Skip to main content

Star Trek: Picard’s pilot is available free on YouTube and Pluto TV

For a limited time, CBS has made the pilot episode for Star Trek: Picard available for free on YouTube.

The series’ primary home is CBS All Access, the streaming video service launched by ViacomCBS. The second episode arrived on the app Wednesday, and CBS is making the first episode freely available on YouTube serves as an opportunity for viewers to check the series out before deciding if they want to subscribe to yet another streamer.

Pluto TV, a free, ad-sported streaming video service, will also repeatedly stream the first episode of Picard on a 24-hour marathon on Thursday, Jan. 30, then every evening at 8 p.m. ET on Pluto TV’s Sci-Fi channel through February 5. Pluto TV is owned by ViacomCBS, so the partnership makes sense.

CBS has not said whether it plans to make additional episodes of the series available for free in the future, nor has it specified how long “available for a limited time” actually will be for the pilot.

That subscription for CBS All Access, by the way, will run $6 per month for an ad-supported version and $10 for ad-free content on the service, which first launched back in October 2014.

The series, which has Patrick Stewart reprising his iconic role as USS Enterprise Captain Jean-Luc Picard, has so far gotten solid reviews from critics. It centers around Picard, who at the outset of the pilot has retreated to a quiet life on his vineyard some 14 years after his retirement from Starfleet. Picard is soon sought out by a young woman, Dahj (Isa Briones), and a new mission comes to the forefront.

It’s seen as an important series for the CBS streaming service, especially considering the ever-increasing competition in the streaming landscape.

CBS hasn’t officially released its total number of subscribers, reports suggest the number could be somewhere between four and five million. Those prospective numbers are rivaled by statistics from companies like Netflix (158 million subscriptions), Hulu (28.5) and even Disney+, which reportedly earn 10 million subscribers within 24 hours of launching.

Star Trek: Picard has already been renewed for a second season, set to premiere in 2021. Another Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery, is reportedly returning for a third season.

Nick Woodard
Former Digital Trends Contributor
  As an A/V Staff Writer at Digital Trends, Nick Woodard covers topics that include 4K HDR TVs, headphones…
YouTube adds free TV series and shows, with advertising
Hell's Kitchen promo for YouTube.

The line between YouTube and YouTube TV is blurring even more, with the addition of full seasons of series -- nearly 4,000 episodes in total -- now available on YouTube. They're free to watch, but there will be advertising -- just like if you were to watch them on-demand on YouTube TV itself.

And YouTube also is rolling out "brand new streamlined navigation and immersive banner art," which it says "will help you more easily find your favorite TV shows." It also says that you'll be able to watch many of the shows in 1080p resolution, and with 5.1 surround sound.

Read more
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds casts Paul Wesley as Kirk
Paul Wesley in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will explore the cosmos with the original captain of the Enterprise, Christopher Pike, this spring. However, the prequel series apparently has plans for Pike's successor as well. Via Deadline, Paul Wesley has signed on for season two as a younger version of James T. Kirk. William Shatner's Captain Kirk was one of the icons of the original Star Trek. For the reboot films, Chris Pine has assumed the role of Kirk in three movies to date.

Wesley previously headlined The Vampire Diaries for eight seasons as Stefan Salvatore. More recently, he appeared in Tell Me A Story and the Shudder original film History of Evil. Wesley has expanded his career to directing, helming episodes of Shadowhunters, Legacies, and Roswell, New Mexico.

Read more
Guinan returns in new Star Trek: Picard season 2 trailer
Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: Picard season 2.

For the first time in 20 years, Whoopi Goldberg is back in the Star Trek universe. In the new trailer for Star Trek: Picard season 2, Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard faces a time-bending problem. But there's no one better-suited to give him advice than his old friend, Guinan (Goldberg). And while the future of humanity and the Federation may be at stake, Guinan tells Picard that the "answers are not in the stars. And they never have been."

The trailer also seems to indicate that John de Lancie's Q was not responsible for the incident that put Picard and his crew into a new timeline. However, Q is definitely taking advantage of the chaos to put Picard through another test. The nearly omnipotent being hasn't appeared to Picard since the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And Q always relishes his mind games, because the trial of humanity never ends.

Read more