My wife recently started to show an interest in watching Star Trek. Previously she had seen The Wrath of Khan when she was single digits in age and not much else.
So far we have watched some of the first season of TOS and some other key episodes (still need to show her Mirror Mirror and The Trouble with Tribbles for sure, and probably episodes with Pike, which I think is starting to come up for us soon).
We watched a few episodes of TNG, for some reason Paramount through Amazon started us in the middle of season 3 instead of the season 1. She did not like how Wesley is treated on the show (she is a huge fan of Wil).
From there we moved to Voyager and are about half way through the second season. She is liking it, but not a fan of Neelix (I cannot wait to tell her he improves after Kes is gone) because of his jealousy towards anything that interacts with Kes. I have never finished watching all of Voyager myself, I think I am in season 6 or 7.
I watched all of Discovery (I think I finished anyway), the first Season of Picard, most of Strange New Worlds, and some of Lower Decks. Since she has said she wants to watch the new stuff with me I am doing my best to not watch it all so I have some new episodes with her.
At what point would you move from the old stuff to the new stuff to keep someone from being too confused? Or if confusion arises would you go back and watch the old stuff to answer questions? I know we will not watch Picard until we have gotten well into the Borg stuff in Voyager and some episodes of TNG dealing with it.
I had this same question come up recently.
A friend of mine was out of town in a store that has a lot of entire series on BD or DVD (as well as movies of course), and he knew I was constantly referencing Star Trek, and he asked where he should start.
I didn’t have much time to think since he was already in the store and had limited time. All things considered, I went with TNG as the perfect spot to start.
He’s someone I used to work with a few years ago, and we play games together a lot. Knowing him (and just younger people in general), TOS would be so hard to watch with how dated it is. If not just the sexist and racist parts, then even for me it’s hard to look at given how LCARS showed up and instantly made all the technology look immediately centuries behind.
But ever since then, it’s looked mostly the same. At least until SNW and Disco. So I told him as much as I felt I could without boring him about where it’s set in relation to the original show. 6 movies and 3 and a half series in, if I counted correctly.
But if he ends up being interested, I’ll have him go through the other 2 golden era shows before going back for TOS.
Except I will have him watch the Tribble episode before he watches the DS9 episode about it.
He already had a small knowledge of it, the basic identity of who Kirk and Spock were, and the idea that it is a multi-show and many movie kinda franchise (I guess like a STU, which is MCU but for ST)
The racism and sexism in TOS has been an issue for us watching it. It is much more mild than other shows of its time, but it is still there. I also watched TOS as a small child and most of that stuff went over my head, but now watching it again in my 40s it really is cringeworthy. That said, I know there are a number of key episodes that should be watched, and I know some of these elements go away (or lessen) as the show progresses.
There were protests and threats aimed at TOS for being too progressive, particularly on racial issues. TOS didn’t make the command structure clear but as bridge officers and department heads Uhura and Sulu can’t be any lower than 6th in command and TOS had the first interracial kiss on television. Yeah it’s pretty bad looking back at it now but keeping in mind that the first season aired less than 2 years after the end of segregation helps temper the shock.
Exactly. That’s why I wanna get him hooked on the show before bringing that up.
Although we just finished Code of Honor, which is a low point for this show. But it’s out of the way early, so it’s all uphill from here.