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Your ranking of the Star Trek series's!

Sim

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
I'm sure this was done before a lot of times, but I couldn't find an active thread about it ... so if I overlooked it, sorry for that.

I'd like to know: What's your personal ranking of the various Star Trek series's? Include the movies, if you like.

Here is mine:

The "gold standard":
1. TOS (including movies), TNG (including movies), DS9 (shared spot #1)

Really good:
4. SNW
5. LD

Okay, but with some flaws:
6. PIC
7. ENT
8. Abrams movies

Mixed bag:
9. PRO
10. VOY
11. SFA
12. TAS

Not my cup of tea:
13. DSC
14. Section 31

How about you? :)
 
TOS
Voyager
TNG
TAS
Enterprise
DS9
Abrams films
PIC

Can't rank DSC fairly since I dropped it at some point, and SNW/SFA both seem to be in extreme quality-flux which makes it hard to tell how they'll rank by the time they wrap up.
 
My ranking of shows, for now (since SNW and SFA are not over yet):

1. DS9



2. TNG
3. TOS (2 and 3 can swap places at times)
4. ENT
5. VOY (4 and 5 can swap places at times)
6. LDS
7. PRO
8. SNW
9. PICARD
10. TAS
11. SFA













12. DISCO
 
I said I wouldn't do this until the end of my re-watches but that's going to take the rest of the decade, so...

This is FAR from final, since -- like I said -- I'm re-evaluating everything, but as of right now:

1. DS9
2. TNG/PIC
3. TOS
4. VOY

#2 and #3 are the least solid and could switch places depending on my mood.

There are other Star Trek series? Okay, okay, wait a minute. That's right. Khan was a pretty good audio series and deserves to be mentioned.
 
The top 5 could switch around, but aren't likely to get overtaken by anything else.

TNG (I doubt this will ever move)
TOS
VOY
DS9
ENT
TAS
PRO (A shame it only got 2 seasons)
PIC
LDS
DSC
SNW
SFA
S31 (I count it as a short-lived series)
 
Top tier:
Deep Space Nine and Lower Decks.

They're both very much my kind of Star Trek as they've got the episodic 'team of smart people solving a problem' stories, smart and funny writing, characters that are fun when they're just hanging out, and the feeling that everything is taking place in a vivid living universe. They both do things I dislike as well, like DS9's magical prophets and Ferengi stories, and Lower Decks getting a bit too absurd, but overall they're my top tier.

-------------------------

Great series:
The Original Series, The Next Generation and Voyager.

These are good solid Star Trek. They're wildly varied in quality from episode to episode, and there's not a whole lot of continuity, but if you know what you're getting into they're good sci-fi and a fun time.

------------------------

Good, but...:

Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Prodigy.

These are the series that I can't entirely love, but I can't say they didn't do a lot right.

Enterprise has three problems that hold it back for me. 1. It can be pretty dull in its stories, characters and visuals. 2. You can't have a mediocre phaser fight every episode and expect anyone to still care. 3. It got cancelled, so it didn't have three more good seasons to counter the bad start like the other shows did.

Disco has all of the problems. It retconned the Klingons, it made Burnham Spock's sister, it has a spaceship that travels through mushroom space, the spaceship contains a turbolift dimension, Burnham is the main character of reality and has to save reality twice every season... and so on. Oh plus it didn't have a clue what to do with Owo and Detmer. But it's also got a mad dramatic energy to it, and it was made by people who tried to stay true to the franchise's philosophy. And honestly, I thought the final season was just pretty solid Star Trek.

Picard also has plenty of problems, including some brand new ones like 'having creepy incest Romulans', 'being too dark to see' and 'spending half a season on the crime planet', but at worse I thought it was watchable, and at best I thought it was pretty good. That last season had some pretty great visual effects as well.

Prodigy has one big flaw and that is that I'm not 12 years old. Despite that, it's pretty solid Star Trek and does a better job with serialised storytelling than a lot of the live action series.

