I started watching Strange New Worlds the other week, I’ve really enjoyed the writing! The only other Trek media I’ve seen were the Abrams movies, which were okay I guess. I understand Strange New Worlds is a prequel to the original series, is it worth it to watch the original series after I finish it? Are there any series to avoid?
My favorites are the original series and TNG.
TOS is a lot of fun, and you get to see why Star Trek became so popular and developed the first “fandom”. TNG is when they really got to dig into the world-building of Roddenberry’s vision of the future, and there’s sooo much of it (178 episodes!). A lot of people nowadays start there.
Have fun!
I’d recommend you start with whatever you’re most excited for! Every series is someone’s favorite, and it often has to do with which Trek was their first.
The Original Series (TOS) is definitely quality television, and worth watching, but it can be jarring for modern audiences. If you haven’t seen much scifi from the 60s, it can feel very silly.
As for which series is specifically best, the debate is usually between Deep Space 9 (DS9), and the Next Generation (TNG). I personally consider Lower Decks (LD) of this same quality, but, being an animated comedy, it’s controversial in the fandom.
DS9 is widely accepted to actually be the best Star Trek. It takes itself very seriously most of the time, and has some fantastic characters. It’s probably the show that gives you the best picture of what it’s actually like to live in the Federation.
TNG is what most people think of when you say Star Trek, despite not being the original. It was the second live action series, which came out in the 80s, and the first of 3 shows set in roughly the same time period (TNG, DS9, and Voyager (VOY)). It was the most popular of all the Treks, and so gets a lot of special attention in pop culture, but suffers from some of the camp leftover from TOS, especially early on while they’re still adapting old stories.
Voyager is a bit of a dark horse. It’s MY favorite, but it has some rough episodes. It takes place outside the Federation, on the other side of the galaxy, where the Voyager and her crew have been stranded by a strange alien known as the Caretaker. The show follows their journey as they attempt to fly back to Earth, the long way, a 70 year journey.
Lower Decks takes place like 10 or so years after Voyager. It’s a workplace comedy following the crew of the Cerritos, a Starfleet support ship. They’re not super elite like the Enterprise, but that doesn’t mean the dangers they face are any less…dangerous. It’s smart, fast, and written with a clear love for the setting. They also get tons of Trek actors to reprise their roles in animation. It’s definitely best to watch once you’ve seen a bunch of Trek, but imo, it holds up on its own. I have friends for whom it was their first Trek, and they still loved it.
You could also stick with New Trek and check out Academy or Discorey next. Be aware, you will be entering a landscape of conflict. This is where Trek has always lived, but it feels different when it’s your show. A lot of people HATED Discovery, and Academy got a lot of flack from reactionaries because it was Star Trek. Personally, I liked them both, but I thought Discovery took a while to find its feet. Academy, I found fantastic, and recommended strongly. Academy is set in the far future, and includes some stuff from Discovery, but I can’t tell you why, because of the Temporal Prime Directive.
There are three other series, Prodigy, Enterprise (ENT), and the Animated Series (TAS). They’re all kind of special cases. TAS came out between TOS and TNG, but I’ve never actually seen it myself. From what I’ve heard, it’s pretty goofy. Prodigy is targeted at kids, but it’s a solid show regardless. It only got two seasons before it was cancelled, like Academy. Finally, Enterprise is a prequel, like SNW, but set even earlier. I like it, but it’s tone is often darker than Trek usually is. It feels like an early 2000s scifi show imo. It’s worth watching for Commander Shran alone though.
That’s the real show: which one of these characters is Jeffrey Combs?
I personally consider Lower Decks (LD) of this same quality, but, being an animated comedy, it’s controversial in the fandom.
The thing about recommending Lower Decks is that it’s a wonderful lighthearted love letter to Trek, but it does that through loads of Trek references and cross-references and obscura that specifically reward fans already in the know. If you’re new to Trek most of LD won’t make sense, it’d be like listening to the commentary track of a movie you never watched.
As much as I love LD, it’s the last thing I’d recommend to a new Trekkie.
The next generation, of course, and deep space nine
Then also, give “the Orville” a try! Basically TNG updated for the 2020s
DS9 is my favorite, but TNG is super important for setting the theme.
So TNG first up, got it!
Definitely TNG is where to start.
also ignore anyone who says skip season one. don’t. there are a few things there that you need to know for later seasons and honestly, it’s not that bad.
