Search the Community

"Someone once said space is dark and cold. Our job is to bring light, bring warmth, bring life, to wherever we go." Credit: Paramount+ Apart from a short teaser in April, we haven't seen much of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' upcoming third season, debuting next month. But Paramount+ has finally released the official trailer. (Spoilers for S2 below.) As previously reported, the S2 finale found the Enterprise under vicious attack by the Gorn, who were in the midst of invading one of the Federation's colony worlds. Several crew members were kidnapped, along with other survivors of the attack. Captain Pike (Anson Mount) faced a momentous decision: follow orders to retreat or disobey them to rescue his crew. Footage shown last October at New York City Comic-Con picked up where the finale left off, giving us the kind of harrowing high-stakes pitched space battle against a ferocious enemy that has long been a hallmark of the franchise. (Of course, Pike opted to rescue his crew.) Per the official synopsis: In addition to the returning main and recurring cast members, Cillian O'Sullivan joins the recurring cast as Dr. Roger Korby, a legacy character (originally played by Michael Strong). Korby was a renowned archaeologist in the field of medical archaeology and Nurse Chapel's long-missing fiancé. His reappearance in S3 is bound to cause problems for SNW's Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), who is romantically involved with Spock (Ethan Peck). Rhys Darby and Patton Oswalt will also guest star. The April teaser played up the different genres showcased in some of the new S3 episodes. The full trailer emphasizes the sense of community among the crew members, showcasing budding romances, space adventures, and an explosive science experiment. And it looks like we'll be seeing Kirk (Paul Wesley) briefly take over the captain's chair. Pike's advice: "The choices you make in that chair, they are yours to make and yours to live with." The trailer ends with a bit of levity: Spock instructs Oswalt's Vulcan in how to "high five" someone. "Give me five." They clap hands. "Now down low." Spock pulls his hand. "Why would you do that?" the Vulcan asks. Spock: "Because you are too slow." The third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premieres on July 17, 2025, on Paramount+. New episodes will air every Thursday through September 11, 2025. The series has already been renewed for a fourth season. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of May): 2,377 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

