Could one-off mini-series be the future medium for Star Trek?

Star Trek boss Alex Kurtzman suggests mini-series are now the future of Star Trek

Star Trek is in a state of flux at the moment. The franchise has seen two of its biggest shows canceled, in part due to budget cuts across the board for Paramount+. The streaming home of Star Trek has not been profitable since it launched and is hemorrhaging money. They’re canceling shows across the service and slashing its budget with the hope of being profitable in a few years.

They’ve yet to turn a profit since they launched CBS All-Access over nine years ago in 2014. Since then, the service has tried to launch its own original streaming programming, with Star Trek as its crown jewel. The franchise hasn’t gotten the service over the top yet, and may not ever, which is why the service is cutting down on spending.

With the Star Trek film franchise in limbo and the Star Trek streaming shows costing hundreds of millions of dollars to produce on their own, there seems to be a shift in how and where they’ll produce their stories.

Trek head honcho Alex Kurtzman seems to be considering mini-series as the future of the franchise, telling SFX Magazine (via TrekMovie.com) that “event series” and “single events” could be the future of the franchise;

"By the way, even individual characters – I think we could absolutely continue to tell stories about individual characters that are set up on the show in other contexts. That’s the beauty of having a universe now is that, in a perfect world, we’re not just doing seasons of television, we’re doing event series, we’re doing single events that could be two, three hours long. I think that we are now at a place where that’s really possible."

Mini-series could help save money while telling more Star Trek stories

There’s no doubt that Star Trek needs help producing content right now. They’re making far too much content, at far too high of a price, for far too little of a return. Even shows like Strange New Worlds aren’t worth its budget if the streaming service as a whole is losing money.

Trek has got to tone down on the production and stop trying to produce shows with “movie graphics” and start producing more affordable, less involved stories. A mini-series or a Paramount+ movie would be the way to go.