------------------------

Didn't enjoy it much:

The Animated Series, Strange New Worlds, Section 31, Starfleet Academy

A couple of series that claimed to be more The Original Series, and a couple of stories tried something new.

The Animated Series deserves a lot of praise for refusing to compromise. They got almost all the actors back, they stuck with the structure and setting of Star Trek, they didn't add kid sidekicks. But a series where they go to the centre of the universe to meet Satan, find a giant Spock, and go to the backwards universe was never going to be for me. Unless it was Lower Decks.

Strange New Worlds
is a bottomless well of frustration for me. Sometimes it's uncanny valley Star Trek, sometimes it's sitcom hijinx, sometimes it's about love triangles. It's strength was the characters, but by season 3 I realised I didn't really like them much anymore, especially Pike. The episode which reimagined Balance of Terror was just a horrible experience, the musical showed they didn't give a damn about plausibility, and I'm just not on this series' wavelength at all in general. The props are pretty awesome though.

Section 31 is the best example of Paramount trying to grow the audience by creating something that absolutely no one wants. I'm one season into classic Mission: Impossible and I love the series so far, but there's a philosophical incompatibility there with Star Trek, and there's definitely an incompatibility with trying to rehabilitate the villains from Deep Space Nine by basically saying they were right all along. But that's not even S31's main problem! It's main problem is that it's a rubbish film with a bad story.

Starfleet Academy is a concept I have never wanted, especially when it was going to be about young Kirk and Spock. What we ended up getting isn't quite that bad, in fact it might not be bad at all if you're really into cadets falling in love and dealing with trauma and vomiting glitter and so on. It's definitely very respectful to the rest of the Star Trek setting, aside from the use of language (and a possible DS9-related exception). The series' biggest problem is that it's not my kind of thing, even as a kid I wouldn't have been drawn to a show called Space Cadet Academy, and if that's the worst I can say about it then it can't be terrible!
 
Are we doing section 31 as a series ranking? If it was for the movies it would be last and will probably stay there forever. If it's a series it would be the same thing. I do consider Section 31 probably the second the worst thing Star Trek has ever produced, only above that very short trek episode about snot.
 
Are we doing section 31 as a series ranking? If it was for the movies it would be last and will probably stay there forever. If it's a series it would be the same thing. I do consider Section 31 probably the second the worst thing Star Trek has ever produced, only above that very short trek episode about snot.

On my list, I included the TOS and TNG movies as part of the respective tv shows, but if I had to rank the movies seperately, I guess I had to make another list.

For me, the Abrams movies are in the "okay with some flaws" category, while I included Section 31 as a kind of its own ... maybe just because I had some pity with DSC and didn't want to leave it on the last spot. Anyway, Section 31 would be the last on any of my lists.
 
First thing I want to say is that like Jorge Hildebrant I love Star trek -- all of it. While there are shows that I'm far less likely to revisit (outside of an occasion episode, generally for research purposes) that I do occasionally slag on, I appreciate all that they have contributed to the tapestry as a whole.

DS9
TOS
TNG
LD
SFA
PRO
SNW
DSC
PIC
ENT
VOY
TAS

This is as of SFA S1, but the future is always in motion. At the end of S1 or 2 of SNW, I would have placed it alongside TOS or TNG, but the 2-for-10 season 3, coupled with a couple of plot arcs that ended with thuds, soured that milk.

As for the high ranking for SFA S1 (highest live action score since DS9) -- There is only one thing I want from new Star Trek and that is for it to do something new and to do it well (which attributes to my low ranks for VOY and ENT) and Academy delivered on both.

A new setting that looks at the Federation through a new lens that makes much better use of the 32nd century and the Burn than DSC did. I am so over 22nd*-25th century Star Trek and my personal hope would be for this setting to be the new "present" for the franchise moving forward. The TNG era has grown so stagnant that and the stories so completely told that there just doesn't seem like there is anything to do but Jump forward, which DSC and SFA did. And with SFA, the Star Trek setting feels new and fresh more so than it has in a very long time. The players and settings are still familiar, but the situations have changed for all involved, which makes for better storytelling opportunities.

