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

3. Star Trek: The Original Series, 1966 – 1969

In trying to compare the original series to the more modern series, one must consider what a different world we had back then. Although in some ways things haven’t changed much. It’s impossible for me to imagine the Star Trek fandom existing before the Internet, but somehow it did! The original Star Trek fandom was the Internet before the Internet; back then, fans had to exchange ‘zines and fanfiction in person! We don’t know we’re alive!

In discussing the original series, we must acknowledge that it was a product of its time, and has many faults attributable to the regrettable thinking of the time. But there’s something about the original series that feels timeless to me. It starts with the design of the original Starship Enterprise, which has never been improved upon. The Starship Enterprise doesn’t look like a product of the 1960s. Somehow, it still looks futuristic; it looks like an artifact of a mysterious future that’s diverged quite significantly from the path we’re on.

And that’s the original series in a nutshell; not current, but not a relic either, an artifact not from another time, but from another timeline where the recent past meets the distant future. Almost 60 years later, you can still see what the fanatics who organized their own conventions to sell xeroxed copies of their love letters to Spock saw.

Every episode of the first season is a classic, most episodes of the second season are too. The third season is a bit of a slog, but it’s worth the effort for a handful of good episodes. But the highlights aren’t simply the best episodes of a TV show; they’re the most seminal, foundational stories of an entire genre.