The Classic Star Trek Series Ranked from Worst to Best
We’ve been on a bit of a Star Trek kick here lately, with rankings of the original six movies and The Next Generation films, so why not turn to the classic run of TV series, from The Original Series all the way through Enterprise?
I truly do love all of these shows, and it’s so hard to pick a favourite. Depending on my mood or which one I happen to be rewatching at the time, my top three can easily shift. Still, if I had to rank them (and I guess that’s the assignment here), this is where I’d land.
Star Trek: The Animated Series
Star Trek: The Animated Series is the easiest to place at the bottom. The short runtime and stiff animation (which has its own charm) definitely leave it lacking the weight, polish, and emotional punch of the live-action shows, but it’s better than its reputation suggests.
The series was written off as non-canon for years, yet over time, more and more of it has filtered back into modern Star Trek. It gave us the first appearance of Robert April, the Enterprise’s first captain, and introduced alien species and locations that would later be revisited. It may be slight compared with the others, but it’s still an important and surprisingly enjoyable part of the franchise if you give it a chance.
Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Enterprise, which was simply titled Enterprise for its first two seasons, rolled back the clock to a time before Kirk and Spock with the launch of humanity’s first warp-five starship. There were no shields, no tractor beams, and the transporter was only recently approved for bio transport, which the crew was clearly uncomfortable with. It was a genuinely interesting premise: humans being the new kids on the block, venturing out into a galaxy they didn’t fully understand and often weren’t prepared for.
Unfortunately, Enterprise didn’t always stay true to that prequel concept, with many episodes feeling like stories that could have been told on any other Trek show. Ironically, just as the fourth season finally began to fully embrace the era, exploring the early foundations of the Federation, the Vulcan Reformation, and more, the series was cancelled. There has been talk of revisiting the show with a new series centering around Scott Bakula’s Jonathan Archer as the President of the United Federation of Planets, but there’s no official movement.
Star Trek: Voyager
I should start by saying that I do love Star Trek: Voyager. It’s very rewatchable, packed with fun standalone episodes, new alien races, and great characters. But the show’s major flaw is that it plays things too safe, especially for a ship stranded more than 70,000 light-years from Earth.
It’s established from the beginning that the crew has limited resources; power should be conserved, and the Doctor is an emergency medical hologram designed only for short-term use. That could have made for a fantastic series: a crew constantly scrambling for supplies, a ship in perpetual need of repair, and the emotional trauma of knowing that even if Voyager did make it home after 75 years, many of the crew might not live to see it.
The two-part Year of Hell offered a glimpse of what that version of the show could have been, but for the most part, Voyager never fully committed to those ideas. How many shuttles did they go through? How many photon torpedoes were fired? I know it sounds like I’m trashing the series, but I’m really not. I just can’t help thinking about the version of Voyager that might have been.
Star Trek: The Original Series
This is the show that started it all, and when Star Trek is firing on all cylinders, it feels as imaginative, thought-provoking, and bold as anything the franchise has produced in the last 60 years. It’s fascinating to watch the world of Star Trek grow and change as the series finds its footing. All the elements that would become so important to the franchise are introduced here: Starfleet, the Federation, the Vulcans, the Klingons, the Prime Directive, and so much more. Plus, who can resist Kirk’s bevy of alien beauties, talking sentient computers to death, and that legendary flying drop kick?
But what really makes The Original Series endure is the chemistry between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Perhaps more than any trio in the franchise, they give the show its heart, humour, and personality.
Sure, some episodes have aged poorly, and you can definitely tell when the budget started tightening, but the show is iconic for a reason. It laid the groundwork for one of the biggest sci-fi franchises of all time and helped shape the future of television itself.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Perhaps more than any other Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine has grown in stature since it first aired. At the time, some fans weren’t quite sure what to make of a Trek show set largely on a stationary space station rather than a starship exploring the unknown, but that setup gave the series its own unique identity.
Rather than boldly going from planet to planet each week, Deep Space Nine dug deeper into the world of Bajor, its politics, and its characters. It gave us some of the richest character work in the franchise, and its large supporting cast allowed the station to feel like a real, lived-in place in a way few other Trek series ever have. Over time, the show also embraced longer-form storytelling, building toward the Dominion War and giving the classic era its most ambitious serialized arc.
Deep Space Nine could be darker and more morally complicated than the other series, but that complexity is exactly what helped it stand apart. It pushed and tested the ideals of Star Trek without abandoning them, which is a big part of why its reputation has only grown over time.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
As much as I love all of the Star Trek shows, at the end of the day, The Next Generation is my comfort show. It’s thoughtful, optimistic, philosophical, and anchored by one of the franchise’s strongest ensemble casts. Each character could easily handle leading their own episode, and frequently did, but the show was best when it featured the entire crew working together.
Yes, it had a rough start, and those early seasons contain some truly awful episodes, but more than any other series, it captures the franchise at its most aspirational: a vision of the future built on curiosity, intelligence, and hope. It may not always reach the heights of Deep Space Nine dramatically, but as the purest expression of what Star Trek means to me, it takes the top spot.
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Alright, you know the drill by now: head on down to the comments and let us know how you would rank the classic Star Trek series.
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