The 19th episode of Deep Space Nine's first season, Duet, was seemingly nowhere to be found on Paramount+. By making Paramount+ the only place to watch classic Star Trek, the company hopes to make its service more lucrative, not just by creating what feels like a metric buttload of new Star Trek to entice viewers, but also by gradually making the service the only place to watch classic Star Trek It's not great when you can access episodes you could have gotten before, but they fall into the digital equivalent of a wormhole, and Paramount+ is forced to claim that a streaming rights issue for one of its own shows is somehow the problem:
It's frustrating for fans when it's an episode that's beloved, but later seasons of Deep Space Nine focus on the dramatic, morally questionable.
The episode focuses on Major Kira, a former Bajoran freedom fighter turned liaison officer between her people and the Federation aboard DS9, feeling the effects of the brutal occupation of her homeworld before the series began. Kira is angry when a Cardassian suffering from a lethal condition comes to the station for treatment, accusing the man of heinous war crimes. At first, the Cardassian claimed to be a filing clerk at the camp, but under Kira's emotional interrogation, he revealed himself to be the Butcher of Gallitep.
The Cardassian isn't. Kira learns about the pain felt by people on both sides of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. The episode offers a gut-wrenchingly emotional story about prejudice in the wake of a traumatic event, and how people caught up in the horrifying acts of oppression are forced to process that, no matter how uninvolved they might have been in the larger conflict. It's an incredible piece of Star Trek, with great performances from Harris Yulin as Kira and Nana Visitor as Marritza, and a stellar example of why Deep Space Nine shouldn't just be.
Star Trek fans got a bit upset when it disappeared from what will soon be the sole home of streaming any kind of Star Trek. Not just any, either. It was only then that Paramount+ backtracked, with its absence no longer an issue of rights but an apparent miscommunication.
Duet lives to on your heartstrings once more. Should it take commentary from the show's producers? It's not the first time that Paramount has been caught in a Trek streaming gaffe, as the studio pushes to bring Paramount+ to more markets, Discovery fans were enraged to discover that the series had been completely. The intervention from the cast and crew led to a hasty retreat and compromise so international viewers could keep up with the show.
Outside of Paramount+, classic Trek still exists in part on streamers. If Paramount wants to be the definitive home of Star Trek streaming, it can't afford to have any of the classic episodes. In the meantime, why not watch yourself? It's pretty damn essential for some people.
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