Star Trek First Seasons- Ranking them All!

[Morrus]

STN is only series to knock the first season out of the park. TOS is close. Nothing else has ever done it, and generally s1 of any Trek show has been pretty bad.

So:

STN
TOS
everything else

Assuming we're only talking first seasons.

The reason? Showrunners since the TNG-era keep trying to think of new things to do with Star Trek, but never stopped to think "What if we just made Star Trek?" -- at least, until now. STN is just Star Trek, and it's great.

 

[Mezuka]

Picard
TOS

The rest.

 

[GreyLord]

I'm not ranking the seasons here, but I'll say the BEST PILOT of any of the Star Trek shows was Voyager's Two Parter.

That was an exceptional start. The rest of Season 1 bores me out of my mind, but that first two set episode was mind blowing at the time.

DS9 just bored me the entire time for the first season. I don't think it got good until Worf stepped in, it wasn't due to Worf, but the feel of the show changed when War came on the horizon.

I liked the first season of TNG. I liked the Character of Wesley. I never understood the dislike people have for that character. I liked all the characters from TNG, but if there were one that I would dislike, it would be Deana's Mother.

Not including the animated shows...Pshaw. How can you rank them accurately if you don't include them! I liked Prodigy as well.

I really liked Picard. I don't get the hate people have for it's second season either.

Discovery Season 1 had great special effects. I enjoyed the space battles a lot. I thought the ending was a cop out that they wrote because they got themselves into a corner and couldn't figure a better way to write an ending in 30 days than what they came up with.

Still haven't watched SNW.

 

[payn]

I'll admit, I read the title and groaned audibly. Don't have much to add on the rankings, but will say the pilot of DS9 is all kinds of awesome. Even with the show doing a bit of a tone and story shift at the end of season 2, that pilot sets up the series perfectly.

 

[Hex08]

STN is only series to knock the first season out of the park. TOS is close. Nothing else has ever done it, and generally s1 of any Trek show has been pretty bad.

So:

STN
TOS
everything else

Assuming we're only talking first seasons.

The reason? Showrunners since the TNG-era keep trying to think of new things to do with Star Trek, but never stopped to think "What if we just made Star Trek?" -- at least, until now. STN is just Star Trek, and it's great.

I notice you use STN a lot for Strange New Worlds. Should I read that as ST for Star Trek and the N for New? I'm just curious how the abbreviation works. I usually use SNW. Just curious.

 

[Morrus]

I notice you use STN a lot for Strange New Worlds. Should I read that as ST for Star Trek and the N for New? I'm just curious how the abbreviation works. I usually use SNW. Just curious.

Occam’s Razor — typo. Dunno why I do that.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

Man my thoughts

Star Trek: TOS: I can't really argue with s1 being the best.

Star Trek: SNW: I agree. My main complaint is we needed more Una so that's a great problem to have.

Star Trek DS9: S1 introduced us to Garak, had the absolutely sublime episodes of Duet and in the Hands of the Prophets. Not bad for a first season.

Star Trek: TAS: I finally saw this recently, and you could make an argument that this was season 4 of TOS. It's dated and has filmation wierd animation, but dag nab it, I'll put "Yesteryear" up against any Star Trek episode. Oh to see it done with modern animation and slightly tweaked scripts.

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Marnier really annoyed me up until she didn't. It's super impressive some of the stuff they did and the fact they turned the pakleds into a big bad was amazing.

Star Trek Picard S1 had a great story and descent characters marred by absolutely horrible pacing. I can't put it above a lot of them because of this.

Star Trek: Prodigy: I know it's got a star wars like feel, but it's got a fun story, great characters (save purple will smith) and Janeway as she should have been.

Star Trek: Voy. S1 was marred by being so hopeful of deliberately having Janeway gleefully stranding them in the Delta Quadrant. The crews came together way too quickly. Plus the Kazon's felt like discount klingons and Neelix showed up. However, I did love the Vidiians.

Orville was borderline painful in the 1st season, but it started turning around near the end.

Star Trek Discovery big lipped mirror universe moment absolutely killed any interest in me continuing further before they drunkenly stumbled back to the Klingon story (which was on life support all season which is a pity because this should have been the story to beat all stories...so many balls dropped) So putting it seriously low.

Star Trek TNG: It's a bloody miracle that TNG became great with the absolute worse s1 of the bunch. Code of Honor alone puts it at the bottom (and the first episode of TNG I ever saw). Plus Skin of Evil did Tasha seriously dirty. The only thing that had a glimmer of potential was Conspiracy but it really was cleaned up too quickly.

Puting ent on the shelf with no rating as the only thing I actually remember is Archer doing a radio broadcast showing children's drawings. Seeing as nothing else made an impression, I'm abstaining.

 

[Ryujin]

For those who haven't seen it, someone made a Filmation version of Next Gen.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'd switch the TNG and DS9 rankings, but otherwise a reasonable assessment.

Me too. And I'm not one of those people who think DS9 was all that. Sure, it was very good here-and-there, but I still think TNG hit higher highs (and lower lows, like this first season).

But otherwise, yeah. And SNW is the Trek I've been asking for for years, even in spite of it's one big flaw (for me, I understand if people like it): That is, I hate prequels. I would love this show even more if they had set it post TNG with a whole new crew. Same actors. Different characters. (Well, the names at least. And Spock would have to be a different alien, say, first Romulan in Star Fleet, or whatever).

But I'm fine with it as it is.

I've always said that I'd rather have Mando than Boba Fett, though not in those words. (A new character that is basically the old character with the serial numbers filed off, but that gives the writers license to do whatever they like, rather than an old character with all its continuity baggage, that mostly can only disappoint). Based on Book of Boba Fett, it seems like most people agree with me.

 

[Ryujin]

Me too. And I'm not one of those people who think DS9 was all that. Sure, it was very good here-and-there, but I still think TNG hit higher highs (and lower lows, like this first season).

Well the thread is about first seasons, and not the total series run