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![Leonard Nimoy as Spock and William Shatner as Captain James T Kirk in Star Trek The Original Series Leonard Nimoy as Spock and William Shatner as Captain James T Kirk in Star Trek The Original Series](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/entertainment/television/info-2022/best-star-trek-tv-shows-series-ranked/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/container_image/articlecontentfragment/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.jpeg/content/dam/aarp/entertainment/television/2022/04/1140-nimoy-shatner-star-trek-the-original-series.jpg)
One of pop culture’s most enduring franchises, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek burst onto American television screens in 1966, and it’s been evolving and growing for decades, with movies, spin-off series and an expanding roster of hundreds of characters to populate its universe. In recent years, the streaming platform Paramount+ has gotten into the Star Trek game in a big way, with a quartet of original series, including the brand-new Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Premiering May 5, the show will follow Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), who led the starship Enterprise just before James T. Kirk, and it costars Rebecca Romijn as first officer Number One and Ethan Peck (Gregory Peck’s grandson!) as a young Spock. Will it rank among the franchise’s greatest hits or its less successful editions? Check out our rankings and then decide for yourself if it boldly goes where no Star Trek has gone before — or amounts to little more than a hill of Tribbles.
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11. Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020-)
The premise: In the world of Star Trek, there’s an upstairs-downstairs dynamic at play, just like in Downton Abbey. Set about a decade after the events in The Next Generation, this adult animated series follows the underdog support crew of one of the least important ships in the Starfleet, the USS Cerritos. The voice cast, including Jack Quaid (Meg Ryan’s son) as Brad Boimler, is game for silliness, but the tone skews a bit broad and snarky. If you’re used to the sincerity of the original series, you may bristle at the irreverence of what amounts to a workplace comedy, albeit one with a very cool workplace.
The best part: The series, which is set to return for its third season this year, is filled with plenty of Easter eggs to keep Trekkies happy. Case in point: High-concept Season 2 episode “wej Duj” takes a look at the lower decks of other spacecraft, including the Klingon ship Che'ta and the Vulcan cruiser Sh’Vahl.
Watch it: Star Trek: Lower Decks, on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Paramount+
![The cast of Star Trek Enterprise The cast of Star Trek Enterprise](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/entertainment/television/info-2022/best-star-trek-tv-shows-series-ranked/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/body_one_cf_one/par6/articlecontentfragme/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.jpeg/content/dam/aarp/entertainment/television/2022/04/1140-star-trek-enterprise.jpg)
10. Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-05)
The premise: Already a sci-fi fixture from his work on Quantum Leap, Scott Bakula, 67, stars as Captain Jonathan Archer on this uneven UPN prequel to The Original Series, set about a century before the adventures of Kirk and Spock. Along with Commander Trip Tucker (Connor Trinneer, 53) and Sub-commander T’Pol (Jolene Blalock), Archer leads the first deep-space exploration aboard the Enterprise, which features decidedly less advanced technology than it would 100 years later — think grappler cables instead of a tractor beam. The plots can be a bit simplistic, tending toward action set pieces in later seasons, and Enterprise is generally dismissed by true Star Trek fans as a cheaply made imitation.
The best part: There are plenty of nostalgic references that will excite fans of the original series, such as early encounters between humans, Vulcans and Klingons.
Watch it: Star Trek: Enterprise, on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Paramount+
9. Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-74)
The premise: After The Original Series was canceled in 1969, creator Gene Roddenberry decided to continue the exploits of the USS Enterprise in animated form in a Saturday morning cartoon. The first Star Trek series to win an Emmy, it was basically a continuation of the live-action show, with William Shatner (91), Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols (89) and George Takei (85) all reprising their roles. When it was first announced that Sulu and Uhura would be recast to keep budgets down, Nimoy refused to voice Spock until the situation was resolved, pointing out how hypocritical it was for a show that championed diversity to leave out its two actors of color.
The best part: Animation allowed the creators to indulge some of their wilder ideas when it came to alien design that wouldn’t have been possible in live-action form. Take, for instance, the long-necked, three-armed, three-legged Arex and the catlike M’Ress, both of whom were new additions to the Enterprise crew.
Watch it: Star Trek: The Animated Series, on Amazon Prime, Paramount+
8. Star Treks: Short Treks (2018-20)
The premise: Created as a companion series to Discovery, this Paramount+ show comprises stand-alone shorts, each 10 to 20 minutes long, that dive deeper into a particular character or storyline. That might mean a quick adventure following con man Harry Mudd (Rainn Wilson, 56) as he gets captured by a bounty hunter, or a largely wordless animated short about a tardigrade named Ephraim and a repair drone named Dot that might remind you of Wall-E. The second season introduced the characters who would go on to lead Strange New Worlds.
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