What’s something that you feel like you should like, but for some reason can’t get into, no matter how many chances you give it?
For me, it’s The Three Body Problem. It should be right up my alley from everything I’ve heard about it (especially the second book, which looks at the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter!), but for the life of me, I can’t get past the first chapter at all. I even tried reading it in another language to see if it was the translation that kept me from getting into it, and nope.
Star Trek - I’m 40 and never gave it a proper chance and now I don’t even know where to start now
Omg. Star Trek and binging it when I was like six or seven when I visited my uncle as a kid. He had the then-entire collection on VHS and I found them and started watching.
Then, he found me watching trouble with tribbles and was like “ooh this is my favorite episode! Rewind it, I’ll go make popcorn.”
Yes. We binged the rest of everything else. Everyone else was either doing adult stuff (BORING.) or at my brothers soccer tournament (even more boring) all weekend.
Yes, this started my sci fi addiction. He also kicked off the fantasy addiction with the admittedly pulpy Belgariad.
You may be interested to know that a Belgariad series is currently in pre-production.
I mean, I knew, but I appreciate the reminder!
Though I am a bit scared of what they did to it.
I’m biased, so I say start with Next Gen. That’s what got me into it. I later went back and watched TOS. The other good starting point is Deep Space Nine.
Sisko is the best captain. He wasn’t even a captain to start. But he’s the best.
Q: [provokes sisko]
S: [knocks Q out]
Q: “you hit me! Picard would never have hit me!”
S: “I’m. not. Picard.”
I let me officers commit acts of terrorism once in a while, as a treat!
you realize, of course, that pretty much all of the captains have committed war crimes and terrorist acts? Sisko is at least…nomimnally… justified in them.
I mean, Picard uses a child soldier as a helmsman for crying out loud. not exactly the paragon of virtue he claims to be.
That first season of TNG is… rough. Although, that’s kind of an issue with most trek and it can easily put people off. Only TOS, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds were birthed with beard full grown
I started watching star trek in my late thirties. Tried TOS, couldn’t tolerate more than one episode. Then started TNG and fell in love half way through first season. Now I am on Voyager. According to me, it’s a good replacement for me for TNG. Not sure what I will watch once I finish this.
My vote is DS9! It connects a lot with TNG, even having some characters move over to it after TNG ended.
Will try that out next.
I’m a very casual Star Trek enjoyer, and reckon the 2009 film wouldn’t be the worst place to start.
The opening scene of that movie is some of the best Trek ever made. I say that as someone who’s been watching since 1987
Absolutely. It’s a fantastic scene.
I started somewhere in the middle of Voyage, it was running on the classical channel. Absolutely loved it and was not at all bothered by starting in the middle. The channel also ran Deep Space Nine, but I never got into it. I could watch it to wait for the next program, but nothing more really.
Strange New Worlds is probably the best start. I like Discovery a lot, esp. since it kicked off this new age of Star Trek, but it is a different format than you’d usually expect from Trek, thus the outcry. Strange New Worlds takes the classic Trek formula (which is not a bad formula–there’s a reason it has legs) and updates it with modern values/stories/special effects/etc.
Older Trek is massively nostalgic for many, but it’s also massively uneven in quality as they were churning out seasons on a shoestring budget and it often shows. Also, they didn’t always correctly predict how tech would go (esp. computer tech) so you can have things that are plot holes given what we know of technology today. If you want to start with older Trek, I think the Star Trek Next Generation movie First Contact might stand well enough on its own, esp. if you cherry-pick the Borg-related episodes (there’s only a few) from the TV series and watch them first.