The third season of the award-winning sci-fi drama Star Trek: Discovery kicked off on October 15th on CBS All Access. One day later, several members of the cast and crew posted a video to the official CBS All Access YouTube channel confirming that the show had been renewed for a fourth season. The first scheduled production day for season four is November 2nd, as reported by Entertainment Weekly.

Although Discovery is an All Access Original, CBS introduced episodes from the first season into the fall programming lineup to fill a primetime schedule lacking in new content due to the COVID-19 pandemic, TV Line reports. Over 1.5 million total viewers tuned in to watch the intergalactic exploits of the U.S.S. Discovery the night of September 24th, according to TV Line. The event marked the three-year anniversary of the show’s streaming debut.

CBS currently boasts a robust roster of programs in the Star Trek franchise, with more on the way. A second season of Picard has yet to begin filming, but co-creator Akiva Goldsman (Batman Forever, A Beautiful Mind) told Collider in May that he felt that most of the development is done: “We are halfway through the writing of it, and we will start as soon as we can once the world opens.”

Meanwhile, development is already underway on the animated Prodigy series at Nickelodeon, Variety reports. Strange New Worlds, which covers the backstory of Captain Kirk’s predecessor Captain Christopher Pike, has plans to begin filming in 2021, as confirmed by executive producer Alex Kurtzman (Mission: Impossible III, Sleepy Hollow) during an interview with Gold Derby. Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites), creator of the adult animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks, spoke to Variety about his plans for the upcoming second season, including stories aboard Captain Riker’s ship, the U.S.S. Titan. 

Finally, a spin-off about the ruthless Captain Philippa Georgiou of the U.S.S. Shenzhou, played by Michelle Yeoh (Reign of Assassins, Tomorrow Never Dies), has already assembled a writers’ room, according to an interview Vanity Fair conducted with Kurtzman and CBS All Access’s Executive VP of Original Content, Julie McNamara. The show is titled Section 31, named for an organization introduced in Deep Space Nine as a group of covert espionage agents that technically operate under the Federation umbrella. In the Vanity Fair interview, Kurtzman compared the story of Section 31 to Clint Eastwood’s revenge-themed hitman western Unforgiven.

New episodes from the third season of Star Trek: Discovery arrive on CBS All Access every Thursday at 3 A.M. EST. You can catch up with the first two seasons courtesy of CBS All Access, priced at $5.99 a month, or $9.99 a month sans commercial interruptions.

Image credit: Raymond Flotat