"We want to give audiences a reflection of their own world through the lens of fantasy." Credit: YouTube/Paramount+ Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns this summer with ten new episodes. Paramount+ has dropped a tantalizing one-minute teaser for the upcoming third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds., and it looks like the latest adventures of the starship Enterprise will bring romance, comedy, mystery, and even a bit of analog tech, not to mention a brand new villain. (Some spoilers for S2 below) We haven't seen much from the third season to date. There was an exclusive clip during San Diego Comic Con last summer—a callback to the S2 episode "Charades," in which a higher-dimensional race, the Kerkohvians, accidentally reconfigured Spock's half-human, half-Vulcan physiology to that of a full-blooded human, just before Spock was supposed to meet his Vulcan fiancee's parents. The S3 clip had the situation reversed: The human crew had to make themselves Vulcan to succeed on a new mission but weren't able to change back. The S2 finale found the Enterprise under vicious attack by the Gorn, who were in the midst of invading one of the Federation's colony worlds. Several crew members were kidnapped (La'an, M'Benga, Ortegas, and Sam), along with other survivors of the attack. Pike faced a momentous decision: follow orders to retreat, or disobey them to rescue his crew. In October, we learned that Pike naturally chose the latter. New footage shown at New York City Comic-Con picked up where the finale left off, giving us the kind of harrowing high-stakes pitched space battle against a ferocious enemy that has long been a hallmark of the franchise. In addition to the returning main and recurring cast members, Cillian O'Sullivan joins the recurring cast as Dr. Roger Korby, a legacy character (originally played by Michael Strong). Korby was a renowned archaeologist in the field of medical archaeology, introduced in the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" as Nurse Chapel's long-missing fiancé. That's bound to cause problems for SNW's Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), who is currently romantically involved with Spock (Ethan Peck). Rhys Darby (Our Flag Means Death) and Patton Oswalt will guest star in as-yet-undisclosed roles—we catch glimpses of both in the teaser. A throwback to classic sci-fi, with "weekly space adventures." YouTube/Paramount+ Looks like the crew will be solving a groovy murder mystery this season YouTube/Paramount+ Spock and Nurse Chapel are an item now. YouTube/Paramount+ Ooh, Patton Oswalt! YouTube/Paramount+ Rhys Darby is looking downright dapper YouTube/Paramount+ Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of March): 1,357 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Also: a new clip for Lower Decks and premiere date for Section 31 with Michelle Yeoh. Sneak peek at S3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The Star Trek franchise made its presence known with a special panel during New York City Comic-Con this past weekend. Among the highlights: Paramount unveiled a three-minute preview clip from the third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and a clip from the upcoming final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks. In other news, while the first season of new series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is still in production, Paramount has already renewed it for a second season and revealed that Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany will be a recurring guest on the series. Tig Notaro, Oded Fehr, and Mary Wiseman will reprise their Discovery roles as Jett Reno, Admiral Vance, and Sylvia Tilly, respectively. And Robert Picardo of Star Trek: Voyager will be back as The Doctor—in a show set 900 years after the hologram physician first appeared. The studio also announced an official premiere date and poster art for the Star Trek: Discovery spinoff film Section 31 starring Michelle Yeoh: January 24, 2025. Miku Martineau plays a young Phillipa Georgiou in the film, which will give us the backstory for Georgiou's evil Mirror Universe counterpart, where she was a despotic emperor who murdered millions of her own people. Meanwhile, Yeoh's older Georgiou is tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets as part of a black ops group called Section 31 while dealing with all the blood she's spilled in her past. (Some spoilers for Strange New Worlds S2 below.) Strange New Worlds We haven't seen much yet from the forthcoming season of Strange New Worlds, beyond an exclusive clip during San Diego Comic Con this summer. As previously reported, that clip was a callback to the S2 episode "Charades," in which a higher-dimensional race, the Kerkohvians, accidentally reconfigured Spock's half-human, half-Vulcan physiology to that of a full-blooded human—just before Spock was supposed to meet his Vulcan fiancee's parents. The S3 clip had the situation reversed: The human crew had to make themselves Vulcan to succeed on a new mission. They succeeded in record time but weren't able to change back. We also learned that Cillian O'Sullivan will join the recurring cast as Dr. Roger Korby. ToS fans will recognize that name; it's a legacy character (originally played by Michael Strong). Korby was a renowned archaeologist in the field of medical archaeology, introduced in the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?' as Nurse Chapel's long-missing fiancé. That's bound to cause problems for SNW's Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), who is currently romantically involved with Spock. The S2 finale found the Enterprise under vicious attack by the Gorn, who were in the midst of invading one of the Federation's colony worlds. The new footage shown at NYCC picked up where the finale left off, giving us the kind of harrowing high-stakes pitched space battle against a ferocious enemy that has long been a hallmark of the franchise. With the ship's shields down to 50 percent, Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and his team brainstorm possible counter-strategies to ward off the Gorn and find a way to rendezvous with the rest of Starfleet. They decide to try to jam the Gorns' communications so they can't coordinate their attacks, which involves modulating the electromagnetic spectrum since the Gorn use light for ship-to-ship communications. They also need to figure out how to beam crew members trapped on a Gorn ship back onto the Enterprise—except the Gorn ships are transporter-resistant. The best of all the bad options is a retreat and rescue, tracking the Gorn ship across light-years of space using "wolkite, a rare element that contains subspace gauge bosons," per Spock (Ethan Peck). Finally, the crew decides to just ram the Gorn Destroyer, and the footage ends with a head-to-head collision, firing torpedoes, and the Enterprise on the brink of warping itself out of there, no doubt in the nick of time. Oh, and apparently Rhys Darby (Our Flag Means Death) will guest star in an as-yet-undisclosed role, which should be fun. Strange New Worlds S3 will premiere sometime in 2025, and the series has already been renewed for a fourth season. Lower Decks The final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks premieres this week. Ars staffers are big fans of Lower Decks, so we were saddened when we learned that the animated series would be ending with its fifth season. Paramount gave us a teaser in July during San Diego Comic-Con, in which we learned that their plucky crew's S5 mission involves a "quantum fissure" that is causing "space potholes" to pop up all over the Alpha Quadrant ("boo interdimensional portals!"), and the Cerritos crew must close them—while navigating angry Klingons and an Orion war. The new clip opens with Mariner walking in and asking "What's the mish?" only to discover it's another quantum fissure. When the fissure loses integrity, the Cerritos gets caught in the gravitational wake, and when it emerges, seemingly unscathed, the ship is hailed—by the Cerritos from an alternate dimension, captained by none other than Mariner, going by Captain Becky Freeman. ("Stupid dimensional rifts!") It's safe to assume that wacky hijinks ensue. The final season of Lower Decks premieres on Paramount+ on October 24, 2024, and will run through December 19. Credit: Paramount+ Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of September): 4,292 news posts RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Also: teaser for Section 31, news on Strange New Worlds S3, Starfleet Academy, and more. "Lower decks! Lower decks!" The fifth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks will be the animated series' last (boo!). Star Trek: Lower Decks is a particular favorite among Ars staffers; it's arguably the best of the recent crop of Star Trek shows, along with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. So we were disappointed when we learned that the animated series would be ending with its fifth season. Paramount+ debuted the first teaser for S5 during the Star Trek panel at San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend, along with a teaser for Star Trek: Section 31—a spinoff film from Star Trek: Discovery featuring Michelle Yeoh's Philippa Georgiou—a clip from Strange New Worlds S3, and the latest news about Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. The Lower Decks teaser opens with a suitably nostalgic recap of some of the highlights of the adventures of the plucky crew of the USS Cerritos, inviting viewers to join them for one last adventure. Cue Boimler (Jack Quaid) and Mariner (Tawny Newsome) in voiceover objecting to that description ("Yeah, right, we're not done voyaging—we've hardly even cracked one quadrant yet"). Their S5 mission involves a "quantum fissure" that is causing "space potholes" to pop up all over the Alpha Quadrant ("boo interdimensional portals!"), and the Cerritos crew must close them—while navigating angry Klingons, an Orion war, and who knows what other crazy developments? The final season of Lower Decks premieres on Paramount+ on October 24, 2024, and will run through December 19. Newsome is already committed to her first post-Lower Decks project: co-writing the first live-action Star Trek comedy with franchise head honcho Alex Kurtzman. There's no title yet, but Deadline Hollywood reports that the premise will involve "Federation outsiders serving a gleaming resort planet [who] find out their day-to-day exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadrant." So, a Star Trek Truman Show? Color us intrigued. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S3 A first look at what's coming in the third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Strange New Worlds marked a welcome return to Star Trek's original episodic structure. The franchise's Comic-Con panel featured a special sneak peek at the upcoming first season. The clip is a callback to the S2 episode "Charades," in which a higher-dimensional race, the Kerkohvians, accidentally reconfigured Spock's half-human, half-Vulcan physiology to that of a full-blooded human—just before Spock was supposed to meet his Vulcan fiancee's parents. The S3 clip has the situation reversed: The human crew must make themselves Vulcan to succeed on a new mission. They succeed in record time but aren't able to change back. The Vulcan versions of the Enterprise crew are hilariously on point, and a long-suffering Spock must endure repeated references to his inferior half-Vulcan status. We also learned that Cillian O'Sullivan will join the recurring cast as Dr. Roger Korby. ToS fans will recognize that name; it's a legacy character (originally played by Michael Strong). Korby was a renowned archaeologist in the field of medical archaeology, introduced in the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?' as Nurse Chapel's long-missing fiancé. That's bound to cause problems for SNW's Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), who is currently romantically involved with Spock. SNW S5 will premiere sometime in 2025, and the series has already been renewed for a fourth season Speaking of Strange New Worlds, remember that fantastic S2 episode ("Substance Rhapsody") in which a quantum probability field caused the entire crew to break into song? Executive producer Akira Goldman revealed during the panel that he is toying with the idea of a Star Trek stage musical, although he cautioned that "We're in the very early stages of figuring out whether we can bring a version of ["Substance Rhapsody"] to the stage." Star Trek: Section 31 Michelle Yeoh reprises her ST: Discovery role as Philippa Georgiou in the spinoff film Section 31. Many of us were sad when Michelle Yeoh's stylishly acerbic Philippa Georgiou was written out of Star Trek: Discovery, but took hope from rumors that a spinoff series featuring the character was in the works. Well, it turns out to be a spinoff film, Star Trek: Section 31, but we'll take any amount of Georgiou we can get, especially in light of this teaser. Miku Martineua will play the young Georgiou in the film, slated to stream exclusively on Paramount+ sometime next year. The cast also includes Omari Hardwick, Kacey Rohl, Sam Richardson, Sven Ruygrok, Robert Kazinsky, Humberly Gonzalez, and James Hiroyuki. It seems the film will give us the backstory for Georgiou's evil Mirror Universe counterpart, where she was a despotic emperor who murdered millions of her own people. Meanwhile, Yeoh's older Georgiou is tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets as part of a black ops group called Section 31 while dealing with all the blood she's spilled in her past. The teaser opens with a flashback to the young Philippa, musing via voiceover about how an emperor "can only be loyal to duty" to ensure that the empire stays strong. But the rest is largely devoted to Yeoh swanning about in fabulous outfits while her fellow secret agents tell her what a "bad bitch" she is. "Somebody's got to keep it lively, right?" Georgiou smirks. Starfleet Academy Finally, we might be losing Lower Decks, but we're gaining the new series Starfleet Academy, featuring some familiar franchise faces. Tig Notaro, Oded Fehr, and Mary Wiseman will reprise their Discovery roles as Jett Reno, Admiral Vance, and Sylvia Tilly, respectively. And Robert Picardo of Star Trek: Voyager will be back as The Doctor—in a show set 900 years after the hologram physician first appeared. During the Comic-Con panel, Kurtzman said that the series will introduce "a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism," thereby answering "who are the captains before they become captains, and what happens when they don't become captains." Holly Hunter will lead the cast as chancellor of Starfleet Academy, while Gina Yashere and Paul Giamatti will have recurring roles. The main Starfleet cadets will be played by Karim Diane, Zoe Steiner, Kerrice Brooks, Bella Shepard, and George Hawkins. Production on the series will begin in August. Listing image by YouTube/Paramount+ Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every single day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of June): 2,839 news posts

After years of development, followed by two seasons of the show itself, it's the end of the line for Master Chief's adventures on the small screen, at least for now. The Halo live-action TV series will not be coming back for a third season on the Paramount+ streaming service. Deadline reports that while the series, based on Microsoft's sci-fi shooter game franchise, will not continue at Paramount+, the company's Xbox and 343 Industries divisions, along with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television, are pitching a third season that could be shown via another outlet. In a statement, 343 Industries said: The Halo live-action TV series was first revealed 11 years ago as part of the Xbox One console launch in 2013. Spielberg came on board as a producer, and the original plan was for the show to be streamed exclusively on Xbox One consoles. Later, those plans shifted and the Halo TV series spent several years in what Hollywood calls "development hell" at the Showtime pay cable network. In 2019, filming of the series finally began, with actor Pablo Schreiber playing the lead role of Master Chief. Production of the series was severely delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. In 2021, it was announced that the Halo show was moving from Showtime to Paramount+. The first season debuted in 2022 to mixed reviews from both critics and fans of the game series. The second season debuted in 2024 and was generally considered to be an improvement over the first season. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every single day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of June): 2,839 news posts

