Star Trek Social Club

Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, and The Orville.

Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, and Lower Decks are my favorites.

The others aren't bad, just unique in their own way.

Lower Decks. Absolutely.

Lower Decks, no question. It doesn't seem all that great at first, but when the show gets into its groove and finds voices for its characters, it becomes much more compelling. The first episode is meh, but by the time you get to the end of the first season, you'll be a fan.

Star Trek Prodigy is also good for its intended audience, and arguably better than the first animated Trek. (Certainly more of a treat for the eyes.) It was cancelled on Paramount Plus, but there are rumors it will come to a different streaming service.

If you’re going to start a new Trek, I seriously recommend The Orville.

It’s a love letter to TNG, VOY, DS9 era Trek. Better in many ways.

It starts as a goofy comedy and the first few episodes are kind of.. okay. But by the third episode they find their footing and it just gets better and better.

The third (and possibly final) season is up there with the best of Trek. No bad episodes, and a much more serious tone. The show even has actors from ST series like Penny Jerald (Kassidy Yates in DS9) as main cast, cameos from Robert Picardo (Doctor on VOY), Tim Russ (Tuvok), John Billingsley (Dr Phlox from ENT). Also Brannon Braga produces/writes on it and Jonathan Frakes directs some episodes.

If you want to continue with TNG/VOY/DS9 era - Lower Decks is my personal favorite new Star Trek property. It’s a cartoon geared to a more adult audience, very funny - and very well written.

Strange New Worlds is the best of the new live action series. It’s episodic ‘alien of the week’ kinda vibe. It’s a spin-off from Discovery. It’s a prequel to TOS.

Discovery is a different approach. It’s season-long story archs and follows one main protagonists’ journey. It does become more about the crew later on. It had a very weak first two episodes - way too much lens flare and shaky cam. It gets a little better after but Season 1 was fairly weak. Season 2 is a huge improvement (and is the precursor to Strange New Worlds). You could start there if you read up about the characters and plot points.

Season 3 is their best - and is practically a whole different show. They flip the entire setting and premise and introduce some new characters. You could also start here if you do some light reading. Season 4 is a continuation of Season 3 - not as strong, but still solid.

I should also mention that Discovery is the least Star Treky-feeling show. It’s kinda in its own world.

Picard is pretty much fan fiction.
Some of the new characters are fun (I like Rios a lot), but the writing doesn’t do any of them any justice. Season 1 and 2 are pretty bad. If you don’t have time to kill, skip it.

Season 3 is actually the show many fans wanted. It’s pretty much like a long-format TNG sequel mini series. It has some plot holes, but it’s a real joy to watch and puts a nice bow around the series. And around TNG.

IMO, all of it.

In terms of general agreement, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, and season 3 of Picard are generally the most well-regarded projects to date.

I've been watching Strange New Worlds recently and I kinda like it even though some of the episodes have made me angry at how dumb everyone is acting. I also kinda wish that they could cut the budget of SFX by half and instead make twice as many episodes if they can be written well too? Maybe I'm just still spoiled by 20+ episode seasons that the older series used to have, but just 10 episodes doesn't feel enough somehow.

Dunno about discovery, I agree with other users that it's not that good, but I can tell you that it's not required to understand SNW even though there's some story overlap there.

As a purist, I'd say watch them all and in release order, but if you really have to be choosy with your time, here's a list of things you can skip (in my opinion):

• Star Trek Into Darkness
• Discovery (whole show)
• Picard S1 and S2
• Short Treks

I know suggesting skipping Discovery outright is going to be seen as... extreme, but I suggest doing so only if time is a crucial factor. It's a dizzyingly uneven show with the lowest points of quality in all of Trek. However, it also has some incredible highs and some truly great characters, so if you find the time to watch it, you should. And I know I'm in the minority on this, but I found Short Treks to be unwatchable.

On the flip side, Lower Decks is incredible, and Strange New Worlds is good. The third season of Picard is excellent. Prodigy is a little weird but it's got a lot of strength. Star Trek Beyond is also a surprisingly good movie.

Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds are the best.

