Star Trek: Beginner’s Guide

With the whole Star Trek catalogue on Paramount+, there has never been a better time to binge your way through this genre-defining franchise. It can be a pretty intimidating prospect with 12 TV shows and 13 movies, especially with all of them happening at different points of a timeline that spans 1000 years. But not to worry, we’ve put together this guide so you can know what to expect and have a general idea of what you get with each series.

The show that kicked off the whole franchise and captured the imaginations and attention of a whole generation, The Original Series (TOS) follows Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S Enterprise as they boldly go where no one has gone before. It’s a great starting off point to the franchise and will introduce you perfectly to the way Star Trek uses its characters and the adventures to pose philosophical questions, as well as what the United Federation of Planets stands for.

You may have seen screenshots or GIFs of animated Star Trek characters on the internet – there is one particularly infamous one of Kirk covering his mouth in mock surprise – and these come from The Animated Series. Mainly voiced by the cast from TOS and featuring ideas that weren’t able to be used for TOS before it finished, it furthers their adventures without being tied down by budget constraints, so it’s best watched after you’ve finished TOS.

There’s a lot of debate around who’s the best Star Trek captain – Kirk or Picard. Find out for yourself in The Next Generation (TNG), which takes place almost a century after TOS. The first 7 season Star Trek show, TNG was able to grow the Star Trek universe and philosophy of the Federation much further and deliver another amazing cast of characters to love.  You’ll also get to meet Q, a truly fantastic adversary played by John De Lancie.

A huge fan favourite, Deep Space Nine (DS9) is the first Star Trek series to move away from purely episodic storylines to longer arcs. Set on a space station at around the same time period as TNG, DS9 goes into more complexities than the previous shows as they are tasked with helping the Bajorans join the Federation. Previous Star Trek shows are great at going into philosophical questions and presenting the utopia of the 23^rd and 24^th centuries, while DS9 explores the realities of the Federation, as well as allowing the characters to have more complex relationships with each other.

The first series to be led by a female captain, the steely Captain Kathryn Janeway, Voyager takes the U.S.S. Voyager to the unexplored Delta Quadrant in an accident that leaves them stranded 70,000 light years – or 75 years of travel – from home. This gives Star Trek the chance to really expand their universal canon, with new alien races and dynamics in an area where no one knows who the Federation are or what they stand for.

The first Star Trek show that acts as a prequel to all the shows that came before it, Enterprise is set a century before TOS, giving it a different political context before the creation of the Federation. The crew on the U.S.S Enterprise (NX-01) are taking on the first deep space exploration mission, and it provides some more background to the Federation and what the creation of it brought to space. Fan reactions weren’t very positive to the show, although the fourth and final season is definitely worth a watch, and it’s fun to see sci-fi veteran Scott Bakula leading a show again after Quantum Leap.

Discovery is also set before TOS but only a decade rather than a century, and so it ties in closely to some TOS key characters. It intertwines with some of the events and plot points of TOS and even fills out some extra details. Focusing on long story arcs and universe-ending stakes, it goes hard into everything you’d expect from the science fiction genre, though it definitely has a different feel from previous Star Trek shows. It does feel ironic at first that a show set in the past has such a modern look and feel, but it works.

It took a show of huge quality to bring Patrick Stewart back to play Captain Jean Luc Picard. In an interview, he talked about how he’d been approached with many other ideas, but this was the one that truly hooked him. With appearances from a lot of the original cast of TNG as well as Seven of Nine from Voyager, Picard is a great exploration of the Star Trek universe and characters. If you find yourself really enjoying the characters of TNG, you’ll love seeing where the characters end up after the show in Picard. With two seasons under its belt, each one has a serialised narrative, making them feel like extended movies.

Returning to animation, Lower Decks is a hilarious animated comedy that is packed with more Star Trek references than you can shake a Tribble at. While it’s pretty easy and fun to watch, it might be better to save this for after you’ve watched a good chunk of the older shows so that you can get some of the many inside jokes that fly around. There’s also plenty of awesome cameos from cast members of different shows, which is always fun to see.

Strange New Worlds centres around Captain Christopher Pike’s command of the U.S.S Enterprise and is set between Discovery and TOS, a pretty slim period of time where not much is known about what happened. With its placement in the Star Trek timeline, there will definitely be a lot of familiar faces dropping in with Spock and Kirk already featuring strongly. It leans in strongly to its roots with the classic uniforms, set design, and even episodic story format of classic Star Trek.

There are a few options for where you can start Star Trek. The earlier shows are easy enough to jump into – TOS, TNG, VOY, DS9 – but the only shows that require some back knowledge so you don’t feel lost are the newer ones – Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks & Strange New Worlds. It might be tempting to go straight for the flashy newer shows but having the background knowledge does help with fully understanding what’s happening. Plus, it gives all the cameos (and there are plenty of cameos) a lot more weight. If you’re the type of person who wants to be fully informed though, TOS  is the only place to start.

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