NEEDLESS TO SAY…SPOILER!
With new Star Trek episodes of the various active series now dropping nearly every week throughout the year, I’ve stopped canceling and reactivating my Paramount+ subscription and have just accepted the reality of yet another streaming service sucking away a “small” monthly fee from my credit card.
And honestly, I do enjoy having Paramount+, even if mainly for Star Trek and little else. But the one thing I most unequivocally do NOT like is the way their app handles their shows’ closing credits! You get about 5 seconds before the active credits roll shrinks down to an unreadable size to make room for whatever show they want to recommend next (as opposed to making the recommendation the small overlay).
This means that, if you wanted to see if that familiar voice you heard on the latest episode of LOWER DECKS was really ARMIN SHIMERMAN or GEORGE TAKEI or JEFFREY COMBS or J.G. HERTZLER, you need to move at warp speed to your remote, hit the right arrow, hit enter, and hope you were fast enough to restore the credits roll to full size before the names of the guest stars finish displaying.
And of course, you’re NEVER fast enough.
So you now need to rewind the playback 15 or 30 seconds (not sure how big the jump is) and let it play again. Of course, then the resizing algorithm activates a second time, and you have to go through the whole rigamarole AGAIN! So next time, you restore the credits to full size and let them play through a little longer before jumping back. This brings up another failure of the Paramount+ application: the credits are slightly dimmed out as they play. I’m not sure what that’s all about, but it confirms to me that there is/was no QA (quality assurance) bug testing at CBS Interactive when the original All Access application was being created, as this problem has existed since day one without ever being corrected.
Now, what if the show’s creators decide they want to include a post-credits easter egg? Disney does it all the time. First of all, that will be dimmed out, too, and barely visible. But also, just in case you missed it (or couldn’t see it well enough or simply wanted to watch it again), by the time you each the end of the credits, the jump back button on your remote NO LONGER WORKS!!! Instead, the application jumps to the next recommended show (which for me is always—shudder!—DISCOVERY).
So you navigate back to the main menu, but now the Paramount+ application takes you back to the beginning of the episode, NOT the end of the closing credits where you left off! And worse, if you’re like me and opt for the cheaper subscription with forced commercials, the app doesn’t credit you the commercials you’ve already watched but instead plays them AGAIN even if you fast-forward to the closing credits! And of course, once you reach them, the resizing algorithm kicks in again…ARGH!
All of this is to say that I now (proudly) present the season three finale EASTER EGG that you very likely missed. And while I’ll probably get some kind of take-down notice from Paramount, I am hopeful that they will first read the above blog to understand that their streaming application makes finding and watching any easter egg that the creators want to show the fans nearly impossible…!