2022 will see more new Star Trek streaming on Paramount+ than ever but this big gamble will pay off for the beloved 55-year-old sci-fi franchise. This year, all five Star Trek shows on Paramount+ will stream brand-new episodes. Not only will Star Trek: Discovery season 4 wrap up in February but it has been renewed for season 5. Star Trek: Picard season 2 premieres on March 3 and the Patrick Stewart-led show is already in production on season 3. The hotly anticipated Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premieres May 5th and it has also received a season 2 pickup. In addition, Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 returns in summer 2022 with season 4 already greenlit. Finally, Star Trek: Prodigy will wrap up its 20-episode season 1 by the end of 2022 and the animated series is also getting season 2.
Star Trek's last glory period in the 1990s was ambitious but not to the degree of Star Trek on Paramount+'s sweeping expansion. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered in 1992 during the height of Star Trek: The Next Generation's popularity and just after the cast of Star Trek: The Original Series bowed out of making movies with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Mere months after TNG ended its incredibly successful 7-season run and ushered in a new movie era with Star Trek Generations in 1994, Star Trek: Voyager premiered as the flagship of the new United Paramount Network (UPN), and new episodes aired alongside DS9 for four years. After DS9's 7-seasons ended in 1999 and Voyager wrapped its 7-year run in 2001, Star Trek: Enterprise premiered on UPN but only lasted 4 seasons until it was canceled in 2005. While all of the shows in the era overseen by Star Trek executive producer Rick Berman generated hundreds of hours of television, no one could have dreamed of a single year where five Star Trek shows would deliver new episodes.
But what could appear to be an oversaturation of Star Trek in 2022 is actually a calculated risk designed to grow the franchise. Now overseen by executive producer Alex Kurtzman, Star Trek has been carefully and gradually expanding in a landscape where Gene Roddenberry's creation is now competing for eyeballs with Marvel Studios, Star Wars, DC, and other massive pop culture intellectual properties. Meanwhile, by following the lead of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movie trilogy, the franchise has remedied one of its biggest weaknesses: that Star Trek is often seen by general audiences as a low-budget sci-fi with cheesy special effects, which is a remnant of the limits of how Star Trek: TOS produced in the 1960s. Under Kurtzman, all of the new Star Trek series are eye-popping and cinematic with state-of-the-art visual effects. With Star Trek about to deliver the single biggest year in its history, here's why this huge gamble will take the venerable sci-fi franchise to new heights.
Star Trek Has More Variety Than Ever
Between the five existing series on Paramount+, there is now a Star Trek show for just about every kind of Trekker. Joined by Q (John de Lancie) and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), Star Trek: Picard season 2 is set to deliver a time-travel/alternate reality tale while Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is, excitingly, harkening back to the 23rd century and the prequel is returning to Star Trek's classic roots of episodic, 'problem of the week' television. Every Star Trek: Discovery episode is a mini-movie that's a thrill-ride adventure exploring the far future of the 32nd century. Star Trek: Prodigy is aimed at all ages but is specifically teaching the youngest generation about Star Trek's enduring core principles. Finally, Star Trek: Lower Decks is a hilarious, ribald, anything-goes celebration of all things Star Trek.
In the 1990s and 2000s, every Star Trek series except Star Trek: Deep Space Nine mimicked Star Trek: The Next Generation's episodic style, which was, itself, derived from TOS. This resulted in the franchise feeling repetitious and led to dwindling audience interest in Star Trek as a whole so that no new Star Trek TV was produced from 2005-2017. But Paramount+'s Star Trek shows offer a variety to suit the interests of most viewers, and every series boasts stunning acting from both the live-action casts and the actors providing voiceovers for the animated series. Each Star Trek series on Paramount+ is tonally and even visually different, yet all are still very much Star Trek.
Because of the current plethora of Star Trek, no one series carries the burden of having to be every kind of Star Trek for every kind of Trekker as Star Trek: Discovery season 1 and 2 did. Much of the backlash Discovery received was because it was substantially different from classic Star Trek and many longtime fans were vocally unhappy that 'their' Star Trek was replaced. The five existing series (with more still in planning stages) now share the mantle of Star Trek and encompass every style of the franchise, allowing Trekkers to experience action, comedy, mystery, outer-space adventure, nostalgia, and inspiration with each new episode.
Star Trek Is Reaching For New Audiences
While Star Trek on Paramount+ is inclusive to longtime Trekkers, its aim is to appeal to the next generation of Star Trek fans and bring new eyeballs to the franchise. Star Trek: Prodigy is perhaps the most important part of this initiative since it's squarely aimed at kids - a demographic Star Trek has traditionally not catered to. As the teenage alien heroes of the USS Protostar learn the values of Starfleet from the training hologram of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), younger audiences are simultaneously introduced to Star Trek's ideals of hope, optimism, and all cultures working together towards a brighter future.
At the same time, Star Trek: Discovery is charting the distant future as Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the USS Discovery solve the biggest crises of the 32nd century. Star Trek: Picard warms hearts every time Jean-Luc Picard has a rendezvous with his former crewmates from the USS Enterprise-D while Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will look at TOS nostalgia through a 21st-century lens. Finally, Star Trek: Lower Decks is an unpredictably chaotic and just plain fun continuation of the TNG era of Star Trek, which is perhaps the time period most beloved by Trekkers. While not every existing Star Trek fan can be won over, each series from Discovery to Prodigy looks forward to bringing new fans to the franchise.
Star Trek Understands Its Legacy And Future
Paramount+'s Star Trek series have been smart and careful about incorporating legacy characters and callbacks to the past. Indeed, Star Trek: Prodigy recently celebrated the entire franchise with a deftly-handed dream crossover that brought Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Odo (Rene Auberjonois), Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), Scotty (James Doohan), and Chakotay (Robert Beltran) aboard the USS Protostar's holodeck - which showcases the advantage animated Star Trek has over live-action. While longtime fans wait for legends like Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and more characters from DS9 to appear, TNG's and Voyager's icons like Captain Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Lt. Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) have delighted Trekkers with their guest appearances.
Despite the belief of some skeptics, all of the Star Trek on Paramount+ shows are in canon with TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise. Star Trek: Discovery season 3 solved the biggest breach in canon Trekkers took umbrage with when the series shifted settings from the 23rd century to the 32nd century. Since then, the new Star Trek shows have been deliberate in protecting established canon while weaving in characters and concepts from the past to inform and add context to the new shows' adventures. Star Trek: Discovery season 4 has even embraced the moral complexity and ethical quandaries of the best TNG-style episodes while still delivering its trademark breakneck thrills.
Star Trek on Paramount+ has laudably embraced diversity, with people of color and the LGBTQ community represented among each show's cast. Since the 1960s, Star Trek's legacy is being at forefront of inclusivity, starting with the Starship Enterprise's multiracial crew. Today, Star Trek: Discovery features a Black female Captain who leads a cast that includes a gay couple in a healthy relationship and the franchise's first non-binary and transgender characters played by Blu del Barrio and Ian Alexander. Star Trek: Picard also features two women, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and Lt. Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd), in a romantic relationship, while Star Trek: Lower Decks' main character is a Black queer woman, Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome). All five Star Trek shows streaming new episodes in 2022 is the franchise's biggest gamble yet but all of it is designed to usher in and inspire Star Trek's bright and optimistic future among its fans, new and old.
Star Trek TV shows and movies can be streamed on Paramount+.