In the course of researching Star Trek: Prodigy for my review of the first part of Season 1, I learned something very odd. The first half of the season was itself cleaved in two, with a few episodes being broadcast, followed by a month-long break, before a second batch were broadcast leading up to the mid-season finale. This appalling scheduling – and on a streaming platform, no less – already made no sense and arguably damaged Prodigy, making it harder for the series to gain traction and retain viewers, and that’s something I addressed in my review. But one thing that’s even worse is that for Paramount+ subscribers outside of the United States – such as in Australia – the second batch of episodes weren’t broadcast at all.
When ViacomCBS announced its intention to take Discovery Season 4 away from fans, the same thing happened. Although Paramount+ existed in Latin America, Australia, and Scandinavia, those regions weren’t going to get Discovery Season 4 at the same time as the American version of Paramount+, effectively meaning that Trekkies in those regions had paid for nothing.
A rather barebones, unapologetic Twitter post from Paramount+ Australia.
We’ve talked on several occasions about ViacomCBS prioritising American Trekkies and viewers over those of us in the rest of the world, but I had hoped that the rollout of Paramount+ internationally would finally bring an end to this disgusting, outdated attitude. Although the pace of the streaming service’s rollout would make a snail covered in molasses riding a sloth up a glacier look fast by comparison, I’m still halfway hopeful that it’ll arrive here in the UK before the end of 2022 – and if I dare to dream, I’d hope that Paramount+ will be available worldwide… one day.
But even if ViacomCBS magically finds competent leadership in the months ahead, meaning Paramount+ will indeed be available here in the UK in time for, say, the debut of Strange New Worlds, it now seems as though the corporation can’t offer fans a guarantee that subscribing to Paramount+ will actually mean we’ll be able to watch any new Star Trek. So… what’s the point of Paramount+, then, and why should I bother subscribing at all?
Hey Paramount+, I fixed your slogan.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that there are some big questions that ViacomCBS and the team behind Paramount+ need to answer as soon as possible regarding the availability of upcoming Star Trek productions. But we can add into the mix the very real and very serious question of whether any non-American Paramount+ subscribers will be able to watch any new or upcoming Star Trek shows at the same time as viewers in the United States. And then we’ll have to decide for ourselves whether we can trust the answer given the corporation’s poor track record going back several years at least.
Last year, when Paramount+ debuted in the United States and began its painfully slow international rollout, I was optimistic and even dare I say looking forward to the streaming platform’s arrival here in the UK. Being able to subscribe to Star Trek’s home, its native platform, felt like a good opportunity, and as I’ve said on several occasions: I want to offer ViacomCBS and the Star Trek franchise my support and financial backing in whatever way I can.
ViacomCBS is the corporation in charge of Paramount+.
But now, having seen just how poorly ViacomCBS has been treating Paramount+ subscribers outside of the United States, the idea of signing up for Paramount+ when it eventually arrives in the UK is getting harder and harder to justify. That’s before we get into the technical issues that plague the platform: in just the last couple of weeks there was an episode of Prodigy that wasn’t available, error messages about servers being “too busy” that seem to be trying to force subscribers to pay for even more expensive packages, and myriad other glitches and screw-ups that leave Paramount+ in the United States feeling like a poor quality product.
Given that viewers in the United States are ViacomCBS’ priority – which they clearly and demonstrably have been thus far – that hardly leaves me feeling optimistic about the kind of service I can expect if and when Paramount+ makes its way across the Atlantic. If Paramount+ were to repeat the Prodigy mistake or their initial Discovery Season 4 plans with Strange New Worlds, for example, then why should I – or any other Trekkie, come to that – bother to sign up? It brings us right back to the arguments about piracy: if ViacomCBS offers fans no lawful way to access their new shows, then piracy becomes the default option.
Will Trekkies in the rest of the world get to enjoy Strange New Worlds along with our American friends… or at all?
Paramount+ does not exist in a vacuum. The choice fans are presented with is not “pay for Paramount+ or don’t watch anything.” Piracy exists, and with a minimal amount of effort it’s possible for anyone with a phone, tablet, or computer to watch or download every new episode of Star Trek. To compete against that successfully, Paramount+ has to do what Netflix, Disney+, and others have done: the platform has to be a compelling, inexpensive alternative.
