Alt text: Image of an abnormally tall phone screen with an enormous received text message. Caption reads: POV: My friend after finally asking me “where to start” watching Star Trek.
with the original series?
It’s what I watched as a kid on syndication. It’s not “modern” Star Trek. Well it is if you take Lower Decks as Star Trek. But a lot of fans think TNG, DS9 style trek is the only Star Trek. Serious, intellectual examinations of politics, etc.
But I think that’s bullshit. There’s plenty of that in TOS. It’s just layered along with a lot of silly and fun stuff. It’s also historically significant. For instance it has a diverse main cast which wasn’t common back then and it had the first interracial kiss on television.
The kiss thing isn’t technically true, it’s the first white man on black woman kiss on American made TV. (edit: and let’s also remember that the characters weren’t willingly kissing each other so there’s that as well)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_interracial_kiss_on_television
Personally, I’d say yes if they’ve heard of Captain Kirk and Mister Spock.
Not all of it, but a couple of select episodes such a Space Seed and Balance of Terror.
Then a couple of TNG episodes like The Measure of a Man and Q Who
If they’re into it after that, some TOS films (2,3 and 4 come to mind) and a few more TNG episodes in order.
The first couple of DS9 episodes to see if they like the space station format, but after season 2 or 3 I think those need to be watched in order really.
Then Voyager, then Enterprise.
If they don’t get on with TNG, maybe look at the first few episodes of Discovery. If that’s a bit grim for them, Strange New Worlds should be light enough.
Prodigy might be a good start if they don’t want to watch 60 years of legacy Trek to catch them up.
And Lower Decks is nice and light but I think they’d get far more out of it if they have some reference on what’s being riffed on.
So? I would also not like the origins of apples or generally almost any vegetable or fruit we have today. They have been refined for 1000s of years to get to where we are today. TOS is just not watchable, not even as a fan, so extremely unlikely for a random person. Maybe it was good at its time, but certainly not compared to what we have had since then.
