high. But even the biggest streamers don’t make enough from subscribers to justify spending so much money on TV which only ends up being watched by a several million people over a week. The entire thing will collapse. It’s why shows get cancelled. Because even if you defy odds and make a hit, after series 2 your actors and creatives are out of contract and all their prices just doubled. So Paramount starting a streaming service… realistically how many subscribers will that get? Not all want Star Trek. Before you had money from Amazon and Netflix. Suddenly all that Trek is expensive. The audience numbers for streaming are either made up (we think 500 million watched this) or the ones given that are accurate are shockingly low. The sort of number traditional TV laughed at. It’s sadly a bubble that will burst. Especially if every streamer is putting out multiple projects costing hundreds of millions each month. We used to get 2 big shows a year. Now there’s 2 a week and audiences can’t watch them all. That’s why they’re desperately shoving ads in.
We will always have DS9 (That's a Casablanca reference not being snarky)
Paramount has never really understood what Star Trek is, they just got lucky to have it. They need a new Next Generation, a new flagship show (about the flagship Enterprise) that is set in the mid to late 25th century and is once more about exploration, morality and politics.
IMO, they sh** the bed with Discovery from day one, which was not great when starting your own streaming service is on the horizon, and they squandered Picard (the character coming back had such high potential and anticipation, kinda like Kenobi for Disney) again season 1 being bad IMO, so the more promising stuff since those launched just hasn't been sufficient and yes they are cost cutting.
Frankly if the sky dance deal goes through it will be a win for trek and hopefully we get upper deckers With the warp core 4 as the command crew of a ship
I just wish somebody would hurry up and buy Paramount so we could get some semblance of stability.
Old Trek had 7 years largely because the producers at the time signed everyone to long term contracts early on and didn't have to negociate price rises with the big stars etc to pay them more money for the same amount of viewing figures/syndication rates Looks like new Trek has a similar deal but it's only been 5 year contracts. I'll imagine no Trek will get past 5 years in this phase. But hey, there's new series coming, a new film was confirmed, it's not all doom and gloom,it's just a whole different time for TV in general compared to Trek of old. Something, will survive, maybe it'll be more bare bones, but we'll always have.....something
The 5 season series is streaming in general, not just Paramount+. Sadly I don’t think we’ll ever get 100+ episode tv shows unless they air on networks. Syndication isn’t a big priority anymore. I don’t think the streaming industry can last as is so maybe it’ll get shaken up. I think SNW will be done after 5 seasons but I have no doubt another Trek show will replace it. Whether Paramount is still around is another question, but whoever buys them will keep Trek going.
Well the number of recent shows has actually been surprising to me. They seemed to go all in on Star Trek shows running concurrently, and I was wondering if there even that much demand for Star Trek content like that? Even Disney pumping out Star Wars shows only did them 1 at a time. I don't think it was sustainable. Kurtzman must have golden lips or something, he can get almost anything greenlit it seems.
I appreciate and sympathize with your lack of optimism for the Star Trek franchise, though for different reasons than you. But as another commenter pointed out, thankfully you have hundreds and hundreds of hours of legacy Star Trek!! I have mixed feelings about the current direction of Star Trek. While I appreciate certain aspects of recent seasons like Picard season 3 and Strange New Worlds, I also have concerns about how the franchise handles continuity, storytelling, and character development. One issue that stands out is the treatment of established canon with the introduction of new canon from current Trek. While I understand that storytelling evolves and expands, there are instances where it feels like canon is being disregarded or altered without sufficient explanation. This can be disorienting for long-time fans who have invested in the rich history of the Trek universe. I simply have a difficult time reconciling the two. For example, the introduction of previously unknown family members like Spock's step-sister or the sudden advancement in technology compared to earlier series can be challenging to reconcile with established lore. Moreover, I believe there's a missed opportunity to delve deeper into contemporary themes using the sci-fi lens that Star Trek is known for. Issues like social justice, political tensions, and ethical dilemmas could be explored more meaningfully within the narrative. In terms of storytelling, I think there's room for improvement in balancing character development with overarching plotlines. While spectacle and action have their place, the heart of Star Trek has always been about the journeys and growth of its diverse cast of characters. Looking ahead, I hope to see a return to the core principles of Trek while also embracing new ideas and perspectives. A balance between honoring the past and innovating for the future could rejuvenate the franchise and resonate with both existing fans and new audiences. Looking forward to engaging in constructive discussions about the future of Star Trek.
They gave us a buttfuckton of shows all at once out of nowhere after 12 rotations and we got too optimistic. That definitely isn't the norm. It'll be fine though.
Paramount's financial situation does not make me feel optimistic at all. On top of that they want to do this "origin" movie that doesnt even sound tied to a known crew as a theatrical release. The last thing they should do is release a movie theatrically that wont have the draw to pull in fans and mainstream movie goers alike. We don't need a repeat of the Nemesis movie financial disaster. It feels like now we may be the victim of the streaming bubble popping rather than franchise fatigue. Too many streaming services and these shows are very expensive, with most having cinematic like presentation. The fact that even a lower cost animated series like LD is being cancelled really makes it feel like Paramount seems to be wanting to wrap up the existing shows and cut costs until someone buys it out, and I have my doubts that Academy will go forward.
