Star Trek’s transition away from being available on multiple streaming services will soon be complete with Deep Space Nine exiting Netflix at the end of June.
Trek’s Netflix decade ends
Netflix has revealed that all seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will be leaving the streaming service on July 1st. It was the last Star Trek series available on the streamer after TOS, Voyager and Enterprise left last September and TNG was removed in December. Subscribers can see the notification for the removal of DS9 when selecting the series.
This is an end of an era for Star Trek and Netflix. CBS (now Paramount Global) was an early adopter to licensing content to the streaming service, with all five live-action Star Trek shows joining Netflix in 2011. Late last year ViacomCBS also ended its co-production agreement for the original series Star Trek: Discovery, buying back the international distribution rights. However, as of now, the legacy Star Trek shows are still available internationally on Netflix.
It’s all about Paramount+
Following the Netflix deal, CBS also licensed all legacy Star Trek shows to both Amazon Prime Video and Hulu in the USA. These licenses all remained even after the launch of CBS All Access (now Paramount+) in 2014, however, in January of this year, all Star Trek exited Hulu and Prime Video as well. So, as of July 1, Paramount+ will be the exclusive USA subscription streaming home for all the Star Trek television shows, both legacy shows, and the new original series. There is also a Star Trek channel on Pluto TV, the ad-supported live streaming service owned by Paramount.
This is all part of a stated goal for Paramount Global to move away from licensing to third parties and to keep their owned content on their own streaming services. This has become a trend among the big media companies in the USA. And while Star Trek content continues to be available internationally on Netflix and Prime Video in many markets, it is probable the global expansion of Paramount+ will follow the same pattern.
Find more news on streaming and home video at TrekMovie.com.
They are all still on H&I if you have Xfinity, from Sunday thru Friday.
Sad thing is that it is so edited down for commercials its barely watchable.
Ughhh I can hardly bear all the commercials on P+ but cannot afford to fish out more for the commercial-free service. It buffers a ton more than Netflix does, too, for some reason, so I can’t justify splurging $10 a month for it :(
It’s strange how in the streaming era people have just seemingly forgotten that you can purchase all these shows on disc or digital formats and not have to worry about buffering, ads or who has the rights to stream it at any give time. Personally I prefer the ownership model to the “lease the right to view” model.
But streaming is so much more convenient.
I dunno. To me, convenient is knowing just where I can go this week to find my favorite show(s)… and that they won’t disappear on me. Sometimes I like being old-fashioned.
Same here. I guess since I spent most of my life in an era where we collected physical copies of movies, music, etc. I don’t see it as an inconvenience. As Ambassador Sybok said; I know where it is at and I know it hasn’t been edited or altered by whomever may be in control of it at that moment in time.
I have the DVDs, but it’s still quicker to flip on the Roku.
I lean on physical media for when there are no other options, though
Exactly. And if I have to turn it off in the middle of an episode on one TV, I can put it back on another TV exactly where I left off.
Yea it’s hard to put a disc into the player 😉🤣 Life can’t always be simple my friend
A lot of my friends wait until the season is released on bluray or DVD. I do ok, financially, so I pay for the commercial free option of Par+. I also discovered that I could download eps on my tablet for offline play. This is very convenient as I travel a bit. I guess I could bring a DVD and play it on my laptop. I live in a smaller house. The space physical media takes up can be a bit annoying. I do like the Blu-Ray for a better picture and bonus features. Which are too sparse in my opinion.
I also prefer the blu rays (tng) . Also because the quality ist significantly better because of the higher bitrates
If only P+ would cough up the cash for a TNG level restoration…but apparently CBS digital sold off all their gear. I imagine the technology has advanced considerably to make the job more efficient since then though.
I just realized I only have seasons 4, 6 & 7 on DVD. My God, I can’t watch Eddington drive Sisko nuts whenever I want to anymore! (and I guess that has been the case for a few months, because we dropped Netflix early this year.)
The image quality so cuts into the show’s rewatchabiity. It’s like you have to watch the stream or the disc on the smallest possible monitor to not get distracted by how badly it is finished in SD.
Yea it’s about time for a HD restoration of DS9 & VOY
Only’ll cost a cool $25 Million or so.
What equipment did they sell? Who is handling the Voyager documentary clip restoration in that case?
I read in an interview awhile back that the CBS-Digital department dissolved and sold off their production equipment…computers, etc. Probably the film scanners too. No idea who was hired for the DS9 Doc. Maybe CBS Digital was rebranded. I’ll see if I can find the info.
