Star Trek

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

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.

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.

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

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

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. Absolutely.

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

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.

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 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.

@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

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 .

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.

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.

I mean, some of them are inconsistent but they are all good and all of them are very much in the spirit of star trek.