Edit: this is meant to be a shitpost. I don’t care about your favorite series/universe. You do you.
I wanted to try Star Trek recently, but found out it’s like 1000 episodes and 15 movies, so it might take a while. Though I’ve heard not everything is worth watching.
Can anyone from Star Trek’s fan base provide some more insights on which shows can be safely skipped, if any?
As for watch order, I’m gonna go with release date order, unless there are any special circumstances.
Though I’ve heard not everything is worth watching.
You heard wrong 😎
Seriously, if you ask ten Trekkies you’ll get twelve opinions on what’s good, what isn’t, and why. My best advice is to try everything, skip a few seasons ahead if a show is not resonating at first, and if it still isn’t hitting the mark for you at that point move on to the next series. Most shows* take a while to reach their potential, but until the recent stuff they’re all episodic enough that you can feel free to jump around a bit.
*The original series is the exception, it pretty much hits the ground running.
The ones worth watching in my opinion are, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, finally Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks together. As for The Original Series, Enterprise, Discovery, Cadets, Picard, and the rest can be skipped. The Original Series is fun to go back to but it’s so unlike the rest I can’t get into it.
Putting strange new worlds above TOS is inconceivable to me. S1 of TOS alone has several episodes well above the best of SNW (Corbomite maneuver, city on the edge of forever, Balance of Terror). Though there’s also a decent amount of poorly aged material… pretty much agreed otherwise. Also, I agree they should watch SNW, just not in lieu of TOS
Personally, I liked Enterprise. Flock is my favorite ST doctor by a wide margin (though I haven’t seen anything newer than enterprise, other than one of the reboot movies).
It’s a different feel from the series that came before it, way more ad-hoc with what they are doing since they are the first human ship to boldly explore the unknown.
Oh my!
Star Trek is one of if not the most prominent Science Fiction series in our culture.
Star Wars is one of if not the most prominent “Science” based Fantasy series in our culture.
They really aren’t at all similar on the most fundamental level. They just use similar set dressing.
Science Fiction v. Space Fantasy
Yea, that’s the right term
but the shots fired were from red shirt ensigns
What would happen if storm troopers shot at red shirts?
Wow. Simultaneously, endless war and world peace, as no one dies from war.
I feel like doctor who is more of a comparison to Star Trek no.
Post TNG and Voyager, they’ve been fairly blah with a handful of decent standout episodes.
Maybe it’s because I grew up with these shows, and now I’m old I just want something with a bit more heft.
It’s just all seems like light entertainment these days. Something akin to The Expanse is what I’m after.
The Expanse has ruined my enjoyment of most space sci-fi shows. It was too good
Try the expense audiobooks. They are as good and better than the TV show
Idk, Star Wars and Star Trek only share the sense that they’re both in space, overall both very different and we like both. Personally we like Star Wars more because autism brain but yeah start trek is good too :3
I think it’s a dumb debate personally.
I love my space exploration show. I also love my space wizard drama, and my space politics show, and my wibbly wobbly spacey wacey show. I just like goofy shows in space.
Except Picard. I don’t care for Picard.
I think it’s a dumb debate personally.
Seriously.
Babylon 5 is obviously the better one.
Even though it’s pure fan service, I loved the 3rd season of Picard
I found Picard enjoyable while I was watching, but retrospectively I can’t remember a single scene I enjoyed. It’s fine, but it’s ephemera.
With exception of the scifi label and being well known they are not even comparable.
I watch Star Wars for spaceships and laser sword fights.
I watch Star Trek for courtroom episodes.
(Although Andor is one of the best political dramas out there and must-see TV.)
Yes to Andor, and before that Rouge One was the best thing to come out after the admittedly cheesy original 3 (before Lucas added all the lame animation over them).
Rogue One is a fine cherry on top of two seasons of Andor.
Star Wars is an action/adventure/drama series that happens to be in space (they called it “space opera” for good reason).
Star Trek is a science fiction series, at least until Fuller/Kurtzman (where it strayed more to action/adventure). You kind of have to bisect Star Trek into pre and post Roddenberry/Berman.
I think the best label for Star Wars is probably “Science Fantasy”. Personally, when it comes to this sort of differentiation, I draw the line at: is there magic?
Unpopular opinion of the day: “The Force” isn’t any more magic than Betazoid telepathy, replicators, or transporters.
Not to mention
Q is more “magical” than anything in Star Wars.
even in Trek, it’s openly acknowledged that there must be a scientific explanation for Q, even if it’s beyond humanity’s current understanding. they also mention several times that any sufficiently advanced technology would appear to be magic to those who lack the ability to rationally explain it.
Star Wars tried for a scientific explanation for the Force, too, with midichlorians.
They tried, but it’s kind of bullshit and magic anyway
Agreed, but so is Q.
Yeah, Star Wars is a fantasy that is set in space.
There are aspects of Sci-Fi but the galaxy often blurs the line between magic and technology.
It has space opera elements, but Star Wars anymore is a setting rather than a story.
It’s not magic, it’s midichlorians!
It’s not midichlorians, it’s heroin.
That explains much of the plot.
Auralnauts Explains It All For You, via the life of Larry Bonjo Ben Kenobi. They tried to make him to go to Grievous’s rehab and he said no no no
That’s a great one. I’ll be using that!
