Some episodes have been written for children it would seem but on the whole I'd say not! The show has always been very adult in how it's stories have been presented! How many kids could understand all that technobabble, how many adults for that case as well? JB
I don't think the show was ever intended to be a kid's show like "Commando Cody," but the fact of the matter is that I got hooked on TOS when I was seven or eight or so, and I suspect that many of us were also hooked on some generation of Trek at an impressionable age. And, honestly, I don't remember having any problem following the plots or being confused by the TOS-level technobabble. Even if you don't know the big words, you can usually pick it up from context: The transporters are't working because of science-y stuff, but Spock can fix it by doing science-y stuff, if only Scotty can fix the "dilithium" thingies in time!
The Kirk romances would have put any kid off the show at their ages but the action, the monsters and the special effects would have brought them back in! JB
I can testify to occasionally getting a bit bored with "the mushy stuff" but never enough to make me stop watching. And beautiful female guest-stars were a staple of of action-adventure shows back in the day, so Kirk romancing a different woman every other episode was no different than James West doing the same thing on WILD, WILD WEST or whatever. It was just par for the course. And, honestly, I think even TNG-level technobabble is not going confuse the average kid since the meaning is clear from context. "Re-oscillate the secondary polaron deflector array" just means "Quick! Science the science thing or we're all dead."
I think TNG is pretty kid friendly, as is TAS obviously. Voyager is too, IMO. Pretty techy but still appropriate. Enterprise is a little iffy. I probably wouldn’t show that to a 13yo. Lots of sexual tension there. DS9 has some darker themes, I would say it’s kid friendly for the most part (minus some of the more sexually based episode or anything that had to do with Risa) but I don’t even know if a kid would get the show. It’s pretty heavy. I doubt any kid in 2018 would want to get into a series made in the 60s, unless the new movies reeled them in (that happened to me).
Probably most episodes would be rated G, but I think certain TNG episodes are definitely in PG territory, and at least one would merit PG-13. The low-hanging fruit is the Alien chestburster riff in "Conspiracy." But you also have things like Lore threatening to burn Wesley alive in "Datalore," the Varon-T disruptor which tortures its victim while disintegrating her in "The Most Toys," and then also things such as psychologically shocking death of Van Mayter in "In Theory." http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Dexter_Remmick http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Varon-T_disruptor http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Van_Mayter There are other examples. These are just off the top of my head.
Did I answer this? Anyway, this is not a difficult question. The answer is NO. They don't ask this question about drama set in the here and now. But because it's science fiction, and because SF has this lingering reputation as being childish, Trek is automatically seen that way by some. How are these not adult characters, dealing with adult situations? -------------------------- As someone said though, it's definitely "kid friendly" because it's imaginative. The real, adult world really ought to appeal to the imaginative though, rather than be the dull bland place it generally is.