That means it needs to work, first and foremost. If fans log in and try to watch the latest episode but find that it won’t play or, as happened with Prodigy Season 1, Episode 9, it just isn’t there at all, then the entire argument behind paying to subscribe falls down. And if fans in the rest of the world can’t access something that fans in America can, how on earth does ViacomCBS expect to convince anyone that a Paramount+ subscription is a worthwhile investment?
Actual photo of the Paramount+ server.
We’re facing inflation and a significant rise in the cost of living. Speaking for myself, as someone on a fixed income, I’m already considering that it may not be possible to keep all of my current subscriptions, let alone add a new one into the mix. In order to overcome that, or to make sure folks are willing to consider Paramount+ a must-have subscription that they can’t live without, ViacomCBS has to demonstrate that the service is a solid investment. That means basic competence to begin with – fixing technical issues, ensuring that the service works properly, and that it has an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. But from the point of view of someone outside of the United States, it means ViacomCBS and Paramount+ need a major attitude adjustment. The corporation and its streaming platform need to demonstrate to Trekkies – and to viewers of all of their other programmes – that they aren’t just fixated on America; that those of us in the rest of the world matter to them too. If they can’t, I see no reason whatsoever why we should offer them our money.
This is an own goal; a self-inflicted wound from Paramount+ that the streaming service absolutely does not need to make. Take a look at the competition: Disney+ doesn’t gate off shows like The Mandalorian or films like Encanto – once they’re on Disney+ they’re on Disney+ for everyone, and while Disney+ has had its own international rollout issues, the service is streets ahead of Paramount+. Paramount+ has existed in its current form for almost a year – and going back to CBS All Access, for almost five years. There has been time for ViacomCBS to learn how to act and how to get this right – but they have consistently failed to do so.
Disney+ doesn’t gatekeep like this – and neither should Paramount+ if it wants to compete.
There’s no question in my mind that ViacomCBS is mismanaging Paramount+ in a serious, potentially fatal way. For a second-tier platform like this to survive the “streaming wars” it has to make an offer that viewers simply can’t refuse. It has to compete not only against the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, but also against the option of piracy, and it has to convince folks like me that I’ll actually get a decent service if I part with my money. So far, I don’t see Paramount+ as a compelling investment as someone living outside of the United States. And even if I were in America, given the other issues and faults with Paramount+ the best I can say is that it might be a service I pay for one month out of twelve to binge-watch a few shows before cancelling.
In short, bringing Paramount+ to the UK – and to countries and territories around the world – will only matter if the service brings with it all of the new and upcoming shows that American viewers can look forward to. If it doesn’t, or if those shows are going to be delayed by many months, then fans are pretty quickly going to see Paramount+ as a bad offer. If the corporation allows that mindset to take hold, it will be very difficult to change the narrative later on, so they need to get this right from day one. Paramount+ needs to bolt out of the gate with a strong, good value offer that can compete with Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. That means the current “America First” attitude of the ViacomCBS board has got to go.
Paramount+ is owned and operated by ViacomCBS and is available in the United States, Scandinavia, Latin America, and Australia. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Although this article doesn’t get into major plot spoilers, minor spoilers are still present for Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1, Episodes 1-10.
I wanted to cover Star Trek: Prodigy as extensively as I cover every other current Star Trek series. I had plans to write individual episode reviews, theories, and additional commentary and discussion pieces about some of the season’s themes and stories. But because ViacomCBS made the utterly inexplicable decision to withhold the series and prevent it from being broadcast outside of the United States, I felt that I couldn’t offer the show my support. As a result, this is the first time I’ve talked about Prodigy here on the website since the first season premiered.
Star Trek: Prodigy is a co-production between CBS Studios and Nickelodeon – both of which are subsidiaries of ViacomCBS. Nickelodeon is a kids’ television channel that is available in more than 70 countries and territories around the world, from here in the UK to South Africa, Pakistan, and beyond. It would have been incredibly easy and inexpensive for ViacomCBS to organise an international broadcast for Prodigy using their existing Nickelodeon channels – but they chose not to do so.
