Star Trek: Discovery gets 4th season, production under way

Just hours after Star Trek: Discovery debuted its third season, it’s been announced that the show will be picked up for a fourth season.

Star Trek: Discovery just debuted a third season and according to StarTrek.com, the series has already been greenlit for a fourth season. The website even goes onto claim that production has already started on the fourth season of the embattled series, meaning this decision was made some time ago. The move to greenlight a fourth season comes right after the series launched the third season that sees the series go through a soft-reboot of sorts.

Season three currently has a 100% critics score for Rotten Tomatoes, while the fans have given it a 52%.

The move to renew it isn’t a surprise at all, considering that CBS All Access is getting relaunched  as Paramount+. Paramount+ will feature most, if not all of the content CBS All Access was providing but will also fold in the libraries of Paramount Network, Nickelodeon, MTV, and other Viacom-owned properties into the fold as well. This will bolster the back catalog for the streaming service, moving the focus off of Star Trek being the only tentpole to prop up the streaming service.

That doesn’t mean there’s going to be less Star Trek, it just means they aren’t the only racehorse that matters anymore. Part of any good relaunch is to find a way to bring fans to the new property, the art of that is having relatable and recognizable content. For good or bad, Star Trek: Discovery is a well enough known property that has shown to curry some fan support.

To launch Paramount+, ViacomCBS wants as much carryover content as possible. A fourth, and more likely a fifth season of Discovery should be expected. Now, this will be seen as a “win” by some who feel the series is being criticized unfairly. Except, it’s not a win. It’s the modern expectations of content creations. When it comes to streaming, series don’t need to make money as they did on television. For television, stations are paid by the ad rate that is agreed upon by businesses who want to air commercials on their platform.

Shows with specific demographics get specific prices. Shows with a higher and younger audience will make more money than shows that have a higher audience and older audience. More so, the time’s in which shows air matter as well. A show will make more money airing from 8 PM to 11 PM than they would before or after. All that affects how much money a show is worth.

On streaming, the focus isn’t to get advertising dollars but subscriptions. Which means shows will have vastly different budgets. This is what’s happened to Netflix, who are in debt $14.7 billion. Shows are expected to lose money these days. It’s still more affordable to keep making Discovery than try to create a new brand, which is why it’ll be part of Paramount+ whenever that eventually launches.