Star Trek: Discovery's final season is set to arrive this coming spring and, with that, there will be will be changes made to the flagship series that injected new life into the sci-fi franchise. The show's lifespan will ultimately be shorter than the cast and crew expected it to be. At the very least though, as it prepares to go out, it'll mimic another popular entry in the franchise, Strange New Worlds. That is to say, expect the final ten Discovery episodes to be more episodic, according to the showrunner, and that should be pleasing to SNW fans.
Michelle Paradise was on hand with Discovery star Sonequa Martin-Green at CCXP in Brazil and spoke a bit about the upcoming season of the Trek series before its premiere. Trek Brasilis reported that Paradise said the following in regard to the episodes (via TrekMovie.com):
Season 5 is going to be a wonderful mix. The DNA of Discovery always has those serialized stories over the course of a season. This season the nature of that serialized story allows us to have more episodic adventures. So I think people are really gonna dig it. There are some very cool adventures and some really fun episodes.
The fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery will see Michael Burnham and the crew on a mission to acquire a powerful artifact before several other factions are able to obtain it. My assumption is that with the overarching story being a quest to find a macguffin, the writing staff felt a sense of freedom to tell more one-off stories concerning the crew's journey across the galaxy.
I already sensed from the first look at Discovery Season 5 that it would have a totally different vibe, and adding more action on top of more episodic episodes will certainly make it feel similar to Strange New Worlds. The latter series has leaned heavily on serialized story arcs, but some episodes can stand on their own as one-off adventures.
Conversely, Discovery has spent the bulk of its run focused one major adventure, with the events of the episodes bleeding into each other and continuing. It's a style of storytelling I felt the series nailed in Season 4, so I am slightly bummed to hear Season 5 will move away from being as heavily serialized.
With that said, CinemaBlend spoke to cast member Doug Jones about Season 5 in December 2022 about Season 5, and he stressed that the new episodes draw from Season 4. For anyone worried that the series is jumping the shark and going full SNW in its final season, Jones believes the bulk of what fans loved about Discovery will still be present in the final season. Can it be April already? I just want to binge this with my Paramount+ subscription.
As excited as I am to watch the new episodes, I can't help but agree with Jonathan Frakes when he told CinemaBlend that the series' impending end sucks. It felt as though the show had found the perfect formula for its approach to storytelling in Season 4 and had the legs to go on much further than just one more season. I guess we should be grateful, though, that it was given the time to produce a proper final season, one that hopefully lives up to expectations with the help of these episodic installments.
As mentioned, Star Trek: Discovery will premiere its final season on Paramount+ in April as part of the 2024 TV schedule.
