I went with TOS, TNG and DS9, but losing Strange New Worlds, Short Treks, Lower Decks and Prodigy would break my heart. Of course, I wouldn't be happy about losing any of them. Well, mayyybbbee Picard...
TOS for historical reasons, TNG and DS9 because they're my favorites and offer the most bang for your buck.
True, but DS9 and VOY were made with underlying materials and care that are so far above SD... streaming even the SD version results in rather ugly looking material with jaggies and other issues that even "AI" can't do much with, since one is taking source material from a high resolution 24fps source, editing on a very low resolution 29.97fps (720x240, x2 fields per second), then for streaming there's deinterlacing (2 240p fields via temporal dithering merged to create one ersatz 720x480p frame and all the artifacting therein) and then stripping out frames to create ~20fps (it's jerkier than 24, that's for sure)... even "AI" on native 29.97 videotape looks leagues better than the multi-generational source hopscotch 90s Trek ended up being. And having seen enough streamed videotaped sitcoms lately, it still looks like muddied wax figures with some sharper edges (not to mention limited bandwidth so a compressed picture strips out more detail... all for a TV set sold as "high definition"... there's a time and a place; "AI" does do true wonders for native videotape, but for 90s shows and movies with the amount of image transferring and editing done? The difference is there, except for people who listen to the tv set from afar - like the kitchen and/or the bathroom, where in one form or another food is involved...) Not to mention, having tried streaming DS9 and VOY, I was quick to go back to DVD because they lack the PQ problems the streamed versions have. (ENT was filmed and whose CGI was rendered in 720p. This is easier to upscale effectively, at least to 150% original size, because enough raw detail existed in a 1280x720P frame (not two 720x240i temporally dithered fields meshed together) to enlarge to 1920x1080P and only looks slightly fuzzy - back when they released this last decade. "AI" nowadays would do a rather superior job, but the smaller the source image means the lesser one can stretch and play with edge detection without sacrificing issues elsewhere.) Never mind no amount of "AI" will pick up all the lush detailing on the costuming (and sets) in DS9, which alone is the most detailed and sumptuous any TV show ever had. "AI" simply cannot create the detail out of thin air. So then that even Venus and Mars are in awe over how thin said the thin air involving the non-detail is. One example screencap comparison of a close-up of one character is one thing, which still reveals a lot, but an identical heavily-detailed image from the same multiple sources is even more a no-contest. /nerdMode
Any? Really? Call me a wet blanket, but I could easily live without VOY ever having existed. Probably ENT too (although I like bits of the fourth season). And DSC, really, except for its purely functional role as proof-of-concept for kicking off a new wave of Trek material. And PRO as well, I suppose, inasmuch as I haven't even seen any of it yet and haven't heard that I'm missing anything. Interesting argument you make, and it underscores the complications of changing media standards over time. But who ever got to see DS9 in high-resolution 24FPS? That's film. When it originally aired, the only choice most people had was bog-standard analog broadcast SDTV. Any details viewers are missing now were almost certainly being missed then, too.
TOS, TNG, DS9. I have love for the others, but nothing close to those 3. Plus, the streaming shows have not wrapped yet. Cannot judge them yet. Still 1-2 seasons in. Only DISCO over 50 episodes.
Well, I did go on to make an exception for Picard, but even with overall "meh" Trek (Voyager, Enterprise and TAS for me), and poor, bedraggled Discovery, the good outweighs the bad for me (admittedly it's sometimes a close call). As for Prodigy; allow me to be the first to tell you that you're missing something. I included it among the shows I'd truly hate to lose, and I meant it. Lower Decks existing without TOS, TAS, TNG and Voyager is an interesting concept.
You've got a point there. I don't think I've seen an episode that doesn't have an explicit callout to characters or concepts from at least one other series (never mind all the Easter eggs!). The Lower Decks characters are practically fan surrogates in a lot of ways, to a degree that's either ridiculous or charming or both, depending on one's point of view!...
Because it had great actors and great characters, Voyager managed to be pretty decent Trek. Because its showrunners made a long series of painfully bad decisions, it only managed to be pretty decent Trek.
I thought the idea was they're burying what came before not expunging it from existence in its entirety. It all still exists, and those of us with a brain filled up with Trek trivia will get the references even if the source material is no longer available.
TOS ENT SNW Why? They’re my personal favourites among them all. No other rhyme or reason behind my selection.
VOY, TNG, LDS, in that order. But it's painful to have to leave out DS9 and ENT, and I'm still desperate to see more SNW and Prodigy. The rest I think I can probably live without...don't hate me!
TNG Because that was my childhood Trek. Lower Decks - I love they can world build in a way the live shows can't budget for. SNW - Great tonal range to the stories. Really likeable characters. Glorious soundtrack. Honourable mention to Prodigy.
I mean part of that is most certainly nostalgia. A certain portion of people will upvote anything as long as it's TOS-related, including the cheaply animated cartoon from the dark age of animation. But on the other hand, in my personal opinion, if any Star Trek show deserves scorn it's PIC.
To me TAS isn’t even worth discussing. But Picard should have been great. Instead, they shit the bed. Twice. The gap between expectations and reality is massive with that show, IMHO. I mean…2 votes (as of this writing). That says a lot.