ViacomCBS owns and operates both CBS Studios and Nickelodeon.
Prodigy’s primary audience – children – are unlikely to be too upset by this, as they aren’t involved with online fan communities and the like. But for Trekkies and adult fans, there really is only one way to interpret this move from ViacomCBS, especially considering that the corporation has pulled other similar moves with Lower Decks Season 1 and Discovery Season 4 in just the last couple of years. This is ViacomCBS prioritising the United States over the rest of the world; taking an incredibly blinkered, shortsighted approach that has already done serious harm to the Star Trek franchise and several of its new and upcoming shows. Unfortunately, that means it isn’t possible to review or discuss Prodigy without taking a moment to acknowledge the truly awful way in which the show has been handled by Star Trek’s corporate overlords.
Another indication of how poorly ViacomCBS is managing the Star Trek franchise is evident in the lack of any toys or tie-in products for Star Trek: Prodigy. Toys and games aren’t just a way for a corporation to make extra money – they’re a way to keep younger fans engaged with the show and the wider Star Trek universe during the rest of the week when they aren’t watching the latest episode. It’s also a great way to introduce brand-new potential fans to Prodigy and to Star Trek; kids playing with their friends might be interested in the toys and check out the series from there. It might sound silly, but one of my earliest memories of Star Trek is actually a toy phaser that my uncle showed me when I was very young.
I’m pretty sure that this is the toy phaser I’m remembering.
I’ve seen on social media some very creative Trekkies who’ve hand-made plush toys of Murf or 3D printed combadges so that their kids would be able to have something Prodigy-related to play with. But these products should have been available officially in time for the show’s premiere. At the very least there should’ve been dolls or figures of the main characters, pretend-play toys of things like phasers and tricorders, and perhaps a playset of the USS Protostar. The fact that ViacomCBS has failed to create any merchandise whatsoever for Prodigy is yet another way in which the corporation is failing the Star Trek franchise.
Finally, we have the broadcast schedule for Star Trek: Prodigy. The series initially ran for a mere four episodes (including the feature-length premiere) between late October and mid-November, before taking a break. The second batch of episodes ran from January to the beginning of February, and the first season will now take an extended break. Broadcasting the series in this way is stupid. Just as fans were beginning to get into the show, it disappeared for more than a month, and its so-called “mid-season break” seems to be scheduled to last from now until at least this summer.
Star Trek: Prodigy streams on Paramount+… but only if you’re lucky enough to live in the United States. Even in Australia, subscribers to Paramount+ have only been able to see the first four episodes at time of writing.
Paramount+ is a streaming service. It’s a crappy, second-tier streaming service plagued by technical problems and a ridiculously slow international rollout, but it’s a streaming service nevertheless. There is no need for Prodigy to have to go off the air to free up space for Discovery or Picard – especially given that the shows are targeting completely different audiences. Screwing up the broadcast schedule so badly is enough to put off casual viewers, and these are exactly the kind of people that ViacomCBS needs to hook in and retain in order to make Star Trek and Paramount+ sustainable in the long-term. Decisions like these aren’t just an idiotic annoyance, they actively work against Prodigy’s success, making it much more difficult for the show to gain traction and appeal to the wider audience that both it and Paramount+ need.
So that’s the corporate state of play surrounding Prodigy’s first season, and as you can see there are major issues that ViacomCBS needs to begin addressing immediately to give the series a much-needed boost. An international broadcast would be a good start, but unfortunately that isn’t the only thing that the corporation has got wrong when it comes to Prodigy. The reason I bring up these points is not to crap all over Prodigy, but because I genuinely enjoy the series and want to see it succeed. Right now, ViacomCBS is shooting the series in the foot and harming its potential success through corporate mismanagement on a truly epic scale.
I genuinely want to see Prodigy succeed and bring a new generation of Trekkies into the fandom.
