Short Answer:
A couple of links to sites that attempt to list varios production in order of fictiomal chronology are included.
Long Answer"
In my opinion, a highly episodic dramatic or comedy television series with a lot of episodes should be pictured as happening in many different alternate timelines, many different alternate universes. One should imagine that each episode, except for the ones that are clearly sequels to others, should be thought of as existing in a separate alternate universe of its own. And if the series has a pilot episode which sets up the situation in the series one can assume that each and every episode is a sequel to the pilot episode, and the alternate universe with each and every episode all diverge after the pilot episode.
Thus one doesn't have to consider which episodes are in which alternate universes when deciding on viewing order, but merely accept that most are probably in their ow separate alternate universes and so will probably not affect later episodes.
Here is a link to a list of
Star Trek productions in a possible fictional chronological order. Naturally the writer had to make some decisions which some other persons might not agree with. This list only includes
Star Trek :Enterprise and productions made before it.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/startrek/st-episodes-1.html
I started a thread with the title: "Which Star Trek Productions are in the Same alternate Universe as Others".
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/whi...iverses-as-others.298962/page-3#post-13162100
Discussing which
Star Trek productions are sequels to which productions.
So with TOS and TAS one can start by watching the first pilot "The Cage" (or perhaps omit it) and then the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". and then watch the other TOS and TAS episodes in chronological order.
How do you determine the chronological order of TOS and TAS episodes?
There are three main methods of determining the chronological order of TOS and TAs episodes.
One: Date of first broadcast order. This may have been the first order used by fans.
Two: Production order, found from the production codes or notes of when the episodes were filmed, etc.
Three: Stardate order, from lower to higher stardates. In the first two orders stardates usually get higher but sometimes get lower. Stardate order eliminates that problem, but has the problem that some episodes don't have stardates (non canonical sources provide some missing stardates), and a few other problems.
http://startreklist.blogspot.com/2011/04/list-of-all-star-trek-episodes-sorted.html
A fourth episode order would be in order of seasons, followed by stardate order within seasons. That would eliminate problems like seasons having overlapping stardatee and the problem that the TAS episode "The Magicks of Megs-tu" has a lower and earlier stardate than "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Of course that has the problem of the stardates dropping significantly lower between seasons.
After TOS and TAS the six TOS movies all have the same order by production order, release order, and stardate order, and numbers II, III, IV, V, and VI all seem to happen in that fictional order anyway.
The first season of TNG has the same problem that the production order, broadcast order, and stardate order are all different.
In the second and later seasons of TNG the production order, broadcast order, and stardate order are almost totally identical. So someone can put them in any of those three orders with very little differences between the three orders. There are only a few problems, such as some episodes not having stardates, and "unification Part 2" being produced before "Unification Part 1" because of the availability of Leonard Nimoy.
The same is true with all seven seasons of DS9 and all seven seasons of
Voyager; Their production order, broadcast order, and stardate order are usually identical, though of course there area few problems.
The four TNG movies all happen after the end of TNG, during DS9 and/or
Voyager, and after
Voyager and most people consider watching them where their stardates put them is a good idea, although there are some dissenters.
Star Trek: Enterprise was a prequel series, set about 100 years before TOS. Since it had no stardates, episodes can be viewed in production order or in broadcast order. Some episodes had Earth dates, and naturally those episodes should be viewed in order of their Earth dates. Since the year is never specified as AD or CE, it is possible that the years a ere not given using
Anno Domini dating but instead use some other year count.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini
The three Kelvinverse movies start a few years before "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and TOS and may extend into what would be the era of TOS.
Star Trek: Discovery began ten years before TOS and thus a few years after "The Cage" and a few years before the first Kelvinverse movie
Star Trek (2009).
And I hear that
Star Trek: Picard beings years or decades after TNG, DS9, and , and after the TNG movies.
Star Trek shows started out highly episodic, with only a few episodes sequels to other episodes, and over time began to have more and more story arcs until some of the latest ones are highly serialized. In my opinion, the more episodic a series is, the more probable it is that almost all episodes happen in separate alternate universes of their own. In my opinion, the more serialized a series is, the higher the proportion of episodes will be that happen in the same alternate universe, and thus the higher the proportion of the episodes which would have to be watched in order to understand later episode,s movies and productions.
So if you are asking what movies, episodes, and other productions you need to watch or rewatch in order to understand
Star Trek: Picard and/or the third season of
Star Trek: Discovery, set centuries in the future, and if you hope that there are hundreds of productions you don't need to watch in order to understand them, I have good news and bad news for you.
The good news is that there are probably hundreds of productions one does not need to rewatch in order to understand
Star Trek: Picard and/or the third season of
Star Trek: Discovery, set centuries in the future,
The bad news is that I have not yet completed a list of which episodes are necessary to understand future
Star Trek productions and which are not. That was one of my goals in creating the thread I mentioned above.
"Which Star Trek Productions are in the Same alternate Universe as Others".
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/whi...iverses-as-others.298962/page-3#post-13162100
But since many users here just assume that all
Star Trek productions happen in the same alternate universe, despite the extreme statistical improbability of that being the case, they have not been as helpful as I hoped in providing lists of episodes that are sequels to other episodes and thus happen in the same alternate universe.
It seems clear that all episodes of
Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) are sequels to the first episode "Caretaker", all episodes of
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) are sequels to "Emissary", and all episodes of
Star Trek: The Next Generation" (TNG) are sequels to "Encounter at Farpoint". And VOY is a spin off of DS9 and TNG, and DS9 is a spin off of TNG. Thus all episodes of TNG, are sequels to "Encounter at Farpoint", all episodes of DS9 are sequels to "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Emissary", and all episodes of VOY are sequels to "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Emissary" and "Caretakers".
And probably the majority of episodes of TNG, DS9, and VOY are in separate alternate universes and sequels to only the one, two or three, as the case may be, pilot episodes. But those shows had a number of story arcs including multiple episodes, so that
Star Trek: Picard and/or the third season of
Star Trek: Discovery, set centuries in the future, should be sequels to tens or possibly hundreds of episodes that are part of story arcs which have been or will be mentioned or significant in those series.
Since all the TNG, DS9, and VOY episodes are sequels to "Encounter at Farpoint", if any TNG, DS9, and VOY episode is a sequel to any TOS era production, "Encounter at Farpoint"must alos be a sequel to that TOS era production, and thus every single TNG, DS9, and VOY episode must be a sequel to that TOS era production,
In my thread
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/whi...iverses-as-others.298962/page-3#post-13162100 in post number 44 I calculated that every single TNG, DS9, and VOY episode must be a sequel to the TOS movies from
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and to about 12 TOS episodes. And I also started working on lists of TNG era episodes that were sequels to others. But there are many more episodes left to do.
Since the three Kelvinverse episodes are supposed to be in an alternate unvives caused by timet ravel, we don't have to suppose that
Star Trek: Picard and/or the third season of
Star Trek: Discovery, set centuries in the future, is a sequel to any of them.,
As for the two prequel series,
Star trek: Enterprise has episodes concerted with a temporal cold war and future time travelers changing history, so there no proof that either
Star trek: Enterprise or
Star Trek: Discovery is in the same alternate universe as any other series. So some people might claim that there is no need to watch any of their episodes before watching
Star trek: Picard, although one w ould have to watch first and second season episodes of
star Trek: Discovery before watching the third season of
Star Trek: Discovery, set centuries in the future.
