Far better sci fi is available but I saw a fair few on a more piecemeal basis. TNG followed by Voyager mostly (which I did do week by week for most of it) but some DS9 as well. Some originals and a smattering of films of all of them.
Various arcs and episodes of all these then becoming highly highly suggested viewing, both in general and as a reasonable introduction to sci fi concepts. Might even have several fan films in that list.
The modern stuff starting with Enterprise was not for me. I tried Picard... butchers with no understanding of most of the lore, mindset and more if I am going to describe the writing team there (even if I wanted a failed empire for the federation, and bought the supernova thing being handled that badly by an otherwise highly proficient spacefaring civilisation, and most sci fi I like is more in the crapsack future/definitely not a utopia mould). Discovery, whoo charmless adventures of a Mary Sue, if claims that series 3 is better (and it took a while for others to find their groove) then it is going to have to blow the series 1-not that* shift of TNG out of the water.
Lower decks, I was warned off this by people I generally agree with on films and TV and whatnot where "Stargate Infinity has competition in worst animated spinoff stakes". There has been some morbid curiosity but at the same time the general lack of discussion from anywhere I figure tells me what I need to know -- while CBS probably are there with Fox for not understanding meme/fan culture the various funny image streams that still reference and clip TNG and the others with new stuff all these years on, and talk about the state of the civilisation, timelines, interesting stories and whatnot.
Would happily consider the Orville as one of those spiritual sequels but it also kind of did its own thing which was nice.
I will ask a question though. Do you think the modern stuff (be it Enterprise, lens flare films or going to this latest revival) will be something that creates something like the enduring fanbase among the youth similar to what the big four enjoy? Or if you prefer before this last round of films (though they might not change much) it was starting to be seen in conferences that younger people had never seen Star Wars (despite being old enough to have watched TNG first airing I only really saw them on TV, can tell you a lot about the games though, prequels I also mostly caught on DVD when bored/morbidly curious at my grandparents who have a massive DVD collection and awful internet, never bothered with the Disney efforts beyond series 1 of mandalorian and was middling at best on that). Am I similarly to expect to be at a panel (or just watching one because conferences are icky and hard to navigate) and have the ever seen star trek question popped in a few years to find few have?
*I did fairly recently go back and watch a bunch of series 1 having mostly seen later stuff originally. Definitely notable shift there after it found its groove.
Re: Them not using technology they discovered. Personally I would say if you can handwave away them clearly having seriously advanced future tech with extrapolations of what we have today then you probably have to go with that; on ageing and cures for it alone then
As far as best. For my money I reckon Voyager consistently asked more interesting questions, though TNG's high points eclipse most of those. DS9 was OK as a trading hub/diplomatic on frontier type thing but otherwise did not a lot for me.
Original, can see why some enjoy it a lot but no particularly special place to me other than I do like