All Star Trek Episodes from Every Series to Stream on Netflix

http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/04/08/all-star-trek-coming-to-netflix-make-it-so/

by mhb • 15 years ago

181 73 15 years ago

pstack• 15 years ago

How far will anyone make it through watching them, before they all start showing "Available until a date two weeks from now", like 20% of my queue almost always does?

jeffgreco• 15 years ago

They will be streamable for at least two years, under the deal.

staunch• 15 years ago

When I was growing up my father had dubbed copies of Star Trek: The Original Series. I watched every fuzzy episode dozens of times. Eventually enjoying TNG/DS9/Voyager/Enterprise as well. One of biggest hopes in life was to own every single episode of each Star Trek series on VHS so I could enjoy them at will. The boxed VHS sets were always way too expensive for me then.

It's strange to think back because now I have all of them sitting on a tiny little corner of a 1TB drive.

I still often watch them to this day while I program. I'll go through a dozen episodes (playing on a second monitor) in a day.

Kids growing up today have it so damn good.

sliverstorm5• 15 years ago

It of course remains to be seen whether it's actually good.

Perhaps I'm looking at things through rose-colored glasses, but things like having to look in the dictionary to learn about things and words (and I wanted to learn about a LOT of words), hunting snails for nickels, working as a stableboy... it's usually said these days with a mocking tone, but I have become at least a bit of a believer in the old, "it builds character".

subsection1h2• 15 years ago

> things like having to look in the dictionary to learn about things and words

Do you think that using a print dictionary builds character better than using Onelook.com?

19,089,129 words in 1062 dictionaries indexed: http://www.onelook.com/?d=all_gen

sstrudeau• 15 years ago

I had an interesting debate with some friends after sharing this Tom Waits quote: "This is what's wrong with the world. Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now."

Via http://www.bnox.be/2009/11/tom-waits-and-deficit-of-wonder.h...

I tend to agree that there can be some value in the gap between wondering about something and actually finding out (or never finding out). Letting your mind chew on a question means you have an opportunity to imagine your own answer or your own story. When you tighten that gap those creative mental wonderings get clipped short.

I don't think he is saying a world where you can never look things up in 5 seconds is preferrable, but noting the effect this has on the underappreciated benefits of wonder.

cstuder• 15 years ago

When I was growing up, a friend of mine actually had to pay a guy in the US to tape all the episodes and mail over the VHS tapes to us in Europe. (German TV showed the shows years later, cut out a couple of minutes to fit their schedule, dubbed over with mediocre voice actors and randomly ordered and dropped episodes without any recognizable pattern.)

We've beaten geo-blocking and regional licensing over 15 years ago and it's getting easier by the minute. Truly great times we live in.

Vivtek2• 15 years ago

Oh God, the German dubs (and the Hungarian ones for that matter) are truly atrocious.

noonespecial4• 15 years ago

Totally did that. My friend in the US would fill an 8 hour tape, disassemble the tape and send just the one tape spool to me in Germany. I'd reassemble the tape, load it into the precious NTSC player and Trek my brains out.

thwarted5• 15 years ago

You can also hit http://www.allstepisodes.com/

Not sure of the legality though.

EDIT: seems to be more ad laden than I remember.

henning• 15 years ago

full of annoying ads, unsynced audio, constant buffering, low resolution. it's a very poor viewing experience, and it's copyright infringement.

thwarted5• 15 years ago

Agreed on the ads, which are thankfully only on the website and not during playback. I don't have any issue with unsynced audio or buffering. The TNG episodes only appear crappy if you full screen it, but NTSC resolution is crappy anyway. The Enterprise episodes are terrible quality because those were all filmed in HD, so of course. It's no worse than watching just about any random copyrighted infringed video on Youtube.

It's the modern equivalent of staunch's dad's dubbed copies.

JoelMcCracken• 15 years ago

YESYESYESYESYES

Sorry, but Picard influenced me as much an any person in my life. This makes me so happy.

thwarted5• 15 years ago

One could pick a worse role model than Picard.

sliverstorm5• 15 years ago

Best of all, any negative traits he might have (besides a self-professed awkwardness around children) seem to stem from being too idealistic, which are very hard to replicate when based only on a role model. Stringent ideals typically require some deeper conviction.

chopsueyar• 15 years ago

powertower• 15 years ago

It would be interesting to do a poll in relation to favorite star-trek character (TNG) and then cross-reference that to respondent’s job/career.

I bet there is a strong correlation between Data (the character) and a programmer.

What do you think the correlation to Riker, Picard, Worf would be?

StudyAnimal• 15 years ago

What, no ST:TAS?

subsection1h2• 15 years ago

They can be watched here: http://www.startrek.com/videos/star-trek-the-animated-series...

navs• 15 years ago

What a find!

Unfortunately I'm not in the correct geographic region to enjoy this.

sathyabhat• 15 years ago

Wake me up when Netflix moves outside the US.

(To add to that list: Pandora, Hulu, Spotify. Atleast last.fm is available as a paid subscription option.)

ig12• 15 years ago

Spotify and last.fm are both European

cabalamat2• 15 years ago

And spotify only works in 7 EU countries, due to copyright laws.

GoodIntentions• 15 years ago

Star Trek was my favourite television show back in grade school. Never got to see them all as a kid, because TV was limited to a few (crappy) channels where I grew up, but I really loved it. To this day, an episode of ST can side track me fairly easily. So I was pretty pleased by this headline.

Unfortunately, it turns out this release is only for the U.S. Seriously, wtf Netflix? You don't need to translate the episodes into Canadian, just let me watch the damn things.

wladimir2• 15 years ago

It's indeed too bad. I'm from Europe and I don't think such a service will be available here in the forseeable future.

