Nearly two years after the Season 4 finale — and almost seven years since its 2017 debut — Star Trek: Discovery will return for its fifth and final season in March of 2024. At CCXP in São Paulo, Brazil, Paramount+ revealed the release date window for Discovery Season 5 and dropped an action-packed clip that brings back a classic Trek concept in an entirely new way.
Because the new season of Discovery has been described as a “galaxy-wide treasure hunt,” and Johnathan Frakes has indicated that there are “Indiana Jones” vibes to the overall story, the brand new clip sees Book (David Ajala) and Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) racing against the clock while trying to decipher some kind of ancient writing on a rock face. We don’t know the context of this galaxy-wide mystery yet, but in a clip released back in July, we did learn that certain mercenaries were willing to have their entire ship ripped apart by a tractor beam at high warp, just to keep a secret.
In the new clip, Burnham and Book’s investigation is curtailed by the presence of massive alien monsters (are they monsters?) that can also cloak themselves. The idea of a cloaking device as a catch-all invisibility shield dates back to the classic Star Trek episode “Balance of Terror,” which first aired on December 15, 1966. Back then, a cloaking device was a piece of technology, but now, with these new and mysterious aliens, the ability to cloak appears to be biological.
Other than the fact that Book and Burnham are reunited, we don’t get many clues as to the actual plot of Discovery Season 5. But this new clip does prove the promise that this season will be action-packed seems accurate. Of the various post-2017 live-action Star Trek TV series, DISCO has always favored action as its true propulsive force, for better or for worse. And, it seems with Season 5, the show is going to stick to what works, with a few classic Trek tropes sprinkled in for good measure.
Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 release date
CBS Studios and Paramount+ have confirmed that Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 will debut on April 24, 2024. The first two episodes will hit Paramount+ at that time, while the remaining eight episodes of Season 5 will be released weekly on Thursdays.
As of this writing, Discovery Season 5 is expected to be the only live-action Star Trek series to drop in 2024. And, as has been widely reported, this season will serve as the finale for the entire series. Does that fact mean we should expect to see a ton of callbacks and cameos to the previous four seasons? Because we know so little about the story of Discovery Season 5, at this point, as Spock once said, there are always possibilities.
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