(The ratings are out of 10 stars, so that I can have a bit of leeway in rating the TV shows and movies against each other, since I cannot rate any classic Star Trek, even the Deep Space Nine war years, any lower than 8 stars out of 10. I have not rated the Original Series or The Next Generation, due to people's emotional attatchment to them. Needless to say, both are easily among the greatest TV shows of all time.)
*Mild spoiler alert for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (and only for this one movie)*I have made the language as vague as possible to make it as little a spoiler as possible... but still...*
Star Trek: The Original Series
Rating: Classic
This is it! The pioneering classic, a pioneer not only of Star Trek as a franchise, but of American series-based television in general, and even more than that, of American cinema, a pioneering predecessor not only of the Star Trek movies but of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and their entire cinematic world as well.
So many cinematic techniques, especially advanced storytelling techniques, are pioneered here that it just isn't funny. Along with The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, this is a television series that has as much to do with the development of the cinematic world of my legendary predecessors, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick do.
Purely as television, this is easily one of the few greatest television shows of all time, and laid the foundation for The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager to come, as well as the great first nine Star Trek movies. True intellectual stories on a par with true literary science fiction, including a few episodes by true literary science fiction legends.
This is what lays the foundation.
If nothing through Voyager and the ninth movie can be possibly rated lower than 8.5 stars out of 10, save only for the Deep Space Nine war years, it is because of the foundation laid here. This is the Original Series. This is where the legend begins.
Series television, which is just so, so hard to do on the level of a great movie, has rarely reached these highs. It is just so, so difficult to keep up this kind of level of quality and come up with 20 episodes a year year after year. Any series that can, even for one season, is legendary.
A miniseires like classic Korean television is much easier, is really a whole different category. It is the 20 episodes a year that is so, so hard. There is a reason that Kdramas are miniserieses.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Rating: 10: Legendary
Rating as a pop movie: 5: This is a quiet indie movie, not a catchy pop hit
The legend of the Star Trek movies begins. As my ratings suggest, this is a quiet indie movie, not a catchy pop hit. This is a movie that moves slowly. But it tells a story that is amazing even by the standards of the finest literary science fiction. This is true mind-expanding science fiction, one of the signature movies of Hollywood's greatest era, the age of Star Wars and Steven Spielberg. This is also something that you will only find among the odd-numbered Star Trek movies and among the movies of the great Ang Lee: a quiet indie movie with big-budget special effects, and great ones at that. But it is the mind-expanding story that makes the movie.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and III: The Search for Spock
Rating (for both and each): 10: legendary
The legendary 2-part, Harve Bennett's masterpieces! A story and acting performance from the great Ricardo Montalban worthy of a great Shakespearean tragedy, with an exploration of themes of life and death, creation of life, and 'The Good of the Many outweighs the Good of the Few' that are explored so deeply and extensively that it takes two movies, with a great acting performance for the villain in the second movie worthy of Ricardo Montalban's legendary performance in the first, all with a pair of movies that are great as catchy pop hits as well. There are few movies that have ever been made that are as good as serious literary works as this while still being good as catchy pop hits. Without sacrificing any of the heart or intellectual and literary content in order to be a pop hit. These are movies that stand alongside the likes of E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the original Star Wars trilogy as THE highlights of Hollywood's greatest era! The pinnacle of Star Trek as a cinematic experience for the wider public beyond those of us who love Star Trek: The Motion Picture so much as a quiet indie movie. Harve Bennet here joins George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Peter Jackson as one of the few to have made movies that are on this level as literary movies while still being great catchy pop hits. This is the standard that will never again be matched, either as pop hits or as high literature. One or the other, never again both, in the great Star Trek movies, and, other than the Lord of the Rings movies and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, perhaps ever so far (2024) in American cinema!
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Rating: 9: Still among the greatest movies ever made
And so it begins. The legend of the even -numbered Star Trek movies vs. the odd-numbered movies. Allow me to be the voice of dissent. I prefer the odd-numbered movies.
Still, this is one of the greatest movies of all time, and still among my favorite movies!
From this point on, the people behind Star Trek will be unable to match the feat in Star Trek II and III of being a good catchy pop hit and still high literary movie on the par of the first three, a cinematic literary standard which is very hard to do overall, and even harder- indeed next to impossible- in something that is not a quiet indie movie like Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And so from this point on, the classic Star Trek movies will go back and forth between making pop hits in the even numbered movies, and making quiet indie movies in the odd numbered ones that match the literary content of the first three Star Trek movies.
