I didn't understand what was going on in every episode but I do remember seeing Kirk and Spock on the bridge of the USS Enterprise.
No bloody A, B, C, or D.
With a black-and-white television, I had no way of knowing that if you wore a red shirt, your days were limited.
I really got into the franchise a few years later, when my family upgraded to a colour TV and the show was running in syndication. Every Saturday evening and Sunday morning, TOS was shown on CBC television. I watched those episodes over and over again.
To date, there have been 11 Star Trek television series and I have watched every single one of them. I've even watched some of these series several times. But I haven't liked them all, even though I have forced myself to sit through every single episode.
Or nearly every episode, as you'll see.
As we wrap up the final episodes of the second season of Strange New Worlds, I've given thought to which of the series are the best and which are the worst in the Star Trek franchise. And here is the list of how I feel, ranked from worst to best.
And be warned, there may be spoilers if you haven't seen some of these shows.
- 11: Prodigy — when Nickelodeon teamed up with Paramount to create a more kid-friendly Star Trek series, I was a bit skeptical, but I gave it a try. I was happy that Kate Mulgrew was reprising her role as Kathryn Janeway, albeit with her voice alone for the animated series.
When the cast was a group of misfit kids who were enslaved on a planet, I was initially uninterested. Having some kids were okay but all of them? They find a Federation starship, the USS Protostar, hidden below the planet surface and use it to escape the planet. And they pretty much lost me.
When they brought the Borg into an episode and the kids were captured without being assimilated into the collective, I told myself that this was really watered down for kids and I really lost interest in the series, though I did see it to the end of Season 1.
I was thrilled to hear that Season 2 was being cancelled. For me, it truly is an awful presentation of the Star Trek universe. - 10: The Animated Series — after TOS was cancelled, an animated version was created, bringing the voices of the original cast and continuing the five-year mission. Being animated, we were able to see things that budgetary restraints and special effects just couldn't achieve in the 1970s, even though the animation itself wasn't that good. While some stories were interesting and well done, I just couldn't follow this version. While I watched many episodes from the series, I just couldn't continue watching it. It's the only Star Trek series that I tired of and stopped watching into the second season.
- 9: Discovery — I didn't like what they did with the Klingons. I didn't like how the main character, Michael Burnham, was connected with Spock and his parents. I didn't like the design of the USS Discovery. Why has the spore-drive technology never been spoken of again, when there were two ships that had it before TOS? The Discovery was presumed lost but there was no mention of how it's technology was a closely guarded secret.
The Mirror Universe was already known before Kirk, Uhura, and Scotty found themselves in it. How did they not know of it?
I eventually got past the fast-and-loose playing of the timeline but I found the season-long storylines and the over-the-top melodrama a little much to take. Discovery will be ending it's fifth and final season next year and I say so long to that. I won't shed a tear. - 8: Picard — this one was tough because I love The Next Generation (TNG) series, and especially the crew of the Enterprise D and E. Jean-Luc Picard remains my favourite Starfleet captain of all time and I was so excited to see Patrick Stewart take up this role again.
The first season was a bit slow in its start but overall it was pretty good, but the second season was a disaster, so much so that not only did I grow tired of the Borg, I wasn't sure if I could force myself to watch Season 3.
Thankfully, the cast of TNG came back and the third season of Picard made up for the second one. I'm hopeful that a spinoff with Seven of Nine and Jack Crusher will get picked up. - 7: Lower Decks — I actually like this series and I was delighted when the crossover episode with Strange New Worlds came out a couple of weeks ago. I like the animated format with some comedy thrown in to give the lighter side of Starfleet. Sometimes, the antics go a bit over the top but I do like the perspective of the lower-decks crew on a second-contact ship that seems to clean up from the first-contact explorers. The next season comes out in September and I can't wait.
- 6: Enterprise — the very first crew of a warp starship to bear this name made for an interesting take on what happened several decades after first contact with humans and Vulcans, and I was happy to go along for the ride. There was a bit of fudging with the Star Trek timeline but overall I loved the crew and the stories, and I was disappointed when the series was cut short.
- 5: TOS — sure, many episodes haven't aged well and are now cringeworthy, but for it's time the original series boldly went were no television series had gone before. People of all walks of life, working together in harmony on a voyage of exploration. How good is that?
- 4: Voyager — this is a series that I liked from start to finish. It was the first series to feature a woman captain, and Janeway showed that she was as tough as anyone. What's more to say?
- 3: Deep Space Nine — this series took a while for me to get into. Set on a space station that went nowhere (except, in the first episode, when it moved near the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant), it was hard for me to catch on. But as the seasons went by, the characters really developed, the stories got better, and the war with the Dominion had me hooked. I wasn't a fan of the Bajoran spiritual episodes but I did respect them for what they were.
I often flipped between preferring DS9 to Voyager, and vice versa, but overall I found the writing on DS9 to be better. - 2: Strange New Worlds — in Discovery, we had already met Captain Christopher Pike and his Enterprise, but when SNW launched, it hit the ground running. The series went back to Star Trek's episodic format, though there is continuity between episodes, but the writing, the acting, the plots, and the special effects makes this one of the best Star Trek series out there. And last week's musical episode? It was both daring and incredible. I don't really like musicals but this one was a lot of fun.
SNW is actually making me rethink my number 1 Trek series. - 1: The Next Generation — while TOS got me into Star Trek, TNG made me a big-time Trekkie. The first two seasons were a bit rough, with the characters finding their stride and a writer's strike to blame for lame story lines, but when the actors found their characters, they made us feel, as viewers, as though we were part of the Star Trek universe. As I said, the third season of Picard was great because of the return of the Enterprise D crew. Season 3 of Picard gave great closure to this part of the franchise. TNG gave us the Borg, brought depth to the Klingons and Romulans, and introduced us to a much larger, though fictional, galaxy.
That's my list. What do you think? If you're a Trekkie, how does your list compare? Which series do you like or dislike? Leave your thoughts in the Comments section and let's... engage!
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