A key figure behind Star Trek's classic era has likened the shortened seasons of modern TV to the equivalent of a Tinder relationship, and said he hoped the sci-fi franchise would return to 22-episode seasons.
Speaking at STLV: Trek to Vegas convention, as reported by TrekMovie, veteran writer and producer Brannon Braga said TV simply didn't have the same "kind of relationship" with fans as it once did, back when he worked on various Star Trek series.
Braga wrote Star Trek movies Generations and First Contact, and served as a producer on both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, before creating Star Trek: Enterprise. Across the three series, he wrote more than 100 episodes — though he has not contributed to the franchise's modern era.
"I look at this audience, and I think you're here because you had a long-term relationship with Voyager," Braga said during a convention panel. "Voyager was 26 episodes a year. Some of you probably keep it on because it's cozy, and that's the kind of relationship you had. A lot of shows now are Tinder relationships — eight episodes every two years, I don't think so. That's not going to be something you necessarily pass on to your kids. And I think that's a loss."
While Braga doesn't name any series in particular, it's interesting to look at Star Trek's streaming era and see how it compares to the 22-episode seasons of old.
Star Trek: Discovery launched in September 2017 with a 15-episode season, followed by a second run of 14 episodes beginning in January 2019. It ran annual seasons of increasingly shortened length throughout the next few years, before a gap of two years for its 10-episode fifth and final season in 2024.
Star Trek Picard aired three 10-episode seasons over four years, and Strange New Worlds has also aired three 10-episode seasons to date over the same time period, with a two-year wait for the show's latest run. A fifth and final season of just six episodes will cap the series off, and is due to begin filming next year.
10 episodes is the franchise's new norm (the upcoming debut season of Starfleet Academy will also be this length), but this is increasingly the standard among TV shows as a whole, as episode budgets rise and audiences demand a higher quality overall.
"It's a new paradigm," Braga concluded. "And some shows are still doing [long seasons]... NCIS does like 22 [episodes]. But I really don't know what's in store for the future of Star Trek, the TV franchise anyway. But I hope, I hope that eventually they get back to a longer, more sustained season."
Exactly when that might happen, however, seems uncertain. Earlier this month, actress Rebecca Romijn said that even gaining a six-episode final season for the hugely popular Strange New Worlds had involved something of a "negotiation" with production company Paramount, which had initially wanted to wrap up the series with a shorter TV movie instead.
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