I tried starting from the beginning a few years back but the production value is a little too rough for me to ignore its flaws since I have no investment in or dedication to the show yet.
I’m wondering if I can watch lower decks or whatever the new live action show is and get into Star Trek that way.
Generally you can watch any of the shows without having watched the previous ones. There will be some episodes with references that will go over your head and there will be some occasions where you might want to look something up (for example episodes that assume you already know about certain alien species). But you’ll be able to follow the plot just fine. Maybe Lower Decks would not be the show I’d necessarily start with, as a lot of the humor relies on references to older shows. Strange New Worlds should be a perfectly fine starting point though.
If you do want to give an older show a go though, TNG is much more palatable for modern viewers than TOS in my opinion, although it doesn’t start out the best.
okay I trust your judgment because you admitted:
“it doesn’t start out the best”
I’m finding it difficult to get past that first interaction between Shakespeare elitist alien and Picard.
when you say start out, do you mean like the first episode, or the first season?
cuz I’ll just skip the first episode and go back after I kind of care about the story and characters and find out what they talked about.
Honestly most of season 1 and about half of season 2 are pretty weak (with some decent episodes in between). Quite a lot of season 1 you can downright skip. There are quite a few guides out there on which episodes to watch and skip, for example here or even this one that skips season 1 and 2 almost entirely. In my opinion, from season 3 onwards, the general quality gets so good that you might as well watch every episode from that point.
Think of TOS (The Original Series) as Greek Morality plays on a stage.
TNG (The Next Generation) is the same, but with a budget and special effects - what Roddenberry imagined for TOS.
For someone new, I’d say start with TNG, it captures the essence of the original but is more watchable for someone who didn’t grow up with the original Trek. Plus everything else really builds from it, sort of. Well, at least Voyager and Deep Space Nine are set in the same timeframe and kind of follow TNG canon.
Edit: the special effects on TNG were pretty much the best you could do for TV at the time. Remember, a large TV then would’ve been 20" or so.