As Trekkies, I firmly believe that we need to be aware of these things. We also have to be willing to be vocal and call out ViacomCBS when the corporation makes mistakes. ViacomCBS has a marketing team of its own – it doesn’t need fans to blindly sing its praises and pretend that it can do no wrong. If anything, what ViacomCBS needs is more criticism and more Trekkies willing to hold its feet to the fire in order to ensure these kinds of mistakes are corrected and never repeated. Star Trek as a whole needs better leadership and better management on the corporate side, and the issues surrounding Prodigy Season 1 are just one example among many.
But Dennis, I hear you ask, aren’t you from the United Kingdom? How on earth were you able to watch Star Trek: Prodigy if it’s only available in the United States? Well, I’m glad you asked! Of course it’s incredibly easy for anyone with a computer to pirate Prodigy – and given that the series is unavailable by any other means, piracy is the only option for Trekkies outside of the United States. I reckon that gives all of us the absolute moral justification to pirate the series. But of course, piracy is against the law, so there’s no way you’d catch me doing something like that. Instead, I – a disabled person on a low income – moved to my second home in the United States (in the middle of a global pandemic) just so I could watch Prodigy. Don’t believe me? Look, here’s a photograph of my house:
This is absolutely my house. And it’s clearly in the United States. Which is definitely where I am.
So let’s shelve the corporate bullshit for now, because I promised you a review of Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1, Part 1 and so far all we’ve done is talk about ViacomCBS!
The great thing about Prodigy is that it manages to absolutely nail the feel of a Star Trek show. The best kids’ shows have always managed to find a way to offer interesting content for adults as well as children, and Prodigy is right up there with the absolute best of modern children’s television in that regard. I was curious, as an adult, whether Prodigy would really be all that interesting, or whether I’d find it too basic due to its target audience – but I’m happy to report that the show really does bring a lot to the table.
Prodigy is also a fantastic “first contact” – i.e. a great way for anyone brand-new to the Star Trek franchise to get acquainted with the universe and the way things work. This is something that could easily have been overlooked as the series brought in Captain Janeway and tried to fit a new story into a long-established setting, but I would absolutely recommend Prodigy for both children and adults who are looking to get started with the Star Trek franchise.
Prodigy will be a great “first contact” for new young Trekkies.
From the point of view of someone who’s been a Trekkie for over thirty years and who watched and enjoyed Voyager during its original run, I was surprised by just how much Prodigy felt like a homecoming. There was enough explanation of what was going on to gently guide newbies into Star Trek for the first time, as already mentioned, but beyond that I found a series steeped in the rich lore of the franchise.
The presence of Captain Janeway obviously connects the show to Voyager in a pretty big way, and there are other references to Voyager that longstanding fans will certainly be interested in. But Prodigy managed to walk a delicate line between being Star Trek: Voyager II and being its own thing, never straying too far into sequel territory that would be offputting for new fans, but never making Janeway and other references and callbacks to past iterations of Star Trek feel tokenistic; in practically every episode I felt Prodigy got this balance just right.
Look who’s back!
Modern iterations of Star Trek are lauded for their diverse casts, but in terms of alien races, Prodigy has them all beat! There are literally no humans to be seen – this version of Janeway is a hologram, something that pre-release marketing made clear! All of the other main characters are from a variety of alien races, some familiar and some brand-new.
There’s often talk within the Star Trek fan community about certain characters feeling under-utilised by their respective shows; such a disagreement even led to at least one departure from Star Trek, when Denise Crosby quit her role on The Next Generation. This was noticeable all the way back in The Original Series, too, where some characters could feel secondary in all but a handful of stories. Modern Star Trek has tended to focus on specific protagonists: Michael Burnham in Discovery and Picard in, well, Picard. Prodigy is different, and each of the main characters feel like they have an important role both on the ship and within the stories that the show has told so far.
Most of the main characters together on the Protostar’s bridge.
Murf attracted a lot of attention for their incredibly cute design, and I’ve definitely seen a strong positive reaction to Murf through my limited interactions with the Star Trek fan community. But for me, the breakout star of the first half of Season 1 has been Rok-Tahk – the youngest member of the crew, voiced by young actress Rylee Alazraqui. Another of the show’s more unusual character designs, Rok-Tahk has a striking, rock-like appearance and large stature that seems completely at odds with her quiet, sweet personality. Perhaps it’s this initial disconnect that first made the character so interesting, but Rok-Tahk had moments of bravery and significant character growth over those first ten episodes that really stood out to me.