I like the characters and they all are fully fleshed and interesting. We have already learned more about our characters' lives and backstories after one season than we did about Ortegas in two seasons of SNW and Chapel in three (not to mention three seasons of TOS). It was episodic while still having an arc that largely nailed the landing, something modern Trek has struggled with.

The acting has been superb. Watching Holly Hunter, Paul Giamatti and Tatiana Maslany bounce off each other was a delight. Giamatti has said that he played Braka as being "drunk out of his mind" in the pilot but became much more menacing later on. Robert Picardo's performance in ep. 8 was worth the price of admission alone. All of the kids are great in their roles.

I can't wait for season 2, but as noted, its ranking is currently as in as much flux as SNW's has been.

* The only exception would be the proposed "United" series. Not for Bakula and Archer so much as for the premise and place in early Federation history.
 
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I don't care how many times it gets asked, I always think it's fun to do a "ranking" exercise. It's so cliched and simple, but it always makes me happy LOL.

1. TOS
Characters, atmosphere, adventure, nostalgia...it has everything I want in a sci-fi television series. Often duplicated....never quite matched. TOS sets the tone not just for the Star Trek franchise, but for sci-fi television in general. And I put the TOS feature films (1-6) as absolute peak Star Trek.
2. DS9
This is a tough one, because there are times it could actually overtake TOS, and there are times it could slip below TNG (my very close third choice). But, it has a depth and a world-building that are unbelievably good. Also, I like the less-episodic format and the huge ensemble of interesting characters that fill out the universe.
3. TNG
Again, it's very tight here at the top. TNG is the best "comfort food" in Star Trek, which is what makes it great, but also what keeps it a millimeter below DS9 for the most part. It has a fantastic cast who obviously were very joyful in being part of Trek. The production design is awesome, and the episodes are like warm sci-fi blankets.
4. VOY
There's a fair gap between TNG and VOY, mainly because VOY really is "TNG-lite," but that also makes it good for the same reasons. It is Star Trek comfort food at it's best, has an appealing visual style, and usually an adventurous heart. My view of it has improved over the decades.
5. TAS
Great stuff with the original cast, but some of the concepts are too silly or too "sequel-ish" for me to put it any higher than this.
6. PIC
This is a weird one, because I really like seasons 1 and 3, and absolutely hated (and there's very little in Star Trek that I outwardly dislike) season 2. I guess it lands here.
7. ENT
Enterprise's only black mark is that it came at the end of the Berman era when the writers and staff were somewhat burned out, and honestly so were fans. In a vacuum, it's a good sci-fi series that was getting better as time went on.
8. PRO
I'm not generally a fan of animation, but this had great heart and soul, and it was fun to watch with my boys.
9. DSC
Ohhhh Discovery....you're so weird. I enjoyed Seasons 1 and 2, warts and all. Once they went into the 31st century, and all of the tonal and character changes that came with it, I lost interest. Also, the whole thing comes off as very self-conscious and (later) disingenuous. Like they were just trying desperately to please everyone while accomplishing nothing of the sort.
10. SNW
So frustrating. It had all the ingredients to be awesome, but the writers and producers read too many internet posts about what made The Orville so special, and decided to double-down on that for their vision of Star Trek, not realizing that the writing and cast for ORV were part of what made that unique. Spock feels like a caricature of a caricature at this point. It's really quite a mess, unfortunately.
11. LD
For me, comedy and funny ha-ha stuff works in Star Trek primarily when it is a special thing, out of the norm, not the standard. As a guy who doesn't care for animation to begin with, and then to have this satire/comedy version of the franchise, but sold as actual "canon..." I don't know man....definitely not my thing. Has the distinction of being the only series with an episode that I just turned off mid-way and said "what the actual f---?"
12. SFA
The only Star Trek franchise show I've ever abandoned after the pilot, realizing that it is totally and completely not for me, and that watching it would likely only make me crazy and say awful things on the internet, and life is too short for that.
 
