Star Trek - Where to Start

I have a good friend who has never seen Star Trek but is interested in watching. The problem is, he doesn't know where to start. 

It is intimidating because Star Trek has been around for 56 years now with 11 series, 13 films, and new content premiering weekly, is rapidly approaching 700 hours of content. To sit down and watch everything would take almost 30 days of non-stop viewing. Assuming you just watch four hours a day, it would still take you half a year to watch everything! (Not that it wouldn't be amazing. I might have found my first activity after retiring!)

For example, here is a list of just all the different TV series in order of release:

• Star Trek (The Original Series)
• Star Trek: The Animated Series
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• Star Trek: Voyager
• Enterprise
• Star Trek: Discovery 
• Star Trek: Picard
  
• Star Trek: Lower Decks 
• Star Trek: Prodigy
  
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

The truth is, not all Star Trek is created equal in terms of quality. That's just the truth of network television and that fact that it has been around so long with so many different contributors.

So, where to begin? What would you consider essential viewing?

Of course, having grown up on classic Trek, I still consider it to be the gold standard. I tried to come up with a list of essential episodes to introduce a newcomer to Trek. Here's what I finally settled on. This is in the order that I would recommend, although I did list the season and episode numbers in case someone wants to watch them in release order.

• The Corbomite Maneuver s01e10
  
• Balance of Terror s01e15
  
• Space Seed s01e22
  
• Devil in the Dark s01e25
• Errand of Mercy s01e26
  
• City on the Edge of Forever s01e29
  
• The Menagerie (2 parts) s01e11, 12
  
• Amok Time s02e01
  
• Mirror, Mirror s02e04
  
• The Trouble With Tribbles s02e15
  

It's still a significant investment of time, but 10 episodes is a lot more manageable than even all 79 of the original series episodes. If you watch these 10 and still aren't hooked on Trek, it's probably not for you. The next ones I would recommend are as follows:

• Where No Man Has Gone Before s01 e03 (the second pilot)
  
• A Piece of the Action s02e17
  
• The Enemy Within s01e05
  
• The Doomsday Machine s02e06
  
• A Taste of Armageddon s01e23 
• Journey to Babel s02e10 
• The Enterprise Incident s03e02 
• All Our Yesterdays s03e23 
• Assignment: Earth s02e26 
• The Naked Time s01e04 
• Arena s01e19 

Finally are some that I would consider non-essential, but still a lot of fun:

• Shore Leave s01e15 
• The Squire of Gothos s01e17 
• I, Mudd s02e08 
• By Any Other Name s02e22 
• Bread and Circuses s02e25 
• The Omega Glory s02e23

Rosalie and I did a rewatch of the entire series a couple of years ago, but if anyone's interested, I never get tired of watching Trek, especially these classic ones!

If you're a new Star Trek fan and try this list, let me know what you think. If you're already a fan, what would you add or change?