The Star Trek saga has spread out over 50 years of television.
And while it's true every Star Trek series has its high points and rough patches, there
are some that come out far, far better than the others.
Here's a totally subjective, and completely accurate, ranking of every Star Trek show
from worst to best.
When the Next Generation era of Star Trek came to an end in 2001, doing a show like
Enterprise probably made a lot of sense.
The franchise had spent over a decade chronicling what happened in the century after the original
show, and since prequels were all the rage, going back to show humanity's first steps
into space undoubtedly seemed like a great idea.
Sadly, Enterprise proved that the distance between "seemed like a good idea" and "was
a good idea" is so vast that even warp speed can't get you there in four seasons.
To be fair, the show eventually did get around to some solid storytelling.
Perhaps surprisingly, it was at its best with plots about time travel and mirror universes.
The two-parter where they go back in time to fight Nazi aliens during World War II,
for instance, is a hoot, and exactly the flavor of Star Trek's signature weirdness that was
pioneered by the original series.
Getting to those, however, is a trial.
Despite its strong premise, Enterprise spent most of its run switching off between bad
and boring, and sometimes managed to be both at the same time.
The worst part, aside from that awful theme song, is that the show is just embarrassingly
horny, and for Star Trek, that's saying something.
Sex appeal has been a part of the franchise ever since green women were belly dancing
for Captain Kirk back in the '60s, but Enterprise was at a whole new level, throwing in as many
scenes of sexy decontamination chamber rub-downs into those first few episodes as it could.
Maybe that's why they had the whole thing turn out to be one of Riker's holodeck simulations
in the finale.
If anyone's going to program in some uncomfortable bathing scenes into a historical document,
it's that dude.
Considering its enduring popularity, it's weird to think about those years between the
end of the original series and Star Trek: The Motion Picture hitting theaters in 1979
when there just wasn't any Star Trek.
Sure, the original show was a favorite in syndicated reruns, but as far as new stories
went, the decade between the end of TOS and the release of the film was a wasteland.
Except, of course, for the 22-episode run of what would eventually be known as Star
Trek: The Animated Series.
It got the green light thanks to Trek's post-cancellation success in reruns, and for all its flaws,
it did some pretty interesting things.
For one thing, it reunited almost all of the show's cast, giving it a sense of authenticity
cartoon spin offs usually lack.
Even the one major cast member who wasn't brought back led to something interesting.
Poor Walter Koenig didn't make the cut, but Chekov was replaced by a handful of alien
helmsmen whose designs would've been way too expensive to pull off in live-action.
There are even some good stories thrown in here.
"More Tribbles, More Troubles", is a great spin on one of the most popular episodes of
TOS, and while it's not perfect, "Yesteryear" gave the viewers who were demanding more details
of Spock's childhood exactly what they wanted.
Unfortunately, on the whole, it's just not very good.
The animation is substandard even for the early '70s, clocking in somewhere south of
Scooby Doo.
The shortcuts, like giving the crew invisible force-field spacesuits rather than designing
a second character model, are obvious and off-putting even for a kid.
That cheap, repetitive animation also makes the 24-minute animated stories feel like they
drag, even though they're half the length of a TOS episode.
The best thing you can say about Star Trek: The Animated Series is that it's technically
Star Trek, which is slightly better than having no Trek at all.
Short Treks feels like an idea that should've happened long before Star Trek finished out
its first 50 years.
If shows like Deep Space Nine have taught us anything, it's that the wider universe
can be just as interesting as the missions seeking out all those new lives and civilizations.
And yet, with all the Trek shows, novels, and comics that spanned the first half-century,
Short Treks was the first one explicitly meant to explore the universe outside of our main
characters.
In that respect, it captures one of the best things about the franchise: it can be something
different in every episode, from tense drama and allegory to full-on comedy.
"Let me ask you, are they intelligent?"
"That's hard to say.
Uh, as you can see they...they don't have a face."
On the other hand, it also suffers from the flaws inherent to every anthology: by its
very nature, it's uneven, and while the lack of consistency can be interesting, it also
means there's a variation in quality from episode to episode.
Despite that uneven nature, Short Treks is absolutely worth watching, episodes like The
Tribble episode are great, and "The Escape Artist," in which Rainn Wilson both directs
and stars as a handful of Harrys Mudd, definitely has the feel of classic Trek.
In the broadest sense, there are basically two kinds of Star Trek episodes.
There are the ones where the crew wanders into some unexplored corner of space and has
to deal with whatever nonsense they find there, and the more allegorical episodes about the
difficulties of maintaining peace between planets in the final frontier.
When The Next Generation spun off into its successors, it seemed like each one picked
one of those ideas to stick with for an entire series.
Voyager was the one about exploring uncharted space, and while you'd think doing a show
about a literal trek through the stars would make for a solid Star Trek experience, the
show's middling level of quality proves otherwise.
Eventually, they got around to some good stuff, particularly once they were dealing with the
Borg and having Seven of Nine get kidnapped into a gladiatorial arena where she wrestled
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson at the height of his WWE fame.
No, really, that happened, and it rules.
Sadly, they didn't get around to People's Eyebrow until Season 6.
The dull, plodding trip to get there is barely worth it.
Setting a Star Trek show in the same general time period as the original Star Trek seems
like the height of hubris, especially if you're throwing in characters like Christopher Pike
and Harry Mudd, and riffing on concepts like the Mirror Universe.