In mid-2023, the Paramount+ streaming service increased its prices as part of adding content from the Showtime cable TV service. Today, it was announced that prices for accessing the service will be going up again for new subscribers, along with some existing users. According to The Hollywood Reporter, new subscribers to the ad-based Paramount+ Essential plan will see a price hike from $5.99 a month to $7.99 a month, an increase of $2. That price increase will begin on August 20. Current subscribers to the Paramount+ Limited Commercial plan will see their prices go up by $1 a month to $7.99 a month on August 20. The Paramount+ with Showtime plan, which also removes ads, will increase for new subscribers from $11.99 a month to $12.99 a month, again on August 20. Current subscribers for that plan will see their price go up by the same amount on or after September 20. The good news is that the service is not increasing the prices of its annual plans. That means new and current subscribers will be able to get Paramount+ Essential for $59.99 a year and Paramount+ with Showtime for $119.99 per year. Also, current subscribers to the Paramount+ Essential plan will be able to keep their $5.99 a month price. Paramount stated in its last quarterly report back in April that in March 2024, Paramount+ had a total of 71.2 million subscribers worldwide. These latest price increases come as Paramount+ keeps adding new and original content to its service. That includes the upcoming launch of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, a new series in the NCIS franchise, NCIS: Tony & Ziva, and more. We are also still waiting to see if the service will renew the Halo live-action series, based on Microsoft's sci-fi shooter game franchise, for a third season. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every single day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of May): Nearly 2,400 news posts

It looks like Paramount Global is still looking to merge its Paramount+ streaming service with another similar company. CNBC is reporting, via unnamed sources, that Paramount "is having active discussions with other media and tech company executives" to merge Paramount+ where the parent company could co-owned the service after the merger is completed. The story also says that Warner Bros Discovery wants to make such a deal with Paramount. If those talks bear fruit, that could mean Paramount+ would merge its content with that of the Max streaming service. Paramount+ currently has about 71 million subscribers, while Max has about 100 million subscribers worldwide. There's likely to be at least some customer overlap between those two services if they merged, but it would still likely result in a much bigger streaming service in terms of numbers to fight against the major services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. If this kind of talk sounds familiar, it should. In December 2023, there were rumors that Paramount+ might merge with Apple TV+, but those talks did not come to anything. In early 2024, there were other rumors that Paramount+ might merge with Comcast and NBCUniversal's Peacock service. This new report would seem to suggest that Paramount Global feels that it cannot make money with a streaming service it alone controls and owns. Merging Paramount+ with another service like Max could help with costs while also offering subscribers one less service to sign up for. In May, Disney and Warners Bros. Discovery announced it would give customers a new bundle deal for the Disney+, Hulu, and Max streaming services for one monthly price sometime later this summer. Details on this new bundle, including its prices, have yet to be revealed, although we do know that it will have both ad-free and ad-based plan options. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every single day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of June): 2,839 news posts

The show will be led by a writer known for Nancy Drew and The Magicians. The crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, a film with many references to Starfleet Academy. Paramount There's officially another Star Trek series on the way, and this time it's one we've been hearing rumors about since 2018: Starfleet Academy. Announced today in a press release and reported by Deadline, the CBS Studios-produced series will follow a group of teenage Starfleet Academy students as they come of age while enduring rigorous training for future interstellar missions. The central characters will reportedly have to navigate friendships, rivalries, and romances as they face a new enemy that threatens the Federation. Co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau issue this in-universe statement in the show's announcement: Admission is now open to Starfleet Academy! Explore the galaxy! Captain your destiny! For the first time in over a century, our campus will be re-opened to admit individuals a minimum of 16 Earth years (or species equivalent) who dream of exceeding their physical, mental and spiritual limits, who value friendship, camaraderie, honor and devotion to a cause greater than themselves. The coursework will be rigorous, the instructors among the brightest lights in their respective fields, and those accepted will live and study side-by-side with the most diverse population of students ever admitted. Today we encourage all who share our dreams, goals and values to join a new generation of visionary cadets as they take their first steps toward creating a bright future for us all. Apply today! Ex Astris, Scientia! The announcement didn't specify when the Star Trek timeline the series will take place, nor did it name any characters or specific plot points. Kurtzman is the current head honcho of Star Trek; he has overseen most of the work on all the franchise shows that have premiered in recent years. Before that, he worked on the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films and worked as a writer on the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and on the films The Island, The Legend of Zorro, and Transformers. Landau is a television writer who first became known as a story editor on the TV series The Magicians—another action-adventure show set in a fantastical school with coming-of-age plotlines—and who later became showrunner for The CW's Nancy Drew series. This won't be the first time Starfleet Academy has been explored in works of Star Trek fiction, of course. Beyond the obvious example of the Kobayashi Maru references throughout the franchise, there were substantial plotlines about the academy in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, among others. Further, there were Starfleet Academy video games in the 1990s for various platforms. While the PC game with full-motion video with original cast members had enough features to recommend it, I always felt the SNES/Sega 32X Starfleet Academy game never got the love it quite deserved. The Starfleet Academy TV series will begin production in 2024, and it will premiere on Paramount+ at some point after that. The long-rumored Starfleet Academy TV series will finally get made

Some original content from Paramount Plus will air on Showtime as part of the change. Paramount’s merging its Paramount Plus streaming service and premium Showtime channel, as first reported by The Hollywood Reporter. In an internal memo, CEO Bob Bakish announced the company’s rebranding its Showtime channel as Paramount Plus with Showtime. Paramount confirmed the change in a post on Twitter, noting that the merger is “the natural next step in our evolution.” The company’s also planning to carry over “select” original content from Paramount Plus to the TV network, which could include shows like Halo and Yellowstone spinoff 1923. Bakish says the move “brings uncertainty for the teams working on these brands and businesses” and that he’ll share more details in “the coming weeks.” In addition to the possibility of layoffs, Deadline reports that some shows like Three Women (which was never aired), Let the Right One In, and American Gigolo could get axed as part of the consolidation. The specifics of what will happen to existing episodes of each series are unclear, but the report says that titles pulled from Showtime will be made available to take elsewhere. As part of the change, the $9.99 per month premium Paramount Plus plan will adopt the same Paramount with Showtime moniker. It’s unclear how much the new tier will cost, as Paramount Plus already offers bundled plans with Showtime. While the essential plan with Showtime currently costs $11.99 per month, the premium plan with Showtime and local CBS networks costs $14.99 per month. Paramount spokesperson Karen Shosfy tells The Verge that the company will announce new pricing information in the coming weeks. “Now, with Showtime’s content integrated into our flagship streaming service, and select Paramount+ originals joining the linear offering, Paramount+ will become the definitive multiplatform brand in the streaming space — and the first of its kind to integrate streaming and linear content in this way,” Bakish says in the memo. The move doesn’t come as much of a surprise, as Paramount started offering Paramount Plus and Showtime in a single app last August, and rumors about the change have been floating around for months. In November, Paramount chief financial officer Naveen Chopra also hinted at a potential price increase for Paramount Plus, citing rising subscription prices among “a number of competing services,” like Hulu, Disney Plus, and Netflix. The Showtime merge may be one way to squeeze subscribers. You can read the full memo from Bakish below: Team, Almost one year ago, we announced that ViacomCBS would become Paramount — harnessing the power of our combined portfolio to become one, integrated company. Since then, I have been tremendously proud of the many ways we have worked together across platforms, brands, and continents to consistently deliver as global leaders in the future of entertainment. In that same spirit, I’m thrilled to share the next step in our company’s evolution. Today, we’re announcing that we will be fully integrating SHOWTIME into Paramount+ across both streaming and linear platforms later this year — providing even more popular franchises and hit originals for viewers to enjoy. To reflect this change, both our premium streaming tier on Paramount+ and the SHOWTIME linear network will become “Paramount+ with SHOWTIME” in the U.S. SHOWTIME has captivated audiences for decades with ambitious original series that defined premium content and fandom. Its name will always stand for critically acclaimed, groundbreaking entertainment and creative excellence. Now, with SHOWTIME’s content integrated into our flagship streaming service, and select Paramount+ originals joining the linear offering, Paramount+ will become the definitive multiplatform brand in the streaming space — and the first of its kind to integrate streaming and linear content in this way. This new combined offering demonstrates how we can leverage our entire collection of content to drive deeper connections with consumers and greater value for our distribution partners. This change will also drive stronger alignment across our domestic and international Paramount+ offerings, as international Paramount+ already includes Showtime content. And, very importantly, this integration will unlock operational efficiencies and financial benefits across our broader portfolio. Chris McCarthy will continue to lead the SHOWTIME studio and oversee network operations for the linear channel. In tandem, he will work closely with Tom Ryan, who will oversee the “Paramount+ with SHOWTIME” streaming business. While we are confident this is the right move for our company, our consumers, and our partners, we know this change brings uncertainty for the teams working on these brands and businesses. We are committed to being as transparent and thoughtful as possible throughout this process, and we expect to share additional details in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I would ask for your continued focus. Because of your hard work, dedication and collaboration, Paramount+ with SHOWTIME is set up for success. Thank you, as always, for all that you do. Best, Bob Paramount Plus and Showtime become ‘Paramount Plus with Showtime’

