A+: DS9
Whatever: Everything Else
Whatever: Everything Else
Rank the Trek series
- Thread starter Belz...
- Start date
before rankking top to bottom: if SNW keeps going what it's doing. I'll say top of the list for it. It's that good. But it's not even a full season yet. DISCO had me this impressed into season 1.. things can change.. Paradise ain't always what you long for)
DS9: it's never gotten better than this. Not always perfect but had much of the best writing and best performances in Star Trek.
TOS: if not for season 3, I'd say it would win top spot. It is the gold standard of Star Trek. It's why Lower Decks can't go two episodes without a TOS reference. It's why TOS characters or direct callouts to TOS have made it into every other Trek series besides Prodigy. It's what holds it all together.
Lower Decks: Incredibly Entertaining.
Short Treks: I'm calling it a series because it doesn't fit in anywhere else. It has had ( so far) a very short run), but what it has done has been consistently excellent. I hope they make more. It got an Emmy nomination, too. Also, Tribbles Cereal is canon now. Deal with it!!! (jk)
DISCO: I loved season 1 and season 2, really liked season 3, and just wanted season 4 to be over. I hope they fix what's wrong. I hope someone takes a night course on how to tidy up their pacing.
ENT: It could have been somebody. It could have been a contender. A show that got better as time went on, but some of those early episodes are REALLY bad. Books can be written about what went wrong. I really do like a great deal of the show, and that's why it gets as high as it does.
Prodigy: I really like what I have seen of it so far. It's not in the same league as the other's but it's still Star Trek, and it's been consistently good for what it is.
TNG: Rose to great heights, sometimes augured in to great lows, but often just sort of wandered around in the middle. I'll always like it. To this day, I'm not even sure I ever saw every episode. I probably have, but a lot of them just were not memorable. TNG being this far down on my list doesn't mean it's bland, it's just how much I like the other's. TNG is kind of bland, to me. But if it's on, I'll probably watch it.
TAS: I enjoyed it when I was younger. But even then I think I liked Jason of Star Command and Land of the Lost better.
VOY: A vacuum is turned on, and runs along a burro. Like ENT, it got better, but not much better, and you REALLY had to put in the time to wait for it to get better. All that wasn't good about TNG and little of the good.
PIC: It's like eating a wild mushroom that you are sure is edible and tastes pretty good. And it wasn't, but it did. Later when you wake up in your pajamas next to a neighbor's swimming pool with their dog hungrily inspecting vomitus that you are pretty sure is yours, and you kind of remember tripping a good portion of the night, and all of it seems rushed, unpleasant and makes no sense. It doesn't sit so well. You work hard to forget. Then you do it again the next year, and your neighbor is REALLY starting to get pissed off and you can only blame yourself and possibly mother nature. Also their dog died. And you'll probably eat a wild mushroom again next year.
DS9: it's never gotten better than this. Not always perfect but had much of the best writing and best performances in Star Trek.
TOS: if not for season 3, I'd say it would win top spot. It is the gold standard of Star Trek. It's why Lower Decks can't go two episodes without a TOS reference. It's why TOS characters or direct callouts to TOS have made it into every other Trek series besides Prodigy. It's what holds it all together.
Lower Decks: Incredibly Entertaining.
Short Treks: I'm calling it a series because it doesn't fit in anywhere else. It has had ( so far) a very short run), but what it has done has been consistently excellent. I hope they make more. It got an Emmy nomination, too. Also, Tribbles Cereal is canon now. Deal with it!!! (jk)
DISCO: I loved season 1 and season 2, really liked season 3, and just wanted season 4 to be over. I hope they fix what's wrong. I hope someone takes a night course on how to tidy up their pacing.
ENT: It could have been somebody. It could have been a contender. A show that got better as time went on, but some of those early episodes are REALLY bad. Books can be written about what went wrong. I really do like a great deal of the show, and that's why it gets as high as it does.
Prodigy: I really like what I have seen of it so far. It's not in the same league as the other's but it's still Star Trek, and it's been consistently good for what it is.
TNG: Rose to great heights, sometimes augured in to great lows, but often just sort of wandered around in the middle. I'll always like it. To this day, I'm not even sure I ever saw every episode. I probably have, but a lot of them just were not memorable. TNG being this far down on my list doesn't mean it's bland, it's just how much I like the other's. TNG is kind of bland, to me. But if it's on, I'll probably watch it.
TAS: I enjoyed it when I was younger. But even then I think I liked Jason of Star Command and Land of the Lost better.
VOY: A vacuum is turned on, and runs along a burro. Like ENT, it got better, but not much better, and you REALLY had to put in the time to wait for it to get better. All that wasn't good about TNG and little of the good.
