Strongest and weakest first season? Second? etc

[BlueStuff]

Strongest

Season 1 - no question here, it's TOS. Just excellent and charming adventures full of entertainment with terrific characters. I don't even need to list the great episodes in this one.

Season 2 - I'm tempted to say TOS again. Getting wackier but also more ambitious with some wonderful character-work. Doomsday Machine; Mirror, Mirror; Journey to Babel; Amok Time; Trouble With Tribbles, all excellent. S2 for most of the other series with the exception of DS9 tended to be a little sketchy.

Season 3 - It's between TNG and DS9. I really loved where DS9 was heading around this time but TNG's general quality had skyrocketed here. The sheer number of outstanding episodes in TNG S3 give it the win for me.

Season 4 - This is a strong year for all the shows (that had fourth seasons of course). Keep in mind I'm still working my way through Enterprise. I think I'll say TNG. BOBW2, Family, Reunion, The Wounded, The Drumhead, Redemption 1 are all too good.

Season 5 - I think it's between DS9 and Voyager here; TNG was surprisingly inconsistent in its fifth year. Ultimately I'll throw Voyager a bone - season 5 was probably my favorite season of that show. Timeless; Counterpoint; Relativity; Drone; Dark Frontier; Equinox 1... very strong episodes and my best memories of Voyager in general. Still, DS9 had an awesome, awesome year too.

Season 6 - DS9 here, quite easy. The Dominion War arc was in full steam. Some of the best episodes of the show are here. TNG was in a "great or dull" phase. Voyager started to feel a little samey, albeit with some gems.

Season 7 - DS9 here too. Just a really satisfying final arc. There were a few clangers but nothing nearly as bad as in TNG's final season. Voyager was just mediocre.

What say you?

 

[BlueStuff]

Weakest

Season 1 - TNG. The reasons are well-documented. It has a certain cheesy 80's nostalgia appeal but there are many, many weaknesses that make it hard to sit through in full.

Season 2 - Enterprise. Frankly, very dull. A few good episodes but mostly a long stretch of utter mediocrity with characters still too new to have formed an attachment to.

Season 3 - TOS, though I'm tempted to suggest Voyager. Ultimately the sheer volume of horrific entries in TOS' third year sinks it.

Season 4 - The hardest by far to think of for me. Voyager only because I like TNG and DS9 far more as shows. Each had very good fourth seasons.

Season 5 - TNG; as said wildly inconsistent. Some of the greatest episodes in the series are countered by some of the dullest.

Season 6 - Voyager - A couple of gems, namely TTDS and Pathfinder, but ultimately not enough to distinguish the year.

Season 7 - A tie between TNG and Voyager. TNG has the better finale, but a greater number of terrible episodes here.

What say you?

 

[MacLeod]

In terms of first sesons I would tend to agree that TOS had the strongest first season as for the weakest first season I think than honour or is that dishonour goes to ENT

 

[Annorax849]

Season 1: TOS easily the best, TNG worst

Season 2: Same as above

Season 3: Voyager best (that's right) and TOS worst

Season 4: Enterprise best, I guess TNG and DS9 would be the weakest, but all are actually fairly close

Season 5: DS9 best, Voyager worst

Season 6: TNG best (slightly beating DS9), Voyager worst

Season 7: DS9 best, Voyager worst. I actually really delve from the consensus here in that I think TNG and DS9 generally maintained quality (TNG took a slight dip), while Voyager dropped off a bit.

 

[Jack Watkins]

I'll play.

I'm excluding TOS, as I came of age during the Rick Berman era and watched those years first hand.

Best / Worst
1. Deep Space Nine / Voyager

• TNG's first season was more uneven than Voyager's, but still had "11001001," "The Big Goodbye," and "Conspiracy." The only standout episode from Voyager season one was "Eye of the Needle." DS9 hit the ground running with a strong pilot (the best of any series), well-defined characters, and a fascinating sociopolitical conflict between the Federation/Bajorians/Cardassians. Enterprise was dull, but an excellent pilot and episodes like "Dear Doctor" pulled it ahead of Voyager.

2. Deep Space Nine / Enterprise

• DS9 hit its stride with episodes like "Necessary Evil," "The Wire," "The Maquis," "Whispers;" the list goes on. Voyager was hit or miss, but I have soft spots for "Projections," "Tuvix," and "Death Wish." TNG had "Measure of a Man," "Elementary, Dear Data," "Matter of Honor," "The Emissary," and "Q Who." I don't recall much of Enterprise's second year.

