CBS Makes Star Trek: Picard Pilot Free On YouTube 'For a Limited Time' (arstechnica.com) 168
A reader shares a report from Ars Technica: CBS has made the entirety of the first episode of its new series Star Trek: Picard freely and publicly available as a YouTube video. This is an opportunity for viewers curious about the show to see if Picard is worth subscribing to the network's streaming service, CBS All Access, to watch the rest of the series. The episode on YouTube is the same as the pilot episode that premiered on CBS All Access last week. The second episode of Picard began streaming on CBS All Access yesterday, and the network plans to release episodes at a weekly cadence.
CBS has not said whether it plans to make other episodes available for free on YouTube in the future, but it seems likely. The description for the video says the episode will only be available "for a limited time" and that it's presented by Geico. It does not, however, clarify how long "a limited time" is or when the video might become unavailable.
CBS has not said whether it plans to make other episodes available for free on YouTube in the future, but it seems likely. The description for the video says the episode will only be available "for a limited time" and that it's presented by Geico. It does not, however, clarify how long "a limited time" is or when the video might become unavailable.
Video Unavailable (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like it's only for folks in the US.
Re: (Score:2)
syndication. they probably sold it to some international markets or are trying to. (can't see it from thailand either).
not really sure I want to. does it really have a 17 minute pointless superhero fight scene?
Re: (Score:2)
Blocked in Australia. Probably pointless, because i expect "CBS All Access" isn't available here, either.
Re:Video Unavailable (Score:5, Informative)
Probably pointless, because i expect "CBS All Access" isn't available here, either.
CBS bought the Ten network, and they now have the 10 All Access [tenallaccess.com.au] streaming service. I don't know if Star Trek: Picard is on that service since you can't see the titles available without signing up. In an ideal world it would be an exact copy of CBS All Access. If you look at the wiki page for 10 All Access [wikipedia.org] it just redirects to the CBS version.
I was just about to hit submit when I found a list of the available shows [finder.com.au]. I don't know if it is up-to-date, but it doesn't mention any Star Trek shows. However, a related link [finder.com.au] on that page shows that this series is available on Amazon Prime [primevideo.com] internationally.
FYI for international viewers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, Star Trek Picard is an Amazon Prime Video exclusive in Australia (and most non-US markets).
Re: (Score:3)
10 All Access streaming service. I don't know if Star Trek: Picard is on that service since you can't see the titles available without signing up. In an ideal world it would be an exact copy of CBS All Access
Re: (Score:3)
Probably pointless
Completely pointless.
Why on earth would they block it by region or make it "limited time"? Isn't the idea to make people want to pay to see what happens next?
(facepalm)
Re: (Score:2)
Why on earth would they (...) or make it "limited time"? Isn't the idea to make people want to pay to see what happens next?
Same reason people feel they save money on sales, even for products that almost never sell for full price. Plus to give you a sense of urgency so you possibly sign up now for weekly episodes rather than binge watch it and cancel in a year. Or simply to get you to watch it at all, if it's permanently free it's always there when you get around to it and many people never do. With a time limit there's a mental reminder to watch it now before the offer expires. And maybe it's as simple as time boxing a marketin
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed; in Europe, Star Trek Picard runs on Amazon Prime.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Alternatively get Epic Browser, tell it to use an open US redirector and enjoy.
(goes without saying that you should NOT use any form of credentials through a service like this)
Re: Video Unavailable (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
All the major ones have it.
Re:Video Unavailable (Score:5, Insightful)
Either they've cut that scene from this free viewing sample or there simply isn't any one coherent action scene longer than perhaps 2 minutes. It could be that there's a total of 17 minutes action/fight scenes. I haven't paid attention to it.
In New Trek there's been a lot of pointless action scenes, which in my eyes replaced the parts where Old Trek did have (sometimes very well written, sometimes ham-fisted) dialogue about moral dilemmas. To me that was one of the hall-marks that defined Star Trek. And they took that away. They kept the technobabble and employ it as a device to enable otherwise silly plot and they even made it worse. These are the main reason's I resent New Trek.
