What are your top 3 Star Trek television shows?

ENT is my clear fourth behind DS9, TNG, and TOS.

 

TOP 3?

1. TOS
2. DS9
3. DISCOVERY
4. LOWER DECKS
5. TAS
6. PICARD
7. TNG
8. VOY
9. ENT

 

Hmmmm...... I'm going to actually nail down an order. Take it with a grain of salt.

1. DSC
2. TOS
3. PIC
4. TNG
5. Short Treks <-- How about that @TIM Thomason?
6. VOY
7. LD
8. TAS
9. DS9 <-- Yes, you read that right. Niners have successfully turned me off from it. Thanks!
10. ENT <-- Would've been higher if the rest of the series was like the fourth season.

Disco was a game-changer for me. It single-handedly knocked TOS off my undisputed #1 spot; and the amount of trashing it got from Niners made me put TNG and VOY over DS9. Whoever would've thought that would ever happen? The fact that TNG and VOY tie closer into Picard also helped.

But if I'm looking at my favorite, the extent to which DSC changed things and how willing I am to defend it makes me realize that, at the end of the day, actions speak louder than words. So that's why I put it in the #1 spot.

TOS goes into the #2 spot because I still recoil when I get the sense that someone thinks Star Trek should be done the way Rick Berman did it. There was a Star Trek before Rick, and it was better.

PIC goes to the #3 spot because even though it's continuing the story from Berman Trek, it successfully managed break free from the style of it. And it made me a lot more interested in the series than I ever expected to be, given that it was picking up from the scraps of Nemesis. It took all my favorite parts from TNG and VOY while discarding the rest, then mashed it up with Disco to create wonderful blend. It also made terrific use of the backstory from the 2009 Film. A lot of ingredients went into this and it shows.

So those are my reasons for ordering them the way I did.

 

Damn. But, I know a similar feeling.

 

It varies, but, right now:

1. TOS
2. TNG
3, LDS
4. TAS
5. DS9
6. VOY
7. PIC
8. DISCO
9. ENT
10. STs

And these are like averages. I'm pretty sure that I can pair off every series and find an episode in one that I think is better than one in the other, each way of doing that. I say "pretty sure," because I haven't actually walked through all 90 combinations of that idea . It might make or form the basis of an interesting game. Arguably the relation of preferring one thing over another is transitive (in other words, a>b and b>c implies a>c), but I'm not actually sure that's true in the case of comparing two films/episodes, if I'm being honest; "being better than" or "preferring" are such fuzzy things. It's implied in a specific instance when you make a list without ties, but lists can change over time, for one thing.

 

Hmmm...

Resolution > And the Children Shall Lead
Nepenthe > Profit and Lace
Unification part 3 > Code of Honor

...So far so good...

 

So, DS9 is a spite ranking because people bashed TNG and VOY?

 

Spite ranking for trashing DSC. DS9 would probably really be #4, but I'm kind of pissed right now.

TOS Fans not liking DSC because they changed the look of the TOS Era, I get.

TNG Fans not liking DSC because it doesn't follow Gene's 1987 Vision, I also get. It's a philosophical difference.

DS9 Fans not liking DSC because it's not telling the story the way they would've told it, that drives me nuts. Especially when they're so incessant about it and their alternatives don't make for a more entertaining viewing experience. There are different ways of telling stories. The DS9 Way isn't The Only Way. Plus DS9 is generally so highly rated on TrekBBS that it's been deified here. So yeah. It needs to be taken down a peg every now and then.

I don't think Niners fully realize how annoying it is to other people to have DS9 shoved down their throats all the time. I didn't realize it during the B&B Years or the Kelvin Years, because I didn't care. Then DSC came along, I really got into it, found myself on the other end of Niners picking apart a series, and then I saw what I didn't see before.

EDITED TO ADD: Like I said before, take the rankings with a grain of salt. At the end of the day, I give Enterprise a 7 out of 10 on average (after the binge of it I did in 2020) and I give Picard a 9 out of 10 on average. So it's not like these rankings are all super far apart.