The DS9 Doc folks did their own clean up/color correction with input from DS9 DP Jonathan West, and for their own purposes to match the rest of the documentary, they also chose to crop to 16:9.
Basically, what CBS did was pull the list of film reels the documentary crew wanted out of storage, scan the raw footage to hard drives and then check out those drives to the documentary crew. The documentary folks got the clips they wanted from the raw scans, and returned the assets to CBS.
https://trekmovie.com/2019/03/01/what-we-left-behind-update-remastering-clips-of-star-trek-deep-space-nine-nearing-completion/
I would assume the same process will happen for the VOY documentary. The only difference being CBS will outsource the scanning to whatever film scanning house they work with now.
Seems pretty shortsighted to me, given that there is a huge volume of properties remaining to be scanned.
Then again, CBS is kinda the extension of GulfWestern Paramount, which is the place that razed their Western St. set to make more parking spaces, essentially ensuring that anytime a Western (like, say, THE YOUNG RIDERS) came along it would have to take its business elsewhere, which I guess was probably a step in the direction of realism given Santa Clarita’s western set is really expansive. And of course they sold off pretty much all of Trumbull’s equipment after TMP — as if motion-control tech was going to be of not much use going forward, when it was bread-and-butter essentials for nearly two more decades in VFX.
CBS Digital (now called CBX VFX) had a number of different departments/specialties. In 2019 they renamed themselves to CBS VFX and they slimmed down their focus and got rid of their in-house film scanner, among other equipment. What that means is, like many other post-production companies, they would send out the film for scanning to a specialty house that does that. It’s quite common.
Something people may not know or may not remember is that CBS Digital’s focus was never restoration. They created a special group to do the remastering of TOS in 2006 and then kept the momentum going by doing TNG. Most of the people working on the Trek remastering were freelance and/or hired for a limited time based on the project. As soon as CBS chose not to continue remastering DS9 and VOY back in 2013 the special CBS Digital group was dissolved.
Thanks for this background!
Great show
What a weird ass cast photo. I’ve never seen that one before.
Based on the framing, lens choice and actor expressions, it looks like a shot of the Prophets speaking to somebody, but before they put that horrible colored filter (which I guess might be a post effect) over everything.
While typing that, I got a weird idea: what if Quark got to experience one of these Prophet visions? I’m imagining a story where he becomes entranced by ‘The Profits” rather than the profits.
I think it was from TV Guide.
Quark did have one of those Prophet visions. It was the one where the Prophets took away Zek’s greed, and Quark had to convince them to give it back.
The photo was originally used for an OMNI magazine cover story
It should have been used for SCI FI UNIVERSE’s DEEP AND CONFUSED issue!
‘The Visitor’ came up on DS9’s broadcast tonight. A reminder that this show had it’s moments of beauty, as well.
Too bad Paramount+ has the worst digital transfers of the lo for DS9. Interlaced and the closed captions info is visible up at the top of most of their files as a little black and white line.
All the classic shows also air on regular TV stations in my state.
Really? I haven’t seen ANY Trek listed on traditional TV stations in at least 15 years, though TOS does still turn up on one of those weird ‘300’ stations every week, the one that runs VOYAGE and TIME TUNNEL at weird hours of the morning.
Yep! I don’t recall what channel it is, but I frequently pass reruns of TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT. They do marathons of different shows on different days, and they have Trek running about 10 hours a day. I have the Blu-rays and DVDs of all the shows, but I still end up watching the reruns. :)
Classic Trek is shown on over the air digital sub-channel networks. These are available in most major markets. And are often carried on cable as well, since they’re sub-channels of a major network affiliate like the local CBS or Fox station.
MeTV shows TOS on Saturday nights.
H&I (MeTV’s cousin channel) has a block of TOS-ENT every weeknight starting at 8PM.
We get the best of both worlds here in Canada. All the Star Trek shows are on a television channel and a streaming service owned by the same company. And you don’t have to subscribe to both. Eventually I do see a long-term possibility of everything being transferred to Paramount plus Canada. But from what I can tell ,there’s a strong relationship between Bell media and Paramount.
Plus, with some of the current shows being shot in Canada, I would imagine that Paramount may want to continue that synergy that exists from working in Canada and maintaining a relationship with a Canadian media Outlet.
I’m curious about how long Paramount will renew exclusive licences to BellMedia for Canada.
Beyond using Pinewood Studios for Discovery making the relationship complex, I’m wondering if Paramount is keeping an eye in the regulatory situation in Canada.
While Paramount+ exists, much of CBS streaming content (and HBO’s) streams on BellMedia’s Crave which also produces Canadian content to meet regulatory requirements in line with cable licensing (e.g. Letterkenny).