So far I find Picard a lot more interesting than Discovery. Probably because there's a couple of albeit confusing throwbacks to TNG, which most likely was their intention in order to capture the interest of TNG fans. But having seen only a single episode is not a good basis for judgement here.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess it's all the fight scenes combined then and not just the rooftop mega jump etc scene.
I guess the tng references would be confusing in a newtrek. I'm still not 100% sure even if this is fully in the newtrek universe or the old or wtf is going on even.. and I've seen a couple of reviews and the reviewers don't seem to know either.
Re: (Score:3)
It follows the plot point of the Romulan Empire having been destroyed through that super nova.
Spoilers follow:
Picard helped the Romulans with their evacuation as a humanitarian act since they asked for help, subsequently earning the scorn of Star Fleet which lead to his resignation.
This strongly ties the universe in the series to the Kelvin timeline.
They also further some TNG elements that dealt with morals
Re: (Score:3)
Of course it’s not in the new Trek universe. It’s in the original one. It’s a continuation from TNG and Nemesis. The supernova is from the original timeline, albeit that information comes from a new Trek film. The entire second timeline is established because Spock travels back in time from the original timeline after the supernova.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A friend of mine, who also read a lot of Trek novels, disliked DS9 because it was like a "daily soap", referencing the continuous story arcs and the stronger focus on the human condition through interpersonal relationships.
Therefore I think you won't convince a lot of people with that argumentation as opinions differ.
DS9 was critic
Re: (Score:2)
I'm starting to think you don't like Trek all that much. I mean if you don't like DS9 and half of TNG... There is Voyager which was mostly very lightweight, and any interesting idea they ever had was inevitably resolved by firing and inverse tachyon beam at it. TOS is fun but a lot of it was dreck, let's be honest.
The new Trek shows are very different but they had to be. If they just made more exactly like the 90s era ones they would have flopped. There is enough of that already and audiences are bit more s
Re: (Score:2)
What remains are some of the good moral dilemmas that the shows did. Which can be found in all the different series, but in some more than in others (DS9 had the most, which is also why I still regard it as the
Re: (Score:2)
Berman was the problem. After Roddenberry went he became more influential and screwed things up. DS9 was the one series he wasn't too involved in which is why it was so different and so good.
I take your points about Discovery but have to take exception to the plot holes thing... Trek has always been full of them and the technology has never worked consistently. Time travel and the mirror universe have always been like that in every iteration.
Re: (Score:3)
TOS gets a pass because of the novelty factor. But in the latter Treks, like in DS9 and ENT, the character mirror universe episodes were just too coincidental to be credible to me. Why would 'the' mirror universe always have the current cast of characters in almost comical positions in the mirror universe?
Coincidence like Worf being the emperor of the Klingon-Cardassian alliance? And why would Garak bei
Re:Video Unavailable (Score:5, Interesting)
DS9 came about after Straczynski first presented the concept of Babylon 5 to Paramount. They claimed they weren't interested but some months later DS9 came out which was effectively the same story line.
Babylon 5 was much darker and frankly better than DS9, perhaps because the aliens in B5 weren't restricted by Star Trek constraints.
Re: (Score:3)
It's hard to say how much B5 influenced DS9... The timing is too tight for them to have entirely ripped off B5, they must have been planning DS9 way before Straczynski came to them and probably turned him down because they knew they already had a similar show in the works that was a fairly sure thing.
I like B5 but during the original run it was hard to catch every episode because of the way it was shown on UK TV. Later I came back to it and really enjoyed it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Also blocked in Canada. What a waste... 9 times out of 10, when something of interest gets posted on youtube, it is geolocked to be available only in the U.S.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Picard airs on the Scifi channel in Canada. You can just watch it, PVR it or use your cable providers or CTVs On Demand services.
