Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Is Like Indiana Jones According to Jonathan Frakes

Jonathan Frakes believes that Star Trek: Discovery is returning to its roots as a series focused on action and adventure in its fifth and final season. Frakes -- the Star Trek: The Next Generation star turned veteran director -- has directed episodes of every season of Star Trek: Discovery, including the penultimate episode of Didscovery's fifth season, unaware at the time that it would be the first half of the show's series finale. In an interview published in Star Trek Explorer #8, Frakes discussed the tone of Star Trek: Discovery's upcoming season, comparing it to the high adventure of the Indiana Jones movies.

"The first half of the season finale of Discovery, by the way, is Indiana Jones this year instead of the heavy emo of season four," Frakes said. "Discovery is back on track as an action-adventure show, and I guess they got their marching orders to maintain that. Everybody has embraced it, from Michelle Paradise and Alex, down through the cast. There's a new energy and a new mandate."

He continued, "It was a thrill for me to find some levity in some of those scenes. That's why First Contact was successful, because you build and then add just a little levity to let them steam out, so you can restart. That's why Deadpool is such a fabulous franchise, because it doesn't hurt. Audiences can handle levity. The Indiana Jones reference is a perfect example. Nobody does that better than Spielberg."

Star Trek: Discovery's fourth season started within that action-adventure genre framework. A misunderstanding in the season premiere, "Kobayashi Maru," during attempts by Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Cleveland "Book" Booker (David Ajala) to get the inhabitants of Alshain IV to rejoin the federation led to a tense chase scene. After that, Discovery's fourth season did take a turn into more intimate, introspective territory, focusing on Book's grief after losing his homeworld, the strain that put on his relationship with Burnham, and the heady challenge of making first contact with an extragalactic species much more alien to humanity than what Starfleet usually encountered. The return to an action-heavy approach is evident in the first clip released from Season 5.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Release Date

The news that Star Trek: Discovery, the show that brought Star Trek back to television (via streaming) for the first time in more than a decade, would end with its fifth season came as a surprise to those making it. Making the final episode first the remit of a series finale, rather than a season finale, required some reshoots.

"I directed the first half of the finale of Season 5, which turned out to be the real finale," Frakes told Variety in an interview published in July. "So that was a very emotional end as well. When we did it, we didn't know it was the end. And then [Discovery executive producer and director] Olatunde Osunsanmi had to go back up and do two or three days of new stuff to actually make the finale the finale."

Star Trek: Discovery has wrapped filming and is scheduled to return in early 2024 on Paramount+. The first four seasons of Star Trek: Discovery are streaming now on Paramount+.