Ay ay, my plan is to watch it and just shrug off the bad bits. I’m usually able to take something from media most people call bad (even if I agree), because sometimes a good actor saves bad writing or vice versa or there’s a good bit of set design or worldbuilding. Trek sets such a rich world that I don’t mind the occasional ‘bad’ episode
you’re in for a treat then. oh man I wish I could experience Star Trek again for the first time, especially TNG and DS9. I’m insanely jealous of you right now.
It’s pretty bad lol, but not in a bad way if that makes sense. The actors just hadn’t found their roles yet, and the writers hadn’t figured out how to use the characters. But it’s all worth watching so you can appreciate what it becomes.
Just remember that some of the episodes are genuinely bad, but at least there’s a ton of 'em, and they’re mostly good. So don’t be surprised if you feel like skipping some!
Got it!
Yes. The beginning is rough.
After TnG I think a lot of people would recommend voyager or original series, but I’d recommend DS9. It is more of a prime time soap style vs every episode is an isolated adventure, but it’s REALLY good. Just kind of unique series. And again… The beginning is ROUGH. Stick it out though, it gets good.
Agree. DS9 is my favorIte Trek for being in conversation with TNG. And, to be totally real here, Battlestar Galactica was created by a Trek show runner and is also deeply in conversation with Trek. No reason to be docrinaire. Also on that note, The Orville is pretty much TNG in so many ways.
I’ll also throw Babylon 5 in the mix if you don’t mind non-utopian fiction.
Bab 5 isn’t really related to Trek at all in my mind. Heck, some of the new Trek properties aren’t related to Trek but in name.
The best three are TNG, DS9 and VOY.
TOS is very much a show from the 60s. If you love SNW, though, it’s definitely worth checking out. If you can’t get into it, the movies are still worth a watch. Wrath of Kahn is obligatory watching.
Be sure to watch First Contact. The other TNG movies aren’t as good.
ENT has its moments. If you get bored with the Xindi or temporal cold war storylines feel free to skip a bunch of episodes. IMO it gets good in season 4 and great right before it was cancelled at the end of that season.
Lower Decks is a funny cartoon that you should watch after you’ve seen a lot of other Star Trek shows, so that you’ll get the references.
Discovery and Picard are not as good as the earlier shows. At least, not in a way that appeals to fans of earlier Trek.
Starfleet Academy doesn’t deserve as much hate as it got, but it’s not great.
TAS (The Animated Series) is a curiosity that might be worth taking a look at for fans of TOS.
How could you leave out Voyage Home???
Honestly, as a sci-fi nerd who has watched The Original Series (and many others) and loved it, it is rough. It’s very much a product of it’s time and you can see and feel that in everything. Costumes, scripts, acting, sets, everything. For example, the below image is an actual alien from the original series, as it appeared in the show.
Now, if you can enjoy the camp and enjoy the show for what it is, then sure, give it a shot, but just know going in what you’re getting into.
Thanks for the heads up! I saw it was from the 60s and figured it would feel super dated, but I’m a lover of camp so it might be up my alley. I just heard that Roddenberry was a raging antisemite which definitely doesn’t fit with the show’s writing from what I’ve seen, and was worried it would be present in TOS more. I can deal with a dog in a costume though hahaha
I haven’t looked into it super deep but my impression is some of the antisemitism was more anti religion in general and that targeted the Jews because they are very central to American religion.
But whatever the truth about him, no, I don’t think it really showed up in the show. It feels very inclusive and truly utopian dreaming in many ways. There’s the classic sci-fi trope episodes about looking beyond physical characteristics or dogma and judging a person based on who they are.
If you like camp then for sure give it a shot, just don’t feel bad about stopping part way through if you change your mind either.
On the plus side literal Nazis get punched in one episode
It’s good it doesn’t show up on the show. He seemed like a reddit atheist stuck in the 1960s. Always down for punching Nazis though hell yeah
Don’t forget it was on a tight budget. I think it was the Official Encyclopaedia that had an article/interview with the costume lady, who told the actors often were scantily clad due to limited money for shopping on the market, not necessarily because hot.
Oh I don’t mean to attack the show or anything, it’s very understandable why it is what it is and it certainly led to a lot of great shows and stories that we all love. Like I said I watched and loved it. I just wanted them to know that if they’re going in expecting more Strange New Worlds just older that they might be disappointed.
Haha it’s like the coconut horses in Monty Python!
It really is!
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Consider starting with the TOS movies. They’re a great introduction to the original cast, using a higher budget and better writing than the show. They’re set after TOS, but don’t require you to know anything about it to watch them. The quality of the movies follows the playground rhyme “first the worst, second the best”.
My personal favourite series, by a country mile, is Lower Decks. You are in for an absolute treat whenever you decide to start on them. Unlike the others, though, Lower Decks massively rewards familiarity with other Star Trek series. The more of them you watch before picking it up, the more you will get out of it.