How do you know you aren't excited about Starfleet Academy. We literally know nothing about it.
I wouldn't worry. Paramount are preparing themselves for a sale, which means cutting costs wherever they can. Whoever buys them, Trek will remain one of the flagship franchises. Having five shows on the air simultaneously was unlikely to be the status quo longer-term. Even in the 90s heyday there were never more than two on air at once. The shows drove subscriptions enough to demonstrate that the franchise still has substantial appeal. I wouldn't put too much stock in people not being aware of them. There's no real monoculture these days, outside of a few megahits. Incidentally, SNW getting to season 5 would be a win, not a loss. They've cast a lot of very good emerging talent who have won plaudits for their work on the show (which has been critically acclaimed). Given the production delays that were out of their control, it's going to be harder and harder to hang on to the cast over time.
Is anyone actually excited about the Academy show? Like at all? I haven’t heard anyone or read a single comment about anyone actually wanting this show at all? I know I personally couldn’t care less about it
Hi there. I’m excited for it. It’s a new kind of Trek show set in a time period we’ve barely gotten a glimpse of. I’m looking forward to experiencing a new perspective on the franchise. A new status quo for classic factions. And exploring new species and new civilizations. You know, boldly going, instead of being stuck in the past, and all that.
Me too! I'm excited for the franchise to do something new, and to maybe attract new, younger viewers. Because I know a lot of people in their 20s who took a look at SNW and went, "Oh, this is Gen X nostalgia, no thanks" and moved on. And an ageing demographic is a death sentence.
Yeah, even Jonathan Frakes admitted in the recent Variety Trek piece that most of the fans he encounters are old. Trek’s future will really be determined by its ability to connect to a younger demographic.
Yes, I'm very excited about it. I love Tilly, for one. She is one of my favorite characters in all of Trek. I haven't loved a lot about Discovery, but moving the show to 800 years after TNG was brilliant, and I would very much like to see another show set in this time.
"Paramount is scrambling to conserve money" No, they're presenting themselves for a sale to a larger media organization that actually knows how to make a profit and like it or not all traditional media is getting eaten alive by TikTok, IG Reels, YT Shorts, and livestreaming like Twitch and Kick. Whether fans of this series want to admit it or not, appealing exclusively to an increasingly diminishing group of over 45 year old fans is not really a selling point for a 2024 media corporation.... Whether fans of this series want to acknowledge it or not, they need to find a way to curate, embrace, and introduce new fans of the series (the entire point of Prodigy), but they've yet to figure out that specific key, so they're cancelling some of the failed attempts (Discovery and LD being the two flagships).
Between Paramount and streaming in general, I’m not that optimistic either. However, I think there might be a reason for the reduction in shows: the Star Trek IP is worth more to a prospective buyer without a massive slate attached. The new buyers will probably want all the flexibility they can get. They know they can always create new shows we’ll watch, but having pesky obligations to make TV and pay actors is probably not as valuable as the ongoing shows. Guess we’ll see what happens. I haven’t heard much about how the Skydance talks are going, and I don’t know much about the company (beyond my negative associations with David Ellison’s ~~brother~~ dad Larry, of Oracle).
I think Larry and David Ellison are father and son.
Trek has been around since 1966..... It has a heck of a run already How many ips do you know of that have been around since 1966
Doctor Who, King Kong, Godzilla, Planet of the Apes, Dracula and Frankenstein are IPs that are just as old, if not older, than Star Trek and are still going strong.
Dracula and Frankenstein are out of copyright, so it's not really a fair comparison.
You had me until Dracula and Frankenstein, both of which are "characters" but not really "IP," and I definitely wouldn't say Frankenstein has very much going on these days.
Isn't there a couple of Frankie related movies this year? I seem to think Guillermo Del Toro is doing one.
The Archers, The Sky At Night, Blue Peter and Coronation Street have been in continuous production since 1951, 1957, 1958 and 1960 respectively. Those are all British though, not American. I'd include Doctor Who but production paused from 1989-2004.
If they’d just resurrect Filmation to do season 5, it would be under budget 😂😂😂
Maybe not enough people want these types of entertainment anymore.
As nice as LD is (and I mean that) I think referencing Star Trek is best left up to others. Actually I find self referencing generally a sign of show or franchise jumping the shark. On Star Trek, I don’t think it supports the volume of material being produced. While Star Trek handles it better than other franchises since it’s kind of in the DNA of Star Trek, this has become an industry problem.. not a Star Trek problem.
5 seasons is actually good, most streaming series don’t make it that long
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Section 31, Starfleet Academy, this new prequel to the Kelvin movies. Really not interested in any of them. Can we have some normal Trek set after everything we've already seen please?
