Summary
- Star Trek: Lower Decks and Prodigy offer more exciting and expansive stories compared to the upcoming season 5 of Star Trek: Discovery.
- Prodigy season 2 explores an alternate 25th century and the search for a missing captain, which feels more significant than Discovery’s treasure hunt.
- The final season of Star Trek: Discovery is still the biggest event of 2024 and will set up the future of the franchise, making it a must-watch for fans.
The most exciting thing about the Star Trek franchise in 2024 isn’t Star Trek: Discovery season 5, it’s the franchise’s two animated shows. Star Trek fans have had a love-hate relationship with the animated format, exacerbated by Gene Roddenberry’s assertion that Star Trek: The Animated Series wasn’t canon. In the 2020s, there are now two animated series, Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy, each with their own things to add to the canon. Prodigy season 2 is set to debut on Netflix early next year, while Lower Decks season 5 is also expected for 2024, now that the Hollywood strikes have come to an end.
The big headline release for 2024 is the final season of Star Trek: Discovery. The final adventure for Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) is much anticipated, especially after the numerous delays to its release. However, the overarching story of an intergalactic treasure hunt doesn’t feel as exciting as the limitless potential of the stories that both Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy could tell.
Star Trek: Lower Decks and Prodigy Are More Exciting Than Discovery Season 5
Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 will see the USS Voyager-A travel through a temporal anomaly to explore an alternate 25th century, as Admiral Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and her young charges try to locate the missing Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran). Immediately, that feels like a far bigger story than the USS Discovery’s quest to secure the greatest treasure in the universe. It may be that Star Trek: Discovery is underselling the importance of season five’s MacGuffin, but for now, it feels low stakes compared to Janeway’s mission into an alternative Star Trek future.
Meanwhile, showrunner Mike McMahan and his team will be building on Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ best season yet, by picking up the show’s loose threads. Lower Decks season 5 is set to further expand the world of the Orions in Star Trek via Lt. D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells) returning home. Meanwhile, Lt. William Boimler (Jack Quaid) is still out there somewhere, working with Star Trek‘s shadowy intelligence organization, Section 31. Those are big story elements that have the potential to impact the wider Star Trek canon for years to come in a way that a 32nd century treasure hunt simply cannot.
Discovery Is Still Star Trek’s Biggest 2024 Event
Live-action is still the preferred medium for modern Star Trek and so the Star Trek: Discovery finale is still the biggest event of 2024. None of the other Star Trek shows would exist if it weren’t for the success of Discovery, so its final season should rightly be marked as a big event. The final season of Discovery will also presumably set up the new Star Trek: Starfleet Academy spinoff, setting up the future of the franchise and perhaps some of its lead characters. From what’s been teased so far, Discovery season 5 looks like a big Star Trek movie, and this will make it a big draw for viewers.
There’s the possibility that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds could release new episodes in the latter half of 2024. Strange New Worlds is the most beloved Trek show right now, and fans will be eagerly awaiting the resolution to the season 2 cliffhanger. However, with production on SNW having just resumed, it’s still likely that Star Trek: Discovery will remain a big draw in 2024. Given that it will mark the end of an era for the modern Star Trek franchise, it’s only fair that the finale gets the space and time to shine.