Re:Video Unavailable (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the many things driving people to torrenting.
These companies are working against themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer the old Dutch policy towards piracy: if content is not legally available in the country in a reasonable time frame for a reasonable price, then you can pirate it. Sadly this policy was overturned because of EU regulati
Re: (Score:3)
Here you go:
https://thepiratebay.org/torre... [thepiratebay.org]
https://thepiratebay.org/torre... [thepiratebay.org]
It's worth a watch.
Re: (Score:2)
Is it actually?
Honestly asking, what's been pumped out as spin-offs, sequels, prequels, whateverquels lately wasn't 10 out of 10 times...
Re: (Score:2)
Every series starts out a bit weird, it's a trope.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pm... [tvtropes.org]
But Picard has promise, the basic idea they are going with is interesting.
My main complaint so far is that Picard isn't acting all that Picard like, but I think as the series gets going that might change. Of course the character will change over 20 years and Patrick Stewart is older now too.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, I'll wait and see whether it's worth my time. Few shows in the recent past were, twice so for SciFi.
Re: (Score:3)
TNG wasn't 10 out of 10 a lot of the time (the pilot definitely wasn't that great). You can demand high quality content, but you're going to miss out on a lot of good shows because you refuse to watch anything that isn't perfect.
Re:Video Unavailable (Score:4, Interesting)
The statement was that in the recent past few shows were worth the time. That more or less implies that the shows were watched at least to some point.
I suppose it's simply part of growing older and developing higher standards after having consumed so much different media throughout all of your life.
Things start to become predictable and redundant, because you've read it somewhere or seen it somewhere in a movie, TV series, or novel before. And when the new iteration of the plot isn't original enough to be interesting on its own there's not a lot of reasons to continue watching unless you like to complain about stuff.
And I'd also postulate that you can't be missing out on something in these times (maybe the mythical water cooler talk with colleagues?).
Shows aren't aired and then gone unless someone taped them or they get a rerun on the same or a different network. Most of today's is available on demand. And when something gets critical acclaim you can still choose to watch it.
Re: (Score:2)
TNG was at best 8 out of 10. And worse in its first season. But, you know, I'd expect TV to get better as time progresses. I would think that we can expect better stories and better writing as time progresses and we should be allowed to expect our shows to be more than the average enemy of the week and the goodie-two-shoes good guys. But we're moving backwards, not forwards. We're back to the political agenda pieces of the 1950s where storyline, narrative, character development and all the other things that
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Now I wonder if you've ever watched and understood Star Trek.
There ALWAYS has been a heavy contemporary political messages and social commentary. Sometimes they did it in a more subtle way other times less subtle (Let This Be Your Last Battlefield).
The difference today is that politics and social issues have c
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is the focus. At least back then you had a storyline and tacked on the political bullshit. Today you have the political bullshit and they try to tack on a story.
Somewhere in between, we actually got stories that were free of political agenda ham-fisting. Some stories in the 80s and 90s actually ran without trying to dump any sociopolitical baggage onto you. There were characters that were believable human beings, storylines that developed around those characters without requiring them to beco
Re: (Score:2)
The how and why I've explained to myself because they've been hiring people for the stories and directing who've made a name for themselves in the industry but in reality are hacks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Some stories in the 80s and 90s actually ran without trying to dump any sociopolitical baggage onto you."
None of them were sci-fi, though. If you want stories with no morals, try Friends or Seinfeld.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Have you seen STD? It's obvious that the writers are deeply aware of classic Trek because the whole 2nd season is knee deep in it. Actually a lot of the first season too, towards the end.
Lore isn't like Data, that was the point of the character. Looks like him but personality wise is the exact opposite. Regards himself as better than humans, rather than aspiring to be like them. Lal was referenced in the scene at the archive, and B4 is at the Daystom Institute.
Re: (Score:2)
Season 2, Episode 9 was where Maddox tried to argue Data was the property of Starfleet and was defended as being a sentient being.