Due to sticky politics it's impossible to have a proper global video streaming service. Sad, really.

tomjen32• 15 years ago

It is certainly possible - you just have to ignore copyright.

At some point we are going to have to realize that we have enough movies, books, etc that we can't read/watch all of those which interests us and just kill copyright.

It is already half happened because most people flatly ignore it and the amount of draconian enforcement necessary to uphold it is too large for people to accept.

gommm• 15 years ago

You can what I do, I use a ssh tunnel to a server that I have in the us to watch them... Netflix does geoip but doesn't check the country of the credit cards paying the subscriptions...

zephjc• 15 years ago

All I can say is http://i.imgur.com/eCOz1.jpg

nkassis• 15 years ago

I live in Canada

/facepalm

kleiba• 15 years ago

Germany - same here.

bluedanieru• 15 years ago

Same (Japan). I wonder how much this sort of nonsense (i.e. region-specific releases) increases piracy in the places that don't benefit. It's not like it's any harder to hop on a torrent in one place than anywhere else, and seeing one region get the release while you're left out in the cold pretty much ruins any moral objection you may have had to just grabbing it.

Anyway, I hope it's a lot (the increase in piracy, I mean).

noonespecial4• 15 years ago

I go to Australia fairly often and know quite a few people who live between the US and AU. Finally frustrated beyond the breaking point by iTunes and Netflix goe-location nonsense, I got one of these small servers(1).

I loaded openvpn(2) server on it and put tunnelblick(3) on all our macs (and a few openwrt type devices)

Cost of a tiny dedicated Atom server payable with paypal: $39/month. Having an IP address that that says I'm in New Jersey wherever in the world I happen to be: priceless.

1. http://www.interserver.net/custom-managed-dedicated-servers....

2. http://openvpn.net/

3. http://code.google.com/p/tunnelblick/

comex• 15 years ago

For what it's worth, you're paying too much; if you don't need much CPU or RAM, just a network connection, you'd be fine with a cheap VPS or EC2.

troymc• 15 years ago

I also live in Canada --- and would love to re-watch TNG.

The best-looking option right now (that doesn't entail copyright infringement) is Zip.ca, which has a bigger selection than Netflix Canada (at least for DVDs-by-mail), and has all the seasons of TNG on DVD. Zip.ca starts at $11/month.

http://www.zip.ca/DVD/Browse.aspx/1/s/Next$20Generation

Osiris• 15 years ago

When Netflix first came out, I used the 3-at-time plan to watch every single episode of Star Trek available on DVD. I think I watched 4 a day for a very long time. Nice to see I can repeat the process now without even having to go to the mailbox =)

kingkawn2• 15 years ago

This is the perfect Hacker News article. I learned something new and mathematically-interesting about the world, the author came up with a niche development to get us excited, and we learn how to apply that to improve our own lives.

mhb• 15 years ago

How far we've come:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1014567

[dead] Hackers News with Vuvuzelas (vuvuzela-time.co.uk)

kingkawn2• 15 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2419815

DanielBMarkham• 15 years ago

I liked all the various configurations of Trek; some more than others.

It's interesting to see in this thread the split between TOS trekkers and a STTNG trekkers. I was always more of a TOS person myself: I think the creative tension that the networks put on Gene by making him "dumb it down" actually made for better, sharper analysis of the sci-fi involved. TNG seemed to meander a bit. But that's me.

What I find interesting about looking at the shows from decades later is the way the topics were addressed. Things like the episode where Daystom's M-9 computer took over the Enterprise and basically was a smart machine with a weapon -- we seemed to have come down on the side of that being okay, at least for now. But back then there were a lot of very important questions raised -- questions that are still valid. Or the Darmok episode, where the culture spoke only in metaphor. That still twists my noodle because that's all any culture really does -- speak in various metaphors. When you're asking a bunch of users from a certain societal niche to tell you what they want, not only is their jargon going to be unique, but the way they compare things and discuss things are too. (Insert Wittgenstein discussion).

Taking a short dramatic format and making a bunch of pimply-faced teenagers start thinking about what's important in their lives is an awesomely good thing. Let's hope Trek keeps doing that for years to come.

scottkrager• 15 years ago

I always thought TOS fans are usually called "trekkies" and TNG "trekkers"

Oh dear gosh I hope my wife doesn't know I know that.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

Trek has always had two important elements which explain its continued popularity.

On the one hand there are rich, deep characters that we come to care about, become interested in, and become invested in. Just about every character in TOS fits this mold. They are all iconic in various ways. Later series did nearly as well, the characters in TNG and DS9 are also largely iconic, Voyager and Enterprise somewhat less so with a few exceptions. This creates the opportunity for rich story telling and character development and also greatly facilitates people becoming attached to the characters and the show. The last season of DS9 is an excellent example of this phenomenon with long running story arcs rich in development of multiple characters.

This in turn facilitates the flip side of Star Trek. A cast of characters that viewers are heavily invested in and a setting that viewers are intimately familiar with creates the opportunity to put on one-off stories that are more engaging than they would be otherwise. In this way most Star Trek shows become a kind of science fiction anthology. So the show can explore various standalone stories within a familiar context, elevating the emotional investment in the story.

This combination elevates Star Trek to an amazing level and many other SciFi shows have adopted a similar format to attempt to recreate Star Trek's success. Many of people's most memorable and favorite episodes of various Star Trek shows are one-episode short stories founded on their own unique premises (Inner Light, City on the Edge of Forever, Hard Time) rather than stemming from pre-existing story elements or being part of a multi-episode story arc.

All Star Trek Episodes from Every Series to Stream on Netflix

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