BellMedia has been advocating in regulatory and Parliamentary hearings for Netflix and Amazon Prime to have to meet requirements for Canadian Content. Paramount may wish to see bow that falls out before pressing hard on moving everything to P+ as their Canadian distribution.
“Gold standard”
To each his/her own, of course, but I didn’t like DS9. Too much Klingon politics, too many Bajoran nuns and Ferengi popes.
Then why are you taking part in a DS9 discussion?
There’s no reason someone can’t take part in a DS9 discussion just because they don’t like it. Personally, I think DS9 was the best of the classic shows, but other opinions are welcome. There’s nothing wrong with disliking a show and commenting on it.
At a high level, true, but a lot of folks who decide to take a s**t on a particular show are doing it only to demonstrate their sphincter still works.
Sphincter or maw? Telling somebody to stop their jawing when they are dissing your fave is maybe slightly less rude, and just as accurate when it comes to gatekeeping.
Phil, this was mild statement from namanske.
While I get frustrated when this board seems to spin out into looping cycles if negativity, it seems reasonable to be able to point out that the narrative saying “DS9 was the best Trek ever!” doesn’t represent a universal view. The adamant position of the fans who love DS9 as the underdog series in the franchise can get a bit much.
I very much liked DS9, but can’t say it’s unequivocally the best ever. On its own, I don’t think that DS9 would have made me a fan of the franchise even if I think that there should be a similar series (Vanguard!!!) in this generation of new productions.
Our kids still can’t get into DS9 even if they still rewatch Voyager on their own.
My spouse is reluctant to invest the time in a rewatch of so many episodes, especially when it’s virtually unbearable to look at together on our OLED television.
So, I can take it that, while DS9 was a great product of its era, it’s not for everyone and the lack of remastering will continue to be a problem.
Oh, sorry, didn’t realize that TrekMovie was writing articles just for you. I’m so glad that you took the time to iterate to us why you, specifically, didn’t like a series.
I can sleep better tonight knowing a guy named “Navamske” doesn’t like DS9, it’s truly the panacea I need to rest soundly.
Thank you for taking the time to share your opinion in this conversation, I’ll make sure that it’s notated in the minutes.
I agree with those who advocate purchasing the actual physical media – I have all my favorite Trek shows and certain seasons of others, select box sets, and all the films on DVD. That said, I do subscribe to P+ for the new stuff and some other shows like Twilight Zone, 1883 and their selection of movies isn’t bad, with some first-run titles. The TMP Directors Edition was a highlight. I subscribe to it as an Amazon Prime add-on, so the signal is pretty stable, but the service itself leaves much to be desired. Especially since I pay the $10/month for ‘Premium.” and they still show me ads…for their OWN shows?? The interface is clunky and remedial, and it’s a shame our favorite franchise is stuck behind this particular paywall.
Amazon and Apple plug their other shows with ads in front of their original programming. Are you seeing ads on anything besides originals though? That’s the only time I see them with the no ad version of P+.
Nope, just ads on their own originals, Ian. Which I find kind of silly because…I already have the service – I can see what they’re offering myself. Just annoying.
It should be skippable like the others do, then it wouldn’t be so big a deal. But the other fundamental ways the service is lacking compared to its competition are more egregious to me.
Sadly the quality of the picture and the subtitles is really bad on Paramount+. I recently cancelled Netflix but subscribe to Paramount+. With DS9, colors are muddier, there are strange video artifacts across the top, and the subtitles are often formatted wrong or even spelled wrong. Also, audio always seems lousy to me on Paramount through my Apple TV, even on new shows like Discovery and SNW.
why aren’t they calling the pilot “Emissary”?
Our family missed PICARD (no CBS access).
Our family will miss DS9 (no Paramount +).
We don’t care.
There’s lots of other stuff to view.
The stories might be contemporary but the ancient video masters are not. I swear some of the season one episodes look like VHS. Where is the HD remaster?
I guess I’m in this case, lucky to live in The Netherlands where all the “classic” series (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT) are still on Netflix these days… DSC was on Netflix but it was pulled off by CBS/Paramount+… PIC and LOW are still on Amazon Plus in Europe, but there is no change to watch DSC, Prodigy and SNW legally.. and that is sad!
Does anyone here knows, if all of the Star Trek series are coming to the P+ alternative, SkyShowTime?
looking back on these 90s promo photos of DS9 (and TNG, VOY, etc) the looks and staging of the actors is so strange….Kira and Sisko just look odd
Going to really miss watching it on Netflix. End of an era.