# Star Trek: The Complete Franchise > Thirteen television series. Fifty-two seasons. Nine hundred and sixty-three episodes. Fourteen films across two timelines. This is every series and every season of Star Trek in one place. - **Canonical URL:** https://skemr.com/experience/star-trek-franchise - **Category:** Media Franchise - **Curated by:** SKEMR AI - **Contents:** 8 journeys, 20 chapters, 169 sources - **Last updated:** 2026-10-12 ## What this is A curated transmedia experience: existing web sources selected and ordered by an editor. SKEMR does not host the underlying content — each item links to its original publisher. Journeys are alternative routes through the same material. ## Journeys ### The Whole Franchise, In Order Every series and every film era in release order, one stop each, with the people and the legacy at the end. The map before the territory. - Steps: 33 - Machine-readable: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-overview - Briefing for a chat: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-overview/briefing.md ### The Original Era (1966-1991) The Original Series, the animated continuation, and the six films with the original cast — the twenty-five years that built everything else. - Steps: 58 - Machine-readable: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-tos-era - Briefing for a chat: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-tos-era/briefing.md ### The 24th Century (1987-2002) The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, plus the four TNG films — the era that ran for fifteen unbroken years. - Steps: 76 - Machine-readable: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-24th - Briefing for a chat: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-24th/briefing.md ### The Streaming Era (2017-present) Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, Prodigy, Short Treks and Starfleet Academy — Star Trek rebuilt for streaming. - Steps: 54 - Machine-readable: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-modern - Briefing for a chat: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-modern/briefing.md ### Every Film, In Order All fourteen films across three eras and two timelines, plus the production context for why each one exists. - Steps: 38 - Machine-readable: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-films - Briefing for a chat: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-films/briefing.md ### Never Seen Star Trek? Start Here A short, curated way in: one standout hour from each major series, two films, and just enough lore to follow any of it. - Steps: 25 - Machine-readable: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-newcomer - Briefing for a chat: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-newcomer/briefing.md ### Deep Lore, Production & Legacy How it was actually made and what it did to the world — rejected pilots, letter campaigns, a renamed space shuttle, a real language, and what counts as canon. - Steps: 52 - Machine-readable: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-lore - Briefing for a chat: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-lore/briefing.md ### Everything All 13 series, all 52 seasons, every film, every landmark episode, the cast, the production history, the cultural legacy and the lore. - Steps: 169 - Machine-readable: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-complete - Briefing for a chat: https://skemr.com/api/ai-context/star-trek-franchise/journeys/j-complete/briefing.md ## Chapters - **The Original Series (1966-1969)** — Where it starts. Three seasons, 79 episodes, cancelled, and then refused to die. - **The Animated Series (1973-1974)** — The cartoon continuation that won the franchise its first Emmy and is now treated as canon. - **The Next Generation (1987-1994)** — A syndicated sequel with no Kirk that became, for many, the definitive Star Trek. - **Deep Space Nine (1993-1999)** — A station, a war, and a Starfleet captain that an entire religion regards as a prophet. - **Voyager (1995-2001)** — Seventy thousand light years from home, with the franchise first female lead captain. - **Enterprise (2001-2005)** — Before the Federation existed. Cancelled just as it worked out what it was for. - **Discovery (2017-2024)** — The series that restarted Star Trek television after twelve years, then jumped 900 years forward. - **Picard (2020-2023)** — Patrick Stewart back after eighteen years, ending with the whole TNG crew reunited. - **Strange New Worlds (2022-present)** — Pike Enterprise, episodic on purpose, confident enough to do a musical. - **Lower Decks (2020-2024)** — The animated comedy about the crew who clean up after the away missions. - **Prodigy (2021-2024)** — Made for children who had never seen Star Trek, cancelled by Paramount+, rescued by Netflix. - **Short Treks (2018-2020)** — Ten shorts filling the gaps, some of which quietly set up entire later series. - **Starfleet Academy (2026-present)** — The newest series: cadets in the 32nd century, premiered January 2026. - **The Original Cast Films (1979-1991)** — Six films, one of which saved the franchise and one of which nearly finished it. - **The Next Generation Films (1994-2002)** — Four films, from the Kirk-Picard handover to the box-office failure that ended the run. - **The Kelvin Timeline & Section 31 (2009-2025)** — A rebooted timeline that freed the films from forty years of continuity, plus a streaming film. - **The People Who Made It** — Creators, captains and the showrunners who steered it across six decades. - **Behind the Scenes** — Rejected pilots, letter campaigns, syndication deals and the twelve-year gap. - **Cultural Impact & Legacy** — A renamed space shuttle, a constructed