Season 3, Episode 16 was were Data created Lal. He made the point that as a "living" thing he had the desire, right and duty to procreate. But his experiment failed.
Season 4, Episode 11 shows Data in contact with Maddox, assisting
Re: (Score:2)
It depends heavily on how you feel about canon/continuity with 600-700 hours of existing Star Trek. If you're OK with them forgetting some things, and saying, "fuck you" to other things that were said in TNG, then you're fine.
Re:Video Unavailable (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're OK with them forgetting some things, and saying, "fuck you" to other things that were said in TNG, then you're fine.
It seems to be working great for Dr. Who Cares!?
Re: (Score:3)
Lol that new black woman is a way better actor than Jodie Whitaker. I'm still not liking the fact that they're trying to cram in these new ethnic past lives. Can't wait for the bisexual native american Dr who only uses sign language in a wheelchair...
Re: (Score:2)
It's good. Patrick Stewart is fantastic as ever.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Video Unavailable (Score:2)
you mean looks like only some folks in the US will be paying more for it.
Rest of the world will still watch it :wink:
Re: (Score:2)
Sure?
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:c32dcd990a55c1961175586c2ce8c10504d21a0f&dn=Star.Trek.Picard.S01E01.iNTERNAL.REPACK.1080p.WEB.H264-GHOSTS%5Brartv%5D&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.trackerfix.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.me%3A2770&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2720
Pluto TV (Score:5, Informative)
It's also airing for free on Pluto TV [twitter.com].
And it won't just be the premiere episode. According to Collider [collider.com]:
Tune into Pluto TV’s Sci Fi channel (Ch. 60) today, Thursday, January 30th to watch the debut episode of Star Trek: Picard, an original series streaming exclusively on CBS All Access. Following the non-stop marathon, for one week only, Pluto TV will air the groundbreaking new series as part of a primetime block on Pluto TV Sci Fi, all for free.
Star Trek: Picard’s Schedule on Pluto TV’s Sci Fi channel (Ch. 60) is as follows:
1/30 – Star Trek Picard, 24-hour Marathon of debut episode
1/31 – 8 PM – Star Trek Picard, Invasion of the Body Snatchers
2/1 – 8 PM – Star Trek Picard, The Giver
2/2 – 8 PM – Star Trek Picard, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus
2/3 – 8 PM – Star Trek Picard, The Librarian: Quest for the Spear
2/4 – 8 PM – Star Trek Picard, The Librarian: King Solomon’s Mines
2/5 – 8 PM – Star Trek Picard, The Librarian III
Re:Pluto TV (Score:4, Informative)
Collider's post is a bit poorly worded. When they wrote "Pluto TV will air the groundbreaking new series as part of a primetime block on Pluto TV Sci Fi, all for free" I got the impression they'd be airing the entire series. But that's not possible since the season barely started on Jan. 23, 2020. So it will just be the 1st episode re-airing on each of those nights at 8 PM
Also available on Amazon (Score:5, Informative)
It is also available on Amazon for free (at least at the moment):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/vide... [amazon.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Have you seen it? I've watched the first two episodes.
It's quite different. Lots of fan service with cameos and the like. The plot is interesting but it's suffering from early episode weirdness at the moment. As the actors settle in and the production settles down it should get better.
The swearing is a bit jarring too. Right or wrong the vision of the future presented thus far is that even under extreme stress Star Fleet officers don't drop f-bombs.
Re: (Score:2)
It is super-jarring.
Re:Also available on Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
The new Romulans are pretty odd as well. In the TNG they were too homogeneous to be realistic of course, but the new ones don't seem to act like any Romulans we have ever met before.
Re: (Score:3)
Most of the Romulans we meet are top commanders or spies. The few regular Romulans we've met act just like regular humans.
Re: (Score:3)
True. The most civilians we saw were in The Best of Both Worlds. Not many but very different to these ones.
Then again it would be weird if the whole planet and Star Empire was all the same.