Are there any series to avoid?
That’s something to decide after watching them all. Yes, even TAS.
There’s a few movies I’d avoid, like Section 31.
That crap actually got made?
Yes. It’s…not great.
Yes I’m planning on watching most if not all of them! I just didn’t want to miss self-references and want to understand the good bits to laugh at the bits that aren’t so good (happens with any long-running show)
definitely not nutrek, starting from jj-abrams - Kurtsman trek.
i would say TNG, DS9, VOY, and maybe enterprise, eventhough it shouldve been better than it was it still pays homage to older series.
but they all bad and filler episodes in the earlier seasons.
for nutrek if you must, i would watch lower decks and prodigy both are cancelled.
i just cant get into SNW, something about thier wooden acting just doesnt fit right with me, and too much like the other 2.
I would avoid Discovery entirely. Personally, Voyager and the first two seasons of Enterprise are my favourites, but I do recommend watching The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine first. Regarding the Original Series, I’d go for a list of best rated episodes and then watch the movies (you can skip the first one, though). There is a lot of criticism about newer Trek in general, but I absolutely recommend watching Prodigy after Voyager and save Lower Decks for when you watched most of the other shows. Otherwise you will miss out on many fun references.
STD and PICARD is definitely the worst, Kurtzman really isnt that interested in trek, hes only there because he was tapped for it.
So TNG -> DS9 -> Voyager -> Enterprise -> Prodigy would be a good order?
I would recommend you make up your own mind about Discovery. It gets a lot of hate for being very different than other Star Trek, but if you take it on its own it can be enjoyable, and it’s visually gorgeous to watch. It also feeds into Academy, which has similar criticisms, but again you should watch them and see if you like them, don’t let strangers’ hate keep you from something you might end up loving. I’m a traditional Trekkie, but I find a lot to like in the new shows.
But otherwise, yeah, that order is good. Save Lower Decks for last to catch all the jokes and fan service.
I’ll give it a whirl at some point!
I can only speak for myself, but I doubt there’s anything wrong with that order. You can easily skip the first half of TNG season one to avoid some very bad episodes, but apart from that TNG is very solid.
Contrary to many other opinions, I did enjoy the TNG movies with the exception of Nemesis.
sure?
If you want to speed up the process, the best of TNG is seasons 3-5, it skips the weird early stuff and the later season “we’re running out of ideas” stuff.
I’m a huge original series fan. Yes, it’s of its time, but good storytelling is good storytelling. Unless you get particularly twitchy about the sexism that comes with the period (I can’t blame you if you do), it’s more than worth a watch.
If you want my opinion of the overall best series, I’d say that’s Deep Space Nine. But it is ideally enjoyed after viewing at least some of Next Gen, since it’s somewhat a response to the optimism of that series. So I do generally recommend going in chronological order.
As to the dregs, Enterprise is the only series I never managed to get through. Picard set up some brilliant ideas in its first couple of episodes, but followed those with absolutely dreadful execution. It’s a real shame.
Everything else falls somewhere in the middle. Discovery seems to have the loudest haters, but I’m a big fan, and have frankly never understood the hate. It falters a little in the second season, but undergoes a bit of a transformation in season 3 and 4, which I very much enjoyed.
Regarding the films: all the original 6 are great, with the caution that The Motion Picture very much takes its time (just try to think of how appreciated all the beauty shots of the Enterprise would have been upon release, when you’d have been used to '60s TV production values), and The Final Frontier is very cheesy (more like TOS itself than any of the others).
After First Contact, the Next Gen films take a bit of a dive, ending on a very sour note with Nemesis.
And the less said about Section 31 the better.
I think discovery was … okay. The first half of season 1 was kinda bad, especially them needlessly redoing the klingons. I liked the 3rd season bit of reuniting the fed a LOT. But following it up with another season of a end of the universe thing just felt like too much. I know thats kind of typical of series like that. But s4 seemed like a good point to go to more episodic stories.
I did really like enterprise tho. First season was really rough, but i thought it ended when it was getting really good.
I think Disco really struggled at finding the right approach for the season-long story arcs. End-of-the-galaxy stakes work nicely as a way to end a season, but when you commit to spending the whole season building to that it can be tough to find a balance between it and smaller moments. I think that’s what really sunk the second season for me. It started out well enough, but by the end just felt frantic and chaotic. They got better at this as the show progressed, though.
I might need to bite the bullet and try starting Enterprise somewhere in the middle. I gave it another try with my partner a year or two back, and they only managed to humour me up until that first awkward decon chamber scene.
