Legendary Star Trek producer Brannon Braga suggests that Star Trek: The Next Generation didn’t need to be canceled after 7 years and could have gone on for 10 seasons.

Star Trek: The Next Generation’s 7 seasons aired in syndication from 1987 to 1994. Essentially creating the syndication model for first-run original series, TNG became a ratings juggernaut, acclaimed by critics and fans. However, Paramount made the call to end Next Gen‘s TV run and transition it to feature films after 7 years, with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine filling the void in syndication starting in 1993 while Star Trek: Voyager launched the new United Paramount Network in 1995.

Appearing on The 7th Rule with Cirroc Lofton and Ryan T. Husk, Brannon Braga helped wrap up the hit podcast’s 3-year journey reviewing every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Braga looked back at the busy timeframe of when TNG ended, when the movies were being produced, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was in full swing, and Star Trek: Voyager was being developed. Brannon then shared his belief that TNG had “another 3 years, easy” and could have gone 10 seasons. Read his quote below:

Brannon Braga: “In my mind, TNG never ended. I mean, it was taken off the air at the height of its popularity. It had another 3 years, easy.”

Answering Cirroc Lofton’s follow-up question about why it was decided that 7 seasons was the cutoff for Star Trek series, Braga noted the rising costs of producing a Star Trek series for so many years, and that, at the time, 7 seasons guaranteed re-airing in syndication in perpetuity (before the rise of streaming changed television). Read Brannon’s response to Cirroc’s question:

Brannon Braga: “It seemed… I think the thinking was after 7 years, you’ve accumulated enough episodes to have an incredible syndicated life. And things start to get more expensive by that point. Actors’ salaries, everyone, really… Enterprise ended after 4 seasons, but we also did [98] episodes. Do you know how many episodes the [Alex] Kurtzman era produced? Grand total? It might not even be 100. I don’t know. Because their seasons are so short. Seven, I wanna say, was kind of arbitrary, but I think it just… seemed about right.”

Watch Brannon Braga on The 7th Rule below:

Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s 7-season run became ‘the number’ that other Star Trek series aspired to. DS9 and Voyager also ran 7 seasons, while Enterprise was considered a ‘failure’ for only lasting 4 seasons. Paramount+’s Star Trek series ceiling became 5 seasons, although the initial idea for Star Trek: Discovery was to match TNG‘s 7 seasons before Paramount Global’s sale to Skydance Media changed everything.

To answer Brannon Braga’s question about the cumulative number of episodes of executive producer Alex Kurtzman’s Star Trek era on Paramount+, noting that Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy‘s episodes were 30 minutes in length, and with the addition of the made-for-streaming movie Star Trek: Section 31, the sum total of Kurtzman Star Trek is 251 episodes and one movie.

The decision to end Star Trek: The Next Generation after 7 seasons was made by Paramount a few years prior and was tied to what to do about the Star Trek movie franchise, as The Original Series‘ cast was aging and becoming more expensive. With TNG a proven hit on television, Paramount made the call to ‘pass the torch’ to the popular USS Enterprise-D cast to carry the movie franchise forward.

Brannon Braga enjoyed his time on Star Trek: The Next Generation, which he joined in season 4, and looks back over thirty years later wishing the show could have run even longer. Braga and Ronald D. Moore wrote the first TNG movie, Star Trek Generations, in 1994, and the duo returned to pen the most successful TNG movie of all, 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact, before Brannon moved to Star Trek: Voyager, eventually becoming showrunner, and then co-created Star Trek: Enterprise with Rick Berman,

Conventional wisdom holds that Star Trek: The Next Generation was beginning to run out of creative steam by its final season. The cast was also getting restless. For the actors, returning every couple of years to make a movie was a more attractive prospect than producing more years of 26-episode-per-season television. Regardless, there was never a plan or option for Star Trek: The Next Generation to continue past season 7.

Release Date

1987 – 1994-00-00

Network

Syndication

Showrunner

Gene Roddenberry

Directors

Cliff Bole, Les Landau, Winrich Kolbe, Rob Bowman, Robert Scheerer, Jonathan Frakes, Robert Wiemer, Gabrielle Beaumont, Alexander Singer, David Carson, Paul Lynch, Corey Allen, Patrick Stewart, Chip Chalmers, Joseph L. Scanlan, James L. Conway, Robert Lederman, Tom Benko, Timothy Bond, Robert Legato, Adam Nimoy, Robert Becker, David Livingston, LeVar Burton

Writers

René Echevarria, Maurice Hurley, Richard Manning, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Tracy Tormé, Hannah Louise Shearer, Stuart Charno, Ira Steven Behr, Sara B. Cooper, Peter Allan Fields, Herbert Wright, Frank Abatemarco, Burton Armus, Hilary Bader, Morgan Gendel, David Kemper, Michael I. Wagner, Philip LaZebnik, Robert McCullough, Susan Sackett, Nick Sagan, Fred Bronson, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Sam Rolfe