Coming from someone who has seen all of the older (pre-Discovery) stuff but only a smattering of the newer stuff:
This is such a difficult question because I think TNG and DS9 were peak Star Trek (along with movie IV) and are where I would point newbies, but both series have such off-putting starts. I grew up on TNG, so it was easy to get past the rough edges of the early seasons on my start-to-finish watch. However I hated DS9 when I started watching it, and only powered through because I was on a “watch all of the franchise” mission (this was back in 2015). Having finished it though, DS9 is now my favorite series in the franchise.
I think my recommendation for newbies is a curated list of a handful of TNG’s standout episodes, followed by “if you liked this, start TNG from the beginning,” followed by “if you liked this, watch DS9 but PROMISE ME you’ll watch the first three seasons before giving up, yes I know it’s a lot to ask but trust me,” followed by “if you’re still with me, start from the franchise beginning and watch in air order, although feel free to give up on TOS if it’s not your thing and skip to movies II+.”
I would actively dissuade anyone who hasn’t watched at least 20 seasons of Star Trek (any series) from starting Lower Decks. Even I feel like half the jokes and references go over my head.
This is great! I have bounced off of TOS a few times, having thought that I was supposed to watch in “production order”. I recently started TNG and have been loving it. I can highly recommend the “Start with TNG” order for newcomers like myself.
It’s surprising to me though that it was ever considered family friendly considering what a horndog Riker is (and also just everything to do with Lwaxana Troi 😂)
I liked Wesley in "A Quality of Mercy" but hot damn, he nailed it here. He is easy to recognize as Kirk and yet is borrowing very little from Shatner's performance. Wesley has managed to "echo" Kirk in a way that Peck and Gooding haven't quite dialed in yet for their characters.
It's funny—given that in both appearances he has depicted an "alternate" Kirk, he's had some built-in leeway to miss the mark and still be credible. He doesn't need it. This man can play Kirk.
[Copying my post from the original thread and adding something to the bottom]
Christina Chong absolutely killed it, especially in that final scene. Imagine finding someone you can connect to for the first time in your life, and immediately lose them. It even makes someone who is usually very unemotional crack.
Also, Pelia is such a delightful character. Great addition to the show.
Other than that I’m not really sold on the episode. It’s over an hour long and it did feel (too) slow and meandering at times. And I feel as if it just existed to shove in Kirk once again (and once again in an alternate timeline scenario to stick to the Trek canon) and explain the postponement of the Eugenics Wars by some Temporal Cold War shenenigans.
Final nitpick: how can Spock exist in the alternate timeline if humans and Vulcans are enemies?
Others wrote about how it was interesting that La’an had to choose to keep baby tyrant Khan alive for the greater good (of the future paradise Earth). And I agree that it’s an interesting conundrum – but that was given so little space in the episode that it fell entirely flat for me. La’an found out early on that Kirk didn’t know Noonien-Singh but that plot point was dropped for 30 minutes and only brought up again in the final minutes. In that aspect it reminded my of “The Elysian Kingdom” last season where nothing happens for 45 minutes and the interesting stuff comes out of the left field at the very end of the episode.
Maybe I’m being too harsh (I’ll rewatch the episode in a couple of days together with a friend) but for now I’d say this was one of the weaker episodes of the series.
It baffles me to no end that a company will pull their own IP from their servers. It costs them next to nothing to leave that up for stream. That was the whole premise of streaming in the first place!
the thing about Enterprise is even at its worst, it’s not an entirely bad show - the supporting cast is good, they are set in an interesting time period, and the premise is ostensibly interesting.
The main problem for me is that, setting aside the fact that the main theme comes straight from the Patch Adams soundtrack, the show is straight up boring. They came so close to something really interesting with Archer being flawed because he was the first, and perhaps even not really the right guy to be captain. But then the writers had to make him a mary sue, he fails is way to success every episode, and becomes like the ship’s alcoholic dad, constantly getting into the dumbest yelling arguments with his wife first officer — who he is also canonically racist against by the way. You would think/hope they were setting him up for some growth on that, but, instead they chose to try to make a lot of the show indirectly relevant to 9/11
By the time the show finally set the stage to become interesting the majority of its audience had already been alienated
What Paramount ought to realize about it is that Enterprise failed because of the writers and producers and not because of the cast or setting and it should not be very difficult to do significantly better than the original
But for real, you’re totally on the mark on how each of them pivot from each other, how Kira hits eats of them
“these ar- these are my friends” - Kira
Really shows how sh’es grown. I love the double take, and pause when she first is about to blurt it out, then says it more sincerly to Bareil. Thanks for pointing this out and reminding me of how awesome #DS9 is.
First season set in 2164. Episodes include depicting the events I linked. Second season in 2165, same deal, depict all these events plus whatever new stuff the writers dream up. By filling in existing canon, half the seasons stories become really easy to break, saving time and money, and people who respect canon will have nothing to complain about. Ten year time jump explains why the actors look older. The only problem is no Trip, but he can easily cameo in a dream story or an alternate timeline, heck they could even Harry Kim him back to life.
edit: added bonus, there’s an opportunity to retcon and apologize for Code Of Honor.
I largely quite like SNW, but this episode had some extremely questionable eugenics apologia laced into the narrative.
I think the broadest problem with nu-trek (though it’s strongly reined in in SNW) is the heavily maudlin over-scoring and the bathos-laden dialogue. When almost every exchange between two characters sounds “perfectly written” and is dripping in score, it’s hard to take seriously.
If SNW employed like, 20% more restraint in that regard, it would sing.
The removal from the service thing is the most absurd part of these announcements, that was the benefit of VOD, that we could access what we wanted.
Shows have gotten cancelled when they are popular and on a cliff-hanger throughout the last 60 years, but the removal thing is new and a massive decline from the accessibility improvements that were made over the last 15 years.
Fortunately for me, my personal server doesn’t have this issue.
“Your griefs, your pains, fix you to moments in the past long gone. You’re like butterflies with your wings pinned.”
I think this is the theme of PIC season 2, and not just for Picard. Processing and accepting the impact of past choices and actions in the here and now. Seven expressing the impact of her post-VOY treatment by others. Raffi admitting to herself that she holds too tightly to those who are important to her in the now because of her fear of loss based on past experiences. Her loss of: Starfleet; her credibility because of her theory about the sythn attack on Mars; and, herself and her family due to her addictions afterwards. Rios’ moment of growth when he moves on from always feeling adrift since the events on the Ibn Majid. Agnes and the Borg Queen bonding over shared feelings of loneliness. A strange combo, but one I think Alison Pill and Annie Wersching’s strong performances completely sold.
I think PIC season 2’s overarching story is muddled because the separate parts seem related more by happenstance rather than being a solid, cohesive narrative. However, I think season 2’s theme is always strong, and it resonates with me.
One of the things I love about Star Trek is when it makes me think about how I think. PIC season 2 has me doing a lot of self-reflection. I enjoy, and re-watch, PIC season 2.
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