G
Gul Sengosts
Guest
I also vote for watching them in chronological order of release, not in-universe timeline, for several reasons.
A) There's not only the Star Trek timeline, there's also a real world timeline providing a background for the different Star Trek shows. Matters addressed are influenced by topics of their times, aesthetics and the technology depicted are influenced by the technology (and imagination) of the time of filming, social circumstances and developments of their times bleed into each show. Star Trek often deals with present matters in a future scenario, so TOS is clearly a late-60s show, TNG is a show witnessing the fall of the Soviet Union, Voyager is a Clinton-era show, ENT is a Bush-era show. Topics of those times are dealt with in the respective shows, so going back and forth between them can be more confusing than going back and forth in the Trek timeline.
B) even prequel shows like ENT often hint at/refer to developments that happen later in the timeline, while TOS/TNG/etc. don't refer to what happened in ENT. ENT's first contact with a holodeck for example, it gives context after watching TNG but has no meaning for TOS. ENT Klingons are actually TNG Klingons, TOS Klingons are very different. It makes perfect sense knowing how Klingons were redesigned after TOS, it makes much less sense to have them changing back and forth from ENT to TOS to TNG.
C) history of depiction and special effects. For example, in TOS, Klingons were just some guys wearing camp fake gold shit with shoe cream in their faces, that's just how it was at the time. They only got their forehead ridges in the first movie, years after TOS the TV series was cancelled. All subsequent Trek shows had headridge Klingons, TNG as well as ENT. DS9 had a parody episode that cheekily addressed this inconsistency, and in its wake, later ENT developed a bullshit explanation to desperately make sense of why they lost the ridges and then got them back again.
I think it makes more sense in hindsight, having watched all that's happened before, to understand what ENT's trying to do there. It's nonsense in any order you watch it, but having watched it in order of airing at least gives context about why they were doing that.
If we count in Discovery, I think order of airing makes even more sense. It hasn't explained the radical change of Klingon appearance so far, and I don't think it ever will (at least not in a way that's not laughable). It replaced insta-hit phaser streams with laser projectiles, it's got some tech that seems ahead even of VOY, it's got the mycelial network which is a concept too far removed from any other Trek show to fit in between any of them, it introduces races never to be seen again in the "later" shows, and it's generally got a massive change of tone that makes sense considering air dates and evolution of TV, but makes no sense at all in its timeline spot between ENT and TOS.
So yes, I recommend watching them in the order of airing.
A) There's not only the Star Trek timeline, there's also a real world timeline providing a background for the different Star Trek shows. Matters addressed are influenced by topics of their times, aesthetics and the technology depicted are influenced by the technology (and imagination) of the time of filming, social circumstances and developments of their times bleed into each show. Star Trek often deals with present matters in a future scenario, so TOS is clearly a late-60s show, TNG is a show witnessing the fall of the Soviet Union, Voyager is a Clinton-era show, ENT is a Bush-era show. Topics of those times are dealt with in the respective shows, so going back and forth between them can be more confusing than going back and forth in the Trek timeline.
B) even prequel shows like ENT often hint at/refer to developments that happen later in the timeline, while TOS/TNG/etc. don't refer to what happened in ENT. ENT's first contact with a holodeck for example, it gives context after watching TNG but has no meaning for TOS. ENT Klingons are actually TNG Klingons, TOS Klingons are very different. It makes perfect sense knowing how Klingons were redesigned after TOS, it makes much less sense to have them changing back and forth from ENT to TOS to TNG.
C) history of depiction and special effects. For example, in TOS, Klingons were just some guys wearing camp fake gold shit with shoe cream in their faces, that's just how it was at the time. They only got their forehead ridges in the first movie, years after TOS the TV series was cancelled. All subsequent Trek shows had headridge Klingons, TNG as well as ENT. DS9 had a parody episode that cheekily addressed this inconsistency, and in its wake, later ENT developed a bullshit explanation to desperately make sense of why they lost the ridges and then got them back again.
I think it makes more sense in hindsight, having watched all that's happened before, to understand what ENT's trying to do there. It's nonsense in any order you watch it, but having watched it in order of airing at least gives context about why they were doing that.
If we count in Discovery, I think order of airing makes even more sense. It hasn't explained the radical change of Klingon appearance so far, and I don't think it ever will (at least not in a way that's not laughable). It replaced insta-hit phaser streams with laser projectiles, it's got some tech that seems ahead even of VOY, it's got the mycelial network which is a concept too far removed from any other Trek show to fit in between any of them, it introduces races never to be seen again in the "later" shows, and it's generally got a massive change of tone that makes sense considering air dates and evolution of TV, but makes no sense at all in its timeline spot between ENT and TOS.
So yes, I recommend watching them in the order of airing.
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