I consider myself more of a DSC Fan than a PIC Fan, despite rating Picard Season 1 higher than the three seasons of DSC because, like I said, actions speak louder than words and raw numbers don't always tell the whole story.

 

Yeah, also just ranking the best and the worst of each series on the same list could give an idea of how plausible one thinks the idea is, without actually doing all the match-ups. Example: If all the best episodes rank above all the worst episodes, you're done. It's some work, but not as much. Of course, that might not happen so neatly....

 

I only really love TOS, so that’s obviously my #1. I haven’t really seen much of TAS, but “The Slaver Weapon” is a masterpiece, and you gotta love the Skorr. That’s enough to put it at #2.

#3 is hard. TNG is in many ways a continuation of TOS, but in many ways it also feels like a rejection of TOS. I think ENT tried to bring back some of those rejected elements — big three, cowboy captain, Vulcans and Andorians — and while I wouldn’t say they recaptured the magic (from the few episodes I have seen), I think it was an honest effort. So it gets my vote.

 

If we're posting our full series ranking:

=1) The Next Generation
=1) Deep Space Nine
3) Picard
4) Lower Decks
5) Voyager
6) Enterprise
7) The Original Series
8) Discovery

I've never watched The Animated Series or Short Treks so can't comment there.

 

Star Trek
The series which created the tropes, the rhythms I know so well. I found the tele structure of the storylines work better when I've written my Star Trek stories, it seemed there was such a vast arena to world build and it is something sorely missing in these new incarnations. I love the wardrobe, the sets and how colorful the series was, and I really liked what the production can do when they were on location.

Star Trek: The Next Generation
Where Star Trek built worlds, TNG embodied those worlds, establishing what was a glimpse from a selected TOS storyline and unraveling their politics and social comings. Critics were harsh on the makeup, foreheads and ears, but I found there was more to the stories being televised where the product shouldn't distract too much from the narrative. I don't think TNG was as colorful like TOS and I thought the sets and production appeared cheap, regardless the performance from the series lead was outstanding and its why I value that series so much.

The other TV series of projects were a mixed bag, a lot more negatives than positives, all faults from the showrunners. Taken what's given and moving forward is where I would like to see Star Trek some day go instead of painfully re-writing and envisioning what the pioneers of this franchise done.

 

I think there is more at work there though. DSC can be downright campy, and the dialogue often leaves much to be desired.

Sorry to disappoint you.

 

It seems like my selections are pretty much in line with the majority since I choose TOS, TNG and DS9.

As an old school Trekkie, TOS will always be top dog, though TNG is a close second and dare I say, like in the whole Alien vs. Aliens debate, the sequel series while it may not have totally topped the former, but at the same time it still surpassed it in certain areas.

Trek to me was still great throughout DS9, a show that really took off once the Dominion War broke out and Sisko was a very close second to Kirk as my favorite captain.

Voyager started off with a good premise and some great episodes that still had the Trek vibe that kept with Roddenberry's vision, but started to lay the foundation for Trek's coffin when they came to rely too much on the Holodeck and Seven's only two assets to carry the show. That and the cliche' of never actually running out of anything like shuttles, torpedoes and other supplies.

While I have since given a slightly more fairer shake to Enterprise since it went of the air by re-viewing it, but there is still so many inconsistencies in canon, that I still only consider it at best half-Trek.

I've never seen any of the CBS pay-shows and from everything I've gathered, have no desire to.

 

I'm not defending DS9 here but does that mean that DS9 goes down the ranks just because the behaviour of some people on a message board? I don't think I would judge a TV series just by what others say about it.

 

TNG has for me. If you want me to be initially resistant to a new show please tell me it is "the greatest show ever" or "the new ______ (favorite show here). TNG was not enjoyable for me from the beginning, but the behavior of friends who were fans, as well as other interactions online and in person colored the experience. it's not as fun.

So can TOS. Which is what makes it fun.

 

I'm a massive TNG fan and even I'll concede that TNG wasn't enjoyable for anyone from the beginning

 

Unfortunately, it didn't make up the deficit until All Good Things!

 

Just how the warp drive pulses.