I can respect "not my cup of tea" over the clownish and performative dislike that the show has gotten on the internet.

Yeah with PIC before season 3 and now SFA, too, I wonder wtf is wrong with so many people on the internet? I can't even say I grasp what the problem is ... is it a matter of a relatively small, but very loud group of review bombers? Or an ecosystem of rage bait financed influencers and/or people pushing a political agenda? I can't imagine these shows are remotely as ill received generally as these phenomena suggest.

Anyway, just because I don't like DSC, I won't tell people they must feel the same. If you enjoy it? Good for you, there is more Star Trek for you to enjoy! :)
 
1. TOS. The definitive version of the concept, with the greatest of any Star Trek characters instead of the colorless, soulless cutouts which populated the majority of the other series.. It is the series with actual heart and a sense of purpose beyond just being in space and stuff happens.

1A.TAS. This is how you build on a classic production and feeling like its a natural part of the established universe, rather than another production with "Star Trek" iconography slapped on it.


...big gap until I get to...

2.DS9. The last, bold Star Trek production produced to this date, and with its own set of strong, memorable characters, though not as magnetic as TOS'.That, and it seamlessly merged the 24th century world with that of TOS.

3. TNG. Well...another ST series needed to be selected, so it might as well be this one.

4. VOY/ENT. Barely worth the effort, with the exception of ENT's TOS 2-parter, effectively proving--once again--that the TOS designs / setting is the most captivating yet easily fitting into the ST world established after it.

5. TIE: J.J./CBS era.
 
don't care how many times it gets asked, I always think it's fun to do a "ranking" exercise. It's so cliched and simple, but it always makes me happy LOL.
I do too, especially if it comes from someone who might have just joined. They are conversation starters, and now that we have a few of the Kurtzman series done, it's good to go back and see where they fall in ones' rankings.
 
I’m only going to rank the series that are completed or if it’s active, has hit 3 seasons. Which means Academy gets an incomplete grade. I’m also skipping Short Treks, Very Short Treks and Section 31.

So in order….

TOS/TAS - I’m combining these two as TAS is just TOS animated. What more can you say. It’s the gold standard. Timeless characters and stories maybe not so timeless production design outside of the Enterprise herself.

DS9 - the most adult Trek with the most richly developed characters. And the only Captain that is as much “kick ass” as Kirk. It really says a lot about a show when you can take a main character from the previous series and not only make him better but show that he should have been there from the start.

TNG - the most preachy, the most pompous, the most “stick up their butt” of all the series. But damn when it’s good it’s great. Plus the greatest TV cliffhanger this side of “Who Shot JR”.

Lower Decks - the ultimate by Trekkies for Trekkies show. Great combination of hilarity and heart. And the characters translate from animated to live action almost seamlessly. Easily my favorite nu-Trek show.

Enterprise - the only Trek (imo) that seems to get better with every re-watch. It’s also like a frustrating football game. Bad first half (S1-2) but a great second half (S3-4). Easily the worst series finale though. Woof.

Voyager - the series with the most wasted potential/premise. It is however responsible for 3 great characters in Janeway, The Doctor and Seven of Nine.

SNW - maybe my most disappointing on the list. Such a great first season only to decline steadily in the last two seasons.

Discovery - uneven series that never should have been a prequel. Really got good when they went onto Treks distant future.

Prodigy - a fun show that is far more than just a kids show. The last season was too long and a bit too…unfocused. Also seemed a little too concerned with being a Voyager sequel series.

Picard - S3 was fun. But S1 was a bore and S2 was just flat out bad. All three seasons would have been better off as tv movies.
————————————-
Starfleet Academy - incomplete grade. But high hopes as it had a very good first season.
 
Leaving out currently running shows, and shows I gave up on…

1. TNG
2. VOY
3. LDS
4. ENT
5. DS9
6. DSC
7. TOS
8. PIC
You place TOS behind six other Trek series? That tells me all I need to know about you and this board. Repugnant isn’t strong enough to describe such a ranking. Be gone, churlish knave!
 
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