Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is just a couple of episodes away from Season 3, and just a couple of seasons away from ending entirely. The Anson-Mount-led series will conclude with Season 5, featuring a six-episode run to close things out. It wasn't the only option that Paramount+ offered the showrunners, however, as Rebecca Romijn mentioned an option that gives me mixed feelings.
Star Trek Las Vegas came and went in mid-August, but newsworthy tidbits from the event are still cropping up in regards to Trek's streaming offerings, most of which can be binged with a Paramount+ subscription. I'm glad a plan was already in place for Strange New Worlds to get a fully planned conclusion, though I have to wonder how much different this final stretch would be if it all ended the way Paramount execs may have wanted.
Rebecca Romijn Revealed Paramount Offered To Do A Strange New Worlds Movie
During a panel for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Rebecca Romijn revealed a very interesting offer that Paramount+ made when the initial conversation started to end the series. The actress said that before the conversation started about getting a new season entirely, the first offer on the table was to give the show a feature-length movie. Read a bit about it below (via TrekMovie.com):
And six [episodes]—I don’t’ know if I should say this, but six was a negotiation. Normally it was ten episodes, but they offered us a 2-hour movie and [co-showrunners] Akiva [Goldsman] and Henry [Alonso Myers] said we can’t wrap up these storylines in just two hours. And so they got [six episodes].
Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers told CinemaBlend they needed the six episodes to bring the series right up to the original Star Trek, so I'll defer to their wisdom that it was necessary to end that way. Plus, six episodes are likely going to exceed the runtime of a two-hour movie, so I'd have to be wild to think I'd prefer if it ended with a movie, right?
I'm Glad We Got A Longer Multi-Episode Final Season, But A Movie Could've Started Something Amazing
As excited as I am that the Strange New Worlds showrunners advocated for as much time as they could negotiate to end the series, I can't help but wonder what a movie would've done for the franchise. I guess my first question would be if we were talking about another movie for Paramount+ or a big-screen feature?
I think, given the near-universal panned response to Star Trek: Section 31, fans might've been upset at the time to hear Strange New Worlds would be getting a P+ movie. In fact, some complaints about Section 31 surrounded the fact that it felt like an overly long episode of a modern TV episode, rather than an actual movie.
All that said, I've long maintained that I think the path to success for Star Trek at the movies is to lean back into making features centered around the shows with an established fan base. I also maintain that for anyone looking to get into Star Trek for the first time, or the first time in a long time, Strange New Worlds is the series to get into.
Something tells me that if a Strange New Worlds movie were made, it'd be a hit. In the hypothetical scenario where Paramount+ had a hit Trek movie, I have to think it would feel better about greenlighting more of those types of movies, be it for SNW or other ambitious projects. Perhaps we'll finally get that long-awaited live-action Janeway project, but without a hit Trek movie, we're left to wait and wonder.
Continue to watch new episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Paramount+ on Thursdays. There's just a couple of weeks left before the wait is on for Season 4, so make sure to get caught up and see how it all ends.
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