Oh wow, there are Star Trek shows planned through 2027

There are seven Star Trek shows currently on the air or on the way, and Trek boss Alex Kurtzman has no plans to stop anytime soon.

The third season of Star Trek: Discovery premieres tonight, with the crew of the Discovery zapped far into the future. As Trek overboss Alex Kurtzman pointed out on The Hollywood Reporter TV’s Top 5 podcast, most Trek series last for a good long while, so there’s still plenty of gas left in this space tank. “It’s not a brand-new show, but it’s a whole new set of variables with a whole new set of ideas and stories,” he said of the third season. “I don’t think we limit ourselves to thinking, ‘Oh, we’re capped at this place.’ I’ll tell you when the show starts to feel stale to us, we will be rallying to stop it. But for now, it doesn’t feel like we are running into a shortage of stories.”

And that positive attitude looks like it extends to all the Star Trek shows either on the air or on the way, and there are a lot of them. We’ve got Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Prodigy and more. At a glance, you might think CBS All Access was loading up too many of these, but Kurtzman doesn’t see a problem. “Given how hopeful and beautiful the messages of Star Trek are, I don’t think you can have too much because I think there’s something for everybody,” he said. “But I think you’ve gotta be really curated and really thoughtful about what you’re doing.”

Can you be thoughtful enough to make upwards of seven different Star Trek shows feel distinct? The jury’s still out on that one, but Kurtzman and company are going to give it their all. In fact, he says that he and his producing partners recently got a call from the network “mapping us through 2027.”

"When I say that, it’s not like it’s set in stone. It’s just, ‘Ok, here’s a plan. Here’s what we’re looking at. Here’s how the different shows are going to drop.’ Consider the fact that it takes a year from inception — from start of production — to airing, so you have to plan way, way, way in advance to get these things done, and you have to stay on top of the zeitgeist and make sure that what you’re doing is relevant…You have to plan so far in advance now in different kinds of ways to seem loose and improvisational, but there’s nothing loose and improvisational about it."

Personally, an alarm goes off in my head whenever I see a company trying to pile on shows like this. I just can’t help but wonder, ‘Why not focus on making the first thing a hit and then if it’s a success think about a spinoff or something?’ But between this, Star Wars and The Walking Dead, mega-franchises seem to be the wave of the future, so…hang ten, I guess.

Whatever your feelings, enjoy the Discovery season premiere tonight!

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h/t Syfy Wire