Parts of Discovery are good... Parts aren't tho.

I would definitely recommend Strange New Worlds. It has a great cast and the return to an episodic format allows for a lot of variety in conflicts and dilemmas faced by the crew. Next up I would recommend The Orville. I hate Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane's humor is very off -putting to me so I was skeptical, but really the show was delightful and felt a lot like TNG era Star Trek to me. The show has some crass elements still, but they aren't overbearing. Honestly, Lower Decks is a lot worse on that front than The Orville and feels way more juvenile to me. People say Lower Decks is supposed to get better in season 2 but I watched some season 2 episodes with my roommates and still found it unbearable. If you like Family Guy/Rick and Morty, you might enjoy it more than I did since most people do seem to love that one.

The other new Trek shows are too busy facing overly big, galactic apocalypse-level threats throughout each entire season to delve into much real philosophy or analysis of the human condition and the crushing threats are so extreme that even when the shows do focus on the human side and try to look at something personal, you start to wonder why people are stopping to have a long discussion about their emotions and relationship struggles in the presence of immediate danger to their lives. Even when the discussions are good, the timing is bad enough for it to not make sense. A lot of details like that are very immersion breaking for me as a viewer.

Picard season 3 was a well balanced nostalgia trip. It was a lot more relatable than seasons 1 and 2 and has some really great human(oid) moments dealing with pride, regret, grief, belonging, and passing the torch to the next generation. It was fan service done well. It still does the new Trek thing of a big, impending threat but does a better job of keeping that threat at arm's length enough for the interpersonal discussions to feel more impactful and logical in the moment. I was so disappointed in seasons 1 and 2 that I almost skipped 3, but now I am rooting for a spin off from season 3 with the new characters they introduced.

That's a tough one. I think Strange New Worlds is the must see of new star trek. Unfortunately the plot lines for SNW S1 are linked with stuff that happened in Discovery S2 and of course Discovery S2 is linked to S1 a bit as well. Maybe try watching an episode or two of discovery S1, but the greatest pieces of new trek writing are Disco S2 and SNW in my opinion, well worth the watch. I think the only way to watch them is the paramount+ streaming service, but I could be wrong.

I'd say strange new worlds and the 3rd season of Picard is worth watching. You could try the first few episodes of the rest to see if it's your kind of thing .

A lot of people in these comments sleeping on Prodigy. I think it's very good and would probably put it behind only Strange New Worlds. For me, the start of the season is just meh and feels more Star Wars Kidsy, but the season just grows and grows and has a real heart, real drama, and action.

Strange New Worlds is great! That's the best one! I also enjoyed Picard, especially S3.

Discovery is one of the worst shows I’ve ever seen.

Picard is awful, except the last season which was spectacular

Strange New Worlds is almost perfect Trek.

Definetly give Lower Decks a chance. Strange New Worlds is really good too imo. Its worth noting that it is a spinoff of Discovery. Specifically season 2 I think.

@dumples so far, Strange New Worlds is the best of the New Trek, so far it's been all killer no filler

Both Picard and Discovery have high highs and low lows, so your mileage with them will vary

Personally, I think they peaked with 'Star Trek: Voyager', although I must say I never liked the character 'Q' in any generation, and even now when I re-watch Voyager episodes, I will always skip the 'Q' ones.

I know there was some occasional friction between the fans on the old site, but I'll also throw in a recommendation for The Orville as modern Trek that's worth seeing. It does a great job capturing the spirit of the second-gen era presented for the current gen, with its cautious optimism pricked once a week by reminders of challenges yet to be resolved.

The first season is slightly rough (more proof it's a real Trek show?), as they figured out the ratio of comedy to drama, but by season three it's about as jokey as TNG. Fox did a bad job promoting it, it's definitely not Family Guy in space, which I think was probably what the network wanted it to be.

There's tons of Trek people both behind and in front of the camera, so while there's obviously no ties to the Trek canon, it's the closest anything has ever come, stylistically.

@dumples I enjoyed the first season of Strange New Worlds. Also, first episode of the second season was pretty good.