Anghraine

For context: my best friend J is an ultra-ultra-dedicated Star Trek fan. I saw re-runs as a kid and had a lot of lingering goodwill towards TNG in particular, but not especially clear memories apart from First Contact (J and I had a beloved English teacher in high school who assigned it to our class :D). I haven't watched much of the newer stuff, even. I saw two JJ Abrams films (the first seemed a perfectly fine film if slightly vacuous—it felt rather more like SW than ST in some ways, but not enough to be fully satisfying as either, while the sequel sucked in a "we should have seen TROS coming" way). I haven't seen any Discovery, Prodigy, Lower Decks, or Picard episodes, just two episodes of SNW that were okay, but not really my thing. They're polished, but struck me as rather unambitious in a ST context. That said, J really, really loves other ST (he considers it basically his religion, despite decidedly rough patches such as Picard) and I hadn't seen any of the older stuff in ages, so I was thinking vaguely of catching up with some old school ST.

Meanwhile, we were negotiating our next Media Experience awhile back, and he really wants me to watch Andor. In part, this is so we can talk about it, and in part because he genuinely thinks I'd like it apart from his admission that it handles Cassian oddly given his characterization in Rogue One, but he thinks I could overlook this in the face of the show's greatness. (He does not do social media and does not fully grasp the extent of my Rogue One!Cassian stanning.) We were talking it over and I was trying to evade committing myself to watching Andor and was suddenly struck by a burst of Machiavellian genius.

him: I think you really would love it if you'd give it a chance.
me: I have a counter-proposal, since the last thing we watched was also your idea.
him: ...yeah? A different Star Wars?
me: No. Star Trek.
him: ...
him: ...
him: O_O
him: ...like, Discovery or...?
me: No. I've been meaning to catch up with the older shows, since I don't remember them very well, except bits of The Next Generation.
him: Wow. Okay. Um, well, which one ... it can't be Deep Space Nine because we're watching that later in the summer, and Voyager is, well, I love it, but like a three-legged dog. I can't really recommend starting there. But we could watch some highlights of TNG...
me: I wasn't really thinking of a highlights reel experience...
him: O_O
him: I guess we could actually start with the original series, though there are some complications with the early episodes and multiple pilots and everything, and, well, sometimes it's extremely 60s...
me: Okay, let's see!

So while this originated in a cunning plot to evade Andor by throwing in all of Star Trek in front of him like a red flag in front of a bull, I didn't want to only be using his favorite thing as a delaying tactic, obviously. I definitely wanted to give ST a fair shot and think about it and try to engage properly, etc.

I don't always have time for it, but so far we've watched the following episodes (in this order):

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