It is not my intention to ignite an EMACS/vim war; I will say that I find it baffling that Lower Decks is ending while Strange New Worlds is being continued. I like Strange New Worlds, despite disagreeing with some of the artistic licenses being taken. But if I had to choose between the two shows, it’d be no contest. Not only as a viewer do I prefer LD, but it has to be the cheaper show to produce. The fact that next season is the last (both by design, it only being contracted for 5 years; and announcement) is sad and incomprehensible in the same way the cancelation of Firefly was - except LD is popular and successful, whereas Firefly merely had a fanatical (🖐️) fan base.
I don’t understand it. Yes, you want to end on a high note. Maybe the writers are running out of plot ideas. Perhaps, given an initial life span of 5 years, the actors have all made other arrangements and aren’t available. But I just can’t believe the One Big Plot Arc that’s been building would necessitate ending the series by its resolution.
LD is a strong show. It’s lighthearted. It’s a breath of fresh air after the more decidedly darker, ethically challenging, and emotionally straining runs of TNG, Voyager, DS9. And Strange New Worlds… the Gorn are basically Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise.Who, despite being the existential threat of the show, somehow get entirely forgotten about by the time in TOS.
But I digress. I’m going to miss Lower Decks, badly. How can this happen? And why?
Paramount has been trying to get bought out by Skydance, so they’ve been cutting costs to make themselves look more attractive. They probably believe that the long term earning potential of the Star Trek property is in the SNW brand and not LD. I personally suspect that when SNW is over we’ll see a rebooted TOS using the lore foundation SNW has laid. (Also I could be misremembering, but wasn’t Balance of Terror supposed to have been the first time the Federation interacted with the Romulans in a long time? That would also be a contradiction created by SNW.)