3. The Next Generation / Voyager

• TNG's third year defined Star Trek for the Berman/Piller years. DS9 had a rough time integrating the Dominion and the Defiant into the series (still many great episodes). Voyager gave up all pretense of being anything but an action-adventure series. The Xindi arc on Enterprise was mostly a wash, but had standouts like "Azati Prime" and "Stratagem."

4. The Next Generation / Voyager

• TNG's fourth year was its last great season; it had a warmth to its storytelling and cinematography that the following years didn't. DS9's storytelling was undermined by the Klingons, and it barely pulled ahead of Voyager (which had its strongest year). I would rate Enterprise ahead of DS9 in consistency, but it's best episodes don't come close to those of the other series.

5. Deep Space Nine / Voyager

• The Dominion War finally began, streamlining the series and making the Klingon/Cardassian/Dominion stories one instead of many. TNG had a dull year punctuated by some great episodes, and Voyager continued its decline into comic book simplicity.

6. The Next Generation / Voyager

• TNG had a strong run of episodes, with the excellent "Chain of Command" two-parter, "Tapestry," "Ship in a Bottle," and "Face of the Enemy." DS9 had a good year, too ("In the Pale Moonlight," "Inquisition," "Behind the Lines, "Beyond the Farthest Star"), but it's hit/miss ratio fell below TNG. Voyager was Voyager, God bless it.

7. Deep Space Nine /Voyager

• DS9's final year was ambitious and heartfelt, while TNG was dull and sterile. Still, it was a close call, as TNG had some great episodes still ("All Good Things," "The Pegasus"), while DS9 reduced Gul Dukat to a mad man and turned the Bajorian religion into magical nonsense. Voyager had a interesting last year under Kenneth Biller, with several strong episodes involving Tom Paris/B'Ellana Torres.

 

[Vger23]

STRONGEST
Season 1: TOS
Season 2: TOS
Season 3: (t) TNG TOS
Season 4: (t)TNG ENT
Season 5: DS9
Season 6: DS9
Season 7: DS9

WEAKEST
Season 1: DS9
Season 2: ENT
Seasons 3-7:VOY

 

[Qonundrum]

Strongest

Season 1 - no question here, it's TOS. Just excellent and charming adventures full of entertainment with terrific characters. I don't even need to list the great episodes in this one.

DS9's was very strong, but TOS - especially in 1966 - is even stronger. TOS gets my vote.

Season 2 - I'm tempted to say TOS again. Getting wackier but also more ambitious with some wonderful character-work. Doomsday Machine; Mirror, Mirror; Journey to Babel; Amok Time; Trouble With Tribbles, all excellent. S2 for most of the other series with the exception of DS9 tended to be a little sketchy.

I almost want to vote TNG because they largely had a vision and direction for the show, a number of eps are fantastic (Time Squared, Q Who, Contagion, Elementary Dear Data, The Dauphin, The Icarus Factor, Pen Pals (despite that ending), others) and I'm also a fan of Dr Pulaski. Still, add in the clunkers and writers' strike, combined with TOS' stronger scripts from season 2 including the titles you'd mentioned but also Immunity Syndrome and Assignment:Earth and TOS pretty much nails it.

Season 3 - It's between TNG and DS9. I really loved where DS9 was heading around this time but TNG's general quality had skyrocketed here. The sheer number of outstanding episodes in TNG S3 give it the win for me.

TOS had a few moments but s3 did go downhill. DS9 wouldn't really be rock solid until season 4 (though season 3 is largely magnificent) but TNG pretty much polished any remaining rough edges and very few episodes have dated badly as a result. TNG for me for season 3.

Season 4 - This is a strong year for all the shows (that had fourth seasons of course). Keep in mind I'm still working my way through Enterprise. I think I'll say TNG. BOBW2, Family, Reunion, The Wounded, The Drumhead, Redemption 1 are all too good.

TNG starts to wobble, especially after Ron Jones got sacked. DS9 did get Worf and a new direction and vision for the show. VOY has some real gems, and ENT was finally finding itself but still not to the point it could compete with DS9 ore TNG... but DS9 gets my vote.

Season 5 - I think it's between DS9 and Voyager here; TNG was surprisingly inconsistent in its fifth year. Ultimately I'll throw Voyager a bone - season 5 was probably my favorite season of that show. Timeless; Counterpoint; Relativity; Drone; Dark Frontier; Equinox 1... very strong episodes and my best memories of Voyager in general. Still, DS9 had an awesome, awesome year too.