"We fight or we die." Behold, the final trailer for the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard. Those watching the AFC Championship Game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Cincinnati Bengals were treated to the final trailer for the third season of Star Trek: Picard, most likely its last. This time around, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) has assembled his old crew from Star Trek: The Next Generation to take on a new adversary out to destroy not just Picard but Starfleet as a whole. (Some spoilers for the prior two seasons below.) As we've reported previously, Picard is set 20 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. The first season's notable guests included Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, reprising their roles as William Riker and Deanna Troi and sparking rumors about the possible return of other Star Trek: The Next Generation characters. Patrick Stewart personally invited Whoopi Goldberg to return as Guinan in S2, with John DeLancie also returning as Q, keen to stage one last trial with his old friend Jean-Luc. We even saw the Borg Queen (played by Annie Wersching, who just died after battling cancer) and were treated to the briefest of cameos by Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton). At the end of the season, we said goodbye to three main cast members: Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), who became the new Borg Queen; Chris Rios (Santiago Cabrera), who chose to stay on Earth in a past alternate timeline with the woman he fell in love with; and the Romulan Elnor (Evan Evagora), who was shot and eventually died early in S2 but turned up alive in the final moments of the finale in a new timeline. "Engage!" YouTube/Paramount+ Those farewells cleared the stage for the third and final season. The showrunners have pulled out all the stops in the name of fan service, reuniting the old TNG gang for one final mission. In April 2023, Paramount+ confirmed that LeVar Burton (Geordie LaForge), Michael Dorn (Worf), and Gates McFadden (Beverly Crusher) would reprise their TNG roles, along with Frakes and Sirtis. Brent Spiner returned as Data in S1 before morphing into Data's creator, the human cyberneticist Dr. Noonien Soong in S2. In the third season, Spiner will reprise his role as Lore, a prototype android and Data's "brother," first introduced in TNG. Daniel Davis will also return to guest star as the holographic Professor Moriarty ("Elementary, My Dear Data," "Ship in a Bottle"). New cast members include Mica Burton (daughter to LeVar) as Ensign Alandra La Forge and Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut as Sidney La Forge, conn officer of the USS Titan—both Geordie's children. This final trailer confirmed the casting of Ed Speelers as an aide to Beverly Crusher, as well as Todd Stashwick in a recurring role as the captain of the USS Titan. Per Deadline Hollywood: The sci-fi series’ third season follows a desperate message from a long-lost friend, draw[ing] Starfleet legend Admiral Jean-Luc Picard into the most daring mission of his life, forcing him to recruit allies spanning generations old and new. This final adventure sets him on a collision course with the legacy of his past and explosive, new revelations that will alter the fate of the Federation forever. Paramount+ debuted an extended teaser trailer for Star Trek: Picard during New York Comic Con last October. That teaser gave us our first look at the new villain for S3: Vadic (Amanda Plummer), captain of an alien ship called the Shrike. Judging by that teaser, Vadic has a major grudge against Picard and his crew and seems hell-bent on exacting revenge not just on him but on Starfleet as a whole. This new trailer opens with what appears to be a Federation inspection that's supposed to be "boring," according to Stashwick's Titan captain: no blowing things up, engaging in firefights, or "crash landing expectedly... or unexpectedly"—all punctuated by scenes showing all those things happening. It's clear that some kind of attack is coming to target Starfleet, with mentions of an "all-consuming darkness" that keeps getting stronger. Add Beverly Crusher's ominous video message warning Picard to "trust no one," and you've built up sufficient dramatic tension to finally introduce Vadic. Some might think the TNG alums are merely "pathetic old warriors," but we're betting they'll prove up to the challenge, whether it means life or death. The third season of Star Trek: Picard premiers on February 16, 2023. New episodes of the 10-episode season will release every Thursday through April 20. Paramount+ Listing image by YouTube/Paramount+ The stakes couldn’t be higher in final trailer for Star Trek: Picard S3