Later seasons of Deep Space Nine and Season 3 of Enterprise in particular had introduced Star Trek to serialised storytelling years ago, but one of the defining things about the franchise since its return to the small screen in 2017 had been an embrace of fully serialised storytelling – for better or for worse, depending on your point of view. Lower Decks definitely pulled Star Trek back in the direction of episodic television, though, and there have since been thoroughly enjoyable standalone (or at least semi-standalone) episodes of Discovery. Prodigy is a surprising blend of the two; a number of standalone stories contained within a serialised framework.
The villainous Diviner is part of Prodigy’s ongoing serialised story.
This allows for genuine character development, and it’s been amazing to see the young crew of the USS Protostar grow into their roles, becoming a true Starfleet crew in every sense of the term. Individual episodes may take the crew on different adventures, but unlike most of the stories in shows like The Next Generation and Voyager, the lessons the crew of the Protostar learned stay with them. This allows for the overarching story of their conflict with the mysterious Diviner to unfold slowly while taking the crew on varied and fun adventures. This is the kind of storytelling model that Strange New Worlds has teased us with – and if the creative team in charge of that show manage to do half as well as the writers and producers of Prodigy, we’re in for a good time!
Prodigy has an amazing title sequence, with a theme that truly feels like it could’ve come from any of the pre-Enterprise shows. The adventurous, up-tempo music is pitch-perfect for the Star Trek franchise, and for the kind of series that Prodigy is, and it’s played over a fun title sequence that harkens back to the style used from The Original Series through to Enterprise. Every Star Trek show needs a fun, memorable theme and opening titles, and Prodigy absolutely nails that. It might sound like a silly thing to compliment, but this style of title sequence and this type of theme music are, in many ways, hallmarks of the Star Trek franchise.
The USS Protostar in flight as seen in the show’s title sequence.
Many Trekkies have noted over the years that a starship is an extra member of the crew; an extension of the series’ main cast. Prodigy brings a fun design to the table with the USS Protostar, one that appears externally to be very much in line with other 24th Century Starfleet vessels – albeit on a slightly smaller scale. The addition of its unique engine adds not only to the design of the ship, making it stand out, but also adds to the overall lore of Star Trek; it’s quite possible, in my opinion, that we’ll see this method of propulsion cropping up in future Star Trek productions.
Internally, the ship brings several different Star Trek designs together. I note influences from the Kelvin-timeline USS Enterprise on the Protostar’s bridge in particular, with the use of bright lights and sleek lines. The use of holographic displays in addition to flat panels is a continuation of a trend that we’ve seen in much of modern Star Trek, and the show takes full advantage of its animated nature to do things with holograms that would be expensive in live-action.
Zero at one of the Kelvin-esque bridge consoles.
Within the USS Protostar are most of the familiar rooms that we’d expect any 24th Century starship to have. The design of the transporter room was one I found to be especially clever; it feels like there are influences from the USS Discovery and the USS Voyager in particular. It’s important for any franchise to have common design elements – these are the visual cues for viewers that they’re watching Star Trek, not another random sci-fi franchise. Generally the designs across Prodigy have done well in that regard – and that’s before we get into the various designs that make a return from past iterations of the franchise.
Prodigy brought back Janeway’s familiar Voyager-era uniform (at least some of the time!) but pairs it with a scaled-back combadge design based on that used in The Original Series (and Lower Decks). The simplified combadge design works pretty well, and when taken in the broader context of those being used in Discovery, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds (soon) and even to an extent Picard, it gives modern Star Trek a sense of consistency that is otherwise difficult to come by with so many different time periods in play! So I like the return to a more basic design – even if it was admittedly odd, at first, to see Janeway sporting this style of combadge.
Dal in the captain’s chair.
