I’d say in order of release, so start with Discovery, Stange New Worlds, Lower Decks, Picard, Prodigy, and then you can watch the Short Treks where they go with regards to the series themselves?
I enjoyed them all, honestly, but yeah, Picard is a good bit of fan service. Prodigy is better than expected. Lower Decks is very funny, although also very fan service… Strange New Worlds is the most like classic trek (episodic, lots of action, good character development, etc). All the others tell an over-arching story.
As someone raised on TOSST:Discovery brought back a joy in Trek that TNG-era just did not meet (I like plenty of TNG, but so much of it is just cringeworthy, and ST:Voy was just painful… I quite liked much of DS9 except where it got all Pew-Pew!-heavy towards later seasons).
Discovery rocks (for so many reasons: multiple female BIPOC bridge characters, lots of queerness, including explicit kissy-times, David Bowie). And Strange New Worlds is lovely (including a delightful musical episode, the exploration of T’Pring and Spock’s relationship, Babs Olusanmokun, exploring the in-universe decade before TOS). Picard I likely won’t watch again, though for TNG fans it is a nice victory lap. Lower Decks is delightful, and I was really surprised by how good ST:Prodigy was after the first two episodes.
I think all of nuTrek (except Section 31 which I found execrable) shares giving interpretative heft to important moments from TOS and the TNG-era, while telling their own stories.
Also: ST:Discovery’s Klingon’s are the Platonic ideal of Klingons. #ComeAtMe
Edit: Oh! As to order: I would actually watch in publication order (maybe except Prodigy) as the writers cross-reference the shows (including some outright cross-overs!). While you will surely enjoy in whatever order you watch, you will be set up to miss come call-outs and connections if you watch in a different order than as the shows aired.
Discovery had some good moments and good acting but always felt a bit off to me, as though the tone and writing were all wrong and they didn’t put enough thought into it to avoid continuously generating new plot holes. It also followed a trend of every season being one big story with the fate of the entire galaxy at stake. I’d generally classify it as watchable but not great.
Picard was an ugly, badly-written, joyless disaster. Maybe it got better after the first season but I hated it so much that I didn’t bother continuing.
Strange New Worlds is very enjoyable, with likeable characters and new adventures each episode. It can be a little too silly sometimes (there’s even a Lower Decks crossover episode), but so could TOS and TNG, which it’s probably the closest to of modern Trek. And it’s not all silly, it can do serious just as well. In my opinion it offers the most variety and fun, and I’m looking forward to the next season.
Haven’t seen the other new Trek series mentioned, so I can’t help you there.
Disco was great because the queer people there weren’t allegorical not really queer people. And they had David Cronenberg, Michelle Yeoh & Tig Notaro in the cast.
It only took 55 years. Though Gene did want gay people in TOS; but the networks didn’t.
There’s no bad Trek. Watch them all and see what you like.
I clicked through anyway! I’ll likely forget before I get to it. Making my post made me realize just how much Trek I was behind. Not really having free time and watching anything will do that!
Also agreed. I enjoyed, and still do enjoy Voyager. I know it wasn’t the most popular but I thought Kate absolutely rocked as Captain and Picardo had a character arc only beat in depth by Garak.
Mulgrew is a consummate professional, which is why she’s so damned great as captain (fight me!). Picardo is also, plus an operatic virtuoso, we’re so, so fortunate his extra talent was featured in Voyager.
No need to fight on that point! The entire cast is great… if Voyager suffered from any problems, it was more about the stories, than the acting, directing, production, etc… One problem I had with it was that often they did not have that decompression time at the end of the episode. Far too many of them were stuffed with too much going on and not enough runway time to resolve everything in a satisfactory manner…
Wheaton’s Memories of the Future book, especially the audio version, is so good. I wish he did more. I do love “making of” more than the actual movie/tv though, which I know makes me weird, but the amazing creativity involved in some of these shows and movies so much fun to see.
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