The WiC rankings: Every single Star Trek show ranked worst to best

7. Star Trek: Voyager, 1995 – 2001

These rankings are highly subjective. I’d be lying to you if I said that I was completely putting my feelings aside here. But I am trying to trying to be somewhat fair. If I wrote this list completely all up in my feels, Voyager would be in the number one spot.

Trying to determine the best Star Trek show is a bit like trying to determine the best-ever rock band. Not only is it an emotional decision, but it will be highly influenced by who was big when the reviewer was in their formative years. That’s why I have such a soft spot for Voyager; it was on when I was a teenager. It gives me a giddy thrill of nostalgia.

Not that I can’t see its faults. The biggest problem with Voyager is that it almost immediately forgot about its genuinely novel premise about a crew trying to find its way home after getting lost in space. Reading between the lines, I suspect this was so that they could have a show on the air that conformed to the default alien-of-the-week Star Trek format. To abandon such an exciting premise is disappointing.

Voyager also took its sweet time finding its legs. It ran concurrently with Deep Space Nine. It felt as if DS9 was the show they wanted to make, whereas Voyager was the show they had to make. The first three seasons had a whiff of low effort about them. But starting with the season 3 cliffhanger finale, Voyager pulled its socks up and produced some of the best moments that 90s Trek had to offer.

There were a variety of factors behind this improvement, but the one that stands out the most is bringing in a new character: former Borg drone Seven of Nine. To make space for her, they dropped Kes, the worst character ever in a Star Trek main cast. Seven was obviously brought in for sex appeal — the catsuit made that hard to miss — but the thoughtfulness behind the character and the magnetism of actress Jeri Ryan made her the heart and soul of the series.