Star Trek: 10 MORE Behind The Scenes Decisions We Can't Forgive

Despite being produced solely for streaming on CBS All Access aka Paramount Plus, Star Trek: Discovery and now Star Trek: Picard maintain much of the artifice of shows made for traditional broadcast television. Generally consisting of the standard four or five acts, each episode of Discovery and Picard more or less fit inside an hour, like all previous live-action Trek series.

The problem here is simply that Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard aren't on traditional TV and the streaming model offers a freedom which modern Star Trek has mostly passed up.

With contemporaries like Disney+'s The Mandalorian and even Hulu's upcoming third season of The Orville dumping the standard television runtime in favor of expanded episode lengths as warranted by the story, there's really no reason why new Star Trek shows keep adhering to the hour-long episode format. This is particularly true when important material gets cut for time. Remember Narek and the XBs in Star Trek: Picard? Their fates are all in deleted scenes that were cut for time. Want to know the backstories of Discovery's secondary crew members? No time for that, there are turbolifts to race.

It's clear the producers are genuinely interested in these show's side characters, as evidenced by the good faith effort to give Detmer, Owo, Bryce, and Rhys something to do in at least two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery's third season. But did you even know all their names?

At around $8M per episode for Star Trek: Discovery and $9M for Star Trek: Picard, making these shows longer is obviously not an inexpensive ask. But with thinly drawn secondary characters and (often) even thinner sci-fi plots, modern Star Trek would benefit from expanded runtimes and more breathing room.