To be honest: After visiting both the US and China I was way more concerned after my US visit that my phone may have been compromised.

Using a VPN was no problem for me in China, but it has been a few years since I’ve been there.

There are several guides on what episode can / should / mustn’t be skipped.

Let’s watch Star Trek has it for every classic show: https://www.letswatchstartrek.com/tng-episode-guide/

But there are of course other guides and as they’re subjective ratings you might want to give episodes a chance even if others didn’t like them.

My main advice is: Don’t be afraid to skip an episode if you watch it and you don’t like it. Especially the early seasons of TNG, DS9 and Voyager have some episodes which can easily be skipped. You won’t lose any context.

Unified state shouldn’t be much of a problem for static web hosting.

I use tt-rss in combination with FeedMe on my Android.