Paramount Plus Just Phasered Itself in the Foot

Most of the Star Trek films have been hit by the "make it go away" setting

Oct 27, 2022

If Paramount Plus were a starship, its warp core would have blown and would be waiting for a tow back to Spacedock — again.

The subscription streaming service — which promotes itself as the home of Star Trek television, touting “every series, every episode” — while technically true, nevertheless keeps coming up against some embarrassing missteps.

This summer it was a long — and ultimately, needless — nearly two-month break in which we were paying for subscriptions but getting absolutely no new Star Trek.

As we've already covered in this space, Paramount Plus executives could have plugged that hole, if not with a new series — at least with an inventive, low-cost alternative such as a set of original Star Trek mini-series or the first professional run of some of best of the fan-produced episodes currently available on YouTube.

If that wasn't bad enough, Paramount Plus just lost the rights to most of — and all of the best of — the Star Trek movies.

(Just two: the 2009 Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, remain.)

Paramount Plus recently lost rights to most of the library of Star Trek movies to rival streamer, HBOMax

If you want to watch any of the other movies — including the original series movies or the Next Generation films — you'll have to pony up an additional subscription fee to join the competing HBOMax service.

It's not only embarrassing to Paramount Plus — and it should be, for Star Trek has been the signature Paramount media property for generations now — it simply hurts the business case for Paramount Plus.

It dilutes what ought to be Paramount's exclusive Star Trek brand.

Fans ought to be able to rely on an understanding that if they want access to Trek content, they must pay Paramount.

This latest debacle completely undermines all of that.

Articles covering the great movie fiasco have emphasized the alternative of buying DVD or Blu-ray discs, by noting, “They can’t take away your discs.”

Which, certainly, strictly speaking, is true.

But I just find it somehow offensive to have to retreat some 20 years into the technological past just to get around business decisions made by people who obviously have the lobes given a Denebian slime devil.

And, quite honestly, one of the things that we Star Trek fans were paying for was centrally located convenience.

I could, from one easily accessible page on Paramount Plus, toggle absolutely any Star Trek content I was in the mood for — at any moment.

That's not the case today.

Paramount Plus should be in the business of giving we fans more reasons to keep subscribing. And right now, they're giving us less. That's not good.