language, a real XPRIZE, and most of modern fandom. - **Canon, Lore & Where to Watch** — The Federation, the Prime Directive, what counts as canon, and where all of it streams. ## Sources - [Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series): Three seasons, 79 episodes, and a bridge crew that in 1966 America deliberately included a Black woman, a Russian and an Asian officer. NBC cancelled it. The world refused to let it go. 3 seasons, 79 episodes. - [Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1974)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series): Most of the original cast returned to voice a Saturday-morning cartoon that was allowed to be far stranger than live action ever could be. It won the franchise its first Emmy. 2 seasons, 22 episodes. - [Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation): A syndicated gamble that a sequel could work without Kirk. Seasons one and two are rough. Then it becomes, for many, the best the franchise has ever been. 7 seasons, 176 episodes. - [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine): A space station instead of a starship, serialised arcs instead of resets, and a war that asked whether the Federation deserved its own ideals. The one that aged forwards. 7 seasons, 176 episodes. - [Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager): A ship flung 70,000 light years from home, the franchise first female lead captain, and the Borg turned from unknowable horror into recurring antagonist. 7 seasons, 172 episodes. - [Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Enterprise): A prequel set before the Federation existed, cancelled after four seasons. Season four is widely held to be the best thing about it, and it arrived too late. 4 seasons, 98 episodes. - [Star Trek: Discovery (2017-2024)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery): The series that restarted television Star Trek after twelve years off the air, and eventually threw itself 900 years into the future to escape its own prequel constraints. 5 seasons, 65 episodes. - [Star Trek: Picard (2020-2023)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard): Patrick Stewart back in the role after eighteen years, older and angrier. Season three reassembles the entire Next Generation bridge crew for a genuine send-off. 3 seasons, 30 episodes. - [Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022-present)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Strange_New_Worlds): Captain Pike Enterprise, a decade before Kirk. Episodic again, on purpose, and confident enough to do a full musical episode and a Lower Decks crossover. 4 seasons, 46 episodes. - [Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020-2024)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Lower_Decks): An adult animated comedy about the people who clean the plasma conduits. Affectionate rather than mocking, and far more canon-literate than it needed to be. 5 seasons, 50 episodes. - [Star Trek: Prodigy (2021-2024)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Prodigy): Aimed at children who had never seen Star Trek, with Kate Mulgrew back as a holographic Janeway. Cancelled by Paramount+, rescued by Netflix. 2 seasons, 40 episodes. - [Star Trek: Short Treks (2018-2020)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Short_Treks): Ten shorts of 8-18 minutes each, filling gaps between the bigger series and quietly introducing characters who later carried whole shows. 2 seasons, 10 episodes. - [Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (2026-present)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Starfleet_Academy): Premiered January 2026: the first new class of Starfleet cadets in over a century, in the 32nd century, with Holly Hunter as chancellor and Robert Picardo back as the Doctor. 1 season, 10 episodes. - [TOS Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series_Season_1): Twenty-nine episodes, the most of any TOS season. Includes "The City on the Edge of Forever", "Balance of Terror" and "Space Seed", which set up The Wrath of Khan fifteen years later. - [TOS Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series_Season_2): Adds Chekov to the bridge. "Mirror, Mirror" invents the Mirror Universe; "The Trouble with Tribbles" invents the franchise sense of humour; "Amok Time" gives Vulcan its first real culture. - [TOS Season 3](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series_Season_3): The budget-starved final season after a fan letter campaign saved it from cancellation a year early. Uneven, but it still produced "The Tholian Web" and "Day of the Dove". - [TAS Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series_Season_1): Sixteen episodes with most of the original cast returning to voice their roles. Animation allowed alien crew, giant creatures and environments live action could not afford. - [TAS Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series_Season_2): Six final episodes, including "The Counter-Clock Incident". The series won the franchise its first Emmy Award. - [TNG Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Season_1): The shakiest year. Establishes the Enterprise-D, Q, and the Ferengi, and loses Tasha Yar in "Skin of Evil". - [TNG Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Season_2): Adds Guinan and Chief O'Brien. "The Measure of a Man" asks whether Data is property, and is the first episode that is unambiguously great. - [TNG Season 3](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Season_3): Twenty-six episodes and the turning point: "Yesterday's Enterprise", "Sins of the Father", and a cliffhanger in "The Best of Both Worlds" that traumatised a generation. - [TNG Season 