Star Trek Showrunners Finally Just Admitted Most Hated Trek Show Was A Failure

With its premiere just over two months away, Star Trek fans can’t help but wonder what the upcoming Starfleet Academy show will be like. We know surprisingly few details, but co-showrunner Noga Landau recently clarified to Entertainment Weekly that it would have the kind of “mission of the week” format that helped make shows like The Original Series and The Next Generation major hits.

That may seem like a no-brainer for a Star Trek show, but Landau’s very welcome announcement also serves as a quiet admission that Discovery (the very show Starfleet Academy spun off of) was a failure.

The Problem With Star Trek: Discovery

Unlike traditional Star Trek shows, which had 26 episodes per season, Discovery began with a 15-episode Season 1 and ended with a 10-episode season. Rather than devote each episode to new missions, Discovery mostly focused on major, season-long mysteries for its characters to explore and solve.

This approach drove fans away for many reasons. Chief among them was the fact that even when the mystery was pretty cool (why is warp drive suddenly impossible?), the answer (in this case, an alien had a temper tantrum) was often wildly disappointing.

After Discovery, Picard followed the same formula, leading to its own major failure. Sure, everyone liked seeing the TNG crew get back together in Season 3, but the stupidity of Season 1’s mystery (what’s the deal with Data’s daughter?) was eclipsed only by the idiocy of Season 2’s mystery (why is Q back on his bullsh*t?). Negative fan reception to these season-long mystery arcs was presumably a large reason why Star Trek: Strange New Worlds switched back to The Original Series’ mission-of-the-week formula.

Star Trek Returns To a Winning Formula

Now, co-showrunner Noga Landau has confirmed that Starfleet Academy will also have a mission-of-the-week format, pretty much cementing the fact that the Star Trek storytelling method pioneered by Discovery is a failure. Ironically, the new norm for the franchise is actually the old norm…you know, spending each episode seeking out new life and new civilizations. Fans have responded to this format in Strange New Worlds so positively that it leaves only one question: why did Paramount change up the old formula in the first place?

The answer is as simple as it is cynical. As Star Trek made the shift to streaming, the creative powers that be wanted to give the franchise the kind of prestigious storytelling typically only found in award-winning cable shows like Breaking Bad or even Game of Thrones. It was a bold gamble that might have worked out in the mirror universe, but in our own dimension, fans were expecting new Star Trek shows to feel like…well…Star Trek shows!

If the Warp Drive Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

Obviously, the traditional Star Trek storytelling formula isn’t perfect, and we’ve gotten some major stinker episodes over the years (looking at you, “Code of Honor”). On the whole, though, this particular brand of television writing has kept the franchise alive for over half a century. It was a major risk to change things up with Discovery, and after that show’s many controversies and abrupt cancellation, it’s clear that Paramount gambled incorrectly on the new format.

Fortunately, Starfleet Academy is ditching the season-long mystery arcs that made Discovery so annoying at times. The simple fact that the show is embracing the formula that made series like The Next Generation a hit may be good news for fans like me who have been on the fence about Starfleet Academy. Now, let’s cross our collective fingers that Paramount can do for the new show what they’ve had recent trouble doing with Strange New Worlds: making these weekly missions interesting to watch!