I started with TNG just because I've seen clips of Q. Worth it.
I have since finished TNG and am a couple episodes into TOS. Suprisingly TOS is not as bad as expected. It kinda holds up and the quality is pretty dang good on Netflix, again to my surprise.
Not sure I am gonna watch many of the other shows. I tried Discovery and Picard and I'm not really hooked. They are not bad, just eh. I do want to watch all the old movies though, right after I finish TOS which will probably take me a few years :D
I would at least touch on VOY, it needs a bit to get going, just like TNG I suppose, but it's solid. And the big, big payoff is watching DS9 after that. DS9 is fantastic, but it only gets better with the context from VOY and TNG.
Can you give a (spoiler free if possible) reason for why you would recommend watching VOY before DS9 instead of the other way around? I assumed that VOY might contain spoilers for DS9 since it aired later.
There’s this weird cultural norm that says TOS is extremely cheesy, Shatner hams up every episode, the sets are all terrible, and it isn’t worth watching. It’s sad because TOS is my favourite and it has so many interesting stories, and Kirk is such a cool captain. Even TAS is worth a watch, especially the episode Yesteryear!
It’s a real shame TOS got shafted by season 3, and we never got more of its peak due to diminishing budget. That’s what networks love doing though, they can never appreciate a good thing until it’s been off the air for decades and people are clamouring for more.
I would highly recommend anyone starting off with a collection of some of the best or most relevant episodes of TOS, as well as some of the poor ones like Spock’s Brain. I’ve found at least the bad TOS ones are interesting, but bad TNG ones can be just boring.