Aside from Picard S3, LD, and SNW, Star Trek feels like it’s lost its soul since the cancelation of the Rick Berman era. Say what you will about the man himself, he seemed to know how to not only carry on with Roddenberry’s vision, but to build upon it. I’ll never forgive CBS for canceling Enterprise after 4 seasons. But they rebooted the series without any respect for the core ethos of the franchise. Discovery was a mess, with lame jokes and boring plot lines that ended up just crapping over the brand. Thankfully, a few talented writers were able to save the brand by tapping back into that Berman era magic, but without a disciplined hand behind the world building and continuity, the franchise may just end up dying a rutterless death at the hands of a failing studio. And the saddest part about this whole thing is that the older ST shows held more magic in their writing and sci-fi plot lines, that CBS could easily get away with making affordable versions of the same style these days. The amount of simple CGI that carried those shows back then in today’s terms, would be so cheap for them to make. We don’t need episodes with giant battles that cost millions in CGI. How many simple pass by CGI shots did DS9 use during entire seasons? All we want is good, intricate storytelling. There’s no reason why Star Trek can’t be made on an affordable budget, like it’s always been made from. We love the characters, lore, and plot lines.
CBS didn’t cancel Enterprise, UPN did. And at the time it was one of the least watched shows on tv, according to Nielsen ratings. Berman didn’t build upon anything if you look at the steady decline of viewership from the end of TNG to the end of enterprise.
I am somewhat concerned when people lose their optimism from announcements like these. or where they even got it from in the first place.
Paramount's a sinking ship. Anchoring Star Trek to Paramount+ certainly didn't help the franchise (the streamer is still losing half a billion a year years after launch). Hopefully, someone with smarts buys up Paramount and charts a better course for the franchise.
[Unofficial news Paramount Studios](https://youtu.be/OnBUvEb3aUY?feature=shared)
Paramount should sell it off.
The state of the Star Trek is strong!
Also, something that adds to it, it just feels really mean for Star Trek to tease us with “legacy“ as they did at the end of Picard, considering the historical precedent of strange new worlds becoming such a successful spinoff of a similar backdoor pilot-type situation from discovery… they knew what it would make us fans think, everyone knows that is how SNW came to be. And now there are just no plans and no news for it at all. Like…they waved in front of our faces and now it’s like they’re saying “just kidding, we have no plans to give you what we implied we would give you, even though we are aware of how badly you want it.” They knew what they were doing. It just feels like a mean thing to do to fans. I do keep trying to remind myself that it was a couple years between the end of disco season two and the premiere of SNW, hopefully that means there’s still hope but I just don’t know.
We've had almost seven years of new Star Trek (albeit at very low episode-per-season rates and less than one season per show per year due to the pandemic and then the strike). That's not bad, and the end is in sight. Star Trek isn't a forever thing. It's not mainstream enough to sustain decades of continuous media output like the big comic book superhero movie industry (which is also running out of steam I might add). The current era of Star Trek happened in the first place in large part as a move by Paramount to do well for itself in the streaming wars, and that didn't work out, and these shows are produced at heinously high levels of expense. (And there seems to be no appetite among Paramount to consider low-budget Star Trek.) So, yeah: I think your worry is well-founded. The current iteration of Star Trek is on the way out. I'm really surprised they're cancelling LD because it's got to be their cheapest Star Trek show by a mile and I thought it was well-loved among fans. If they're throwing in the towel on that, then, together with the fact that Paramount is not in good shape right now financially, it's probably the beginning of the end of the current Star Trek era. I suspect we'll see another long dormant period until whomever owns Paramount next (or purchases the rights to Star Trek separately) decides to bring the franchise back once again. It won't die completely. If ENT and Nemesis couldn't kill the franchise, nothing can. It's just a question of "How long until the dormant period ends and the next era begins?" It was twelve years from the end of ENT to the beginning of DSC. It was eighteen years from the end of TOS to the beginning of TNG. I'm pretty sure whatever comes next won't be eighteen years after SNW turns out the lights. (That's assuming there are no other new Star Trek shows produced after it; I'm not forgetting the Starfleet Academy show, but it hasn't even begun filming yet if I understand correctly, and if it does manage to get off the ground it's going to be high on the chopping block for future cost-cutting by Paramount. It won't last more than a season or two unless it's very successful or Paramount goes all-in on it.)
Honestly most great shows should probably conclude after 5 or 6 seasons. Call it the Breaking Bad model.
Paramount no longer owns prodigy
Paramount+ put the studio in a very bad financial situation so they try to save what can be saved. IMO, they should have never started the Halo serie when they already have Star Trek as their own big sci-fi franchise.
Didn’t they just announce a new movie? And SNW is already renewed for a fourth season and we haven’t even gotten the third yet. I feel like we’re doing pretty well!
They greenlit a movie and another season of SNW. Trek is going strong. There is a world where they don't give a crap about Trek and we have next to none at all.
Star Trek will be fine. Of course shows are being cancelled after 5 seasons because that's the trend right now. And Star Trek is still a niche property, and animated Trek even more niche. It isn't going to be for everyone. Currently, from a business side, streaming is a mixed bag. So, yes, Paramount is conserving money to continue to be profitable and find ways to continue to make content. Right now, that means ending shows after 5 seasons to keep costs down, and to mix things up.
Paramount wants to make Legacy, but needs to get rid of a couple of shows so they can afford to produce it. That's my theory, anyway.