Picard adds familiar faces while addressing few of the show's other problems. Jonathan Frakes is my dad. Paramount+ Few involved in the making or watching of 2002's Star Trek Nemesis would say that it was a fantastic send-off for the beloved characters of The Next Generation. Over seven seasons, TNG became one of Trek's most nuanced and consistent entries (though still one that was capable of producing terrible, silly, and just plain weird episodes). But Nemesis is a flat action movie defined by thin characterization, a cheesy one-note villain, and distracting plot contrivances, and it did so poorly ($67 million on a $60 million budget, in a time before "maybe it will make a lot of money in China" was a thing) that it foreclosed any possibility of another sequel. The cast and those characters, the thinking generally went, deserved better closure. Star Trek: Picard has been the TNG continuation you'd get if you wished for a TNG sequel on a monkey's paw. The first two seasons made only intermittent use of any non-Picard characters, and the new characters were either annoying or bland or both. The show's creative staff uses "convoluted twists" as a stand-in for clear and interesting storytelling. It's a show strictly for die-hard Trek completists, and it's easily the worst of the five Trek shows in active production as of this writing. The show's third and final season has been pitched as a true TNG reunion, and if nothing else, it's nice to see the clear affection these performers still have for one another. But Picard is still Picard, and many of the characters and plot points in the season so far (we've seen the first six episodes of a planned 10, though this piece will only refer to specific events from the season premiere and the trailers) are eerily reminiscent of the ones that made Nemesis so unsatisfying. The movie version of TNG Most, but not all, of Picard's characters this season are returning from other Trek shows. Paramount+ My favorite writing on the Star Trek movies is Darrich Franich's Entertainment Weekly series that revisited each film leading up to Star Trek Beyond's release in 2016 (the gap between Beyond's release and today is officially longer than the gap between Nemesis and J.J. Abrams' 2009 Trek reboot film). Franich isn't particularly kind to any TNG movies, for reasons I broadly agree with. These are crystallized in his piece about 1998's Star Trek Insurrection, which is in part a dialogue with a then-unpublished book called Fade In, written by Trek writer and producer Michael Piller (who died in 2005): But Fade In is out there, if you’re looking for it. And it is, I think, the first essential book about screenwriting in the new century, a snapshot of Hollywood at the dawn of the franchise era: A portrait of the artist amidst corporate necessity, narrative continuity, the perceived requirements of fandom, the hazy way that actors in iconic roles can know everything yet nothing about their own characters, the urge to change, the simultaneous urge to not change too much. Piller writes how he wanted this ninth Star Trek movie to recapture the spirit of Next Generation, to show how the Enterprise crew [w]as deep-down a family. Piller writes: During seven years of the television show, Picard had emerged as a man of great principle and moral integrity. He solved problems with his intellect and communication skills and would never fire weapons unless fired upon. This side of him had not been explored in the other two feature films. I sort of love this idea? I sort of agree? Generations and First Contact both landed on the idea that Picard needed to finalize into a man of action, needed to battle Malcolm McDowell across a rocky missile ledge, needed to carry big laser rifles before dangling above acid mist wearing John McClane’s Die Hard tank-top. Surely there was a way to make a film with Picard the thinker, Picard the outwitter, Picard the clever? But someone disagrees with me, disagreed with Piller. One of the leading Picard experts, actually: Patrick Stewart, who allegedly writes a long and thoughtful (and often quite funny) memo back to Piller declaring that these TNG movies needed to be different from TNG, that the emotions and action needed to be bigger, that too much sentimentality leads to heroes around a campfire singing “Row Row Row Your Boat.” I don't disagree with Patrick Stewart about what made for a successful franchise blockbuster in the late '90s. But the main problem with Picard as a TNG reunion vehicle (which is mostly but not entirely separate from its problems as a show) is that those heightened, flattened movie versions of the characters are the ones who made it back to TV. There's a scene midway through the first episode of the new season that encapsulates this. Captain Liam Shaw, played by Todd Stashwick, is one of the season's new characters. Paramount+ Picard and Riker, again drawn out of semi-retirement, board a Federation starship. The captain they're attempting to work with (Liam Shaw, played by Todd Stashwick) is neither awed by them nor particularly inclined to give them anything they want. He also seems, like too many Star Trek characters, to have experienced his own reality primarily by watching Star Trek. Riker: Not a fan of jazz? Shaw: Mm. No, I am not. I like structure. I like meter. I like keeping tempo and time, which is why you will probably find this inspection boring, for the likes of you two. Picard: Ensuring the condition of our starships would be boring? Shaw: Well, we won't be blowing things up. Taking or engaging in fire. Crash-landing, expectedly or unexpectedly. You know, the usual for you boys. This image—of Picard and Riker as rule-breaking, property-destroying, authority-flouting cowboys—is a wildly inaccurate assessment of their characters on The Next Generation. TNG was, sort of infamously, the slowest, talkiest, and most diplomatic of Trek shows, always more interested in monologuing than shooting torpedoes. The show leaned into this to give it some distance from the Wild West feeling of the original series, just as subsequent Trek shows like Deep Space Nine and Voyager leaned harder into fast-paced action to distinguish themselves from TNG. Picard was the consummate rule-follower, always ready to drop a soliloquy about duty on anyone he thought needed to hear it. But it is an accurate description of the movie version of Picard. And there are other signs, beyond plentiful references to the events of the movies; the season has a mysterious, mustache-twirling villain with a gigantic warship, both retreads of Nemesis and Star Trek (2009). The song that plays over the end credits is the main theme from First Contact. So, yes, the last season of Picard is finally giving us what the show arguably should have been from the start: a full-fledged Next Generation reunion featuring the entire original cast (plus a few fun surprises). But for better or worse, this is the movie version of a TNG reunion. And underneath that, it's still a season of Picard, with all of the near-misses and unevenness and frustration that entails. It’s also Picard, and Picard is a weird show Picard is all about Picard, which sometimes works OK and sometimes does not. Paramount+ Whatever its issues as a sequel or a vehicle for fanservice, Picard has always been a spotty-at-best television show. It's the kind of show where characters always shout things like "You just killed us all!" at each other because that is a very dramatic thing to say, and dramatic things make for good TV, right? Don't they? From what we've seen so far, Picard season 3 is the best season of Picard. That says more about the low bar set by the first two seasons than it does about anything else, but if you are in a "I would stop watching this, except it's the last season and also they're doing the TNG reunion thing finally, so I might as well stick it out" place, there's probably enough here to keep you interested. Here's what's good: The show takes place primarily on starships that are in space, as characters trek among the stars. All the old TNG cast members seem to be having a blast (whatever it was that Jonathan Frakes had back in the '80s and '90s, he only has more of it now; I would watch the hell out of Star Trek: Riker, especially if Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine was his first officer). Pretty much everything looks great, including the new "Neo-Constitution class" USS Titan. And yes, I regret to inform you that a lot of the fan-service nostalgia bait did work on me, including the musical nods to James Horner's Wrath of Khan score. Captain Shaw and a couple of other new characters actually work surprisingly well. Here's what isn't good: Every minute the camera is spent pointed at Michelle Hurd's Raffi is a moment that it could have been pointed at something dynamic or interesting instead. The show continues to cling to "surprises" and "twists," keeping viewers in the dark as to what is happening or why. It's not particularly interested in Trek's utopian or humanist ideals, themes that TNG explored regularly and to great effect. A distress call from Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) kicks the season off. Paramount+ The show's biggest problem, its (pi)cardinal sin, is its Picardocentrism: groups of impressionable Academy students gather 'round a restaurant booth to hear Picard speak (after he gently, unconvincingly insists that he doesn't want the attention). Picard is being chased by the bad guys and the putative good guys. Picard is always right, all the time, about everything, even when it briefly appears that he may have been wrong. Picard somehow manages to serve as both protagonist and MacGuffin. The show desperately needs more scenes where any two non-Picard characters have a conversation that isn't about Picard. This is true of every modern Trek show except maybe Strange New Worlds, but Picard is a for-fans-only affair that newbies or even casual TNG viewers won't get much mileage out of. In past seasons, that "why would a non-fan care about this" vibe has clashed with the show's other decisions, like "using a mostly new roster of underdeveloped characters" or "setting the show in a lightly altered version of the present day instead of in the future in outer space." The third season, at least, is better at showing the people still watching more of the things they want to see. That doesn't make it a great show, but it does make the whole enterprise feel less pointless. TNG reunion injects a little fun into Star Trek: Picard’s uneven final season

