Picard was such a hot mess.

TNG is"my" star trek, I watched it religiously when it first came out and even now the music has a curious feeling of comfort and safety about it.

I watched series 1 of Picard, it was okay. Started on 2 and stopped as soon as Q arrived, never liked those episodes of TNG either.

Just started on series 3, enjoying it so far

I'm with you there on Picard. Season one was... okay, but it had some very interesting worldbuilding that was just thrown away at the end. Season two had all kinds of problems: the story was writier's-strike-levels of half-baked, and the forced time-travel plot just stunk of budget slashing. Season three was fun, but it was wall-to-wall fanservice and that's why we like it; this too also ignored a lot of plot points from seasons one and two.

I would have loved to see a more genuine attempt to establish a Next(er) Generation with the support of so much established star power. IMO, there should have been an entire new crew at the end of season three that has us clamoring for season four. Instead, we got that out of Prodigy of all things.

I'm definitely similar in that I usually enjoy most Trek! I also wasn't a fan of Picard, although I only watched season 1. I just didn't feel the urge to even try any of the later seasons after that. Discovery is not my favorite either, but that's primarily due to the heavily serialized storytelling and the focus on one character instead of a larger cast like many of the other shows.

Lower Decks has a surprising amount of heart for being a comedy show! I've gotten to really enjoy it, although some of the humor doesn't always work for me. DS9 will probably always be my favorite though, at least for the foreseeable future! Sisko is my favorite captain, and I really enjoy the rest of the cast as well.

I can understand the older shows being a little difficult for modern audiences! I grew up with more modern series as well, and some of the older episodes are a little harder to watch. I still enjoy a lot of the stories though.

There's definitely nothing wrong with skipping some of the shows, there's a wide variety of styles in the new ones. I would recommend Strange New Worlds as a potential starting point if you wanted to try any of them though. It feels closest to the TOS era, but with more modern stories and production values.

I need to watch some Orville sometime, I've heard it's pretty good. The 90's era Treks are always a solid choice. Did you try any of Strange New Worlds? It's got a completely different vibe than the other new shows, and I like the crew.

There's a lot of good stories in those shows!

Some good choices! 🖖🏼

There are a lot of good episodes in both of those!

(except a few episodes)

True, some episodes really haunt the series.

That a good way of doing it! I'm definitely looking forward to Lower Decks season 5, I think they said it starts the end of next month. It's also going to feel like a long wait for SNW too.

You're right, if you haven't watched all of the Trek shows you're definitely not going to get nearly as much enjoyment from Lower Decks! There are even references to things that weren't previously canon, like the Star Trek helmet, so even then you won't get all the jokes.

I really enjoy SNW, it's always pretty high on my list. It's been especially great since this is the first time I've had a Trek show I really like that I'm watching while it's still in production! I have some annoyances with it here and there, mostly due to the fact that it's a prequel, but I can more easily overlook that because most of the rest of it is good.

I really think Enterprise and Voyager both were missed opportunities. Enterprise for a lot of the reasons you mention, and Voyager I felt could have had a lot more continuity. It was the perfect place to have a lot of recurring characters and DS9 style arcs, but they never really committed.

Lower decks! Lower decks!

It took me a bit to warm up to Lower Decks, but I like it pretty well now! It has a lot of heart, and certainly isn't above laughing at itself!

Nice! There's a lot of good Trek stories in those shows.

I'm glad I put that logo on the collage then! There's not a lot of them, but they're kind of interesting short stories that don't really fit in the modern serialized format.

I hear a lot of mentions of that show, someday™ I'm going to get to watching it!

It wouldn't be my preferred ranking, but that's fine! I've seen a lot of people that look a lot more favorably at VOY and ENT now that some time has passed. Not that they were ever actually bad, I think pretty much any of the shows would have had a harder time of it in that time period.

Unfortunately I see many people talking about TOS looking too dated to watch, or the acting and stories not holding up. While I'll admit it doesn't look quite as shiny as the new shows, I still enjoy it! I'm guessing that's one reason, the other is that a lot of the older TOS fans are either passing away or old enough that they've stopped talking about the shows online!

It appears you like shows with a ship named Enterprise in it!

There's a StarTrek show with a grumpy-cat woman doctor!!!