TNG season 5 is absolutely increasingly variable and preachy whereas DS9 is running at warp 10 and with no salamanders as a result. VOY had some rock solid episodes but DS9 just outdid the rest by a somewhat small distance, say 19 trillion miles. DS9 easily wins this one. If there was a 5th year of ENT, that might have been very interesting.

Season 6 - DS9 here, quite easy. The Dominion War arc was in full steam. Some of the best episodes of the show are here. TNG was in a "great or dull" phase. Voyager started to feel a little samey, albeit with some gems.

TNG, for me, continues to get stale. VOY was starting to run out of gas... DS9 continued to be rock solid, though Terry Farrell leaving did start DS9 downward, especially as her death was completely done on the cheap and shoehorned in.

Season 7 - DS9 here too. Just a really satisfying final arc. There were a few clangers but nothing nearly as bad as in TNG's final season. Voyager was just mediocre.

TNG did have an upward tick but while DS9 was starting to go downhill. I'd almost call it a tie except DS9 still felt as if an 8th season could be plausible. VOY definitely was mediocre, to the point that they conveniently got Neelix a new home... and, of course, a series finale didn't bother with showing families being reunited. They could have had an extra 30 minutes to show families reunited or a one-off movie or something during the summer or something to have charatcers reflect on a unique experience, semi-soapy as it potentially could be. Or action-based like a courtroom drama or something. It's great they got home, it's great Janeway did a Kirk by breaking the rules, the Borg queen is always fun to see despite being antithetical to the Borg concept, but something still felt missing.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Season 1
Best: TOS
Worst: TNG
Best premiere: ENT
Best finale: DS9


Season 2
Best: TOS
Worst: ENT
Best premiere: TOS
Best finale: DS9

Season 3
Best: DS9
Worst: TOS
Best Premier: DS9
Best Finale: TNG

Season 4
Best: TNG
Worst: VOY
Best Premier: VOY
Best Finale: TNG

Season 5
Best: DS9
Worst: VOY
Best premier: TNG
Best finale: DS9

Season 6
Best: TNG
Worst: VOY
Best premier: DS9
Best finale: VOY

Season 7
Best: DS9
Worst: VOY
Best Premier: VOY
Best finale: DS9

 

[JRoss]

Interesting idea. Let's see:

Strongest
S1: Yeah, probably TOS. None of the others had truly great first seasons, through DS9's Duet was a standout, and Enterprise wasn't terrible. We rewatched the first five seasons of Voyager and found S1 of Voyager to be fine, too.

S2: TOS by a country mile. DS9 in second place

S3: TNG, though DS9 did very well, and so did Enterprise.

S4: TNG. Enterprise' fourth season left me wanting a fifth, and DS9 got very, very good. Best of Both Worlds gives the edge to TNG.

S5: DS9, no question

S6: DS9 again

S7: Owned by DS9

Weakest:

S1: TNG, but I'm betting that Discovery becomes a strong contender for first place

S2: Enterprise. It gets some competition from TNG and Voyager, but it's the clear "winner" of being most terrible.

S3: Voyager, even though TOS puts up stiff competition. TOS redeems itself with some good episodes, my favorite of which is The Savage Curtain

S4: Voyager

S5: Voyager

S6: Voyager

S7: Voyager

 

[BlueStuff]

Ouch. Voyager generally isn't coming off strongly here.

 

[Vger23]

Interesting idea. Let's see:

Strongest
S1: Yeah, probably TOS. None of the others had truly great first seasons, through DS9's Duet was a standout, and Enterprise wasn't terrible. We rewatched the first five seasons of Voyager and found S1 of Voyager to be fine, too.

S2: TOS by a country mile. DS9 in second place

S3: TNG, though DS9 did very well, and so did Enterprise.

S4: TNG. Enterprise' fourth season left me wanting a fifth, and DS9 got very, very good. Best of Both Worlds gives the edge to TNG.

S5: DS9, no question

S6: DS9 again

S7: Owned by DS9

Weakest:

S1: TNG, but I'm betting that Discovery becomes a strong contender for first place

S2: Enterprise. It gets some competition from TNG and Voyager, but it's the clear "winner" of being most terrible.