"It has been a hell of a journey. But everything ends someday." It's been two years since we had new episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, which debuted in 2017. Now Paramount+ has dropped the official trailer for the fifth and final season of the spinoff series. (Spoilers for prior seasons below.) As previously reported, Sonequa Martin-Green plays Michael Burnham, an orphaned human raised on the planet Vulcan by none other than Sarek (James Frain) and his human wife, Amanda Grayson (Mia Kirshner)—aka, Spock's (Ethan Peck) parents. So, she is Spock's adoptive sister. As I've written previously, the S2 season-long arc involved the mysterious appearances of a "Red Angel" and a rogue Starfleet AI called Control that sought to wipe out all sentient life in the universe. The big reveal was that the Red Angel was actually a time-travel suit worn by Michael's biological mother. She had accidentally jumped 950 years into a bleak future in which Control had achieved its nefarious goal and had been traveling through time, leaving signals (in the form of the visions), hoping to alter that future. In the S2 finale, Michael donned a copy of her mother's suit to lead Discovery over 900 years into the future. The crew of the Enterprise told Starfleet that Discovery was destroyed in the battle and was ordered never to speak of the ship or her crew again. In S3, Michael, Discovery, and her crew arrived in the future and found that Control's plan had been thwarted: Life still exists. But the galaxy was very different thanks to something called The Burn, a catastrophic event that caused all the dilithium in the Milky Way to explode and destroy much of Starfleet in the process. In the aftermath, with no warp drive possible, all the planets had become disconnected and were no longer governed by the Federation. Michael did, however, manage to locate one sole Federation liaison on a remote space station with the help of a new ally, Book (David Ajala). The Discovery crew reunited with what was left of Starfleet, figured out what caused The Burn, and managed to defeat a rival syndicate known as the Emerald Chain, inspiring planets to start rejoining the Federation. Burnham finally became captain of Discovery after Saru (Doug Jones) opted to return to his home planet of Kaminar for a spell. And we bid a sorrowful farewell to Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh). S4 opened with the plucky crew—including Saru as first officer—helping rebuild the Federation and celebrating the reopening of Starfleet Academy. They soon encountered a "gravitational anomaly" five light-years in diameter that destroyed Book's home planet of Kwejian as it moved through the galaxy. It turned out to be a powerful technology belonging to an alien species with interconnected minds called 10-C, whose language employed mathematical equations. In the S4 finale, the aliens ultimately agreed to turn off their technology, thereby sparing Earth and other Federation planets. The fifth season was already in development by March 2020, and the plan was to film those episodes back-to-back with S4. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and put those plans on hold. Filming didn't happen until 2022. While S5 was originally meant to air last year, once Paramount decided to pull the plug and make it the final season, they needed to shoot additional footage in order to wrap up the series properly. Per the official premise: In addition to Martin-Green, Jones, and Ajala, much of the main cast is returning for S5: Anthony Rapp as Stamets; Mary Wiseman as Tilly; Wilson Cruz as Dr. Culber; Blu del Barrio as Adira Tal; and Callum Keith Rennie as Rayner. Eve Harlow and Elias Toufexis will reprise their recurring roles as Moll and L'ak, respectively. Returning as notable guest stars in S5: Oded Fehr as Starfleet Commander-in-Chief Charles Vance; Chelah Horsdal as Lair Rillak; Tara Rowling as T'Rina; David Cronenberg as Kovich; and Tig Notaro as Jett Reno. The first two episodes of the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery will premiere on Paramount+ on April 4, 2024; the remaining eight episodes will air weekly after that through May 30. Listing image by Paramount+ Source

One of the best of the most recent Star Trek TV shows is about to warp off its streaming home. Paramount has announced that Star Trek: Prodigy has been canceled and will no longer be available to stream off its Paramount+ service starting next week. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show will be part of an overall tax write-off for Paramount+, along with the removal of other original shows such as Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, Queen of the Universe, and the revival of The Game. The decision also comes as the streaming service will officially bring in content from the cable TV service Showtime on June 27. In a statement, Paramount says: As we prepare to combine Paramount+ and Showtime later this month in the U.S., we are refining our content offering to deliver the best streaming experience for subscribers. This is consistent with our content strategy since launch and across our business, which ensures we make smart, efficient choices, informed by audience data and insights. We are removing select programming as we look to optimize Showtime’s robust slate of premium originals. Star Trek: Prodigy launched in October 2021 and had 20 episodes in its first season. Produced in cooperation with the kids TV network Nickelodeon, the 3D CGI series was set several years after the end of Star Trek: Voyager. It focused on a group of young aliens who escape from a prison colony and its evil leader on a previously abandoned Federation ship, the Protostar. The show's voice cast included Kate Mulgrew, who reprised her role as a hologram version of Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager. Star Trek: Prodigy was critically acclaimed and was nominated for the 2022 Children's and Family Emmy Award for Best Animated Series. While the first 10 episodes have been released on Blu-Ray and DVD, there will be no other way to get the entire first season, either on disc or digitally, after it is taken down from Paramount+. The show was previously renewed for a second season. The Hollywood Reporter says that its production will be allowed to be completed, and both seasons of the show will be offered to other networks. However, there's no guarantee that any network or streamer will take on the series. Paramount+ will remain the home for all the classic shows in the franchise, along with the more recent original series, including Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks. A new show, Starfleet Academy, is in the works at the streamer, along with a Section 31 movie. This is just the latest move by streaming services to remove original shows and movies from their platforms to save money. A few weeks ago, Disney removed over 100 original shows and films from Disney+ and Hulu. As an Amazon Associate when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases. Source

"Our job puts us up against death. We might not like it, but we do have to face it." The second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will feature a crossover episode with Star Trek: Lower Decks. We already knew that the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would feature a crossover episode with Star Trek: Lower Decks. Paramount just dropped the full trailer for S2, giving us our first glimpse of Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid playing the live-action counterparts to their animated Lower Decks characters Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler. They definitely nailed their respective looks. And yes, part of the crossover episode will be animated in a similar style just to keep things fun. (Some spoilers below, notably for S1.) As reported previously, the series features classic The Original Series characters Capt. Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Number One (Rebecca Romijn), and Spock (Ethan Peck). Babs Olusanmokun plays Dr. M'Benga; Celia Rose Gooding plays Cadet Nyota Uhura; Jess Bush plays Nurse Christine Chapel; Melissa Navia plays Lt. Erica Ortegas; and Christina Chong plays La'An Noonien-Singh (a relation of the classic revenge-obsessed Star Trek villain Khan). Alas, we bid farewell in the penultimate S1 episode to Chief Engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horak), an Aenar, aka an albino subspecies of Andorians that are generally depicted as blind. When an infection of Gorn eggs hit the ship, Hemmer helped fight the spread, only to become infected. When he sacrificed himself, perishing along with the Gorn eggs he carried inside, there wasn't a dry eye in millions of homes around the world. And the S1 finale gave us a bona fide cliffhanger when Number One was arrested for being a genetically modified Illyrian. So the Enterprise is getting a new chief engineer for S2: Pelia, played by the legendary Carol Kane. Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid totally look like their animated counterparts Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler. YouTube/Paramount+ There was a short teaser for S2 last month, but it didn't tell us much about any plot details. Mostly the teaser emphasized the diversity and camaraderie of the crew as they embark on new adventures and face fresh challenges, both personal and professional. This full trailer gives us more of the same. Even the brief official synopsis is maddeningly vague: "Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Number One (Rebecca Romijn), Spock (Ethan Peck) and the rest of the Enterprise crew are back exploring strange new worlds and boldly going where no one has gone before." That's probably due to this show's (welcome) episodic nature, a return to classic Star Trek standalone stories each week. The trailer opens with Ortegas attempting a daring shuttle descent to a planet's surface as Captain Pike looks a bit queasy. "Don't worry, I did this a hundred times during the war. It's like riding a bike," she assures him—and she pulls it off because this is Ortegas we're talking about. There are aliens and explosions and at least one shot of each main cast member in action, plus the occasional bit of poignant philosophizing. "Our job puts us up against death," Kirk tells Singh. "We might not like it but we do have to face it." And yes, that is Spock locking lips with Nurse Chapel in a passionate embrace, finally giving in to the sparks that flew between them in S1. It looks like Spock may also bond a little with Boimler, giving the latter his best Vulcan "live-long-and-prosper" salute as Boimler is about to be transported. Boimler naturally fumbles his response. The second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debuts on Paramount+ on June 15, 2023. Paramount+ Listing image by YouTube/Paramount+ Check out live-action Boimler and Mariner in Strange New Worlds S2 trailer

