Update Jan 17: Season 2 of Star Trek Discovery premieres tonight at 8:30 PM ET/5:30 PM PT with new episodes coming out weekly in the same time slot.
While Star Trek: Discovery's first season has come and gone since then, the pertinent information to watch Season 2 is the same. To watch the show in the United States, you'll need a subscription to CBS All Access. In Canada, you can tune in on the Space channel, while the rest of the world can use Netflix.
Since it premiered more than 50 years ago, Star Trek has enthralled imaginative TV fans all around the world with its unique mix of action, adventure, drama and science-fiction.
Enter Star Trek: Discovery: the latest entry in the franchise, made for the era of prestige streaming television. Star Trek: Discovery takes place ten years before the original series, and explores how the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire come to oppose each other in an intergalactic cold war.
Sonequa Martin-Green will play the show’s protagonist: Michael Burnham, an officer aboard the U.S.S. Discovery. Other important characters include Jason Isaacs as the Discovery’s captain, Michelle Yeoh as the captain of the U.S.S. Shenzhou and James Frain as Sarek, Mr. Spock’s father.
Streaming Trek
The show has also garnered some interest for being CBS’s first foray into big-budget streaming television. As such, you won’t be able to watch it on regular television. You'll have to use the CBS All Access streaming service, at least in the United States.
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Furthermore, Star Trek: Discovery won’t offer all of its episodes at once, as Netflix tends to do with its original series like The Defenders. Fans will have to tune in each week, just like they were watching a traditional TV show. Of course, missing an episode when it airs won’t be a problem; after its initial run, viewers will be able to stream it anytime.
CBS All Access
Your options to watch Star Trek: Discovery are, as such, pretty slim: Either pony up some cash for CBS All Access, or go watch something else. The service offers a 7-day free trial; after that, it costs $6 per month to watch shows with advertisements, or $10 per month to watch without.
On the bright side, watching CBS All Access is trivially simple. Just load the app onto whichever device you use to watch TV (Apple TV, Android, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, iOS, PlayStation, Roku, PC, Xbox), log in, and start streaming.
Star Trek: Discovery isn’t the only thing you can watch, either. You’ll get access to a generous back catalog of CBS shows, including NCIS, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife and the other six Star Trek series. (Yes, there are six other series. If you’ve never seen The Animated Series, you can probably skip it.)
As for whether CBS All Access is worth the price in general, I’m ambivalent. But I will absolutely pay for Star Trek: Discovery, and I suspect that many other fans will feel the same way.
