What Star Trek series should you start watching if you’re new to the franchise?

Do you want Star Trek that isn’t Star Trek?

Star Trek: Picard or Discovery

Star Trek’s Picard and Discovery definitely fit the mold by being non-conventional Star Trek series. Both series are darker, grittier, and far less optimistic series and it took a lot of grief from fans for that. Lower Decks also fits in this area of being far from the standard norm of Trek, but for different reasons.

Discovery and Picard are series that wash away the concept of the Federation being a force for good and look at them through a flawed lens and they certainly match the point in time they were created in. They’re heavier, more preachy but less based on conversation. So much of Trek is about the debate about what to do, not the assumption that there is only one way forward. Discovery really steered into that notion, that there is only a correct way forward. Other series don’t usually go down that road.

Picard also really amps up the gore and violence to an unnecessary degree. It’s supposed to be a show about mortality, but it gets insanely convoluted and completely dismisses its core concept at the end of season one. If you want a non-Trek series, these are the ones to start with.

Do you want to stop watching five minutes in?

Star Trek: The Animated Series

Yikes, this is hard to watch. The animation is the same type you’d see in the early 1970s, with limited movement, a lackluster color pallet, and very janky illustrations. It is voice casted by the same actors from the 1960s series but it’s largely viewed as non-canon as a whole, even if bits of the series were used in future episodes. It’s not really worth sinking time into, not when there are 10 other shows to watch.