Commander Abe Sapien’s dialog early on is pretty rough. His character is entirely ruined by the forced tension with Michael.

I wish there was like a Season 0 where I could learn to care about the characters before the events of Season 1. I feel like it is taking me on a journey the characters havent earned.

My biggest issue is I just dont like any of the characters and I wouldn’t want to be on that ship. That to me is the biggest flaw of Discovery.

Every other Star Trek I can imagine it being so cool to get to be there. Discovery would be awful. Being around that crew sounds awful and exhausting.

I tried watching it and got to what I was told was a peak episode in S1E7 and it was still awful and seemed like it would be awful. No charm. I compare it to other episodes in sci fi like it and it has nearly 0 fun and the fun it had was dark and creepy.

Movie Star Trek is different from TV Star Trek. Except for Insurrection which is just a 2 part episode in a movie trench coat. And probably Section 31 but I don’t plan to watch that and find out.

SNW S1E2 - Children of the Comet. This is a tricky one because of potential predestination and the end result being an accidental major break of the prime directive. A warp capable civilization is certain that a comet must destroy a pre warp civilization and refuse to let that change. The issue is that the ship/comet wants the Federation to interfere and does not intend to hit the planet. This is all in Federation space.

Another in Federation space that is also a loose fit is LD S5E7 - Fully Dialated where the crew must recover Data’s head from an alternate reality that has fallen on a pre warp world. The loose fit here is that the only reason they count as external is that it is Purple Data who is not technically a a member of this realities Federation and thus an outsider.

Lastly a decent fit but outside Federation space is Prodigy S1E7 - First Con-Tact. The crew first breaks the prime directive by making first contact with a pre warp civilization but then defends it by stopping a Ferengi from influence the civilization negatively. This is outside Federation space though.

Specifically for a new viewer who wants 3 shows that would be different and enjoyable:

TNG:

The Inner Light, Cause and Effect, Lower Decks

DS9:

Duet, The Visitor, Trials and Tribbleations

Prodigy has holoemitters on every deck and is able to reconfigure the bridge using them. It is possible but they just need a reason.

Normal for a person, but not normal for him. We see him as a very passionate person before he gets his implant who treats the dulling of his emotions as a boon.

I’d be shocked if the person influencing this writing of his character had never dealt with SSRIs or a similar medication.

No Star Trek show loved Star Trek more than Lower Decks.

I hope this is not the last time we see these characters. Between losing Prodigy and Lower Decks it has been sad for Star Trek as of late.

Rutherford upgraded his implant to be little more like Alternate Rutherford who had a super implant that also blocked out his emotions entirely.

This wasn’t a story about how his implant was bad at dealing with alternate universe versions of technology. His story was about how he had always used his implant to protect him from feeling emotions. Cranking it up slightly was all it took to finally block him from loving anything. Himself as he is, the Cerritos, Tendi. As soon as he took it out all of those emotions flooded in.

You are in a theater group and steal a magical princess. Yada Yada Yada, you find out your twin brother is using magic life mist to build an army of dolls… Yada Yada yada, the princess turns a castle into a giant robot to fight the doll army… Yada Yada yada, you go to your alien space ship to find all of your other clones, yada yada yada your clone brother kills you and the only way to realive is to kill Necron the god of death and then the game ends.

Final Fantasy 9, the pinnacle of FF games doing this.

Another favorite for me though would be Breath of Fire.

You are a man, you become a dragon man, you find out you were always a dragon, find the goddess and have to chose between killing her or becoming a dragon god and killing your friends.

I mean the issue with TikTok is that they give the data and videos over to the Chinese government to be able to mass process it and search for vulnerabilities or enable social engineering attacks on the US government.

Meanwhile Twitter/X is totally different in that they give the data and videos over the US government to be able to mass process it and search for vulnerabilities or enable social engineering attacks on US citizens.

Admiral April and Admiral Forrest are both solid options.

I think April did a really solid job of showing what a great but imperfect leader looks like in Ad Astra per Aspera.

Forrest was supportive and helpful. Willing to bend the rules to support his people rather than vice versa.

He still is ahead of Kamala by about 2% or 2.5 million votes. Before he was ahead of Kamala + Claudia + Chase + Cornell + Jill + Vermin Supreme + Elmo.

It’s still a closer gap than he lost to Biden by by a lot. But it is also super clear that Harris managed to do worse in this environment than Hillary did in 2016 back when Trump was an unknown crazy person instead of the well known crazy shill for hire.

Syndication is also called reruns, when the show is rerun out of order on TV at a standard Timeslot. Like for me TNG was on every night at 7pm M-F. It was shown in random order as far as I know with I believe them skipping less popular episodes, I honestly never noticed if they did hits for a bit then did a rerun through it or what.

The first season of TNG is considered weak as a heads up, similar for DS9 though DS9 has some bangers in S1, TNG is mostly weak. That said if you like it, you’ll LOVE the rest.

SNW is fantastic and I really recommend it, it is certainly New Trek but it’s a MUCH better successor to the legacy than Discovery.

Start with the best episodic episodes of TNG and DS9. Most of us were introduced to Star Trek out of order, it isnt like modern TV. 90s TV and prior was focused on syndication.

My recommendations would be, TNG: Darmok, Tapestry, The Wounded, Inner Light, Cause and Effect, Lower Decks (The episode that inspired the show). For DS9: In The Pale Moonlight, Duet, Trials and Tribbleations, The Visitor (Rest in peace Tony Todd)