Earlier this year, news broke that “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” is set to conclude with a shortened sixth-season finale.
The news came as a slight surprise, as the third season of the program had only begun airing a little over a week ago.
However, with all the expected financial cutbacks at Paramount following the now-approved Skydance merger, it seemed that those involved had received the green light earlier than usual to ensure the series could end properly.
Co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman pretty much confirmed this while appearing at this weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con. He tells Collider that while it is four episodes shorter than a standard season, it was a compromise because:
“The original messaging from the studio as we were done, they wanted us to be done after [Season] 4. We had made a commitment to the fan base, and to the narrative, that we would get right up against TOS [The Original Series]… because there are a lot of folks from canon who are either different or who seem to have vanished by the time TOS happens, and so we wanted to fill in those gaps.
The studio said, ‘Oh, yeah, we did we agree. We were part of that bargain, too,’ and so they sort of said, ‘We can’t do a full season. What do you need to close it out?’ and we said six, and they said six, and so that gets us right up to Kirk’s first day on the job.”
As a result of the order, the production schedules have been somewhat compressed, with co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers discussing how busy things are right now:
“We’ve been working on Season 5 for months now. So we were working on Season 4 and Season 5 and doing press for Season 3 all at the same time.”
Filming on the fourth season wrapped the other day. Christina Chong, who plays La’an Noonien Singh, confirmed there is only about five weeks downtime for the actors between the production of Season 4 and 5:
“More just like a breath. But that’s actually probably really important to take that breath, and also emotionally as actors to sort of get yourself ready for filming the final episodes.”
Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Scotty are already in the series, but three key characters are missing, most notably Dr. Leonard McCoy, Hikaru Sulu and Pavel Chekov though the latter doesn’t appear in the original series until the second season so doesn’t have to be included.
At the same time, some characters like Una Chin-Riley, La’An Noonien-Singh, Erica Ortegas and Pelia all have to exit while others like Joseph M’Benga and Christine Chapel are essentially demoted.
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” is currently streaming its third season on the Paramount+ service.