S3: Voyager, even though TOS puts up stiff competition. TOS redeems itself with some good episodes, my favorite of which is The Savage Curtain

S4: Voyager

S5: Voyager

S6: Voyager

S7: Voyager

TOS season3 gets waaaaay more of a bad rep than it deserves, to your point

There are actually some great episodes in there! Including Savage Curtain, I'd give a "7 or above" to all the following:

Enterprise Incident
Specter of the Gun
Is There In Truth...?
Day of the Dove
Tholian Web
The Empath
Cloudminders
All Our Yesterdays

 

[UnknownSample]

I'm starting to think the damning-with-faint-praise defences of TOS s3 are funny now. "It's not ALL bad..."! I criticize it sometimes, but now, seeing it remastered on a big screen on BBC America, I keep wondered why I didn't appreciate it more as a kid.

BEST
s1: TOS
s2: TOS
s3: Yes, TOS (#2, Next Gen)
s4: DS9. Next Gen, for me, suddenly became stale and uninspired about a third of the way into s4.... started out great, suddenly went flat and never came back. Someone posted about someone leaving around then... was that it? I'd like to know.

s5: DS9. So the quality ones from NG were Darmok and The Inner Light I guess? Maybe they seem like good ideas, but I don't know, stodgy? And the only thing worthwhile in Spock's two parter was Sarek's madness and death scenes. Spock wasn't even Spock. Nimoy had forgotten how to play him.

s6: DS9 of course, ditto s7.

Worst:
s1: Enterprise by a mile. No show has ever hit the ground slumbering like this one. It seemed all worn out right from the start. It felt like everyone just wanted a break, and here they are making a whole new show AGAIN. I don't think there was a single worthwhile episode for me.

s2,3,4: Enterprise.

s5: Next Gen. I took a few years to wean myself off the impression that Next Gen is better than Voyager. I see adult content and subtleties in Voyager now that escaped me on a small screen the first time around... and Next Gen always exudes during the last half of its run a mature veneer with little or nothing underneath it.

 

[Blamo]

TOS season3 gets waaaaay more of a bad rep than it deserves, to your point

Maybe. As you say it has some great episodes, but the bad ones were truly terrible. Worse still is that they're memorably bad.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Best to worst, by series:
TOS: 1, 2, 3
TAS: 1, 2
TNG: 3, 5, 4, 6, 7, 1, 2
DS9: 5, 7, 6, 4, 3, 1, 2
VOY: 3, 5, 4, 7, 6, 2, 1
ENT: 4, 3, 1, 2
DIS: 1

Best to worst, by season number:
1: TOS, DIS, ENT, TAS, DS9, VOY, TNG
2: TOS, TAS, DS9, VOY, TNG, ENT
3: TNG, VOY, ENT, DS9, TOS
4: ENT, TNG, DS9, VOY
5: DS9, TNG, VOY
6: TNG, DS9, VOY
7: DS9, TNG, VOY

 

[TheCrankyCardassian]

In order to be fair, I’m excluding TAS as it has been close to forty years since I’ve watched most of it. Out of the few I have seen as an adult: when they’re good, they’re great, when they’re bad, the litter box smells better.

I’m also excluding DSC because I don’t feel that four episodes are enough for a bald comparison.

Here goes...

Best to worst by series.
TOS - 1, 2, 3.
TNG - 3, 4, 6, 2, 5, 1, 7
DS9 - 6, 7, 4, 5, 3, 2, 1
VOY - 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 3, 2
ENT - 4, 3, 1, 2

Best to worst by season number
1 - TOS, DS9, TNG, ENT, VOY
2 - DS9, TOS, TNG, ENT, VOY
3 - TNG, DS9, TOS, ENT, VOY
4 - DS9, ENT, TNG, VOY
5-7 - DS9, TNG, VOY

 

[Annorax849]

Best to worst, by series:
TOS: 1, 2, 3
TAS: 1, 2
TNG: 3, 5, 4, 6, 7, 1, 2
DS9: 5, 7, 6, 4, 3, 1, 2
VOY: 3, 5, 4, 7, 6, 2, 1
ENT: 4, 3, 1, 2
DIS: 1

Best to worst, by season number:
1: TOS, DIS, ENT, TAS, DS9, VOY, TNG
2: TOS, TAS, DS9, VOY, TNG, ENT
3: TNG, VOY, ENT, DS9, TOS
4: ENT, TNG, DS9, VOY
5: DS9, TNG, VOY
6: TNG, DS9, VOY
7: DS9, TNG, VOY

Other than a few differences, this is extremely close to how I would rank them.

 

[cultcross]

Interesting topic. Bit of a twist on a classic

Season 1
Best - TOS - started it all, and contains some real classic episodes. Discovery is biting at its heels though.
Worst - TNG - dross from start to finish. Hard to imagine what it would become.

