I recently got caught up to “Doctor Who.” In order to do so, I had to binge Series 13 and the 2022 Festive Specials on Max. When I was ready to watch the newest specials from this year, I had to switch over to Disney Plus. And if I was so inclined to watch the classic era, that would require a ridiculous third subscription to BritBox. 

This segmentation of TV shows over multiple streaming services is ridiculous and makes a strong case for physical media. 

This goes beyond “Doctor Who” — my girlfriend and I have run into many instances where one of our streaming services will only pay for some of the seasons of a show (“Law & Order” has fallen victim to this in the past) in order for the platform to advertise the show in their catalogue at reduced cost. 

I personally hate the practice — it makes me feel lied to as a consumer and it’s a way to artificially inflate a platform’s offerings. 

Netflix has also been guilty of this, though it’s been a little more transparent in some ways, namely how it’s been known to buy the rights to only the first seasons of long running anime. I fell victim to this when it got me into “Black Clover,” only to realize that, if I wanted to watch beyond Season 1, I needed to buy a Funimation subscription at the time (which I did). It’s been a little better with “One Piece,” as when I started my journey watching through the show, it had everything through the first episode to the Water 7 arc, and have been adding seasons since. 

“Doctor Who” has been one of the softest offenders, as while it is ridiculous that three streaming services are needed to watch one show, the classic era is almost an entirely different show from the modern one that started in 2005. The modern show has an entirely different tone and production values from the classic era, though the two share a loose canon — the 2005 show acknowledges all the classic Doctors, with some returning a couple times. 

But I do admit that it’s hard to defend the shift to Disney Plus, a platform that is unceremoniously raising its monthly price to about $14, which is grossly inappropriate given that its catalogue is largely mediocre and is almost entirely supported by children’s programming and fandom content — the latter of which has been overall middling and oversaturated. Despite the large amount of franchise content on the platform that I’ve regularly reviewed on this website, my girlfriend and I have discussed dropping Disney Plus, as it hasn’t been able to justify its price increase. 

I think this practice of scattering parts of shows into the wind comes from the fact that there are simply too many streaming services. Not everyone can have a huge library and there are some shows — like “Friends” and “The Office” — that they all compete for. 

This means that, even if you’re lucky enough to have a favorite show be all in one place, it might not be there for long. And there are plenty of great shows that have fallen off of streaming’s radar, many of which you can only legally watch on DVD releases from years ago. 

Perhaps we will see some of this volatility die down when more streaming platforms cease to exist — I would not mourn the loss of Paramount Plus, Apple TV Plus and Discovery Plus, as they are services I never plan to buy into. 

But I do recommend buying physical copies of at least old favorites, as unlike content on streaming, once you pay for it, you have access to it forever.