Trek’s experiment with animated children’s entertainment wraps up (maybe). Spoilers for a season review.
This was really a very entertaining and well told series of Star Trek. It was peak serial story telling, as I’m not sure there’s a single episode you could move out of sequence without it becoming obvious. And while there are a couple of detours it really felt like everything added up into a single cohesive story.
I watched about half of the season over the course of a couple of weeks, which probably emphasised that part to me. I think there was perhaps a little bit of imbalance between story and character – for instance, Zero goes through a lot but there’s no sense of how he’s changed. But that’s a difficult criticism to level at a children’s TV show.
Although I’m not entirely sure the writers remembered they were doing kids TV. It definitely felt like they’d moved the target from tween to Young Adult from Season 1, with some sequences which were honestly pretty far from what you normally get in children’s TV – erasing red shirts from existence, and not even retconning it later.
So where does this rank in the canon? Well for me I think this is really some of the best stuff Star Trek has done. It’s telling Star Trek stories in the Star Trek universe (which Season 1 was a little weak on), it has a well developed story, and it has a satisfying ending. Definitely in the very top bracket. I can’t quite bring myself to rate it over DS9 Season 2, in part because while it was all good there wasn’t a single episode that was ‘wow’.
The very best of Trek (top 8):
- SNW Season 1
- PIC Season 3
- PIC Season 1
- SNW Season 2
- TNG Season 6
- DS9 Season 2
- PRO Season 2
- PIC Season 2
Strong performers (next 10):
- PRO Season 1
- LD Season 1
- DS9 Season 5
- TNG Season 3
- TNG Season 5
- TOS Season 2
- DIS Season 2
- ENT Season 3
- TNG Season 4
- VOY Season 4
Mixed bag (middle 16):
- TOS Season 1
- DS9 Season 4
- LD Season 3
- LD Season 2
- LD Season 5
- DIS Season 1
- DIS Season 5
- LD Season 4
- ST Season 2
- DS9 Season 1
- ENT Season 4
- DIS Season 3
- ST Season 1
- VOY Season 5
- ENT Season 1
- VOY Season 1
- TNG Season 7
Not good (second worst 9):
- DS9 Season 3
- DS9 Season 6
- DIS Season 4
- VOY Season 6
- VOY Season 3
- TNG Season 2
- ENT Season 2
- TAS Season 1
- VST Season 1
Really just awful (the bottom 6):
- VOY Season 7
- VOY Season 2
- DS9 Season 7
- TOS Season 3
- TAS Season 2
- TNG Season 1
On the assumption that this is it for Prodigy, that brings the show league table to:
- Picard
- Deep Space 9
- The Next Generation
- Prodigy
- Lower Decks
- Enterprise
- The Original Series
- Discovery
- Voyager
- The Animated Series
About a month and we’re into Strange New Worlds season 3, I’ll be back then.