PIC: It's like eating a wild mushroom that you are sure is edible and tastes pretty good. And it wasn't, but it did. Later when you wake up in your pajamas next to a neighbor's swimming pool with their dog hungrily inspecting vomitus that you are pretty sure is yours, and you kind of remember tripping a good portion of the night, and all of it seems rushed, unpleasant and makes no sense. It doesn't sit so well. You work hard to forget. Then you do it again the next year, and your neighbor is REALLY starting to get pissed off and you can only blame yourself and possibly mother nature. Also their dog died. And you'll probably eat a wild mushroom again next year.
I feel like I'd have to scale everything to use A through F. My "grading" the Star Trek series would make them all end up coming out Bs and Cs.
TOS = B- (low-8s)
TNG = C+ (high-7s)
DS9 = B- (low-8s)
VOY = C (mid-7s)
ENT = C- (low-7s)
DSC - B (mid-8s)
PIC - B (mid-8s)
SNW - C+ (high-7s) [EDIT: Updated]
This is just from averaging out all the ratings I've given the episodes or seasons.
I've seen some really top-tier TV that I'd give an A and it's not Star Trek. There's also some real crap I've seen that I'd give a D or F and it's also not Star Trek.
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1. The Next Generation
2. The Original Series
3. Deep Space Nine
4. Strange New Worlds
5. Picard
6. Lower Decks
7. Enterprise
8. The Animated Series
9. Discovery
10. Voyager
I haven't seen Prodigy yet.
2. The Original Series
3. Deep Space Nine
4. Strange New Worlds
5. Picard
6. Lower Decks
7. Enterprise
8. The Animated Series
9. Discovery
10. Voyager
I haven't seen Prodigy yet.
I'd probably put Discovery just below Strange New Worlds but otherwise that's pretty much how I'd rank them too.
To the people saying IDIC, I believe this is technically incorrect as there are only 39916800 ways to do the rankings.
Hard. But…
1. TOS
2. DS9
3. TNG
4. DSC
5. PRO
6. PIC
7. VOY
8. TAS
9. LDS
10. ENT
Have only seen 4 eps of SNW so don’t feel I can place it yet. But it’s probably just above DSC so far. PIC would have been a notch higher as I liked the first season but the second just didn’t hang together for me. Not really a fan of anything below number 6. I gave up on both VOY & ENT during their original runs, TAS is so dated it hurts, and I just really don’t like the hyperactive every-character-talks-at-warp-speed style humour on LDS; I watch it more just because it’s there than because I enjoy it. I can’t take it as an actual ST series. For me, it’s a parody and no more.
1. TOS
2. DS9
3. TNG
4. DSC
5. PRO
6. PIC
7. VOY
8. TAS
9. LDS
10. ENT
Have only seen 4 eps of SNW so don’t feel I can place it yet. But it’s probably just above DSC so far. PIC would have been a notch higher as I liked the first season but the second just didn’t hang together for me. Not really a fan of anything below number 6. I gave up on both VOY & ENT during their original runs, TAS is so dated it hurts, and I just really don’t like the hyperactive every-character-talks-at-warp-speed style humour on LDS; I watch it more just because it’s there than because I enjoy it. I can’t take it as an actual ST series. For me, it’s a parody and no more.
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Well put.
Picard is a show where I talk to the TV a lot.
Mostly...WHY AREN'T YOU BETTER?!?!
I decided to try to calculate some kind of ranking from the answers so far, which is hard with all the people leaving series out and having them tied, but it's roughly something like this:
The most beloved Kurtzman-era is Lower Decks and the least favourite is Discovery, which surprises me. I mean I'm not surprised about Lower Decks winning, everyone knows it's awesome, but Discovery has ended up much lower ranked than I expected. I wonder if this is mostly season 4's fault.
- Deep Space Nine
- The Next Generation
- The Original Series
- Lower Decks
- Strange New Worlds
- Voyager
- Prodigy
- Picard
- Enterprise
- Discovery
- The Animated Series
The most beloved Kurtzman-era is Lower Decks and the least favourite is Discovery, which surprises me. I mean I'm not surprised about Lower Decks winning, everyone knows it's awesome, but Discovery has ended up much lower ranked than I expected. I wonder if this is mostly season 4's fault.
I agree and the problem as I see it is one of absent verisimilitude. Language is just the tip of the iceberg. It's hard for me to buy people doing complex things under high stress without practicing like drones endlessly every day - that's what much of the military experience is about. Drill, drill, drill. That could easily come off as boring - I get it. But the attraction need not be the "approachability" of the language. The way we speak is maddeningly imprecise, and we fill in with lots of other ways of communicating to (sort of) get our points across. There is no way people doing complex tasks under high stress could do that in real life. And if we are going to say "they are in the future and are different from us", then they shouldn't be using speech conventions from 2022.