Re: (Score:2)
I really enjoyed the first episode of Star Trek: Picard very much. It's set in the future, and so far it has stayed consistent with what we know about the Trekverse while advancing a new story.
You'd think people would set up transport inhibitors everywhere, except for plazas and lobbys. But whatever...
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen it, it's super weird for actual Star Trek fans, they portray Starfleet as some dark, evil government organization bent on sticking it to the man, not at all what the originals were portraying. Off course all the SJW non-fan service just to make sure they don't get cancelled doesn't help.
And that's the weird thing about this series, it's trying so hard to be SJW-hate-proof that they forget Star Trek has always been about justice and social issues, but they have to try so hard, the lead characters h
Re: (Score:2)
In the two episodes so far, we've seen that Starfleet:
- didn't want to evacuate the Romulans.
- didn't want to give a ship to a former admiral who disobeyed their orders.
Not sure how you get from that to Starfleet being "some dark, evil government organization bent on sticking it to the man".
Re: (Score:3)
Early on in TNG they had some episodes about conspiracies. Like those parasite things that lived in peoples' throats. We even got to see a head explode! Then the other episode where Picard met old friends on that deserted planet and told him to look carefully and watch his back. Sounded like a great start to something but Roddenberry wasn't a fan and ended it there.
Re: (Score:2)
Off course all the SJW non-fan service just to make sure they don't get cancelled doesn't help.
Star Trek has always been SJW.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a sci-fi author you might like: Joanna Russ.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember season 1 of DS9 and how great that ultimately turned out to be? It got a lot of the same criticisms too, e.g. pandering to the "SJWs" with a black captain.
We all know that Sisko wasn't captain until season 3!!! He was commander before that! /adjusts nerd glasses/
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Nobody remembers how Starfleet infected Odo with that bio weapon in order to take out the founders? Then they even refused to give the antidote to Odo.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed in the 60s most of the audience was more liberal than the bosses who insisted on having Number One cut, for example. There were complaints about the interracial kiss though.
Re: (Score:2)
I still complain against that kiss. Why is it acceptable that cisgender white male superior officer forces himself onto his subordinate African American officer? Of all people, you should understand why that is just an extension of the cis white male patriarchy.
Re: (Score:3)
Spoiler alert but the kiss is forced by powerful beings who are using the Enterprise crew as their toys, and Kirk did everything he could to resist it.
So actually the episode did make it clear that a forced kiss is wrong. You should watch it some time, it's one of the better ones.
Information distribution doesn't work how you thin (Score:2)
Dear CBS: There is no such thing as a "limited time" free access to some secret. Once it's out, it's out. You can't demand to get it "back", like the CIA "genuises".
You are offering me access to download a copy (aka "streaming"). You have no way of telling if I will then give the whole world a copy and nobody ever tells you. Maybe somebody already did.
No, your deludes snake oil ("DRM") did nothing. That is physically impossible.
Now go find a legitimate business model without stealing, fraud and racketeering
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks CBS! (Score:4, Insightful)
Saw it last night (Score:2)
I saw it last night. It was really well done and definitely makes me want to watch the rest. The special effects were much better than even Next Gen's. The writing was very good, and of course Patrick Stewart was his usual amazing self.
The only quibbles I had were two but very minor. First, the improvements in technology felt a little awkward, reminding one that there's a lot of things that we have now or look just on the horizon that even the writers of Next Gen didn't anticipate at the time; that broug
Re: (Score:3)
RedLetterMedia Review (Score:4, Interesting)
here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
TL;DR: The writers have only seen a few TNG Episodes, they're saddled with JJ Abrams's nonsense, and Starfleet/UFP has gone evil.
Re:RedLetterMedia Review (Score:4)
However, I think as professional critics, their brains are always in a mode where they catch (and get caught up on) lots of small things that most people watching casually aren't going to catch. Their points are almost always valid in hindsight, but they're frequently about things that I think a casual viewer wouldn't catch or even care about while watching as long as the storyline is serviceable.
