Star Trek’s Best Series Coming To Free Streaming, No More Subscription Fees
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and The Original Series are coming to the free, ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will soon be available to stream for free on Pluto TV. According to TrekMovie.com, the ad-supported streaming service will add more than 63,000 episodes of CBS content through the end of the year, which will include the critically beloved Deep Space Nine and The Original Series. This will mean you will soon be able to watch some of the best Star Trek stories ever told, for the price of occasionally watching some commercials on Pluto TV.
This is, of course, how all television used to be when only terrestrial channels existed and rabbit ear antennae were a thing. As it is, the current, extremely crowded streaming service market is mostly dominated by paid services like Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+, but ad-supported services are increasingly becoming prominent (likely due to pretty much everyone raising subscription prices recently). Even Netflix, the formerly undisputed top dog of the streaming world is currently trying out a lower-cost version with ads.
That means that while all Star Trek series are currently available on the Paramount+ series for a subscription cost, at least Deep Space Nine and The Original Series will soon be available on Pluto TV. The streaming services is owned by Paramount Global, so this would seem to be a case of a very large media company experimenting with its IP and seeing exactly how much profit can be extracted from two of the more notable science fiction television shows of their respective time periods. If Paramount can get people to pay subscriptions to watch all Star Trek shows on Paramount+, then also get ad revenue from Pluto, why would it think twice?
There has been quite a lot of confusion when it comes to Star Trek and streaming services, which makes Deep Space Nine and The Original Series addition to Pluto TV that much more interesting. All of the Star Trek feature films abruptly left the Paramount+ streaming service only a short time ago, then popped up on Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max (at least most of them). And while all the series currently seem to be remaining on Paramount+, it would not be the least bit surprising if some tomfoolery happens there as well.
Paramount has also been working overtime to develop new Star Trek shows, all of which end up on its streaming platform and now possibly Pluto TV in the future. The company has also been breaking some new ground for the hallowed science fiction franchise, coming up with a comedic animated series (Lower Decks), a YA-oriented animated series (Prodigy), and soon, a horror-influenced show. It makes sense in this glut of Trek content, Paramount would decide to shuffle some things around.
However, Paramount still has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to compete with HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video in terms of streaming viewers. Snagging some more Star Trek fans on Pluto TV is definitely one way to go about it, but there’s a long way to House of the Dragon numbers.