There’s a lot more I want to say about Prodigy, but we’d start getting into serious spoiler territory! So perhaps it’s best to end things here. Despite the damaging corporate nonsense that is, sadly, doing harm to Prodigy, the show itself has been a lot of fun. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a series that was deliberately pitched at such a young audience, but what I found was a genuinely great Star Trek show, one with all of the heart and spirit of adventure that has defined the franchise since its inception more than fifty years ago. It’s not the same as what came before, and there are kid-friendly elements and choices that you wouldn’t expect to see in any other Star Trek series. But those things aren’t front-and-centre the whole time, and overall the series has a lot to offer even if, like me, you’re not that young anymore!
I hope that Prodigy can succeed at bringing in hordes of new, younger fans. With a potential Starfleet Academy series also in the offing, and Lower Decks trying to bring in fans of animated comedy, there’s the potential for the Star Trek fandom to grow a lot over the next few years – something that will hopefully shore up the franchise and see it continuing to be supported for years to come. Of all the shows currently in production, Prodigy has the most potential, at least in my view, to bring in totally new fans.
Here’s hoping Prodigy will create lots of new Trekkies!
It’s up to all of us to try to make the fandom a welcoming place. I remember attending my first fan meet-ups in the early/mid-1990s, meeting older Trekkies who’d been fans since the days of The Original Series. No one made me feel unwelcome, even if I hadn’t seen every episode or film, and I hope that we can all extend that same courtesy to newbies who are jumping into Star Trek for the first time after getting excited by Prodigy. I’ve already heard anecdotally of new Prodigy fans who are jumping into Voyager to spend more time with Captain Janeway! Perhaps that could be a great excuse for ViacomCBS to finally get Voyager remastered… well, a fan can dream!
If you’ve been sleeping on Prodigy, or waiting to see how its first season was received, I hope you’ll give it a try. Stick with it for the first three or four episodes at least before judging it, and keep in mind that as a kids’ show it isn’t going to be exactly the same as past iterations of the franchise. There’s no shame in disliking Prodigy or finding that its tone isn’t right for you – but in my view, if you stick with it you’ll find a genuine Star Trek series that embodies all of the elements that fans have long enjoyed about the franchise.
I was surprised at just how invested I became in Prodigy and its characters. The world-building is fantastic, the stories dramatic and even emotional. It’s a Star Trek series through and through, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Now if only ViacomCBS would allow it to be broadcast…
Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1, Part 1 consists of ten episodes and is available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States. Some episodes are available to stream on Paramount+ in Australia, Latin America, and Scandinavia too. No further international distribution has been announced. The Star Trek franchise – including Prodigy, Voyager, and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I like Star Trek. I’ve been a Trekkie since I first watched The Next Generation in the early 1990s, and watching that series kicked off a lifelong love of the franchise that continues to this day. Over a span of three decades I’ve watched every single film and episode – practically all of them several times over – and in addition I’ve spent a lot of money on plenty of merchandise, ranging from action figures and coffee table books to artwork and stationery. My house is decorated with Star Trek posters and action figures in display cases, and if you ever stop by for a coffee you’ll almost certainly drink it out of a Star Trek mug. But Star Trek, it seems, doesn’t reciprocate.
At the very least, the suits in charge of the franchise at ViacomCBS do not care one iota about any Star Trek fan outside of North America – as evidenced by the fact that, for the second year in a row, a brand-new Star Trek series is not going to be made available to fans across the world.
Logo for ViacomCBS – the corporation that owns Star Trek.
Star Trek: Prodigy premieres in a couple of days’ time, and just as happened with Lower Decks in August 2020, the series is going to be kept away from fans outside of North America. This decision re-emphasises ViacomCBS’ disgusting attitude to the franchise’s non-American fans, but in one significant way it’s an even worse and more egregious insult than the Lower Decks debacle was.
Why do I say that? Because Prodigy is a co-production between CBS Studios and Nickelodeon – both of which are ViacomCBS subsidiaries. Nickelodeon, as I’m sure you know, is a children’s television channel that is broadcast across the world – in more than 70 countries from New Zealand to Ukraine and South Africa to Pakistan. In order to make Prodigy available to a worldwide audience, all ViacomCBS would have needed to do was put the series on Nickelodeon – something incredibly easy to do as Nickelodeon is a channel it already owns and operates. It wouldn’t have even cost the corporation any money, as there would have been no expensive rights agreements or broadcast licenses to negotiate.
