STAR TREK: DISCOVERY

SHOW RUNNER MICHELLE PARA DISE ON THE LAST TRIP FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY

WORDS: DARREN SCOTT

THEY BOLDLY WENT FROM The Original Series timeline of the 23rd century, rewrote Starfleet history and jumped over 900 years to the 32nd century. But the story is ending – for now – as the crew of the USS Discovery find themselves grounded with the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery. Showrunner and writer Michelle Paradise sat down with SFX to give some insight into what that means for their untimely end.

Why is this the final season of Discovery?

Oh, gosh! I think those are a lot of decisions that are made above my head. We just found out that it was going to be the end, actually, after we had completely shot what was only originally going to be the fifth season. I can’t thank enough [our] studio and network partners for giving us the opportunity – once they had decided this was going to be the end, and once they had told us – to go and shoot some additional material so that we could wrap up the series as a whole and have it feel like a series end.

I’m sure, as you know, that’s most often not the case when a show ends. It’s just, “Well, whatever you’ve done, that’s the ending.” They are so aware of the impact of this show and how much people love it and what it means. So it’s a very uncommon thing to allow showrunners to go back and do some additional work to really tie it up in a satisfying way and I’m so grateful. I know Alex [Kurtzman] is too. We all are that they gave us the chance to do that.

Was that something that you were able to weave throughout the season? Or is it something that comes towards the end?

I don’t wanna reveal what it is specifically. But interestingly enough, the season itself, we didn’t have to change. We shot some additional material, we didn’t re-shoot anything, and save for a couple of tiny tweaks in the finale we didn’t have to re-edit anything.

We’ve sort of said amongst ourselves that if this were to happen in any season, this was – in terms of the storytelling – this was the season for that to have happened, because it still feels like a complete story, particularly since we got to add some additional things. But in terms of the the matics and what our character journeys are, and where we were going over the course of the season we added to, we didn’t have to change anything.

The crew of the Discovery line up one last time.

So I think, honestly, for people who come into the season not knowing that we didn’t find out, they wouldn’t know that we didn’t go in planning for this.

Did you get to do an extended episode for the finale?

We did, yes. It’s definitely a longer episode, for sure.

Had you planned ahead for season six?

Just in my own work, whenever we finish a season, and the shooting is behind us, I give it a couple of weeks and then, just because of the timing of everything, I have to start thinking about the next season to come, because we have to ramp up so quickly because the lead times are so long.