“Unfortunately Discovery’s loss was our gain. So they basically said, ‘Look, we think we’re done after four seasons.’ And we said, ‘Hey, what about our whole ‘Let’s get the fans to the TOS era,’ because what happens to all these people, and how does this person will come up?’ And they were like, ‘No, that’s fair. That’s true.’ And they said, ‘What do you need to get there?’ And we said, ‘Six episodes’ and they said okay.”
“The good news was, when I say ‘they,’ really the folks who make this show wanted this to happen too, but there are fiscal constraints that are real. You know what’s going on with Paramount. So to move things forward in that environment was a challenge, but everybody—CBS, Paramount, Strange New Worlds, and [Alex Kurtzman’s production company] Secret Hideout were all pulling in the same direction. And that’s how we ended up getting six episodes. So it was a wasn’t really a negotiation, but it was a heavy lift for pretty much everybody, because everybody wanted not to have another Discovery circumstance where it felt abrogated in a way that wasn’t thorough.”
Surprisingly candid stuff. I'm glad that some of the CBS pencil-pushers are creative-minded enough to make this happen.