Is Star Trek: Discovery not airing on a regular schedule important?

Star Trek: Discovery will not be a regular, new-season-every-year type show, and the show’s production team is making that clear early.

Nerdist, citing The Hollywood Reporter, has put the word out there that Star Trek: Discovery is not shooting for a second season in 2018, instead taking another year for production. On a surface level, this seems like a punch in the gut.

After all, Star Trek: The Next Generation managed to put together seven seasons, most of them quality, one after another in the ’80s and early ’90s, and so did Voyager going from the ’90s to the ’00s, and Deep Space Nine overlapped the both of them!

At the same time, however, the world has entered a new era of television in the 12 years, as Nerdist notes, since Star Trek had some new episodes to give its fans. Uneven production schedules and delays have slowly started to become more acceptable as the quality of TV goes up. Hey, we’ve even come to terms with Star Wars: Episode IX going back to December 2019, although that’s an example from film. Fans would rather see something stellar, pun intended, than something on time that isn’t quite as good.

(Besides, Star Wars and Star Trek coming out in the same year … twice … is particularly fantastic for those fans who like both.)

Nerdist picks up on this by pointing out that Alex Kurtzman wants a good second season, one that already appears to be in the writing (or at least planning) stage based on the quote that it uses from THR, so it’s not so much “they have no ideas and need the additional time to come up with ideas”. That’s actually a good sign, too.

Additionally, it’s good that Kurtzman hasn’t gotten fans’ hopes up too much before letting them down. Although this is still a disappointment, it’s not like the season finale has just aired. There are still plenty of episodes to enjoy in the near future.

Next: Star Trek: Discovery premiere recap

Besides, now fans have more time to argue the finer points of how Discovery interacts with the existing canon …

Is anyone actually excited for that, though?