Even TOS often missed the mark on this, but at its best, it nailed it. You can ignore all those plywood sets if the cast behave like they have trained thousands of hours there. And no amount of fancy, blinky, ubertech sets can sell me on what's going on if the people are behaving more casually than the crews at a Starbucks or McDonalds.
I can finally properly rank this, now that I've seen the first season of SNW all the way to the end.
TOS/DSC (tied)
DS9/PIC (tied)
TNG/SNW (tied)
VOY
ENT
For anything that's tied: if I have to choose one over the other, it's going to depend on the day you catch me on and what mood I'm in.
I'm not including any of the animated series in this ranking. Sorry. I like PRO, but it's a kids' show and ranking it here doesn't make sense to me. LD didn't hold me, but it plays like a spoof. And TAS is basically TOS Season 4. In my eyes, they don't fit into the paradigm of the live-action shows.
TOS/DSC (tied)
DS9/PIC (tied)
TNG/SNW (tied)
VOY
ENT
For anything that's tied: if I have to choose one over the other, it's going to depend on the day you catch me on and what mood I'm in.
I'm not including any of the animated series in this ranking. Sorry. I like PRO, but it's a kids' show and ranking it here doesn't make sense to me. LD didn't hold me, but it plays like a spoof. And TAS is basically TOS Season 4. In my eyes, they don't fit into the paradigm of the live-action shows.
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- Voyager - not the best in quality, but the one I'm most attached to
- DS9 - Deserving of its praise, and has the best character development and world building
- The Lower Decks- shameless fan service and I'm here for it
- Strange New Worlds- took four tries. But they finally did a prequel justice. This is my favorite take on the 23rd Century
- The Next Generation- Has plenty of damn good episodes. It's not the Star Trek I usually go looking for, but it's one I can trust to almost always deliver
- The Original Series- the camp is it's superpower. Especially with the redshirts.
- Prodigy: It's Teen Titans in space, but whatever. It has Janeway and it develops the parts of the Delta Quadrant that Voyager missed.
- Discovery- Overall seems to have no idea what it's trying to do, and the pacing is abysmal. But I love some of the characters and world building, especially after they jumped to the future. It's a mess, but there's good stuff in there.
- The Animated Series- I like camp. And silliness aside, it actually did add some good characters and aliens.
- J.J. Abrams Reboots- I never understood the hate. They're perfectly watchable movies. I won't pretend there's anything special about them though.
- Enterprise - I wish I could decontaminate my memory. But even this dull locker-room of a show could be vaguely interesting when an episode focused on characters outside the main cast. (The Mirror Universe, the Augments, the Andorians, Porthos...) it also gave us the greatest threat a Starfleet captain has ever uttered, in "A Night in Sickbay."
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1. Tos/Tas
2. TNG
3. DS9
4. VOY
5. ENT
6. SNW
2. TNG
3. DS9
4. VOY
5. ENT
6. SNW
I've only seen the Berman-era Treks and TOS.
1. DS9. I think that there's a lot to like in DS9. I like the ensemble cast and the arc-based storytelling in the 4-6 seasons especially. I like the fact that actions (mostly) have consequences and that most characters get at least some character development, Dr. Bashir in season 7 is a very different man than he was in season 1. We get to see Jake grow up, and he doesn't leave the show when he grows up, the way Wesley did. The last season wasn't quite as good, although I'm not quite sure why. I guess I'll come back to this after our current rewatch (3rd season). That said, I also like it that there are plenty of stand-alone episodes as well as the ongoing Dominion War and the Federation/Cardassian crisis.
2. TNG. Sure, there are a few stinkers in this one, and perhaps it hasn't aged so well in all respects, but it's a solidly entertaining show with interesting characters. This is the Trek I grew up on, and for that reason alone it has a soft spot in my heart. I was an adult by the time I got the chance to see DS9, etc.
3a) TOS. This is the original that started it all, without it the franchise wouldn't exist. Like all TV shows it's a product of its era, and the blatant sexism in many episodes makes me cringe now. But when it's good, it's really good. I like Uhura, even if I wish that she had a more central role in more episodes, and I like the banter between Kirk, Spock, and Bones.
3b) ENT. ENT is the first and only Trek show that I've seen every episode of as it aired, or within a week of first broadcast on DVR. I really liked this show when it aired, and at one point it was tied with DS9 as my favorite Trek. But it's been a while since I last saw it, and my memories are a bit vague. Time for a rewatch soon, I think. I liked the fact that it was a prequel, too, because that made the characters a bit more relatable for me than the perfect future Federation humans of TNG, especially.
ENT and TOS are tied, which I rate higher depends on how I feel on a particular day, and which show I've watched more recently.
