I am relatively new to Star Trek. I have watched strange New Worlds, the Lower Decks and Discovery and want to watch some of the “older” memed shows from this sub. I could never really get into TOS because it’s just too old. What would you guys recommend to watch first to get really into it?
TNG is a great place to begin. It’s usually what I recommend to anyone who hesitates to start the original. It matures the series and gets into the philosophy of trek more.
You can always go back to TOS later if you really get into the whole universe of Trek. It’s light-hearted and campy, the characters are cultural icons, and it’s fun to see where everything got started.
Going to be that person and suggest the OP try Voyager.
It seems to be the most accessible of the older shows for younger, newer viewers. It was the most watched of all the classic shows on Netflix.
It covers all the classic tropes and provides endless fodder for memes here.
It’s uneven throughout its entire run, but also has some of the very best episodes ever. New fans really attach to the characters, and there’s no refuting that it unabashedly leaned into the weird.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is my favorite Star Trek of all time to this day. The setting on a space station rather than a starship whizzing all over the galaxy makes for a lot more development of characters and storyline than the more episodic nature of other Trek shows. Plus the chemistry the ensemble cast has is just fantastic, and you literally cannot get too much Armin Shimmerman.
you literally cannot get too much Armin Shimmerman.
Quark is my favorite character. DS9 is a great choice.
Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is one of the most popular shows in the franchise (and definitely meme’d to death online). With a stellar cast, interesting development of characters, and fascinating action and psychological stories, it helped build a modern setting for the franchise to grow into.
Also, it’s one of the only series that received a modern sequel series (Star Trek: Picard). Sure, there are occasional crossover episodes between series, but TNG was so popular, they got most of the old cast back to reprise their roles decades later. So if you’re invested in the characters of TNG, you get to see what adventures they’re up to years after leaving Starfleet.
ALSO also… TOS and TNG are the only two series to get full-length feature films made alongside their respective TV shows. (Even the modern reboot films are set in the TOS timeline, following the characters from that show.) So if you’d like to see TV show characters on the big screen, TNG will give you those big budget productions along with your show.
The first TNG film (Star Trek: Generations) actually has Captain Picard running into Captain Kirk from TOS, who got stuck in some sort of time anomaly in space. It was awesome that they found a way to do a crossover between the two series, considering they take place almost 100 years apart from each other in the Star Trek timeline.