Season 2
Best - TOS - probably the best overall season of Trek ever, in terms of consistent ability to produce classics.
Worst - ENT - while the first season lost its way, season 2 never amounted to anything and contained the worst episodes the show produced.

Season 3
Best - torn on this one but TNG probably wins out over DS9. TNG's sudden upsurge in quality is as dramatic as it is exciting.
Worst - TOS, you don't get called the turd season for nothing. What a cluster.

Season 4
Best - TNG. DS9 and Voyager are close contenders. Season 4s are strong years for all three 24th century spin offs.
Worst - ENT, fanwank explosion which nearly killed the franchise.

Season 5
Best - DS9, easily that show's strongest season.
Worst - Voyager. The show had got very stale by this point, and didn't recover.

Season 6
Best - TNG. Some really strong stories this year, the real last hurrah of the TNG crew except for First Contact.
Worst - Voyager. More of the same. It had become the Doctor and Seven show by this point and the crippling refusal to take risks was deep seated.

Season 7
Best - DS9 - not universally brilliant, but beats out the lacklustre and understated affair that was TNGs, although All Good Things deserves a special mention in its own section.
Worst - Voyager. Same reasons as 6, really. With only three shows in the running after season 4, Voyager was going to struggle.

Special awards:
Best pilot - DS9
Worst pilot - ENT

Best finale - TNG
Worst finale - ENT

Best two parter - DS9, In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light
Worst two parter - TNG, Birthright I & II

 

[Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai]

What say you?

First Seasons:

1. Star Trek. Absolutely the most consistently excellent first season of them all, even accounting for the datedness of the production and the differing expectations of television at the time. Only a few duds out of 29 episodes

2. Deep Space Nine. While boring, at least it didn't outright suck, and it had Duet in it. It's pretty rare for an episode of that caliber to come from a first season. It also had Move Along Home, but at least it wasn't a full season of Move Along Home-quality episodes, and heck, I thought that episode was funny.

3. Voyager. Again, boring, but most of the issues I had with this series had yet to make themselves evident. There was still potential there.

4. Enterprise. After a slam-bang pilot, it settled right back into its comfortable rut and became Voyager at its worst with new characters.

5. The Next Generation. Dear lord. How on earth does a series widely regarded as the second-best of all time, or even equal to its predecessor, have the most abysmal first season of them all? Sure, there were bright spots, but this was the season that contained The Naked Now, Code of Honor, The Last Outpost, Lonely Among Us, Justice, Haven and Home Soil, some of the worst episodes in the entire series. Hell, Code of Honor is in the bottom ten worst Star Trek episodes ever. It also had Wesley at his most insufferable (he was almost tolerable in the second season and by the end of the third I actually kinda liked the little snot).

Second Seasons:

1. The Next Generation. There is a reason why it still manages to be considered so great despite its first season. The second season, which is probably only marginally better than the first, still manages to be the only second season in the franchise to be a measurable improvement over its first. With Elementary, Dear Data, A Matter of Honor, Contagion, The Icarus Factor, The Emissary and in particular Q Who? and The Measure of a Man, both among this series' strongest ever, not to mention the actors all coming into their own as they learned who their characters really were, this is the season that, in more ways than one, grew the beard. This is the season that set the tone for the rest of it.

2. Star Trek. While not as strong as the first season, it's still a very strong season. I only rank TNG ahead of it because of the rapid turnaround in quality for TNG. This one was a very good season that just managed to not be quite as consistent, quality-wise, as the first.

3. Voyager. Boy is it ever painful to admit that Voyager had a better second outing than Deep Space Nine, but I can't lie. After watching the series again, more recently, I have to say that if there was an early season of Voyager that actually threatened to live up to its potential, it was the second. It was the only one that felt like it was really building up to something.

4. Deep Space Nine. Still boring, but the actors all started to get more of a grip on who their characters were, similar to TNG. While it ended on a very high note, and introduced the series' identity, far too much of this second season didn't really know what to do with itself. It waffled between being TNG lite and being a dull political drama about a planet we still didn't really care about.

5. Enterprise. It was the second season that did this show in. The first was nowhere near as bad as we like to remember, but this season destroyed any good will that anyone might have.

 

[Starbreaker]

S1 - Best: TOS Worst: TNG
S2 - Best: TOS Worst: ENT
S3 - Best: TNG Worst: TOS
S4 - Best: DS9
S5 - Best: DS9
S6 - Best: DS9
S7 - Best: DS9 Worst: VOY