I started with Star Trek after watching the Star Trek (2009) movie in college. After that I went wild watching everything I could since I was young with loads of time. I watched most of TOS, all of TNS, all of DS9, all of Voyager, all of Enterprise and all of the movies. I then stopped since I didn’t have the time and wasn’t ready to download a new app to watch Discovery.
I am interested in watching some of the new shows from Discovery onwards but don’t know where to start and what are worth watching. I no longer have hours to watch TV or movies anymore and want to prioritize series on an easy to find streaming service. What is worth watching and what is worth skipping? Is it worth while to watch them all the way chronically or just watch one series and then another one.
As a purist, I’d say watch them all and in release order, but if you really have to be choosy with your time, here’s a list of things you can skip (in my opinion):
I know suggesting skipping Discovery outright is going to be seen as… extreme, but I suggest doing so only if time is a crucial factor. It’s a dizzyingly uneven show with the lowest points of quality in all of Trek. However, it also has some incredible highs and some truly great characters, so if you find the time to watch it, you should. And I know I’m in the minority on this, but I found Short Treks to be unwatchable.
On the flip side, Lower Decks is incredible, and Strange New Worlds is good. The third season of Picard is excellent. Prodigy is a little weird but it’s got a lot of strength. Star Trek Beyond is also a surprisingly good movie.
Dude I’ve seen TNG season 1 and Enterprise seasons 1-2. I know we both know it can get worse.
TOS also has some truly awful episodes, but it’s pretty easy to ignore them.
I think the low points of DSC and PIC stick out for two reasons:
@beefcat @dumples @tymon @LibraryLass That last point is one of the problems with arc-centered shows
Okay, I’ll give you Code of Honor.
I enjoyed Star Trek Beyond and was ambivalent about Into Darkness so I agree with that. I think Lower Decks might be the first to watch. I have heard good things about it here. I love weird things so I think Prodigy might be next. From the initial ads Picard seemed like it was a nostalgic cash grab but if there is an excellent season I would watch it all the way through. I might watch Discovery last if you think it is skippable. It depends on how much I enjoy the rest and if I can still find it streaming by then.
I would say Discovery season 2 is worth watching - it’s the show’s strongest season, it’s fairly self-contained, and it sets up Anson Mount’s depiction of Pike ahead of the excellent Strange New Worlds (including explaining the specific context for SNW’s first couple of episodes).
Agree with this, especially skipping Picard S1 & S2. I feel the showrunner(s) definitely agree too, as S3 is a standalone story and ignores many of the developments introduced in the previous seasons. While I also didn’t completely love Season 3 it sits head and shoulders above the first two in every way.
I think Picard S1 was watchable. It had some neat stuff in it. But it is not a high point for the franchise by any means. It felt like an adaptation of some Arthur Clarke doomsday short story or something but stretched out until the breaking point.
S2 left a bad taste in my mouth. It was just kind of pointless and dumb. I enjoyed the characters very much, but the actual story was pretty damn rough. Storylines involving any kind of time travel are nearly universally awful across the whole genre and the mirror dimension getting played for anything other than camp makes me a bit queasy. At some point, I wondered if they were just trying to undo some of the damage Voyager did to the Borg lore, but they were actually spending more time doubling down on it so that can’t be it.
Also, the world felt SO small. Star Trek always makes the galaxy feel smaller than it means to just because of the natural limits of casting, writing, and fandom, but Picard S1 and S2 are both excruciatingly tiny universes with so few important players. As a result, I haven’t watched S3. I’m hearing it’s way better, but I have to work myself up to giving it another try.
Both share a flaw with Discovery: it just doesn’t feel like Star Trek. All three shows are trying to be big, dramatic, high-tension, cliffhanger-ending space epics for binging. Modern streaming shows, basically. And the best of Star Trek is nothing like that. My sibling could never get into Star Trek. Started with TNG. Their complaint was that it felt like watching stage plays at the local theater. That they were constantly aware of how this was just a bunch of people talking at each other on a set. There was all philosophy and cerebral-ness and drama and very little action, and the plotlines often resolved without an unambiguously right answer. They’re totally right, and that’s what makes me love the show and why I don’t feel strongly about Picard and Discovery.