Like here's an example. They point out the stuff about the archive room with, for example, the Picard banner in it. And they're completely right, the things they selected to be in that room all seemed to be selected based on whether the audience would recognize them rather than whether Picard himself would probably keep them. And that's definitely a problem, but as a casual viewer, I wasn't thinking about that, I was thinking about Picard's plot goals at the time -- the references in the room were just like a semi-conscious "oh, I remember that." So while they're absolutely right about what they said, and I think maybe that's all stuff that maybe does get processed on an unconscious level ("you may not have noticed, but your brain did"), it's not stuff that really bothers me unless it's either so blatant that it distracts me from the plot or the plot is so bad that I'm paying attention to other things instead. And I think most casual viewers are going to be in the same situation.
Put simply, those guys are too smart for their own good, to the point where it's more difficult for them to enjoy things because their brains are constantly pointing out every inconsistency. That's a great attribute to have as a critic, but man am I glad my brain doesn't work that way, I'd be constantly pissed off at how shitty media is.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with you, and I was a bit surprised they didn't enjoy Picard more--I hate Discovery but I'm really enjoying Picard so far.
My favorite part about the scene you mention--the Captain Picard day banner--is that all the Trek props got sold off, right? So somebody had, as their job, the responsibility to go back and watch every scene of that TNG episode, to catch every angle of the poster to be able to redraw it precisely. Because you KNOW if something was wrong with that banner, more than one Star Trek a
Re: (Score:3)
RLMR's review is accurate. It's not your father's Star Trek. They are just stating the inconsistencies and conflicting plots, dialog, and behavior that most Star Trek fans would see as a production team that just don't get it, didn't do their research and homework, or just don't care. Basically it's lazy and bad writing and much of what made Trek appealing has been lost since Enterprise ended. Casual fans wont see or wont care about these inconsistencies, the die-hard unwavering fans will watch it beca
Just keep it there forever.. (Score:2)
And do it for all the other shows.
First hit is free, the rest you pay for.
CBS: Dear TNG Fans - Please Subscribe! (Score:2)
Time to get the TNG crew out of retirement to send off Picard on new adventures.
A good way to hit the nostalgia vibes of those who enjoyed TNG and looked to Picard as a positive male role model.
Will it work? We shall see.
Sponsorship ain't what it used to be (Score:2)
I will wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like I did for Discovery, I will wait until season 1 is done, subscribe and binge, then cancel. Seems like a reasonable way to do things these days. Why shovel money month-after-month for a dribble of content?
Showing on SCFI in Canada (Score:2)
In Canada, at least for Bell TV subscribers, the series is currently running on SCFI - Thursday evenings with a repeat showing Saturday afternoon.
FWIW: Having seen a few episodes, it's occasionally interesting, but probably not worth paying an additional subscription fee, unless you are a hard core Trekkie...
Also Crave in Canada (Score:2)
Watched the first two episodes and I can't say that I thought it was particularly great.
CBS and the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. (Score:2)
CBS applies Rule 144:
"There's nothing wrong with charity... as long as it winds up in your pocket."
available on YouTube for a limited time... (Score:2)
It's not even on All Access in Canada (Score:2)
- subscribed
- found out they don't have a lot of CBS shows, including, inexplicably, Picard
- video for the ones they do have doesn't play on Linux
- cancelled subscription
Guess I'll keep torrenting.
So... (Score:2)
....do I give it a try, or do I refuse to buy into CBS's pay tv bullshittery and simply avoid it completely?
As much as I'd like to see it, there's plenty of other shows to watch, games to play, and books to read.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You influenced me to watch it! That's got to be worth something. How much did the man pay you? I'll bet it was millions.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Slashvertisement (Score:4, Funny)
> Why is this here?
It's Star Trek. Turn in your pocket protector.
Re: (Score:2)
Because content is now a basic human right.
Re: (Score:2)