You're not only setting yourself up to be compared to the OG Star Trek, but to people's
memories of the show and the very idea of it as a cornerstone of something they love.
It would take a truly great show to pull that off...and it turns out Discovery actually
is that good.
A big portion of that has to do with the fact that the cast is an amazing collection of
actors.
Sonequa Martin-Green has the kind of charisma that could carry the show and single-handedly
justify the change of focus from the captain as the main character to a (slightly) lower-ranking
officer.
That same choice also allowed Discovery to pull off another amazing bit of casting with
Jason Isaacs.
Spoiler warning, but having the guy who played Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies spend
half a season as a good guy before revealing he's from the mirror universe is the kind
of great twist Trek has never really pulled off before.
Throw in the rest of the cast, along with great visual designs and two seasons of solid
writing, and you've got a really solid show.
The only question is whether or not Discovery will be able to maintain that level of quality
for its whole run.
If Voyager was the show that got lost in its years wandering around the galaxy, Deep Space
Nine was the one that planted its roots and became one of the best Trek shows of all time.
DS9 showed a side of the Star Trek universe that had never been seen before: a run-down,
barely functioning rust-bucket of a space station, rather than the ultra-sophisticated
flagship of the galaxy that was the Enterprise-D. By positioning that space station around a
planet that had only just been freed from an occupying military force, it explored ideas
about the fragility of peace in a way the high-minded original series and TNG never
had.
By building a cast that included upright Federation officers, unabashedly sketchy crooks, and
the people trying to rebuild from what seemed like an endless war, it had a character dynamic
no other Trek show came close to cultivating.
Just look at Major Kira Nerys.
She's one of the show's most heroic characters.
She's also an insurgent freedom fighter described by several characters, including herself,
as a terrorist.
"The only thing terrorists care about is attacking the enemy.
I know, I was a terrorist, and if I had this ship then.."
That her actions are presented with nuance, that they're influenced by real-world ideas
without becoming a heavy-handed allegory, speaks to the level of sophistication that
DS9 was working with from day one.
Along the same lines is Jadzia Dax, who, because she's a symbiotic life form who was formerly
bonded with another body, will casually mention that she used to be a man.
When that comes up, everyone around her accepts it without any problem.
These are both things that shows struggle with doing today, 20 years after DS9's final
episode.
Plus, listening to Avery Brooks deliver dialogue is the audio equivalent of wrapping yourself
up in the warmest, coziest blanket you can imagine.
"So where do you think Starfleet will be sending us next?"
"I don't know, but if I have anything to say about the matter, we'll be going right back
to the front lines."
Looking back from the distant future of the 21st century, it's sometimes hard to believe
that Star Trek's original run only lasted three seasons.
Seriously, even Enterprise got four.
But what a three-season run it was.
Sure, there are a handful of real stinkers in Trek's original run, "Spock's Brain" is
easily one of the worst pieces of the entire franchise, but they're more than balanced
out by the good stuff.
One thing that rarely gets the spotlight it deserves?
The acting.
Star Trek's characters and the way the cast portrayed them were so iconic, influential,
and familiar that the broad strokes have been parodied countless times.
You remember William Shatner's breathy, pause-heavy delivery, Leonard Nimoy's deadpan eyebrow,
and James Doohan's wildly over-the-top Scottish accent.
What often gets lost in all those parodies is that they're actually really good at what
they do, making even the most ludicrously overwrought plot seem poignant and compelling.
There's a reason the show got the fan-base that it did, and defined an entire side of
science-fiction for the next 50 years.
In all honesty, Star Trek: The Next Generation probably shouldn't have made it as far as
it did.
Of its seven-season run, the first two are chock full of episodes that are almost unbearably
bad.
That's partly because the second happened during a writer strike that led to the show
digging through rejected scripts from the '70s for a reboot that never happened.
Remember the one with the weird Irish stereotypes?
Or where Troi gets space pregnant against her will?
It's rough stuff, and if you see those too-tight first-season uniforms it's almost guaranteed
to be a bad time.
But then, somewhere in Season 3, something clicks, and suddenly it's one of the best
shows in television history.
In a lot of ways, it's like the writing and production finally catch up to the cast.
The one thing the show had going for it since day one, and the thing that really carried
early-season high spots like "Q Who" and "The Measure of a Man", was a truly incredible
roster of actors that were all committed to making that show work.
"Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life.
Well, there it sits!"
Without Patrick Stewart delivering a tour-de-force performance as Picard, or Brent Spiner doing
his level best to make Data's twee robotic nonsense seem charming instead of unforgivably
annoying, the show never would've gotten the chance to become great.
Episodes like "The Best of Both Worlds" and "Chain of Command" set new watermarks for
how good Trek could be at compelling, thrilling drama.
"You called me Picard!"
"What other federation's defense plans for Minos Korva?"
"There are four lights!"
At the same time, "Rascals" and "Tapestry" proved that TNG could take a seemingly silly
premise and pull it off with comedy that was fresh and fun.
The end result was a run of episodes where the good didn't just outweigh the bad, it
obliterated it.
Seriously, this is a show that includes "Sub Rosa," an episode where Beverly Crusher got
busy with a ghost that used to hook up with her grandma, and it still has enough all-time
great television that it averages out as the best Trek series of all time.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.