I really liked the xindi arc(s3). Some people dont, but that and the last season were the best part. I have to go through s2, but minefield, first flight, and the communicator were good ones.
holy hell the reviews for section 31 are hilarious
Taking a swipe at Section 31 was probably the least controversial thing I said there. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone interested in going to bat for it. Where are you looking for reviews?
Wow, this is pretty much exactly what I’d have responded. Are you me bro?
Might be a transporter clone. Do you fancy going by your middle name, or shall I?
thanks for the heads up about the sexism
To be honest, Next Gen, Voyager, and Enterprise are also pretty rife with sexist tropes. The '90s were their own flavour of “a different time”. DS9 mostly avoids it, as do the modern shows. Though I do have some beef with how SNW is letting Chapel’s character slide closer and closer to her TOS counterpart…
Luckily I’m mature enough to hold to my own values and just grimace at a painful bit of writing. I live in Southern USA so I’ve seen a fair bit worse than sexist tropes on TV :( I’m happy the fans seem to call this stuff out nowadays
OP writing this post…
I didn’t know! Honeslty though everyone’s been super helpful although there’s differences in opinion, which is to be expected
Just don’t go ask the same thing on reddit, lol
Don’t use that hellsite anymore anyways hahaha
Same, but I have PTSD flashbacks sometimes, lol
tbf there’s aggressive assholes on any social media, but the astroturfing, enshittification, and useless redesigns did it in
The ones I’ve seen, in order from favorite to least favorite:
- TNG
- Lower Decks
- SNW
- The Orville*
- DS9
- TOS
- Voyager
- Discovery
Discovery’s the only one I really didn’t like. I knew in 2 episodes I didn’t like it. There’s really nothing you need to avoid preemptively.
You can watch them in any order, but watching at least one episode of TOS might give you some good context for SNW. And likewise watching some TNG/DS9 would give good context for what Lower Decks is building from. Lower Decks is mostly a parody of the TNG/DS9/Voyager set.
TNG probably the most popular one for people to reference, so is a good pick if you want to fit in with Trekkie culture. (DS9 too.)
Wow, SNW over DS9? Hot take.
We’re all allowed our opinions, strange though they may be!
I think at some point TOS is a needed watch, even after getting into TNG some. There’s a lot of good stories and background there. But TNG is fine for a start, as it began assuming little to no knowledge of TOS from viewers then, trying to reboot the series. Like any series, the first season has some so-so episodes as they try to figure out the show and characters, but most aren’t so bad as to say skip entirely, as usually there’s some development that will be used later. TNG is a well rounded show, with DS9 and VOY being more nuanced plots that drive their story.
Discovery I wouldn’t say avoid, but I never got pulled into it from various clips I’ve seen to care too much about it. Maybe because of the time travel stuff and how much they changed of “canon” things for me. Same issue I have with the Abrams movies, the casting was spot-on, terrible job and acting, but the stories… meh. And they touched the real canon that I live for with Star Trek, the ship. Way too much wrong with it. But the first scene from the 2009 movie, and the hook that gets Kirk to join Starfleet, yeah, that was pretty good writing, even if it broke earlier lore.
Star Trek TOS novel Kirk though… he’s a legend. The good writers knew how to build depth to their characters, and none of the visual media, even Shatner, can touch book Kirk.
I’ve felt that with SNW a little bit, the time travel stuff felt a little… disjoint? As someone who doesn’t have context for the entire show, I understood they were playing with past story hooks (like that episode when Pike would start a war with the Romulans in the future ergo he needs to let Kirk become captain eventually). I don’t know if that is changing canon or explaining it though. Definitely giving TOS a go given the feedback here, probably a little later on in my journey though.
I actually didn’t mind that particular episode, since it feeds into the whole idea of Kirk and who he is as a captain, and the logical idea of a more peaceful captain like Pike making things worse. And Pike thanks to Discovery is built all on him knowing his future and pushing things because of it, so kind of hard for it to avoid time stuff. Overall and not just in Trek, it’s hard to do time travel plots well, and too often is used as an easy route to fix things.
Time travel done well - TOS - The City on the Edge of Forever - but don’t watch it until you’ve watched a few other episodes to understand the Kirk - Spock - McCoy relationship, because in the end it’s about that, and not time travel itself.
Natürlich - plot devices are typically to advance our understanding of characters and their places within the setting. I’ve found the strength of what I’ve seen so far to be the writing of the characters, excellent acting, and killer set design that sells the story. So it makes sense that the time travel episodes you like would be centered on relational dynamics.
