Spent 20 minutes trying to find a thread that fit what I wanted but everyone seems to be willing to watch all of Star Trek. I tried TOS and while it’s not bad I don’t want to watch every single episode of Star Trek to get into the show…
What’s the best order to watch the most universally enjoyed Star Trek series’ and movies? I really enjoyed Lower Decks as a fan of Final Space and Strange New World’s looks incredible. I want to start with the earlier series but not have to watch all of it!
TNG is, imo, the gold standard and an excellent starting point if you’re not looking to jump straight into Strange New Worlds. Its episodes are generally pretty self-contained, so you won’t be punished terribly for jumping around if you’re just looking to get a taste, and will still be able to enjoy the great episodes it has to offer, but you will get more context the more episodes you’re willing to watch.
Plenty of folks have compiled lists of which episodes are skippable vs worth watching, and there’s pretty universal agreement on which are iconic must-watch episodes, so there’s nothing wrong with following one of those for a first watch. Here’s an example. I’d recommend using the list at the bottom of that page (or another rated list) as a guide, and experiment a bit to figure out a good baseline for how low of a rating is acceptable and how many episodes you can tolerate in your first watch through.
Note that season 1 is widely regarded as the weakest, where the show is trying to emulate ToS and hasn’t yet come into its own, and you can skip episodes more liberally here, or even come back to it later.
Agreed! I think it comes at the cost of character development to some extent, since if you watch straight through, it feels like some of the characters just “reset” after enduring enormous, life-changing events, but it really is constructed in a way that makes it watchable from any point (except maybe the 2-parters.) New series have very much moved away from that style.
I’m always tempted to tell people to skip the first season and revisit it later as well, but I guess it introduces some interesting things that the series periodically circles back to, so who knows. I watched it after many random episodes, so I still think of it as a sort of wonky prequel.
If you want to watch more ToS, you can similarly cherry-pick your watch list there, as there are some stand-out episodes. I’d definitely recommend at least watching The Menagerie for context before SNW (or Captain Pike’s appearance in Discovery).
DS9 is some of the very best of Trek, but you’re going to want to actually watch it through; it’s got much larger story arcs and character development than ToS, TNG, and Voyager. It takes a couple of seasons to really pick up, but is well worth it. If you’re not ready to sit through that many subsequent episodes yet, you can wait until you have a better feel for the series. But don’t sleep on this one, it’s fantastic.
Those are my highlights for earlier Trek, but you can’t really go wrong as long as you’re enjoying what you’re watching!