20 years ago I started a Netflix subscription because Star Trek: The Next Generation was an expensive show to watch. Over the past decade I switched that to CBS All Access and then Paramount Plus to keep my “Star Trek Channel” going. Today I’m ending my Paramount subscription, and it turns out it’s not so expensive to replace anymore.

How it started: TNG had just come out on DVD, and the box sets for each season were running about $100 each. With 7 seasons I was looking at $700 to binge-watch the whole show, about $1100 today’s money. Even renting the discs from Blockbuster meant I’d be spending $150 before I was done. That felt like a lot.

Instead, I tried out this new service for a fixed cost, about $10 a month. Netflix would send me a DVD at a time, so I could watch 4 episodes and send it back for the next 4. I loved that model for reasons I won’t go into here, and I did indeed binge all 7 seasons of TNG in a less than a year. Money well spent.

I know that was at least 20 years ago because I enthused about Netflix in 2004. Since then, between Netflix and Paramount I’ve probably spent about $2500 total to keep my Trek supply flowing. More than that initial sticker-shock cost, but over time it included the other Trek shows, the upgrade to streaming, and the TOS and TNG remasters to HD. I probably came out even.

Today I’m ditching Paramount because their new owner decided to choose the fascist path. Eff those guys. So I need an alternative to the Star Trek Channel. My usual go-to is Apple, and I did the math on what it would cost to get all the Star Trek series.

For example, TNG is now $100 for all 7 seasons. Enterprise is $50 for the 4 seasons they were able to get through. Older shows like Voyager and DS9 are cheaper, newer ones like Discovery and Picard a little more. The most expensive (Strange New Worlds) is about $25 a season.

The total for TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and the first 2 seasons of Strange New Worlds is… $600!

(Oh, and I did NOT forget Prodigy. I already own Prodigy because Paramount took it off their service and then Netflix did the same, and that’s a whole other reason not to stream. But I digress.)

Paramount’s least-garbage tier is $13/month. At that rate I could buy a season or so every couple months and have them all, every last Trek show to watch whenever I want forever, in 4 years. (Or I could decide to buy now so their sales numbers drop to zero after the merger.)

What about the new stuff? Yep, I’m giving up early access to Strange New Worlds, the only Trek show currently being released. I expect I’ll have to do the same for Starfleet Academy if they decide to release that. Maybe that means waiting a few months for a season to be available on Apple, or it might not be released there at all. I can be patient.

In the best case, they’re releasing new stuff and I’m buying it on Apple when it comes out. Wait, isn’t that just the same thing as paying them monthly? No. They’d need to be releasing an entire season every 2 months to cost the same, and we all know that’s not the direction they’re headed.

But also wait, isn’t this just replacing one big-company streaming service for another? OK, yes. Sure. I’m relying on Apple to be less terrible, which so far they have been. (No pre-roll ads. No “autoplay next video”. No pulling a show entirely. So far.) I’m also relying on the ability to download each video file in its entirely, and if Apple stops authorizing them for some reason I could REDACTED because the data’s all technically there, not on a remote server.

If I want to go further (and I might), I can look at my friendly local bookstore for seasons on disc. I’ve been doing that for shows like Mork & Mindy that aren’t on streaming at all, and they similarly tend to be about $10-20 a season. So I bet that over time I’ll end up with physical copies of all these shows, backing up the more-convenient Apple digital files, and ensuring my Trek supply for the next 20 years.