And yet Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is a great pop hit adventure-comedy that is still a great piece of literary storytelling, just a bit below that standard of the first three, and far more intellectually mainstream. The first thing you have to sacrafice in order to make a catchy pop hit is intellectual daring. As the example of the next Star Trek movie shows. And so this is more intellectually mainstream. And yet this is still a fine piece of intellectual literary filmmaking, and a great catchy pop hit comedy-adventure. Possibly the best of the even-numbered Star Trek movies after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. One of the great movies of all time, and still one of my all-time favorites, and still one of the best combinations of high literary content and catchy pop joy in cinema history!
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Rating: 10: Legendary: The movie America is still not ready for!
Let's just put it this way: America is still not ready for a serious movie about God.
Not that this movie doesn't try hard. You cannot possibly talk about God in a serious way and be less objectionable to mainstream America. This is the movie that takes the safe route of spending most of its plot telling us just what God is not, while still encouraging us to dream and hope, and still keeping an open mind about the possibility of a real God being out there. Not to mention telling a great story quite aside from the God part of the story.
But America is just not ready for a serious movie about God.
(India is. See Aamir Khan's classic PK. With exactly the same message about God as this Star Trek classic.)
Not even one that is one of the finest adventure stories in cinematic history, and, if anything, even more fun than Star Trek IV: The voyage Home!
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Rating: 8.5: Still one of the all-time great movies
This may be the lowest-rated among the first nine Star Trek movies, but, quite frankly, all nine are among the all-time great movies of all time for me. This particular one is especially interesting for me as a historian, for this is a Star Trek movie that quite literally is a commentary on then-recent historical events, namely the Cheronobyl disaster and the following period of openness and friendly relations between the NATO West and the Soviet Union, events which would, by the time the movie came out, lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and, around the time the movie was being made, or perhaps even as it came out, the peaceful fall of the Soviet Union.
This movie comments upon these events by showing an equivalent series of events, with the Klingon Empire in the place of the Soviet Union, complete with a Klingon Gorbachev.
This movie is a testament to how great every single one of the first nine Star Trek movies is. A 8.5-star rating on this web page is quite an achievement!
How great did we have it!
And still do- we can still watch these movies today!
A great intelligent commentary on then-recent historic events, and a testimony to how great every one of the first nine Star Trek movies are!
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Rating: Classic
Rating for Next Generation Borg episodes: 8; rating for introducing the Borg as a cheap fear villain in the first place: 3
Rating for every time The Next Generation does archaeology to look back at advanced ancient civilizations: 30 Beyond Great!
The legendary Next Generation! The legendary television series that set the standard not only for Deep Space Nine and Voyager to come, but for the entire Golden Age of science fiction television to come, which would see such legendary television shows as Babylon 5 and Farscape- this is, arguably, the finest age in the history of American series television!
The Next Generation is particularly a masterpiece for being an intellectual show, a rational, intellectual exploration of ideas, rational without dismissing the emotions, all with the legendary Shakespearean-level acting of the great Patrick Stewart, leading a great cast! Patrick Stewart is a massive talent, and having him in the lead of an intelligent exploration of ideas is a real treat!
For seven years we followed this show faithfully, and I remember what an event it was when the final episode came out!
This series contains a handful of episodes, including the finale and the 5th season episode 'the inner light', that may be Star Trek's finest achievements, including a few often underappreciated episodes featuring advanced, spiritually/philosophically advanced civilizations
Voyager may be my favorite Star Trek series overall, but the 5 or 6 best episodes of Star Trek ever- perhaps even above any of the movies- are here!
This is the legendary Next Generation!
Star Trek: Generations (movie # VII)
Rating: 9.5 Legendary
Rating as a pop movie: 8 Still very good
By this point, the odd-numbered Star Trek movies are more quiet indie movies than catchy pop blockbusters. This one, however, is much stronger as a pop hit than the odd-numbered movies usually are, thanks to a strong personal storyline involving Captains Kirk and Picard and a brilliant, powerful performance by Malcolm McDowell as the main villain. A strong villain always propels a story.
However, like all the odd-numbered Star Trek movies, this is really a great indie science fiction movie at heart.
Like the first three Star Trek movies and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, this is a true literary exploration of ideas, one that, like the other odd-numbered Next Generation movie to come, has a great character story involving Captain Picard, played by the legend, Patrick Stewart.
This may only get a 9.5, but this is, along with Apollo 13, Forrest Gump, and The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Ferngully, probably the finest American movie to come out between the release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989 and the release of Titanic and Good Will Hunting in 1997, at least among American movies to get a big-budget, highly publicized mainstream release, even above the legendary first Jurassic Park. Even above the Disney Renaissance. One of the greatest movies of a great era.
