I think that if a person can watch Bonanza and get over the "sixtees-ness" of it all, then one should be able to enjor TOS. Just don't blame TOS for not being "the future" (why are they carrying memory chips? where is the WiFi), because scifi never perfectly captures the future - most often, scifi is not simply "futurism" but a philosophical thought experiment (e.g., politics, ethics, identity, consciousness, power) and TOS has this in spades.
For people who are curious about TOS but can't tolerate the "60s" look on their screens, perhaps they might consider reading the James Blish books. He adapted most of the 79 episodes before he died, and J.A. Lawrence did the others. That's how I knew about most of the episodes before I got to see them on TV. Of course he wasn't working from final scripts, so there are discrepancies - notably during the time when George Takei was filming a movie and his scenes were given to Walter Koenig.
I'm old enough to remember Bonanza when it was in its first run. Admittedly I was very young and don't remember individual episodes from then, but I've managed to do a lot of catching up since. It's still a pretty good show, and I'm still searching out episodes I haven't seen, and ones I saw before and would like to see again (yeah I could buy the DVDs, but Amazon's going to have to put them on sale before that'll happen...).
A few years ago, there was a thread here about black-and-white movies. There was one poster who swore up and down he hated them, would never watch them, didn't care about the story being good or not... they were black-and-white, and therefore worthless. That discussion inspired me to check out the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy movie marathon that was on TV a couple of days later. I'd never seen "The African Queen" before, and loved it! Even if the images on screen aren't in color, I can
imagine how they would look if they were.
And sometimes color isn't necessarily better. I saw a colorized version of the old Richard Greene "Robin Hood" series... it looked ridiculous.
If you want to know the origins of DS9's Kor, Kang and Koloth, you have to watch:
Errand of Mercy (first Klingon episode!)
The Trouble with Tribbles
Day of the Dove
TNG was my first trek, and TOS was a bit cheesy after that, but it quickly grew on me. Don't miss out!
More properly, the first appearances of those characters, not their origins.
How can those episodes not be their origins, if those are the first time the characters are seen? After all, it's not like they were ever
mentioned previously.
I wouldn't begrudge anyone liking what they like. We all have different tastes. It just seems strange that there are people who call themselves Star Trek fans who, you know, don't actually like Star Trek.
Agreed.
I don't think anyone can argue Star Trek isn't dated. Of course it is. But it is what it is -- a product of its time. People still read classic SF novels that are far more dated than Star Trek is, featuring a populated Mars, a swampy Venus, and interstellar travel in the late 20th Century.
I still enjoy Ray Bradbury's stories - all of them hopelessly dated by this time. Ditto Edgar Rice Burroughs. Robert Heinlein's stories that take place on Mars and Venus and Jupiter's moons are outdated. Even Ben Bova - a modern SF writer whose Grand Tour/Asteroid Wars series is top-notch reading - wrote some political SF stories that are dated now (I'm thinking specifically of
Millennium and
Colony). They're still fun stories.
Thanks guys & gals for all the input. 
