I want to get into the Star Trek universe but dont know where to start. I have previously seen first three seasons of Disocvery and first season of picard. Picard was cool but disocvery didnt quite track, a little boring and not adventure focused enough. However loving lower decks now (just started season 4) and want to get into the more canon stuff.
I have access to TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise and SNW. TOS i could probanly get access to if i want, but gotta admit that is not very enticing.
So where to start? TNG?
If it helps (and i dont get shunned for this), i am a stargate guy and love especially sg-1 and the adventure of the week format and the character ensemble
Some advice for TNG. Don’t skip seasons 1 and 2. It’s popular but misguided advice. I finished TNG this year and generally enjoyed these seasons despite their flaws.
To that effect, here’s an optimized episode watch guide for each. Six episodes removed per season to save you 9 hours in total. Return to the skipped episodes later if you’re interested.
<S1 - click to expand>
Watch Encounter at Farpoint 1x01/02 The Naked Now 1x03 Code of Honor 1x04 The Last Outpost 1x05 Where No One Has Gone Before 1x06 The Battle 1x09 Hide And Q 1x10 Haven 1x11 The Big Goodbye 1x12 Datalore 1x13 11001001 1x15 Home Soil 1x18 Coming of Age 1x19 Heart of Glory 1x20 The Arsenal of Freedom 1x21 Symbiosis 1x22 Skin Of Evil 1x23 We’ll Always Have Paris 1x24 Conspiracy 1x25 The Neutral Zone 1x26
Skip/defer Code of Honor 1x04 Lonely Among Us 1x07 Justice 1x08 Angel One 1x14 Too Short A Season 1x16 When The Bough Breaks 1x17
<S2- click to expand>
Watch Where Silence Has Lease 2x02 Elementary, Dear Data 2x03 Loud As A Whisper 2x05 The Schizoid Man 2x06 Unnatural Selection 2x07 A Matter Of Honor 2x08 The Measure Of A Man 2x09 The Dauphin 2x10 Contagion 2x11 Time Squared 2x13 The Icarus Factor 2x14 Pen Pals 2x15 Q Who 2x16 Samaritan Snare 2x17 Manhunt 2x19 The Emissary 2x20 Peak Performance 2x21
Skip/defer The Child 2x01 The Outrageous Okona 2x04 The Dauphin 2x10 The Royale 2x12 Up The Long Ladder 2x18 Shades of Gray 2x22
TNG season 1 is a good start its rough around the edges and if it starts to look like the movie “Coming to America” go ahead and skip that episode. Just watch knowing it’s going to get better like Park and Rec but it sets up a lot of storylines that will pay off later and some classic episodes that people forget are season 1 like “Datalore”.
You know what you are correct i should have done a search before posting thanks for the correction
If us Star Trek nerds can’t get our facts straight, what hope for humanity?
I’d say VOY, ENT, TNG, DS9 & SNW, but keep in mind I’m a bit anti mainstream in terms of Trek recommendations.
TNG season 3. The first two sessions are pretty rough. Start with 3. If you ever do a rewatch then try starting with season 1. Then try DS9.
TOS is good if you can handle the very low budget look.
Echoing move to SNW. It has a higher budget than older Trek and follows the current trend of “mini-series” storytelling. Older Trek follows older TV rules (wanted 26 eps to a season so a lot of filler to make it so). DS9 would be my other rec with a heavy caveat that if you’re not feeling an ep skip it and look it up on memory alpha later, particularly for the first season. As it goes on it gets more into the long form storytelling you’d expect with today’s shows, but first few seasons can be a bit rough and there can be a long time between plots being revisited (but when they are they make it count). TNG, Voyager and TOS are mainly monster/problem of the week (Voyager kind of weakly straddles longform and episodic leaning heavily towards episodic). Out of them I’d recommend TNG outside of the first two seasons (first season is TOS scifi tales encore, second season I actually like a lot and has some good eps, but general like is a minority opinion and cast gets retooled in third season anyway).
If you don’t mind kids shows also recommend Prodigy (kinda like a Trek ATLA imo).
