Star Trek: Strange New Worlds producers asked for more than ten episodes

Once upon a time, Star Trek fans could expect twenty or more episodes of their favorite series per season. With the advent of streaming, though, the numbers are considerably less with most new series getting around ten episodes per season. Only Star Trek: Prodigy has given twenty episodes for its first and second seasons, while Star Trek: Discovery was given thirteen episodes in season one, fourteen in seasons two, three, and four, and its final season received a ten-episode order.  Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Picard each had ten episodes per season as has Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Though this is something that fans have complained about, and we still continue to want more, it’s clearly not something that’s going to happen. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' executive producer Akiva Goldsman verified this is true for this series at the Strange New Worlds' panel at San Diego Comic Con. [via Trekmovie]

" No [we aren’t doing more than 10 episodes], I mean not so far, and we tried, in fairness. We too have that sense and it is most practically represented by the number of cards that are episode cards we get at the beginning of each season. It’s sort of like a Friends analogy, “Let’s do ‘The One Where…’, Let’s do ‘The One Where…’, Let’s do ‘The One Where…’” And we always have more cards than 10 by the end. So, [Discovery] was 13 episodes and we sort of batted our eyes and said, “give us more,” and they said, “No, you can have less.” And we said, “No, ten is good.”"

- Akiva Goldsman

According to Myers, Paramount+ was asked for more episodes for season four because there were plenty more stories to tell, but they were given an adamant no. Instead, they offered less so Myers said the team took the ten. And that’s probably where things are going to stand from here on out.

In the pre-Kurtzman era of Trek, the cost of each episode was much lower than it is now. The cost to produce Discovery averaged $8.5 million per episode while Star Trek: The Next Generation’s cost was $1.3 million per episode. Today, that would bring the cost to around $3.5 million per episode.  For TNG, that would a cost of around $87.5 million for 25 episodes, which was how many the first season had. Essentially, Discovery season one cost more to make than The Next Generation’s first season.

The numbers tell the story, and even though Star Trek remains popular, we should expect that the days of twenty episode series are over, for the most part.