Paramount’s flagship Star Trek series is expanding its reach in the UK, with the first season of Strange New Worlds now available on the free streaming service ITVX, with more likely to come.
SNW joins ITVX
Like in the USA and most of the world, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been a Paramount+ exclusive in the UK since it premiered in 2022. Now the prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series set on the USS Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), featuring Spock (Ethan Peck) and Number One (Rebecca Romijn) is available to stream for free on ITVX. On Sunday the entire first season (called “series” in the UK) of ten episodes warped onto the ad-supported free streaming service from ITV. The service requires no subscription but you can pay £5.99/month for an ad-free “premium” version.
Strange New Worlds on ITVX in UK
In addition to streaming content from the ITV broadcast network, ITVX features a wide array of licensed content from the major studios. In 2022 they inked a deal with Paramount, but it’s only recently that has started to include Paramount+ originals, with Lioness, and The Offer debuting earlier this year on the service. ITVX is available on the web, via mobile apps, on consoles, and a variety of smart TVs.
The first two episodes will also be airing on ITV1 on Sunday night at 10:20 p.m. and 11:20 p.m. respectively.
The addition of Strange New Worlds could be significant, showing a willingness to license original Star Trek series in markets that also have Paramount+. The series is still available on Paramount+ in the UK, but has recently been updated with the note that only season 3 is exclusive. This could indicate that ITVX will later be adding the second season to their free streaming offering.
Strange New Worlds on Paramount+ app in UK
It’s also noteworthy that the free ad-supporting streaming service Pluto TV (owned by Paramount) is available in the UK, but it has no Star Trek content, unlike in the USA where Pluto TV features several Star Trek channels. The “classic” Star Trek TV series (TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise) are all available in the UK on Netflix, as they are for most of the world outside the USA.
The post-Skydance takeover management at Paramount has talked about more openness to licensing and so it’s possible the ITVX deal now including originals could be seen more often, possibly in the USA. During the height of the streaming wars Paramount clawed back the streaming rights to the classic shows in the the USA, taking the Trek library license away from Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video, to make Paramount+ the “home of Star Trek.” Perhaps we might see this loosen up a bit with Paramount+ still hosting all of the Star Trek content, but also selling licenses to third parties, including older seasons of Paramount+ originals.
Find more on streaming and home media at TrekMovie.com.
