Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Showrunners Open Up on the End of the Show (& Tease New TOS Series)

Paramount+ recently confirmed that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will end after five seasons. Fans still have some time to prepare for the end of the series as the show hasn’t even premiered its third season yet. The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise will return on July 17 for its third season, and a fourth one is already in production.

Following the announcement that Strange New Worlds will conclude its run with its fifth season, the series’ showrunners, Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, are talking about the decision to end the show. Per Trek Movie, the pair appeared on a panel discussion at the Strange New Worlds Season 3 premiere event at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and talked about the show's conclusion and the future of Star Trek.

The Showrunners Treated Every Season Like it Would be the Last

“One of the things you learn as a TV writer is that all shows end. It’s just a question of when,” Myers said. “So, you don’t look at it like tomorrow it’s gone…So, the whole point is to go out each day trying to do it as well as you can and make it as good as you can. Don’t think about, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll get another season tomorrow.’ Like, really go for it,” Myers said.

He added that the team approached the show as if any given season could be its last. “And we have treated every season like that,” he said. “It is a blessing to be able to do five seasons. The original show got to do three, and this is more than that, which is amazing.”

“It’s Not Really an Ending”

Also, because Strange New Worlds is essentially a prequel to the original 1966 Star Trek, and fans ultimately know what happens to Captain Christopher Pike in the long run, Myers said that ending the show isn’t exactly a true ending.

“So, the real thing for us that I think is important is that we get to do the show and the ending. And it’s not really an ending, but the ending to the series as good as possible, as good as we would like it, as fans of this genre, as fans of Star Trek. We want to make a show that we would like,” Myers said.

Goldsman delved further into how the team plans to end the series. “We made a promise to ourselves that we would arc the show into (the original Star Trek series). And so we sort of thought, ‘Well, five-year mission, okay, can we do five years?’ And we are really doing almost five - well, four and a little more than half,” Goldsman said. The fifth season is set to feature six episodes instead of 10. “And we needed to be able to tell that story. Because right now (the characters) are in mid-stage development.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+)

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score	Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score	IMDb Rating
94%	79%	8.3/10

‘We Have Those Sets’

Goldsman continued about the show’s characters, “How do they become who they are? What happens to some of them? Those are questions that we knew we needed to answer and promised to answer. And so that’s our five-year plan.”

He also teased that Strange New Worlds could continue with a new series down the road. “And then we run into TOS. (Switching to a conspiratorial tone) But they’re not dying. And we have those sets…” he said cryptically.

Strange New Worlds stars Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as First Officer Una Chin Riley, Ethan Peck as Spock, Christina Chong as La’an Noonien-Singh, Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura, Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. M’Benga, Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas, and Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will premiere its third season on July 17 on Paramount+.

Source: Trek Movie