There’s not much actual sience behind the technobabbel of Star Trek tbh. It’s just as much of a magic system as the force is.
Bormanis was given a hard task, to be fair. So many scripts just had (TECH) written where the writers needed help and Bormanis would have to shoehorn something in (and before Bormanis, the actors probably just made a lot of it up).
Thankfully most of the science fiction isn’t in that technobabble but in the plot lines; questioning what it is to be human, to be civilised, and what meaning there is to life, post-scarcity.
Thankfully most of the science fiction isn’t in that technobabble but in the plot lines; questioning what it is to be human, to be civilised, and what meaning their is to life, post-scarcity.
This point needs more acknowledgement. Star Trek isn’t a sci-fi show because it does or doesn’t have magic, it’s because it tends to follow the genre conventions of a (very soft, pop) sci-fi show. Easy example, Star Wars doesn’t tend to focus on questions like “hey are these robots sentient? How could we know?” while Star Trek can’t stop litigating that issue.
It’s the best technobabble, full stop.
Andor and Solo are good, most of the rest of Star Wars including all the “space wizard” stuff is shallow as hell and far more casually cynical than Star Trek is.
I’m not sure how you can defend Solo when one of its subplots is literally “the exploitative plight of droids is funny lmao”
And also "the one droid fighting for droids’ rights is
spoiler
literally turned into a permanently-enslaved appliance at the end."
valid, I am not defending it there, but at least it acknowledged the concept…
Wait until you hear about stargate.
Star Search has entered the chat
Babylon 5 wants a word out back. And Farscape is waiting to surprise them both
What’s that? Firefly from the top rope!
Red Dwarf waiting to tag in.
Farscape is so refreshing for a lot of reasons, but the quality puppets let them do soooo many cooler aliens than other shows that had to capitulate to the homonoid alien trope
No love for Lexx? 😔
Never heard of it…
Oh. Yeah. No.
No.
None.
Lexx is like a bad salvia trip.
Feels like suffering brain damage and sexual abuse.
Oh my, I couldn’t get into that show. I still haven’t finished it. It has been sitting in my “Up Next” for months, and will probably remain there for months to come…
I thought the girl was soooo cute when I was young. She’s probably half my age now…
And Fargate… but that’s a conversation for another community.
That’s for !chevron7@lemmy.world right?
I think we upset OP lol
I don’t get the love for Farscape at all.
You are not alone. I just don’t understand how people can watch that and think “good”. The puppets were neat and some of the concepts had possibility. But characters wildly changing their personality episode after episode just turned me off. It just had no consistency.
I really like the premise of Farscape, but the execution was lacking. It can still be fun in small doses, but I find a majority of the episodes are just too cheesy for me (same reason why I could never get into Doctor Who).
Really bad writing overall.
It’s at least nice that they’re not so much a big military hierarchy for a change, in sci-fi.
If you want to compare current stuff, then both are trash. sequel trilogy at least had the decency of being entertaining garbage while disco was 10% plot and 90% people talking about the 10% in case you missed anything while looking at tiktok.
original trilogy and next generation are both good shit, and are good for different reasons.
The only real comparison I can draw between the two is both have disappointed me by moving away from their established brands and disappointing me.
Strange new worlds is amazing and reclaims that established spirit.
Star Trek going back into its own timeline isn’t something I’m excited for. I want to see what’s next. Its probably good, but it feels like revisions when I’m waiting for the next next generation.
Eh, they both have their place. I can’t get behind Jedi being emotionally stunted or the federation not using it’s tech to the fullest.
My one exception is pre-Disney Mandolorians. Nothing is sexier than freefalling from orbit on the back of a 6 legged robot dragon with nothing but your platemail and a vague goal of scaring the shit out of locals.
the federation not using it’s tech to the fullest.
Funny you say that, since the Federation arguably doesn’t.
Just look at warp drives, for example. A galaxy-class can go from reverse to full forward in a third of a millisecond. Smaller, newer ships like the Intrepid, of the Sovereign, would be both faster and even more agile.
Federation starships should be zooming about the battlefield like dragonflies instead of slowly flying around each other like star wars ships. Though it makes some sense why they won’t, since the viewers would have a fit about it being unrealistic.
My biggest grievance is that the threat of death exists when, between replicators and transporter errors, they could populate their ships with unending clone armies to explore without ever risking anything.
Not having clone armies at least makes sense, since the Federation isn’t exactly that fond of cloning sapients, inorganics aside. Too many ethical issues involved.
Ok, so instead of staffing a ship with 1000 duplicates of one guy who volunteers to go out and risk his life, they could add some extra storage to the transport buffer and require weekly backups of all crew. Then if redshirt #3 dies planet side they just spin him back up and tell him what went wrong. They have video game style save points on every ship and they’re using them to save on gas.
My one exception is pre-Disney Mandolorians. Nothing is sexier than freefalling from orbit on the back of a 6 legged robot dragon with nothing but your platemail and a vague goal of scaring the shit out of locals.
My knowledge of Star Wars is almost entirely pre-Disney, but I am completely lost here. What is that describing?
Legends stuff. Mostly comics I believe?
🌎🧑🚀🔫👩🚀
💥🧑🚀🔫👩🚀
Whoops!