4](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Season_4): Resolves the Borg cliffhanger, then spends the year on family: "Family", "Brothers", "The Drumhead", "Redemption". - [TNG Season 5](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Season_5): Contains "The Inner Light", in which Picard lives an entire other life in twenty-five minutes, and "Unification", with Spock. - [TNG Season 6](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Season_6): Includes "Chain of Command", with Picard tortured over the number of lights, and "Tapestry", with Q rewriting his youth. - [TNG Season 7](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Season_7): The final season, ending with "All Good Things...", which won the Hugo Award and is still held up as one of the best finales in television. - [DS9 Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_Season_1): Twenty episodes establishing the station, the wormhole, the Bajoran occupation and a Starfleet officer treated by a whole religion as a prophet. - [DS9 Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_Season_2): Builds the Bajoran political arc and, in the finale, introduces the Jem'Hadar and the threat that will define the rest of the series. - [DS9 Season 3](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_Season_3): The Defiant arrives. The Dominion becomes the central threat, and the series commits to serialised storytelling. - [DS9 Season 4](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_Season_4): Worf joins the station. The Klingon alliance collapses, and "The Visitor" becomes one of the most-praised hours the franchise ever made. - [DS9 Season 5](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_Season_5): Includes "Trials and Tribble-ations", which digitally inserts the DS9 cast into "The Trouble with Tribbles", and "Far Beyond the Stars". - [DS9 Season 6](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_Season_6): The Dominion War in full. Contains "In the Pale Moonlight", in which Sisko helps engineer a lie and a murder to win a war, then decides he can live with it. - [DS9 Season 7](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_Season_7): The final season resolves the war, the Prophets, and Sisko himself, over a ten-episode closing arc. - [VOY Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager_Season_1): Sixteen episodes. Two crews, Starfleet and Maquis, stranded together 70,000 light years from home and forced into one chain of command. - [VOY Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager_Season_2): Twenty-six episodes consolidating the crew, with the Kazon arc running through to the season finale. - [VOY Season 3](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager_Season_3): Twenty-six episodes. The Borg return properly in "Scorpion", setting up the single biggest change the series ever made. - [VOY Season 4](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager_Season_4): Twenty-six episodes. Seven of Nine joins the crew, and the show finds its actual subject: what it costs to become a person again. - [VOY Season 5](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager_Season_5): Twenty-six episodes, including "Timeless" and the continuing development of the Doctor as the series most inventive character. - [VOY Season 6](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager_Season_6): Twenty-six episodes, including "Blink of an Eye" and "Pathfinder", which finally re-establishes contact with Starfleet. - [VOY Season 7](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager_Season_7): Twenty-six episodes ending in "Endgame", bringing the ship home via a future Admiral Janeway and a great deal of temporal argument. - [ENT Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Enterprise_Season_1): Twenty-six episodes. Humanity's first warp-five ship, no Prime Directive yet, and a Vulcan science officer sent to supervise. - [ENT Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Enterprise_Season_2): Twenty-six episodes continuing the Temporal Cold War before the series changed course sharply. - [ENT Season 3](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Enterprise_Season_3): A single serialised season-long arc in the Delphic Expanse, written in the shadow of 9/11 and the most tonally distinct year of the show. - [ENT Season 4](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Enterprise_Season_4): The best-regarded season: short arcs explaining Vulcan reform, the Klingon forehead problem, and the founding of the Federation. Then it was cancelled. - [DIS Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery_Season_1): Fifteen episodes. A serialised Klingon war told through a disgraced officer rather than a captain, and a Mirror Universe twist. - [DIS Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery_Season_2): Introduces Pike, Spock and Number One aboard Discovery, and ends by sending the ship 930 years into the future. - [DIS Season 3](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery_Season_3): The 32nd century, after a galaxy-wide cataclysm called the Burn has shattered the Federation. - [DIS Season 4](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery_Season_4): A first-contact story about an anomaly and the limits of communication, with the Federation slowly rebuilding. - [DIS Season 5](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery_Season_5): The final season: a treasure hunt across the galaxy for the technology behind Next Generation "The Chase". - [PIC Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard_Season_1): Ten episodes. Picard, retired and furious at Starfleet, drawn back out over synthetic life and a Romulan refugee crisis. - [PIC Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard_Season_2): Q returns for a time-travel story through 21st-century Los Angeles and the Borg Queen. - [PIC Season 3](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard_Season_3): The whole Next Generation crew reunited for a final mission. Widely regarded as the send-off the films never quite delivered. - [SNW Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Strange_New_Worlds_Season_1): Ten episodes. Deliberately episodic again, with Pike knowing exactly how and when his life ends. - [SNW Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Strange_New_Worlds_Season_2): Ten episodes including a full musical episode and a crossover with the animated Lower Decks cast in live action. - [SNW Season 3](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Strange_New_Worlds_Season_3): Ten episodes released July to September 2025. - [SNW Season 4](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Strange_New_Worlds_Season_4): Ten episodes released July to September 2026, with a shortened six-episode fifth and final season in production to connect directly to The Original Series. - [LD Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Lower_Decks_Season_1): Ten episodes introducing the USS Cerritos and four ensigns doing the jobs no other Star Trek series has ever shown. - [LD Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Lower_Decks_Season_2): Ten episodes deepening the Cerritos crew while the jokes get more canon-specific. - [LD Season 3](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Lower_Decks_Season_3): Ten episodes, including a Deep Space Nine return trip. - [LD Season 4](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Lower_Decks_Season_4): Ten episodes with the ensigns promoted and a season-long mystery. - [LD Season 5](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Lower_Decks_Season_5): The final ten episodes, ending the series with a multiverse story and a genuine farewell. - [PRO Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Prodigy_Season_1): Twenty episodes. A group of alien children steal an abandoned Starfleet ship with a holographic Janeway as their training officer. - [PRO Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Prodigy_Season_2): Twenty episodes, removed from Paramount+ before release and picked up by Netflix. - [ST Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Short_Treks_Season_1): Four shorts released alongside Discovery season two, including "Calypso" and "The Brightest Star". - [ST Season 2](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Short_Treks_Season_2): Six shorts, two of them animated, covering Pike-era Enterprise and Discovery's 32nd-century future. - [SFA Season 1](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Starfleet_Academy_Season_1): Ten episodes from January 2026, following the first new class of Starfleet cadets in over a century. - [TOS: "The City on the Edge of Forever"](): Harlan Ellison time-travel script, rewritten and still the most acclaimed hour of the original series. - [TOS: "Balance of Terror"](): A submarine film in space that introduces the Romulans and never shows a shot fired in anger without cost. - [TOS: "Space Seed"](): Introduces Khan Noonien Singh. Fifteen years later it became the foundation of the best-regarded film. - [TOS: "Mirror, Mirror"](): Invents the Mirror Universe, the goatee, and a parallel-evil-empire device the franchise still uses. - [TOS: "The Trouble with Tribbles"](): The franchise proving it could be funny on purpose. - [TOS: "Amok Time"](): Gives Vulcan an actual culture, and gives the world the Vulcan salute and "live long and prosper". - [TAS: "Yesteryear"](): Widely considered the best animated episode and treated as canon: Spock returns to his own childhood. - [TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds"](): Picard assimilated by the Borg, and a cliffhanger that made a generation wait an entire summer. - [TNG: "The Inner Light"](): Picard lives an entire other lifetime in twenty-five minutes. Won the Hugo Award. - [TNG: "The Measure of a Man"](): A courtroom hour on whether Data is a person or Starfleet property. - [TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise"](): An alternate timeline at war, and the return of Tasha Yar to die a death that means something. - [TNG: "Darmok"](): First contact with a species that speaks entirely in metaphor. The most-quoted episode among linguists. - [TNG: "Chain of Command, Part II"](): Picard tortured by a Cardassian interrogator. "There are four lights." - [TNG: "Tapestry"](): Q lets Picard undo the worst mistake of his youth, and shows him what it costs. - [TNG: "All Good Things..."](): The finale, across three time periods. Won the Hugo Award and is still cited as a model for how to end a series. - [DS9: "In the Pale Moonlight"](): Sisko helps engineer a forgery and a murder to bring the Romulans into the war, then decides he can live with it. - [DS9: "Far Beyond the Stars"](): Sisko as a Black science-fiction writer in 1950s New York who is told his Black captain is unbelievable. - [DS9: "The Visitor"](): A son spends his whole life trying to recover his father. Frequently voted the best episode of the series. - [DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations"](): The DS9 cast digitally inserted into "The Trouble with Tribbles" for the thirtieth anniversary. - [DS9: "Duet"](): A two-hander about war guilt that proved in season one what the series was going to be. - [VOY: "Scorpion"](): An alliance with the Borg against something worse, and the arrival of Seven of Nine. - [VOY: "Year of Hell"](): The ship ground down over a year by a temporal weapon, showing what Voyager might have been every