ViacomCBS literally owns Nickelodeon and all of its international channels.
The decision not to broadcast the show on Nickelodeon can only be taken one way: it’s an insult. ViacomCBS is once again throwing up a middle finger to Star Trek’s international fanbase – a sizeable fanbase that must at the very least equal the number of Trekkies in the United States.
At first I thought I was okay with it. Prodigy is a show for kids, after all, and most kids won’t care. But the more I thought about it the more I kept returning to the argument I made in the run-up to Lower Decks’ premiere last year: that this is not an acceptable way for ViacomCBS to behave.
Star Trek became a global brand at the behest of ViacomCBS and its predecessors. The corporation adores globalism because it wants to make more and more profit – like a greedy Ferengi – from people who don’t live in the United States. But creating a global brand comes with a responsibility that doesn’t stop at international borders, and for seemingly no reason at all ViacomCBS is abdicating its responsibility to Trekkies.
Photo from the ViacomCBS boardroom.
I get it – ViacomCBS wants people to sign up for its mediocre second-tier streaming platform: Paramount+. The future is digital, and the corporation wants Paramount+ to be a success as more people around the world stop tuning in to broadcast television. But if that’s the case, ViacomCBS needs to make Paramount+ available internationally – the platform’s international rollout has been painfully slow and incredibly patchy, with films and shows the corporation owns not being available on the platform even after Paramount+ arrives in some regions.
ViacomCBS is trying to tie Star Trek to Paramount+, using the franchise to hook Trekkies in and convince us to subscribe. There’s a profit motive here – but that doesn’t absolve them of the responsibility they have to fans of their programmes and franchises. Star Trek only exists and was only able to be revived in 2017 because of its international fanbase – a deal with Netflix reportedly paid for almost the entire cost of Discovery’s first season. Yet time and again, ViacomCBS is content to ignore its international fans and leave us in the cold.
Prodigy will only be available to American audiences via Paramount+.
This isn’t just about one series – or two series now, counting Lower Decks last year. The Star Trek franchise is constantly prioritising fans in North America over us out here in the rest of the world. Trailers and clips for upcoming shows or even marketing material will be quite literally gated off on social media, with fans outside North America being told that “this content is not available in your location.” Star Trek’s official shop offers a paltry range of products internationally when compared to its North American offerings, and ViacomCBS is quite happy to ignore any and all questions on the subject of international availability.
Look at any recent social media post promoting Prodigy and you’ll see a slew of messages and comments from fans overseas. Most are polite, simply enquiring about if and when the series will be made available in their neck of the woods. And Star Trek’s social media team ignores every last one of them – just as they did last year when fans were clamouring for information about Lower Decks.
A handful of comments from social media directed at the official Star Trek pages and channels – all of which were ignored. Names redacted.
There has been no official word from ViacomCBS or the Star Trek social media teams about Prodigy’s international debut – and there won’t be. They simply do not care enough to even give a non-answer like “coming soon.” Instead, fans are left to shout into the void, bang our heads against a wall of silence, and whatever other metaphor you can think of for trying to get information from an uncaring corporation.
Last year there was an excuse – a piss-poor one, but an excuse nevertheless: the pandemic. Disruption to production and broadcast schedules – especially post-production work on Discovery Season 3 – meant that last-minute changes were necessary. Lower Decks was bumped up to be broadcast ahead of Discovery, and there wasn’t time to sort out the international rights. That excuse is bullshit, of course, because as I said last year it’s still up to ViacomCBS to broadcast or delay the series, meaning they could have waited to ensure fans everywhere could watch it together. But this year even that paltry excuse no longer applies.
There are two reasons why: Prodigy’s production hasn’t been impacted by the pandemic to anywhere near the same extent, and as already discussed, ViacomCBS owns Nickelodeon and has the option to broadcast the series on a channel that they own in 70+ countries around the world.
Prodigy is a Nickelodeon and CBS Studios co-production.
