Don’t Reject ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ With CBS All Access

If the only Star Trek show airing new episodes in 2018 is Seth McFarlane’s awful spoof, The Orville, there will be no instrument capable of measuring the breadth of my anguish and despair. Star Trek: Discovery is looking more and more like a glorious opportunity squandered, as production delays and the loss of showrunner Bryan Fuller (now steering American Gods). Still, we don’t know the new Star Trek will be bad, we only suspect it. Even worse, CBS yoking Star Trek: Discovery to their garbage streaming service, CBS All Access, is turning Trekkers against the show before it even has a chance to fail honestly. Don’t do that. Don’t throw out Discovery in your rejection of CBS All Access.

A lot of hardcore Star Trek fans are already wishing doom on Discovery. It’s hard to say whether this is a widespread attitude, since the only data set is comment fields, but it never fails — every Star Trek post on this site is inundated with supposed fans actively rooting against a new Trek show. It’s baffling.

“Hope the series dies early,” one commenter said.

“Trust me, this show is going to die real fast. Even if it is good no one is going to flock over from their Netflix,” wrote another.

Similar comments can be found on every Star Trek: Discovery post. What a weird attitude it represents. How could you like Star Trek and want a new Star Trek show to get cancelled?

Most commenters cite the delivery medium. “I’m a huge fan of Star Trek,” wrote one commenter, “but I can’t keep up with all these streaming services trying to take their libraries by starting their own streaming service. $4 here, $5 there and so on.” You’ll hear no counter-arguments here.

But doesn’t that seem a bit myopic? A new Star Trek show could exist for hundreds or thousands of years. Star Trek: Discovery Season 1 could come to Netflix or Hulu or YouTube to build up hype for Season 2. Stuff comes out on DVD. There’s also this really easy thing called BitTorrent.

There will be infinite possibilities for watching Star Trek: Discovery without paying CBS and Les Moonves for their market fragmenting, streaming vanity project. All you have to do is wait, or steal it.

So stop wishing for Star Trek: Discovery to suck. You can still hate on CBS All Access, the fate of which is not necessarily intertwined with the success of Discovery. Since CBS pre-sold the new Star Trek to Netflix everywhere else in the world, the failure of the first season on CBS All Access doesn’t necessarily mean Discovery will be cancelled.

There’s a peculiar overlap between people who want to see Star Trek: Discovery crash and burn (Why? It’s Star Trek! Wish it well!) and fans of Star Trek: Enterprise. Remember how terrible Enterprise was at first? And how, some would argue, it improved? Or, remember the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation? It sucked!

With the exception of The Original Series, every Star Trek has taken a season or two to find its feet. So what possible reason could there be to wish failure on Star Trek: Discovery? If all you have is anger against yet another nickel-and-diming streaming service, rethink your position. Find a friend who’s enough of a sucker to subscribe. Learn to pirate. Or just wait for the Blu-ray to pop up at a garage sale. But don’t tell me the world should have less Star Trek in it.