Paramount+ has announced its plans to integrate Showtime into its platform, along with a price increase. The company aims to enhance its content offerings and streamline its services for subscribers. Starting June 27, the new Paramount+ with Showtime integration will be available, accompanied by adjusted pricing plans. Paramount+ currently offers an ad-supported essential plan for $4.99 per month and a premium plan without Showtime for $9.99 per month. With the upcoming changes, the ad-supported essential plan will increase to $5.99 monthly and the premium plan will be adjusted to $11.99 per month but will include access to Showtime's content. Previously, the popular streaming service provided a separate premium plan with Showtime for $11.99 per month. This intermediate plan will be phased out, simplifying the subscription options for users. By consolidating its offerings, Paramount Plus aims to create a more streamlined experience while delivering subscribers a broader range of content. In addition to integrating Showtime into Paramount Plus, the company has announced its intention to sunset the standalone Showtime app. By the end of this year, Showtime will be rebranded as "Paramount+ with Showtime." With the rebranding of Showtime, Paramount+ aims to expand its content library, providing subscribers with a comprehensive selection of shows and movies from both platforms. Paramount's decision to merge its streaming service with Showtime comes as other major players in the streaming industry explore similar strategies. The recent launch of Warner Bros. Discovery's combined streaming service, Max, brings together HBO Max and Discovery+. Some of the content on Paramount+ includes Halo, The First Lady, Super Pumped, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1883, Mayor of Kingstown, Scream, Transformers, Grease, Mission Impossible: Fallout, and more. Source: Hollywood Reporter Paramount+ hikes prices as it adds content from Showtime

Season 2 continues with an episode featuring unnerving portents for the future. If you can't control something, neither should your enemy. At least, that belief being held by some is the crux of the conflict in Halo The Series Season 2's penultimate entry, "Thermopylae," which sets the stage for a devastating fight that will forever shape the balance of power in the Human-Covenant War. We also get some harrowing foreshadowing that seems unlikely to pay off in the finale but could raise the stakes even further as the show continues. With allegiances and motivations tested, this episode serves as a solid entry heading into the endgame of Season 2, with only a few small distractions taking away from the experience. Here's my review. As a reminder, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can grab a month of Paramount+ for free right now! Halo The Series Season 2, Episode 7: Thermopylae Perez and John-117 reunite before the finale. (Image credit: Paramount+) If you haven't yet, you can also check out my review of Halo The Series Season 2, Episode 6, Onyx. Thermopylae picks up immediately after the events of Onyx, with John-117 (Pablo Schreiber) and Kai-125 (Kate Kennedy) dealing with the unfolding ramifications of the former's march across the base in search of his armor. I've always really liked Kai, and getting to see her play off of John again is sorely needed, even if it's under more dire circumstances that don't allow her once-bubbly personality to really shine through. Makee (Charlie Murphy) also gets to have a few solid moments in this episode, showcasing her tenacity, drive, and, above all else, her fear of being wrong. Where past episodes, and especially the entire first season, could have her delivering mixed results, Murphy's performance is compelling, and the continued lack of explanation surrounding her recovery aside — at this point, I'm throwing in the towel on that topic — I truly am curious to see her story through when reaching the Halo. Elsewhere, the ever-enigmatic Ackerson (Joseph Morgan) is finally in the limelight again, and with his back against the wall, we finally see who he truly is. Ackerson's motivations early on often seemed contradictory, but even if there are still questions around his aims for the Spartan-IIIs, it's in this episode that so much of what he really believes is finally revealed. The unexpected highlight of this episode comes from Catherine Halsey (Natascha McElhone) and Miranda Keyes (Olive Gray). The mother-daughter duo reunited in the last episode after an entire season away from each other, and they immediately make up for lost time, with Miranda picking up and continuing Halsey's work investigating ancient ruins. The discoveries they make alongside Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha) might be subtle for show watchers, but for longtime Halo fans, there's an alarm blaring as the path to one of the biggest possible events in the timeline just became a lot clearer. Halo The Series Season 2, Episode 7: Verdict Kai-125 is conflicted. (Image credit: Paramount+) While I'm disappointed the action is going to kick off again in the next episode, Thermopylae really helps represent how far the show has come. Characters I was interested in have had consistent arcs, and while it's annoying that it took this long, some of the setup here for the future of the Silver Timeline is extremely exciting to speculate about. With only the conclusion to this season remaining, I'm interested in seeing just how the show tries to stick the landing. I truly hope (and believe) that we'll finally arrive on the Halo in the next episode. It's time to lock in predictions. There have been ups and downs, but overall, the series found its footing in Season 2, so fingers crossed that everything is lined up properly for Season 3. A reminder: I interviewed the showrunner and some of the cast for Halo The Series Season 2, so you can read that right now to learn more about what went into crafting these characters, plots, and themes in order to adapt one of the Halo universe's biggest events. Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 of Halo The Series Season 2 are now available exclusively on Paramount+, with new episodes dropping every Thursday. Right now, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can try one month of Paramount+ for free. Interested in more Halo? Halo Infinite and Halo: The Master Chief Collection are currently available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows PC. Both are included in Xbox Game Pass. With continued support, both are some of the best Xbox games available. Source

