The WiC rankings: Every single Star Trek show ranked worst to best
8. Star Trek: Discovery, 2017 – 2024
Discovery shares Enterprise’s identity crises and uncertainty about what kind of show it wants to be, but it has one advantage: it doesn’t suffer from franchise fatigue. There was no solution to Enterprise’s identity issues, no identity would’ve been right, as the real issue was franchise fatigue. But Discovery came after 12 years when Star Trek wasn’t on TV at all, and it felt longer. Unlike Enterprise, Discovery was meeting a need.
Discovery burst onto our screens with confidence and bluster in 2017, bluffing us into thinking they knew what they were doing. The problem was that they were intent on reinventing the wheel. New and different are good, but Discovery season 1 was disorienting. The arc was unbelievably convoluted and the tone was dour. Discovery has no chill; every obstacle or adversary is an existential threat to the universe. Characters regularly show signs of PTSD, which is just too real for Star Trek’s usual optimistic tone.
Star Trek is all about camaraderie. On Discovery, it’s more like trauma bonding. I think this is another example of the show placing novelty above all else; sure, the franchise hadn’t much explored the emotional and mental health consequences of living on a spaceship and regularly getting into life-and-death conflicts, but leaning into it this hard kinda sucks the fun out of the show.
The show’s need for novelty also led to redesigns and plot elements that contradicted the canon. I have no problem with canon being malleable, but Discovery went so far that it bordered on disrespect.
But at least they listened to us and changed in response to fan feedback. Discovery deserves points for that. The downside was that we saw the sausage being made. Shooting the ship and crew off 900 years into the future was a fantastic decision that saved the show, but awkward retoolings like that are noticeable.
The other great example of Discovery listening and changing is bringing in humor to relieve the dourness. Though she has had very little screentime, Tig Natoro’s laconic ball-busting engineer Jett Reno single-handedly made Discovery a fun show. And though season 5 has been delayed until 2024, the trailer promises a lighter tone and action-packed adventure. It took its sweet time, but Discovery may yet done a complete 180 on all of the faults it had when it started.