For UK Star Trek fans, the news that Paramount+ will finally launch in the UK and Ireland on 22 June was welcome and long overdue.
Fans will be delighted to hear that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Discovery and Prodigy will be available when the service launches on 22 June. However, only the first three episodes of Strange New worlds will be available, even though five have been released so far.
Future episodes will be released five weeks after being released in the US, Canada and Australia. Five weeks! The season finale of Strange New Worlds will debut on 7 July in the States, and the UK will see that episode on 10 August. This is such disappointing news. Paramount gives with one hand and takes with the other.
Money is the only logical reason I can see for Paramount’s decision to stagger the release. Think about it.
Paramount+ will be releasing all four seasons of Star Trek: Discovery and the first ten episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy. It’s the least they could do after the rushed decision to remove Discovery from Netflix just three days before season 4 was due to air.
Discovery and Prodigy can be binge-watched whilst fans wait for the weekly release of a Strange New Worlds episode. If the schedule was kept the same as North America, UK Trekkies could cancel their subs after 7 July and re-sub when Discovery season 5 is released. Or, if they don’t like Discovery (some people don’t. Weird), they can wait for the release of season 2 of Strange New Worlds next year.
With the staggered release, the streamer gets another month’s subscription fee, knowing that subscriptions will likely drop off once Trekkies have caught up. This is just supposition, of course; who knows what is in the dark mind of the corporation that holds the keys to our favourite shows.
We can only hope that future seasons of Strange New Worlds, Discovery and Prodigy will be released in the UK simultaneously with the US schedules.
Regardless of their reasons for kicking us in the teeth, I think most UK fans will agree
https://t.co/Z4V23F1DQC pic.twitter.com/XfZk43G8Dl
— Stace Williams 🇺🇦 (@stackee) June 1, 2022
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