I love Jurassic Park, but the great deeply meaningful serious literary storytelling takes the cake above even Jurassic Park, the greatest pure fun movie of all time.
And make no mistake: this is also a movie with its share of fun as well!
Indie character fun, and more pop-blockbuster action/drama fun than a great indie movie like this usually has, thanks to Malcolm Mcdowell's powerful performance as the villain, enough to make this a good pop blockbuster as well.
But still, this is a great indie science-fiction movie and indie character movie at heart, and one of the best ever made!
One that, like the best of the Star Trek movies, has ideas in it that a whole book could be written about, one of the all-time great idea movies! And a great character story as well! One of the all-time great movies, and a great achievement for Gene Roddenberry's chosen successors, Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, and their great team!
(Michael Piller and Jeri Tayor are the other two, however, it is Rick Berman, the leader among the four, and Brannon Braga who are listed as writers and, in Rick Berman's case, producer, here.)
Star Trek: First Contact
Rating: 9: Very Great
Great movie, one of the best pure action or adventure movies ever made.
Still, there is so much wasted potential here. Barely anything is made of the actual First Contact, a little bit more is made of human civilization's state at the time of First Contact. But most of it is just a great action story about fighting the Borg.
Still, there are some good, interesting ideas explored here, and great character storytelling, including the characters from the future 21st Century Earth where most of this movie takes place, and this is surely one of the all-time great action (or perhaps adventure) movies, especially for combining action with compelling character drama and big-picture scope within the movie's own fictional world.
If you want a great science fiction action adventure movie with great, powerful, compelling character drama, an epic scope, and some interesting ideas thrown in, this is pretty much as good as it gets.
The only movies or television seasons that would get a higher rating than this would be legendary literary indie movies like the first three Star Trek movies, and that is just so, so hard to combine with a great catchy pop hit in the same movie.
But if you want a fun pop movie, this is very nearly as good as it gets!
And as a great action-drama blockbuster pop hit this gets as many stars as a movie can on this page without being a great indie literary movie like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and III: The Search for Spock, E.T., and the original Star Wars trilogy, among the few movies ever to successfully combine the two.
Star Trek: Insurrection
Rating: 9.5 Legendary
Rating as a pop hit: 7: pretty good, but this is really an indie movie and not a pop hit
The last of the classic Star Trek movies, and one of the best. Here we are, back to the great literary indie science fiction of the odd-numbered Star Trek movies and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. And like Star Trek: Generations, this has a great indie character story for Patrick Stewart's Captain Picard.
This is one of the all-time highlights, from barely over a year after that legendary moment when Titanic and Good Will Hunting came out at the same time in 1997. But this is really part of the Golden Age of Science Fiction Television alongside Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and a follow-up to two decades of great Star Trek movies.
A movie with some really deep ideas, explored in the context of a great indie character storyline involving Captain Picard. In an indie movie that gives the story time to breathe and stretch its wings, like a true indie odd-numbered classic Star Trek movie. This is what makes the classic Star Trek movies great!
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Rating for the first couple of seasons: 9
Rating for the war-story years: 8
Rating as a daring experiment: 10: Legendary
This is it! The great experiment! Star Trek without a ship!
Star Trek here experiments with following the life of a stationary community rather than exploring planet to planet. With this experiment, we get things that Star Trek could never have done otherwise.
Eventually, the writers have to give in to a running storyline, after all the possibilities of exploring community life without a running storyline are exhausted, and as the Star Trek people are new to continuing storylines, they choose the simple, easy route of a big continuing war against a villain. This is not my favorite Star Trek, but it still keeps enough of the characteristics of classic Star Trek and is well-done enough, with indie community story episodes among the war episodes, that I still count this among true classic Star Trek.
But the down side of having to turn to a big, brute-force war story is simply the downside of having made the great daring experiment, and a big, brute-force war story has rarely been done as well as it is here.
However, it is as a daring experiment that this show is really, truly legendary!
One final note: it is with this series and Star Trek: Generations that Star Trek starts to explore true character storytelling, with character-based conflict, and Rick Berman and company are among the all-time greats! So part of the great experiment is that this is their first deep dive into character storytelling, with character-based conflict, on a series level! To do this on an experiment is legendary, this particular experiment really needs a lot of character-based storytelling, won't work at all without it, following the character storytelling of a whole fictional community is really what Deep Space Nine is about- but doing your first series to go deep into character storytelling on an experiment is simply legendary!
Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: 9 Legendary by the standards of series television
Rating for Seasons 5 and 6: 9.5 Legendary
Rating for the finest episodes: 10 Legendary
Rating for Season 4: 8
This is my favorite Star Trek series. (Save for Season 4.) I love The Original Series and The Next Generation. But this is my favorite, and among series television, nothing outside of the work of Jim Henson is above this.
This is character storytelling with an entire community- but one exploring the stars!
This is it- the combination, on a series level, of Deep Space Nine-level character storytelling with classic Star Trek exploration!
All led by Katherine Hepburn in Space- Captain Janeway, played by the brilliant Kate Mulgrew, one of the all-time greats!
And from Season 4 on, with one of the most interesting characters in television history, Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine! (Her character growth and relationship with Captain Janeway was the bright spot in the miserable and terrifying Season 4! (But I still won't watch Season 4. It's too stressful and paranoid at its worst!))
If you want character storytelling with exploration, alongside with the deep mythology of fictional civilizations like the Klingons and Vulcans that are represented among the crew of Voyager, well, I dare say you won't find many places to find this at all. This and Farscape may be your only choices.
So many of my favorite Star Trek episodes were in those great 5th and 6th seasons in particular, and those two seasons are a major, massive influence upon me as a writer.
The last classic Star Trek series, and my favorite of them all!
*Voyager's biggest failure: the character of Kes and her species... such potential for growth and interesting possibilities, all betrayed by the writers... we never really got to see her or her species learn and grow! I wish someone like Arthur C. Clarke could have written for her and her species instead! But it is hard to find writers like Arthur C. Clarke in the Nasty 90's and early 2000's!
Star Trek: Enterprise
Rating as television in general: 7.5 very good
Rating as Star Trek: 5 Not real Star Trek; Star Trek: CSI Begins Here
Yes, this is the beginning of what I call Star Trek: CSI. Modern Star Trek. Star Trek like a Nirvana album. Grunge dirtiness and unhappiness.
This is far from the worst that Star Trek will do. Based on what I saw, this was a pretty good television series. Just not very Star Trek, and not legendary like Farscape or Babylon 5. Star Trek: CSI starts here, and as series television, this is as good as Star Trek: CSI will get.
Star Trek (the J J Abrams movies)
Rating as movies: 3 There is a good action movie there, but it is buried underneath a lot of CSI Grunge gloom, the kind that sucks all the life out of life
Rating as Star Trek: please, do not ask
Rating for the casting: 10 Legendary
These have a really good action movie in there somewhere. It is not Star Trek, but it would be a nice fun action movie. But it is buried underneath a whole boatload of CSI Grunge gloom and hyperstimulated fear, sucking all the life out of it. This is pretty much the Anti-Star Trek, the complete opposite of what the great franchise was under Gene Roddenberry and in the Voyager days. But you take away the (obligatory for the era) CSI Grunge gloom, and you have a fine action movie. J.J. Abrams gives in to peer pressure, but otherwise he is an amazing crafter of blockbuster movies, if you give him a good scriptwriter. Please, someone give him a good scriptwriter!
The death of the franchise is sealed. Star Trek is Star Trek no more. We will always have Paris. We will always have the Voyager years.
Star Trek: the newer TV series (Based on my experience with Star Trek: Discovery)
Rating as television overall: 4 good for the awful American television of the early 21st Century
Rating as 20th Century American television: 1.5 Butt Awful, along with most 21st Century American television
Rating as Star Trek: please, don't go there
The Dark Ages of American television, starting with the year 2001 perhaps, still ongoing to this day. You simply cannot expect modern Star Trek to be that much better than the rest of the awful modern American television. This is hard-core Star Trek: CSI, hard-core misery and stress.
Note that if the newer Star Trek did something that was more fun and joy than just what I call Star Trek: CSI, that I would gladly consider it to be a classic, whether on television or in theaters. I would consider it to be a separate phenomenon from classic Star Trek, its own thing, not canon Star Trek, but I am open, if they should try to shake off the Grunge gloom!
The Orville
Rating overall: 9
Rating as Star Trek: still 9
You cannot expect modern Star Trek to be that much better than the rest of the awful modern American television.
And yet... here it is.
The miracle known as The Orville.
Great character storytelling, with the likeability of a great sitcom like Friends or Cheers, in a true, serious science fiction show that is so much like Star Trek that it is just beyond belief.
The great Star Trek series that we haven't had in the 21st Century, to stand alongside Deep Space Nine and Voyager.
A true Classic, with a capital C.
This is Seth MacFarlane's Magnum Opus!
And with this, I bring this page to an end!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson