Star trek is like an old friend you can talk with for hours. Makes you comfy, makes you laugh, makes you ponder your existence and mortality, and every time you meet they have a new story to tell you.

As to where to start: If you can handle old shows The Original Series is really amazing for what it is.

If you can't then no worries The Next Generation is a safe bet, but maybe try to skip the first two seasons on your first watch, some of the episodes are painfully mediocre, and the show was still trying to find its footing.

If you want a modern show, then Strange New Worlds is currently running and has some qualities of the old Trek

I like Star Trek because of the hopeful future it depicts, the exploration I would love to experience, and the well developed characters.

Episodes are varied, one episode might focus on a side character's love life, where another might be a battle against a superior foe that feels like a Das Boot adaptaion.

I recommend Strange New Worlds, it's a return to episodic storytelling, it's got great visuals, great actors, and the weakest episode is better than The Next Generation's average episode.

I recently introduced a friend to Star Trek with SNW without explaining anything and it did a great job of introducing the setting and itself

Its more of a philosophical space drama then an action packed space opera.

I just appreciate how the prime directive limits the characters. They almost always could militarily dominate the enemy, but that's never the goal.

My favorite thing about Star Trek- and I do like Star Wars, but this is where I think you may not like Star Trek if you like Star Wars- is that they (generally) try talking things out before using their weapons. I like to dream that we will eventually become a society where violence is not our first reaction to the unknown.

There’s a ‘Where to start’ FAQ linked in the sidebar wiki for this community. I recommend going there and taking a look.

The best place to start largely depends on your personal preferences in terms of whether shows need to be action packed, have long term serialization vs episodic, and tolerances for 60s or 80s/90s trends in special effects, technobabble, Shakespearean acting styles.

I’m an older person who has been watching since TOS was in first run, and saw the original Star Wars as a teen. Alien 1 too. All to say, I saw all of it as it came out. We were just so glad in the late 70s that someone was making sci-fi movies that weren’t post-Armageddon dreary.

Trek has held my interest more intently, but I read more than my share of the SW ‘legends’ books as they came out. I can see a wide range of offerings in both franchises, appealing to different audiences and tastes.

It rather boggles me that there are folks who have tried one but not the other. It’s like someone who is a DC or Marvel fan and has never checked out the other. You may not find anything to like, but the potential of finding another universe of stories that interest you is more than worth the risk.

A word of caution. Just about Star Trek every fan thinks that the show they first watched or their favourite show is the best place to start. They’ll argue passionately that you’ll do best starting where they did. Ignore all of it. You’re you.

Read the ‘where to start?’, check out ‘Memory Alpha’ or Wikipedia for the basic description of the main series, pick one that appeals and try the pilot. Be also cautioned that many of the shows take a while to find their groove. Checking out a ‘best of’ list for early seasons is ok if you’re not the of a completist temperament. Hope you find the Trek that’s best for you.

I got told by Lemmy to start from Voyager and I've had no regrets. Low barrier for entry in terms of not needing to know much about star trek, introduces a lot of important lore to take into different series, hits a lot of the great beats of the rest of the material.

For one Star Trek isn’t fantasy in space which is honestly a lot more appealing to those of the nerdy persuasion.

Like, Star Wars has ships that can travel anywhere and basically instantly whereas there are actually in universe explanations for how that might work in Trek and you can’t just zoom home whenever you want - Star Trek Voyager is a whole show about a ship that can’t return home. There are also just way better characters in trek and enough variety that everyone has different favorites.

It’s also nice that many of the conflicts in trek are solved through logic, diplomacy, and smarts. Only in Star Trek Discovery and the Picard show does the franchise venture too far into “pew pew” territory.

At the end of the day Star Wars is like 10 movies and a handful of shows that don’t do much and Trek has that many movies plus like 700 episodes of content.

One last tidbit, most of trek actually flows really well into each other and I think is way more cohesive than Star Wars where each era of movies feels like a different universe.

NOT any of the movies. Avoid them until you know you enjoy the tvseries. And I believe you should start at Strange New Worlds. A recent series that quickly gets itself into what we enjoy about Star Trek.

You COULD see if you enjoy Discovery too. I think its a bit too far from what makes Star Trek fun (team work and optimism), and it too quickly delves into mirror world stuff, which you really should have more context about. Picard is a bit too much dependent on knowing stuff from The Next Generation. Lower Decks is making fun of Star Trek lore. And Enterprise and anything older is good and watchable if you enjoyed Strange New Worlds. They all have a bit slow first season though. The Original Series is too old to be watchable for me.