All of the best episodes are about strange or philosophical concepts about what it means to be human. It is mostly some talking with a single concept holding it together. I enjoy some action but only in small doses. That is what TOS did the best
I second lower decks, can’t wait for the next season
I’m on the last seasons of Discovery.
I avoided it for a long time because of reviews.
The portrayal of toxic relationships is interesting and even rewarding at times, it’s just not why I watch star trek.
Trek is great with big hard concepts but work best with philosophy concepts instead of personal relationships
Man. Very well put. Very, very well put. I’m so sad that Discovery was as it was. It’s not Star Trek to me. I was excited to see how it started out. Things I wanted to see ever since I was a kid. And then it just doesn’t do what Star Trek is supposed to do.
To me in each episode (or episode arc) we need an internal and external problem that have no apparent solutions and are worked out towards the end of it all. Self-Contained episodes with ongoing character changes and evolution. Not… “dark gritty” whatever the heck this is.
I’d also strongly suggest watching The Orville @dumples That’s the most Star Trek show in the past few years, despite being a bit more light hearted. Heck, even Avenue 5 is worth a watch to scratch some of that Star Trek itch.
@AlteredStateBlob @dumples @tymon also despite it being a Seth McFarlane product, The Orville is very much not “Family Guy In Space” and while it is pretty hilarious, it can go into some REALLY heavy territory, especially in S3.
I also, speaking as a trans person, really don’t like how it handled its allegorical trans character plotline, especially relative to how Discovery, Prodigy, and SNW have handled actual trans and nonbinary characters.
Absolutely, yeah. I like the levity of it and the recurring jokes, but they do tackle a whole lot of really difficult topics and do it really, really well. That’s how it’s very Trek like and why I love it.
Not to mention: It’s actually nice and bright. I always loved that about old Star Trek. Why does modern Star Trek insist on everything looking like the inside of Darth Vaders helmet?
@AlteredStateBlob @dumples @tymon The Federation is what makes the show Star Trek. The moral standing of the characters is established by how they follow or break federation rules. The move to the future removed the soul of the show. It was a cowardly decision likely made to avoid criticism. First 2 seasons were great.
I get why they want to show the “The federation isn’t flawless either” argument, but it is being done in the most hanfisted way possible.
The most recent episode of Strange New Worlds was an okay take on it, highlighting some hypocrisy in it all, but we really don’t have enough information on the legal system to understand if any of it even matters.
I agree. The Federation as a well established monolithic structure around exploration, peace and dialogue helps frame everything else that happens in the show.
Throw that out of the window and what are we left with.
Maybe it is just a symptom of this whole “This is THE HERO” thing that popular story telling has shifted towards. Picard was undoubtedly an important and great captain. He certainty had those “everything hinges on what he and his crew do next” moments, but there were always others out there alongside him. Losing Picard was a blow to the federation when he became locutus. But it didn’t break them.
Now watching more modern Star Trek it feels like the only people worthwhile in the entire federation are the people on screen right now and their renegade shenanigans.
@AlteredStateBlob @dumples @tymon @actualeyes
This feels like an overly broad take. I agree that Discovery has some tone issues that make it feel heavy handed, but it has strong characters outside of the crew that represent a healthy Federation.
Strange New Worlds has been if anything very episodic and light, with the exception of the arrest and trial of Una, which was really the writers picking up a thread that has been hanging there since DS9.
Discovery, to me, is simply action SciFi. But what makes Star Trek Star Trek to me, isn’t present at all. No self contained little adventures with moral conundrums, etc.
I’m simply not the target audience for that show, so to what I want out of Star Trek, it’s not good but rather terrible. If it were simply some random SciFi Action thing, maybe, okay.