I want ViacomCBS and Paramount+ to succeed because I want Star Trek to succeed and continue to be produced. But if the corporation is so callous and uncaring when it comes to fans like me, what am I supposed to do? It’s a toxic relationship right now; a one-way relationship with no reciprocity. Prodigy is supposed to be a series that will bring in new fans to Star Trek – but it’s also supposed to be a show with a lot to offer to Star Trek’s existing fans. For “business reasons,” though, only certain fans that ViacomCBS deems important enough or worthy will be permitted the privilege of watching the series.
In 2021, with the global interconnected fandom that ViacomCBS pushed to create, segregating a series or film geographically is indefensible. A delay of a day or two between regional broadcasts might be acceptable – though there’s no technical reason why, given the technologies involved. But to broadcast a new show in one location and not even give lip service to when it might be available anywhere else? It’s wrong – and more than that, it’s stupid and self-defeating from a business perspective.
A map of the world according to ViacomCBS.
ViacomCBS wants as many people as possible to tune in to Star Trek. They want as many kids as possible to watch Prodigy, and I would assume they’re planning to sell merchandise based on the show as well – though the lack of any obvious Prodigy merchandise so far is yet another indication of the moronic and amateurish way the corporation is handling its biggest brand. But if the goal is to get fans excited and talking about the show, hyping it up in the run-up to its premiere and generating the kind of online buzz that makes television shows a success, cutting off at least half the fanbase is the dumbest and most idiotic thing the corporation could possibly do.
From Game of Thrones to Squid Game, online chatter is what drives people to check out a new television series. People who love something and who are passionate about it tell their friends and their social media followers, and that engagement drives people to the show – and the platform that hosts it. By deliberately and intentionally preventing many Trekkies from accessing Prodigy, ViacomCBS has killed a lot of the hype and excitement that the show could have generated.
Who knows how much bigger Prodigy could have been if the corporation in charge had handled its broadcast better?
The corporation has evidently learned nothing from the muted and lacklustre response to Lower Decks last year – a response that, sadly, has seen the show fail to hit the heights it could have in terms of viewership. Even when Lower Decks did arrive internationally and even when its second season did get the simultaneous broadcast it needed, a lot of damage had already been done, and the opportunity to make the series bigger than it ultimately became was missed.
Lower Decks and Prodigy are the two most unique and different offerings that the Star Trek franchise has arguably ever produced. Out of everything the franchise has on the horizon, it’s these two shows more than any others that had the potential to bring in hordes of new fans and to take the Star Trek franchise as a whole to the next level in terms of audience numbers and the scale of the fanbase. These opportunities have been pissed away by a corporation that clearly has no idea how to run an international franchise.
Fans outside North America might as well stare out of the window – because Prodigy won’t be hitting our screens any time soon.
When a corporation deliberately and wilfully treats a large section of its fanbase with such blatant disrespect, what can we do?
Since ViacomCBS clearly doesn’t care about anyone outside of North America, it seems to me that there’s no point in continuing to engage with the corporation or support it. They don’t care about us, so why should we care about them? And why should any non-American Trekkie consider spending a single penny on any ViacomCBS product in future? It seems like it’s only a matter of time until the next Star Trek show or film isn’t made available to us either.
If ViacomCBS chooses not to make Star Trek available to fans, we might as well pirate it. They clearly place no value on the money we could pay them or the passion we could have when talking about upcoming shows and films, so why bother? We might as well pirate all of Star Trek – and everything else ViacomCBS does, too. If they’ve chosen not to make Prodigy available internationally, and won’t even have the basic decency to answer repeated questions from fans, piracy is the default option – quite literally the only way to watch the series. It didn’t have to be, but this is a choice ViacomCBS willingly made.
When a corporation chooses to place no value on its biggest and most passionate fans, and takes increasingly stupid business decisions that almost seem intended to harm their franchise, they’ve made their decision. The lack of a response to these basic questions from fans about Prodigy’s availability or about the Paramount+ rollout is in itself an answer. And that answer is: “go fuck yourself, we don’t give a shit about you.”
In most jurisdictions around the world, piracy – defined above as the sharing of copyrighted material over the internet – is not legal. This essay was an examination of the moral and ethical implications of piracy only, and was categorically not an endorsement or encouragement to download any individual film or television series, nor should anything written above be interpreted in that manner. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 