4. VGR. I put VGR last, not because it's a bad show, but because it could have been so much more if the network execs had been a bit more brave. Instead, they wanted a TNG-lite, and that's what we got. I think that the show was partly ruined by intentionally bland characters, as all the humans were rather blandly written to let the aliens and EMH stand out. I think that the Maquis integrated far too quickly into the Voyager crew, and it should've taken at least half a season for everyone to find their place in the hierarchy. The big red reset button was used far too often, and individual episodes had less of an impact, because they'd start again from scratch in the following episode and the audience knew it. I realize that there were real-world reasons for Jennifer Lien to leave the cast, but I always resented the way Kes was tossed aside when Seven arrived on the scene. There should've been room on the ship for both of them. The last few seasons became all about Seven and the EMH, and that got tedious in the long run because I don't particularly like either of them.
Other people on this thread have said so, and I've said it in the past, VGR could've been something akin to Battlestar Galactica if the execs had been willing to take a chance with a darker Trek show where actions really had consequences. Now I'm not so sure anymore, because in my book, Trek is fundamentally an optimistic franchise. I haven't seen DSC or PIC yet, and I'm not even sure I want to. They may just be too dystopic for what I want in my Trek.
1. DS9. I think that there's a lot to like in DS9. I like the ensemble cast and the arc-based storytelling in the 4-6 seasons especially. I like the fact that actions (mostly) have consequences and that most characters get at least some character development, Dr. Bashir in season 7 is a very different man than he was in season 1. We get to see Jake grow up, and he doesn't leave the show when he grows up, the way Wesley did. The last season wasn't quite as good, although I'm not quite sure why. I guess I'll come back to this after our current rewatch (3rd season). That said, I also like it that there are plenty of stand-alone episodes as well as the ongoing Dominion War and the Federation/Cardassian crisis.
2. TNG. Sure, there are a few stinkers in this one, and perhaps it hasn't aged so well in all respects, but it's a solidly entertaining show with interesting characters. This is the Trek I grew up on, and for that reason alone it has a soft spot in my heart. I was an adult by the time I got the chance to see DS9, etc.
3a) TOS. This is the original that started it all, without it the franchise wouldn't exist. Like all TV shows it's a product of its era, and the blatant sexism in many episodes makes me cringe now. But when it's good, it's really good. I like Uhura, even if I wish that she had a more central role in more episodes, and I like the banter between Kirk, Spock, and Bones.
3b) ENT. ENT is the first and only Trek show that I've seen every episode of as it aired, or within a week of first broadcast on DVR. I really liked this show when it aired, and at one point it was tied with DS9 as my favorite Trek. But it's been a while since I last saw it, and my memories are a bit vague. Time for a rewatch soon, I think. I liked the fact that it was a prequel, too, because that made the characters a bit more relatable for me than the perfect future Federation humans of TNG, especially.
ENT and TOS are tied, which I rate higher depends on how I feel on a particular day, and which show I've watched more recently.
4. VGR. I put VGR last, not because it's a bad show, but because it could have been so much more if the network execs had been a bit more brave. Instead, they wanted a TNG-lite, and that's what we got. I think that the show was partly ruined by intentionally bland characters, as all the humans were rather blandly written to let the aliens and EMH stand out. I think that the Maquis integrated far too quickly into the Voyager crew, and it should've taken at least half a season for everyone to find their place in the hierarchy. The big red reset button was used far too often, and individual episodes had less of an impact, because they'd start again from scratch in the following episode and the audience knew it. I realize that there were real-world reasons for Jennifer Lien to leave the cast, but I always resented the way Kes was tossed aside when Seven arrived on the scene. There should've been room on the ship for both of them. The last few seasons became all about Seven and the EMH, and that got tedious in the long run because I don't particularly like either of them.
Other people on this thread have said so, and I've said it in the past, VGR could've been something akin to Battlestar Galactica if the execs had been willing to take a chance with a darker Trek show where actions really had consequences. Now I'm not so sure anymore, because in my book, Trek is fundamentally an optimistic franchise. I haven't seen DSC or PIC yet, and I'm not even sure I want to. They may just be too dystopic for what I want in my Trek.
^ I mostly agree with this assessment, though I have to add that due to its serialized nature, the threshold of rewatching DS9 is a bit higher. That is, I can easily rewatch an early season DS9, but some episodes in the Dominion War Arc - especially in the final nine-parter, can only be rewatched and properly understood when you rewatch the entire cluster of episodes. Which means I don't rewatch them often, since I usually don't like to commit to systematically rewatching episodes in order (after the initial viewing).
G
Gul Sengosts
Guest
1. DS9
2. TNG
3. TOS
4. Lower Decks
5. Voyager
6. Enterprise
7. TAS
8. Discovery
9. Picard
Haven't watched SNW or Prodigy yet.
2. TNG
3. TOS
4. Lower Decks
5. Voyager
6. Enterprise
7. TAS
8. Discovery
9. Picard
Haven't watched SNW or Prodigy yet.
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