DIS Season 5

Warning! This page contains information regarding Star Trek: Discovery, and thus may contain spoilers.

This page contains information specifically pertaining to the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery. It started streaming on Paramount+ in North American and other countries in which Paramount+ was available. Additionally, the season was concurrently broadcast on CTV Sci-Fi Channel/Z in Canada.

In the rest of the world the show debuted with an one-day delay on the Paramout+ spin-off SkyShowtime in those countries where that service was available. [1]

Episodes[]

Summary[]

The fifth and final season will find Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. But there are others on the hunt as well … dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it.

Excerpts of copyrighted sources are included for review purposes only, without any intention of infringement.

Background information[]

• On 18 January 2022, Paramount+ announced that the series had been renewed for a fifth season. [2]
• On 13 June 2022 it was divulged that principal filming, aka production, of the fifth season had begun that day, as was confirmed by showrunner Michelle Paradise on social media. [3]
• Principal filming wrapped in November 2022. [4]
• On 2 March 2023, it was announced that the fifth season would be Discovery's last and will air in 2024. [5][6] The cancellation decision had caught showrunner Paradise by surprise, only becoming aware of it around New Year. [7]
• Just prior to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike which started on 2 May, cast and crew reconvened for a few days to shoot some additional scenes, to reflect the end of the show. Missing was actor Wilson Cruz as he had already accepted a work assignment abroad. [8]
• How unexpected the cancellation had been for Paradise and how rushed she was to conclude the series, was evidenced by the circumstance that the final farewell scenes in "Life, Itself" were originally intended to occur at the end of the now never-to-be-realized sixth season. She had concurrently stated that she had intended the ST: "Calypso" episode to become the "central narrative engine for Season 6" instead of the jack-in-the-box contrivance and out-of-the-blue gimmick it eventually became in "Life, Itself". [9]
• On 2 December 2023, it was announced during the Paramount+ panel at CCXP in São Paulo, Brazil that the series will conclude with its upcoming fifth season in April 2024. [10]
• Season 5 will be more episodic than Discovery's previous seasons, although it will retain an overarching serialized plot. [11]
• On 10 January 2024 it was announced that the final season's premiere episode would be screened at SXSW as part of their "TV Spotlight" event. [12]
• On 14 February 2024, it was announced that season 5 would premiere with a two-episode launch on 4 April 2024. [13]
• In Canada, CraveTV had been the first-time streamer for all four previous Discovery seasons. However, it had by 9 September 2023 lost all Star Trek streaming rights to the local Paramount+ streaming service. [14]

Reception[]

In 2023 the rating agency Nielsen started recording ratings for original streaming programming, with resulted in that both Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds have made the Top-10 Streaming Chart since then. Discovery was the next to follow when it entered the Top-10 after its fifth season debuted at the start of April 2024, rising to the eighth place by the mid-season's episode five. And even though it lost its Top-10 listing in the subsequent week, it still constituted a feat of considerable proportions as Paramount+ can only boast a subscriber base that is dwarfed by those of its two major industry competitors, Netflix (the original Discovery foreign streamer) and Prime Video, [15] who habitually dominate the chart, making it that much harder for Paramount+ productions to break into the Top-10 Chart. [16] Despite this and in line with the series loosing its place in the Nielsen Top-10 list while its fifth season was still in the midst of its streaming debut, it has also been observed that viewership numbers for that season were rapidly dwindling as well over the course of its debut run. [17][18]

Yet, these two seemingly contradicting trends actually chimed with the series cancellation rationale franchise head Alex Kurtzman had given to news site CinemaBlend.com on 10 April 2024, "I don't know, it's very hard. I mean, the fact that [Discovery went to] go on five seasons is sort of a miracle. I think most people watch two seasons of a streaming show, and they check out, you know, and that's not specific to Trek. I just think that's the watch pattern for television in the streaming world. It's hard to know." [19]

Credits[]

• Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham [20]
• Doug Jones as Saru [21]
• Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets [22]
• Mary Wiseman as Sylvia Tilly [23]
• Wilson Cruz as Hugh Culber [24]
• Blu del Barrio as Adira Tal [25]
• David Ajala as Cleveland Booker [26]
• Callum Keith Rennie as Rayner [27]
• Elias Toufexis as L'ak [28]
• Eve Harlow as Moll [29]
• Chelah Horsdal as Laira Rillak [30]
• Oded Fehr as Charles Vance [31]

External links[]

• Star Trek: Discovery season 5 at Wikipedia
• Star Trek: Discovery season 5 at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Star Trek: Discovery season 5 at Ex Astris Scientia