I didnt have anyone to guide me in my late-90’s pre-teen years. It was only with Jessie Gender’s reccomendation that I dipped my toe in to lower decks, and then friends i met told me about DS9 being “the queer one”, which got me hooked.
Dont get me wrong, I’d seen TNG episodes growing up…unfortunately the connection/click just didnt get made. (I circled back, dont worry)
Now for the heresy: From my perspective, the newer stuff, which folks so often gripe “change the format too much” or whichever (I wont even humor the bad-faith bigots complaints about how they cant slur people for intrinsic traits just for existing) – I enjoy Strange New Worlds and Discovery a lot. They address something that Star Trek didnt (when I was young and media illiterate and taken in my bang-boom-Halo-style-scifi: i could suspend my disbelief. The costumes in TNG and even DS9 had taken me out of it before i ever got into it. No shade to designers…i see now the wonderful theatre they were making room for…and hey, Im a queer-anarchist so making things more easily digestable is the opposite of what i dig…but maybe consider that someone super enthused about a newer show may well be on their own path to a new appreciation for the older series <3
TNG is the definitive Star Trek for me. I don’t think DS9 or Voyager would have existed had TNG not been a success. They also appear to be in the same universe, all three had similar aesthetics and had crossover between them. TOS always felt a bit dated to me in the 90s, most of the stuff after didn’t really catch my interest.
I had a conversation with my dad about newtrek and for him “the new series” was Enterprise. I mean it was for me too until discovery aired a few years ago
It seems like quite often, for myself included, “the best Star Trek show” is the one you first grew up with.
So it will always be TOS for me.
I don’t dislike any Star Trek show, but TOS was my first love.
Enterprise was fantastic if you cut out the time travel episodes.
Voyager took a long time to find itself and it was disappointing the direction they took with it.
DS9 was a lame story with fantastic characters.
