After a troubled production period that featured multiple delays and the exit of longtime Trek fan Bryan Fuller as its original showrunner (he was apparently pushed out by CBS after he failed to deliver scripts on time), the long-awaited Star Trek: Discovery finally beamed onto televisions last night in its premiere episode. You can read two reviews here on /Film – one from a seasoned Trek veteran, and another from someone without that level of expertise when it comes to the sci-fi franchise – but the general reaction to the show has been positive so far.

So fans might be a little bummed to discover that Star Trek Discovery season 2 might not arrive until early 2019. It looks like you may have to set your phasers to “wait.”



In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Discovery producer Alex Kurtzman spoke about the potential plans for a second season, assuming the show earns a green light for one soon (and based on the initial reactions to the premiere, that seems increasingly likely):

There have been preliminary conversations about when and how [a second season could air] and we’ve been very consistent in our message, which is that rather than announce a date and have to push again, let’s take into consideration everything we’ve learned from this season. Now we know what we can do and where the sand traps are, so let’s give ourselves ample time to announce a date that makes sense to everybody — both the needs of production and CBS. Breaking story is, in some ways, the easier and faster thing; it’s the ability to execute on it that’s much harder. We want to take the right amount of time and don’t want to rush. So ideally, season two could bow in 2019? Ideally, on the early side of 2019.

That sounds like a dagger in the heart of fans who have been waiting for over a decade for a new Trek TV series, but at least Kurtzman’s reasoning is valid. The last thing Trek fans want after all of that waiting is for the showrunners to pump out an inferior product only to hit an arbitrary release date, so I imagine Trekkies will be OK with a bit of a break.

Besides, season one is already being split into two parts, with eight episodes airing between now and November 5, and the second batch of seven episodes beginning in January of 2018. And big shows like Westworld and Game of Thrones are slowly conditioning audiences to expect big delays between seasons already, so this is just the latest example of a fan-favorite series taking the necessary time to get things right. We already know that season 2 will involve fallout from a Klingon war, and you can read more about that here.

Star Trek: Discovery premiered last night on CBS, but the rest of the show will only be available through the CBS All Access subscription service.