Paramount+ has finally launched in the United Kingdom and Ireland meaning people in those countries finally have a legal way to watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It was the case that Star Trek: Discovery streamed on Netflix but was pulled when Paramount decided to launch its service. Aside from Star Trek and a plethora of other TV shows, there’s a large collection of new and iconic movies. There is also a range of shows aimed at kids. Similar to other streaming services, it’s available across lots of platforms including Sky, Samsung, Apple TV, Roku, Android TV, Android, iOS, iPadOS, Chromecast, FireTV, and Amazon Prime Video. Some of the content on Paramount+ includes The First Lady, Super Pumped, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1883, Mayor of Kingstown, Scream, Transformers, Grease, Mission Impossible: Fallout, and more. Commenting on the new service, Tom Ryan, President and CEO of Streaming at Paramount, said: “From over 100 years of storytelling experience with our Hollywood studio and production hubs worldwide, we know how to make great, global content. Paramount+ is a mountain of entertainment for the entire family. We're the only service where you'll see Sylvester Stallone, SpongeBob SquarePants, Star Trek, and South Park all in one place, and all of this makes Paramount+ what a streaming service is meant to be.” If you’re in the UK you can get Paramount+ for £6.99 per month / £69.90 per annum and €7.99 per month / €79.90 per annum in Ireland. People in both countries will also benefit from a 7-day free trial. Paramount+ launches in the UK and Ireland with shows like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Cartoon's return is not as "sci-fi" as trailers hinted—which might be for the better. Beavis and Butt-head, seen here potentially succumbing to space madness. Paramount The Mike Judge-verse has long toyed with the inherent comedy of utter stupidity. But as anyone who has looked beyond the incessant "heh heh heh" of Beavis and Butt-Head knows, Judge's cartoons, TV series, and films are at their best when they toy with the question of exactly who in the room is the "smart" or "dumb" one. The great news about this week's Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, a straight-to-Paramount+ film debuting on Thursday, June 23, is that it finally sees Judge and co. bring a smart-kind-of-stupid approach to his most famous cartoon. This week's film achieves this far more successfully than the series' other feature-length film from 1996. Its ideas meld well with the series' bottom-of-the-toilet stupidity and feel fresh instead of like they were ripped from Judge's other shows. Failing forward, all the way to space This many years later, these dudes still love AC/DC and Metallica T-shirts. Also, nachos. Lots of nachos. Paramount The film opens with madcap comedy in its sights, as Beavis and Butt-head are in high school in the '90s, still oblivious to anything that doesn't resemble boobs, explosions, sticky snack foods, or phrases that sound like euphemisms. (Heh, heh. "Sticky.") The McGuffin that sets this film's plot in motion is about as high of a concept as you'll get from a crudely drawn '90s series. After causing untold amounts of destruction and bodily harm, Beavis and Butt-head are put in front of a judge—who, lucky for them, has been freshly influenced by a certain '90s pop-culture relic. "When I see these two boys today, I don't see their failure," he tells a packed courtroom while the defendants stare confusedly into space. "I see our failure." The judge decides that these two idiots' criminal negligence should be rewarded with a trip to a special NASA-themed event. This becomes a running theme in Do the Universe: An adult sees these boys acting like idiots, gives them the benefit of the doubt, and puts them in a position to cause greater amounts of damage and death. The result is an increasingly scorching-hot fireball of I Love Lucy-like, misunderstanding-driven comedy. And the film knows better than to fret about tightening up the logic when every NASA nerd in the room eventually decides that, yes, it's worth putting a crucial American agency in Beavis and Butt-head's hands: "We could finally get Americans interested in the space program again." No crotch is safe Yes, the duo talks about whether this training exercise will help them "score." Paramount Between each giggling double entendre and juvenile visual gag, Do the Universe is careful to insert diametrically opposed people into the plot, usually with their own anxieties and problems keeping them occupied enough to look away for a second while the titular duo attends to chaos. (It's the cartoon version of a professional wrestling referee looking away while someone gets smacked in the crotch with a steel chair.) This setup aids the laughs when Beavis and Butt-head get away with stuff, certainly, but the filmmakers also use it to achieve different kinds of laughs: A subordinate government weakling frequently gets trampled upon; a real estate agent has questions about the unhappy couple that has walked into a for-sale showing, suggesting that their love life has gone awry; a professor allows the duo to interrupt one of her classes so she can impart a "teachable moment"—and it's no surprise that neither Beavis nor Butt-head interprets the lesson correctly. Beavis and Butt-head, meet Butt-head and Beavis. Paramount Better than perhaps all of those instances is the film's wacky sci-fi angle, which sees the duo tear a hole in the space-time continuum and thus put the entire universe in jeopardy. This introduces at least one other version of both lead characters into the film, and the resulting confrontations are the film's highlight. One version of Beavis lands an incredible meta-commentary joke when introducing himself, and I don't want to spoil it—or, really, any jokes involving additional versions. Somehow tasteful in the wake of cavity searches Yet, Do the Universe is also careful to limit its comedic reach. If you have seen the trailers or read more about the plot, you might imagine ways in which the series' classic characters figure into the antics. At first, I was disappointed to learn that the low-hanging comedy fruit of original-series cameos wasn't harvested. Once the film concluded, however, I appreciated that Do the Universe settles on a limited cast and gets in and out in roughly 85 minutes. The film's momentum begins to sag as it approaches the finish line, and I'm honestly impressed the film surpassed the one-hour mark without getting tiresome; after all, this series is famous for insanely short TV episodes that were padded with music video commentary. Plus, the ending sets up the series' return to Paramount+ in 2024—which could still lead to missing cameos and Easter eggs eventually getting their day in the Cornholio sun. Spacewalking is cool, but have you ever tried space sex-pantomiming? Paramount The same restraint applies to the madcap, universe-bending stuff that technically makes Do the Universe a sci-fi film. To be clear, Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy counts more as a sci-fi film than this one, despite the films' similarities, where people from the past land in situations a bit over their heads in a different era. Still, Beavis and Butt-head's blushes with modern technology are memorable and refreshing—all without overdoing any fish-out-of-water gags. (Do the Universe takes special care to routinely refresh its jokes and punchlines, as opposed to 1996's Beavis and Butt-head Do America, which repeated the same "cavity search" joke roughly 4,000 times.) Be warned, parents: This film continues the series' streak of pushing past "PG," yet landing nowhere near "mature." The boys keep up their decades-long streak of talking about and pantomiming sexual acts, and if your kids see you laugh at this movie, they'll probably start faking like Beavis or Butt-head around the house for the next few weeks. Ultimately, this film's few slow stretches can't derail the rest of its highlights, and the result is my favorite Judge production in years. I for one am thankful that someone decided to strap Beavis and Butt-head to a rocket to see what happens. Verdict: Anyone who has ever laughed at Idiocracy, Office Space, or King of the Hill should splurge on a one-month subscription to Paramount+ to watch this. Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe: Official trailer. Beavis & Butt-Head Do the Universe review: An enjoyably stupid multiverse

Apple and Paramount are reportedly working on a partnership to bundle Apple TV+ and Paramount+. This could be great for users who are interested and / or are subscribed to both services. The Wall Street Journal reports (paywalled article) that the two companies have been discussing a deal to offer their respective streaming services at an affordable price. The talks are in an early stage, so it is unclear how it could develop. We can't tell if this would be a U.S. Centric deal, or whether Apple would make it available worldwide. That would also depend on Paramount's existing partnerships across the globe. Partnerships between streaming services are not exactly new. For example, Paramount+ is available as part of JioCinema Premium in India, the plan also includes content from HBO. Verizon has a similar deal for users in the U.S. where it is offering Netflix and HBO's Max together in a bundle. Disney+ has a bundle which combines its own service along with Hulu and ESPN+. What is the need for such partnerships? The WSJ quotes Antenna's research, which reveals that both Apple TV+ and Paramount lost 7% of their subscribers in October. This was also the highest defection rate across the industry. Some services such as Netflix have tried other strategies such as offering an ad-supported plan at a lower price, and increasing the cost of the ad-free plans. It has proven to be rather successful for the company, and others have followed suit. But there is another problem with this trend, the rising prices of streaming services. The cost of streaming services have been increasing their prices steadily over the past couple of years, by up to 25%. It has become difficult for consumers to afford subscriptions, and as a result of this, they jump to an alternative platform that costs less. Apple TV+ was available for $6.99 / month recently, but it costs $9.99 after a price hike of $3 in October. Apple and Paramount are in talks to bundle their streaming services Let's say that the talks are successful. How could this be beneficial for users? Paramount Plus boasts a decent line-up of shows including heavy-hitters such as Star Trek, Yellowstone to name a few. It also offers some live sports like soccer in the U.S. In comparison, Apple TV+ has a bigger catalog like Ted Lasso, Severance, Silo, etc. It bundles some live sporting events as well, so a combination of both services would definitely add some value for viewers. The thing that will prove to be the deciding factor will of course be the price of the plan. Apple TV+ costs $9.99 per month. Paramount+ Essential costs $5.99 per month and has ads between episodes, while Paramount+ with SHOWTIME offers CBS live channels, has fewer ads and supports offline downloads). Let's say a bundle of the two, i.e., Apple TV+ and Paramount+ Essential is made available for $12, that would be more attractive than buying both subscriptions separately for $16 a month ($192 /year). This could shave off nearly $50 per year ($144), which could be appealing to consumers. I miss the good old days when cable was the thing, it was not expensive and offered a ton of content. Now we have to pay for each service that carries our favorite shows, and sports, and the bills turn out to be significantly higher. Source

We got to see a teaser trailer for the upcoming second season of the Halo TV series in December. Today, we got the full and final trailer for Halo Season 2, and it hints strongly that we will see a version of one of the pivotal moments in the Halo game series. The trailer, as posted on YouTube, is looking like part of season 2 will depict the fall of Reach. The event, which depicted Earth's Spartan forces going up against the alien Covenant in an invasion of the planet Reach, has been depicted in prose novels and a previous CGI movie commissioned by Microsoft, before Halo's original developer Bungie made it their final game in the series, Halo: Reach, in 2010. Here's the video's description: It would seem like Season 2 of the Halo TV series is getting us set up for depicting the show's version of the first game in the series, Halo: Combat Evolved, where Master Chief crash lands on the massive Halo ring. The show got renewed for a second season even before the first season began in 2022. However, Season 1 got mixed reviews at best from TV critics and Halo fans. This new trailer has us hopeful that Season 2 will be better, and if it gets renewed, we will hopefully get to see Master Chief exploring the Halo ring in Season 3. Halo Season 2 is scheduled to drop on the Paramount+ streaming service on February 8. It will debut with the first two episodes, with the remaining episodes will drop weekly on Thursday through March 21. Source