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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18997 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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What's the right age to start with? Something like 13ish?

"The Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve."

If you want something to tide him over until he is older, try Space Cases. It's basically Voyager for kids.

And what episodes/movies should I "make" him watch? Wrath of Kahn seems like a decent stand-alone introduction to the whole franchise, but most of the other popular movies/episodes seem like they have too much "fan service" in them. I just watched a few "best of star trek" collection dvds, and all these episodes require way too much background knowledge about the universe to make sense. Something like Trouble with Tribbles, for example, could almost be a good introduction to the series for kids because of the cute tribble creatures, but you already have to understand that the franchise is about space exploration and colonizing planets and the prime directive and the war with klingons to actually make any sense of the setting.

What's wrong with publication order? "The Cage", TOS, TAS, the first six movies, TNG, DS9, VOY, Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, Nemesis, Galaxy Quest, done.

That said, the first full episode of Star Trek I ever saw was "Blink of an Eye", which a Trekkie teacher of mine put on when I was in 10th grade; I fucking loved it, though I later learned it is basically just a remake of Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. It helps that, much like an episode of Wagon Train, "Blink of an Eye" is actually the planet's story, with the crew of Voyager serving primarily as viewpoint characters; this means you do not need to know anything about them, or the wider setting.

What's wrong with publication order? "The Cage", TOS, TAS, the first six movies, TNG, DS9, VOY, Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, Nemesis, Galaxy Quest, done.

Outside of missing ENT which I quite enjoy, I don't think this would have worked for me. I came back to it later and I love it all now, but when I was a pre-teen/teen in the 90s, there was reruns of all of the Star Trek show playing all the time on TV, and TOS, TNG and DS9 never had much interest for me. TOS because it looked stupid: the action is robotic and looked stupid, and the plots basically all felt like they boiled down to sufficiently advanced aliens act like gods, until Kirk says "nope" and somehow he'd end up clumsily wrestling with a goofy looking alien somewhere along the way. I know it hit different for kids in the 60s and 70s, but you'd need a kid with a specific interest in "retro" shows to enjoy TOS on its own now, which I would guess isn't too common unless you live in a bunker and have deprived them of modern media. TNG and DS9 didn't interest me because it seemed like non stop politics and relied on too much built up lore that I didn't care about.

What's wrong with publication order? "The Cage", TOS, TAS, the first six movies, TNG, DS9, VOY, Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, Nemesis, Galaxy Quest, done.

Only that this is like watching two hours of tv everyday for a year. That's way more tv than is appropriate for a kid.

"The Cage" was not published first! Part of it was filmed first, but it was broadcast much later!

And it's also not such a good place to begin.

I should have said production order, not publication order.

I am a firm believer that TOS should start with "The Cage" followed by "Where No Man Has Gone Before", rather than "The Man Trap" followed by "Charlie X".

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