I didnt have anyone to guide me in my late-90’s pre-teen years. It was only with Jessie Gender’s reccomendation that I dipped my toe in to lower decks, and then friends i met told me about DS9 being “the queer one”, which got me hooked.

Dont get me wrong, I’d seen TNG episodes growing up…unfortunately the connection/click just didnt get made. (I circled back, dont worry)

Now for the heresy: From my perspective, the newer stuff, which folks so often gripe “change the format too much” or whichever (I wont even humor the bad-faith bigots complaints about how they cant slur people for intrinsic traits just for existing) – I enjoy Strange New Worlds and Discovery a lot. They address something that Star Trek didnt (when I was young and media illiterate and taken in my bang-boom-Halo-style-scifi: i could suspend my disbelief. The costumes in TNG and even DS9 had taken me out of it before i ever got into it. No shade to designers…i see now the wonderful theatre they were making room for…and hey, Im a queer-anarchist so making things more easily digestable is the opposite of what i dig…but maybe consider that someone super enthused about a newer show may well be on their own path to a new appreciation for the older series <3