Star Trek is back on TV, and for better or worse they’ve updated the universe to fit in better with the other content that’s on television. Lots of explosions and lasers and awesome space battles, I really do suggest that you check it out and try not to pay too close attention to the series’s canon nor the science that they try to mention. I have no real complaints, this is likely the best pilot episode of any of the Trek series, all of them were rough or had content that made no sense.

I do have complaints though. I suggested above that you check it out, and that’s where most of my complaints come from. Here’s your options:

Option One:
Watch it live on CBS. Your time to do this has come and gone. CBS ran the first episode on broadcast television, there will be no other episodes on broadcast TV. This particular episode was delayed by 18 minute so CBS could run 15 minutes of commercials for ONLY CBS properties and put in a couple segments from Oprah’s first segment on 60 Minutes. That segment was her moderating a panel of people discussing Trump and the various things have been going on with the Trump presidency. Infuriating to watch and a complete failure on her part to listen to people saying demonstrably false things and not pushing back or showing them the proof of their ignorance or educating them on just how Russian interference would effect everyone in our country. I was legit angry by the time the 60 Minutes broadcast was finished. What a failure on CBS to have that kind of content, what a failure for Oprah to not be able to control the crowd, what a failure for our country to have people that would rather stick to their guns than investigate the world outside of their tiny political bubbles. Shameful of CBS to advertise Star Trek to start at one time and then intentionally push it back to force advertisements for their content out. They had complete control of this process and it’s unforgivable that they would do this. I can’t imagine that any of the local CBS Affiliates were happy with the situation either.

Option Two:
Stream it on the internet. If you’re in the USA, your only choice is CBS All Access. CBS-AA has no free tier and costs either $6 a month for advertisement supplemented content or $10 a month for an “Ad-Free Experience”. I tried out the 48 hour free test of the ad-free version, and while the app is snappy and among the best streaming apps I’ve tried, there’s not nearly enough content on it to justify even a $1/month subscription. I’m already subscribed to Netflix with thousands of interesting series (all the other Trek series are on Netflix) and I’m already subscribed to Amazon Prime (which also has all the Trek series, two of them in HD, the CBS-AA app does not have the HD versions), so why would I want to subscribe to CBS-AA for just one series? None of the other content interests me.

If you’re not in the US, you can stream it on Netflix. You can try to VPN out to a country that Netflix hasn’t blocked yet and try streaming it that way, then at least you’ll be counted as someone that officially and sorta legally watched it.

If you do buy the CBS-AA subscription you should be aware there are only going to be a total of 16 episodes in the first season of STD (yes, that’s the acronym) and they plan on splitting it up into two different segments, the first 8 running from September to November, the second half sometime in Q1 of 2018, so if you’re there just for STDs, you’ll have a few months were there are no new STDs to consume.

So to sum it all up: CBS is screwing the pooch on this series on the business side. Star Trek has always been a broadcast series and it deserves to be in the public eye and not behind a paywall. It’s worth it to watch though, so try out the free 48 hours of ad-free service to see how you feel about it.