It’s Official, Star Trek Isn’t Over Yet

Though Star Trek‘s future feels more precarious than ever, there’s hope for the franchise yet. For the past nine years, Star Trek has enjoyed a new age of TV, entering the streaming landscape with overwhelming grit and bravado. Starting with Star Trek: Discovery, the “Nu-Trek” canon expanded rapidly, competing with major franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe while pumping out no less than six new shows and a (critically maligned) made-for-streaming movie.

While the success and quality of each of these Star Trek shows have varied, for nearly a decade, fans were at least assured that brand-new small-screen Trek stories were on the horizon, whether in live-action or animated form. Now, however, as the dust settles on the Paramount-Skydance merger and the new company prepares for an immense deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, Star Trek‘s fate remains in limbo.

This isn’t the first time Star Trek has entered a period of uncertainty, however, and it’s unlikely to be the last. 12 years passed between the finale of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005 and the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, with only the Kelvin movie trilogy breaking up the franchise’s darkest era. Star Trek could very well find itself in a similar situation over the next decade or more, as Paramount decides which IPs to platform and which to shutter indefinitely. While there is some cause for concern, if any entertainment brand can make an impactful comeback, it’s Star Trek.

Why Star Trek’s Future Is Cause For Concern

For the first time in over 10 years, there are no new Star Trek shows in active development or in production. Following the news of the Paramount Skydance merger, the company sought to slash budgets and production costs, with shows like Star Trek: Prodigy, Discovery, and Star Trek: Lower Decks all canceled between 2023 and 2024. Thankfully, Star Trek: Picard finished its pre-planned three-season run in 2023.

Much more recently, it was announced that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the newer Star Trek: Starfleet Academy would be coming to an untimely end. While there was speculation of a Strange New Worlds spinoff tentatively titled Star Trek: Year One, which would follow Paul Wesley’s newly promoted Captain Kirk during his first year on the Enterprise, the dismantling of Strange New Worlds’ sets in April this year effectively shut that concept down.

If Paramount Skydance succeeds in its attempt to take over ownership of Warner Bros. Discovery — Netflix was originally the “winner” in this battle, but stepped aside when Paramount upped its bid considerably — it could be years before the company is ready and willing to pour more streaming money into an expensive franchise like Star Trek. In this age of prestige TV, it’s unlikely Star Trek will produce lower-budget live-action shows as it used to between the ’60s and the early 2000s.

Unless Paramount announces a surprise new Star Trek show in the next few months, it certainly feels like this is the end of the Nu-Trek era. After a Zoom meeting with Star Trek TV leader Alex Kurtzman, during which the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy cast and crew learned of the show’s cancellation, actor Robert Picardo shared that the powers that be had seemingly “decided to take a pause in [producing] new Star Trek, and that Star Trek will be reintroduced again after a fallow period. Which, as we all know, is what happened after [Star Trek: Enterprise]…

We Still Have 3 Seasons Of Star Trek TV Left To Air

Though there are no new Star Trek shows in development, the franchise does have three more seasons of TV left to air in 2026 and 2027. First, there’s the return of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, a spinoff of Discovery and a direct prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series. Season 4 will premiere on Paramount+ on July 23 and will consist of the show’s usual 10 episodes. The new season promises to be more episodic than ever before, as the series prepares to say goodbye to characters that weren’t part of The Original Series, like pilot extraordinaire Erica Ortegas.

Strange New Worlds was originally supposed to end after four seasons. Luckily, the team convinced Paramount that they’d need five seasons to wrap the story in a satisfying way and lead into Kirk’s first day on the Enterprise. The series was granted a reduced fifth and final season, with Strange New Worlds’ last six episodes expected to air in 2027.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will also return for its second season in 2027. It was canceled less than two weeks after the season 1 finale premiered in mid-March this year. However, the show had already been renewed for a 10-episode second season before the first season premiered on Paramount+, and production was completed in February 2026.

As such, as long as Paramount Skydance doesn’t officially announce a new Star Trek TV show, Starfleet Academy season 2 and Strange New Worlds season 5 will mark the official end of a decade of continuous new Star Trek stories on the small screen.

Paramount Remains Determined To Make Another Star Trek Movie

Having said all that, Star Trek hasn’t been just a TV franchise for a very long time. The first Star Trek movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, premiered in 1979 and revived the live-action franchise after The Original Series was canceled in 1969. Three additional feature films bridged the gap between The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s small screen premiere in 1987, including Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

In total, Star Trek has produced 13 theatrical adventures, including the most recent Kelvin trilogy, which reintroduced the Enterprise’s Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura for a new generation (and in a new timeline). The last Star Trek movie was Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond, which premiered in 2016 with solid reviews but middling financial success. After that, it made sense for Star Trek to pivot back to TV shows, just as it would make sense now for the franchise to pivot back to producing movies and keep the spirit of Starfleet alive.

Though plenty of “Star Trek 4” creatives have come and gone, Paramount Skydance does seem committed to producing a Star Trek movie in the not-too-distant future. In November 2025, Deadline reported that the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves duo John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein were tapped to develop a new Star Trek movie. Additionally, at this year’s CinemaCon in April, Paramount Skydance announced that a new Star Trek movie was in the works. However, it was never made clear whether that was related to Daley and Goldstein’s concept or something else entirely.

Either way, a new Star Trek movie can bridge the gap between Star Trek’s TV eras, just as the first four Star Trek movies did in the ’70s and ’80s and the Kelvin trilogy did in the 2010s. It could offer a fresh launch point for the franchise, one it arguably needs after the divisive reaction towards much of Star Trek‘s Nu-Trek era.

Star Trek Is Too Big To Ever Truly Die

Credit: MovieStillsDB

All this is to say that, for a franchise as iconic and historic as Star Trek, there’s no way it will ever truly die. Yes, it will experience “fallow periods” and darker eras, certain stories will divide viewers and critics, and interesting concepts will never make it out of development limbo. Still, Star Trek is a pioneer of the sci-fi genre, and it always will be. Letting it fizzle into nothing is simply impossible (and unacceptable). Between the TV shows and movies, Starfleet’s legacy will be kept alive through books and comics, too.

At the very least, Star Trek deserves a solid vision for how it will move forward. If, with all the confusion surrounding Paramount’s various changes and expansions, it takes a little longer to get there, that might be for the best. After all, no Star Trek is better than rushed Star Trek.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 premieres on Paramount+ on July 23.

TV Show(s)

Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Short Treks, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek Lower Decks, Star Trek: Prodigy, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

Cast

William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Jonathan Frakes, Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Wil Wheaton, Avery Brooks, Nana Visitor, Rene Auberjonois, Alexander Siddig, Cirroc Lofton, Armin Shimerman, Colm Meaney, Terry Farrell, Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Dawson, Jeri Ryan, Robert Duncan McNeill, Robert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, Garrett Wang, Jolene Blalock, Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating, Scott Bakula, Linda Park, John Billingsley, Anthony Montgomery, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, Chris Hemsworth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sonequa Martin-Green, Mary Wiseman, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Wilson Cruz, Oyin Oladejo, Emily Coutts, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Rebecca Romijn, Michelle Yeoh

Created by

Gene Roddenberry