Discovery has it's flaws, but it occupies a special place in my heart...

A place that also includes the TOS Monster Maroon Movies, TNG, and possibly Strange New Worlds?

I'm absolutely not saying these are the best Treks (glances knowingly towards Star Trek 5) but they are my favourites

You're basically describing Strange New Worlds 😂

They really need to find ways to get Star Trek to an audience beyond Paramount+

Hell, why not put the new shows on normal TV a couple of years after they air online? I know fewer people watch traditional TV these days, but it's still a way to get the show out to a more general audience

I think it boils down to what kind of TV you want to watch in general, because almost all Star Trek is good Star Trek, but the shows are very much products of their time

So, do you want 60s adventure of the week where you really get into the origins of the franchise? -> Original Series seasons 1-2

80s/90s vision of a future where we have really learnt to better ourselves? -> The Next Generation Season 3 onwards (and any highly rated season 1 or 2 episodes)

A new take on Star Trek that keeps the hope and adventure, with modern special effects and episodes still in production / coming out? -> Strange New Worlds starting at the very beginning

The other shows are good too, but for someone specifically looking for a hopeful iteration of Star Trek, I'd recommend the above three

I really want Paramount to keep trying to broaden the Star Trek universe and its genres, if only because that will bring us one step closer to my dream show...

...a weekly 90s-style proceedural where a Starfleet Medical doctor somehow gets involved in solving a murder every single episode

I'm up to the Search for Spock now, and the Star Trek Pod Crawl has been so interesting so far

Previous to this, the only Star Trek podcasts that I had listened to were either Uxbridge Shimoda properties or the D-Con Chamber and its predecessor, so it's great listening to different style shows

Open Pike Night in particular has a great format and I'm hoping to get into that back catalogue at some point

I actually enjoyed it. For a movie that apparently squeezed a season of ideas into a single feature, it came out pretty... coherent? 😂

Sure, it's silly and weird, but I'm glad that the powers that be at the Star Trek industrial complex are not afraid to try different things

My only worry is that we'll be seeing less new different Trek going forward as Paramount don't seem quite so willing to spend big and greenlight everything these days

In another timeline, the two-part pilot of the Section 31 series would just be Mirror Universe Hunger Games 😥