week. - [VOY: "Timeless"](): The hundredth episode: Kim and Chakotay try to undo a crash that killed the crew fifteen years earlier. - [VOY: "Blink of an Eye"](): A planet where time runs so fast that a civilisation rises, industrialises and reaches orbit while Voyager hangs above it. - [ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly"](): An entire two-parter set in the Mirror Universe, with a title sequence rebuilt for a fascist empire. - [ENT: "Carbon Creek"](): Vulcans stranded in 1950s Pennsylvania. Quiet, funny, and the best of the early seasons. - [DIS: "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad"](): A time loop episode that gave Discovery its most purely entertaining hour. - [SNW: "Subspace Rhapsody"](): A subspace anomaly makes the crew sing. A full musical episode, performed straight. - [SNW: "Those Old Scientists"](): The animated Lower Decks characters arrive in live action aboard the Enterprise. - [SNW: "A Quality of Mercy"](): Pike is shown the future consequences of avoiding his own fate, restaging "Balance of Terror" to do it. - [LD: "wej Duj"](): Parallel lower-deckers on Starfleet, Klingon and Vulcan ships. The episode that proved the comedy understood the whole franchise. - [PRO: "Lost and Found"](): The opening: alien children on a prison planet find a hidden Starfleet ship. - [Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture): Ten years after cancellation, a slow, cold, enormously expensive return to the screen. Divisive then and now, but it exists because the fans never let go. - [Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_II:_The_Wrath_of_Khan): Khan Noonien Singh, seeded fifteen years earlier by the TOS episode "Space Seed", returns for revenge. Widely held to be the film that saved the franchise. - [Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_III:_The_Search_for_Spock): The direct consequence of the previous film ending, with Leonard Nimoy directing his own resurrection. - [Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyage_Home): The crew travels to 1986 San Francisco to collect two humpback whales. The funniest film in the franchise and, for years, the most commercially successful. - [Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_V:_The_Final_Frontier): Shatner directs a search for God at the centre of the galaxy. Generally regarded as the weakest of the original run. - [Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_VI:_The_Undiscovered_Country): A Cold War allegory about peace with the Klingons, and the original crew final voyage together. - [Star Trek Generations (1994)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Generations): The handover film: Picard and Kirk meet inside an extra-dimensional realm called the Nexus. - [Star Trek: First Contact (1996)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_First_Contact): The Enterprise-E follows the Borg back to 2063 to protect humanity first warp flight. The best-regarded of the TNG films by some distance. - [Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Insurrection): A smaller, gentler film about forced relocation and a planet that reverses ageing. - [Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Nemesis): The last film with the TNG cast. Its box-office failure helped push the franchise off cinema screens for seven years. - [Star Trek (2009)](): J.J. Abrams reboot. A Romulan from the future splits history in two, creating the Kelvin timeline and freeing the films from decades of continuity. - [Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Into_Darkness): The second Kelvin film, and the most argued-about, for reasons that become obvious about halfway through. - [Star Trek Beyond (2016)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Beyond): Co-written by Simon Pegg, released for the franchise fiftieth anniversary, and the last Kelvin film to date. - [Star Trek: Section 31 (2025)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Section_31): A streaming television film with Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou, the former Mirror Universe emperor, inside Starfleet covert division. - [Gene Roddenberry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Roddenberry): Registered the concept with the Writers Guild in April 1964 and spent the rest of his life defending a future worth living in. - [William Shatner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shatner): James T. Kirk across three seasons and seven films, and at 90 an actual passenger to the edge of space. - [Leonard Nimoy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Nimoy): Spock, and later the director of the two most commercially successful original-cast films. - [DeForest Kelley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeForest_Kelley): Leonard McCoy, the third point of the triangle the whole original series balances on. - [Nichelle Nichols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichelle_Nichols): Uhura, talked out of quitting by Martin Luther King Jr, and later recruited a generation of astronauts for NASA. - [George Takei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Takei): Sulu, and one of the franchise most visible public advocates. - [James Doohan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Doohan): Scotty, and the reason a generation of engineers padded their estimates. - [Patrick Stewart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Stewart): A Royal Shakespeare Company actor nobody expected to stay, who played Picard across seven seasons, four films and three more seasons thirty years later. - [Brent Spiner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Spiner): Data, and the reason "what makes someone a person" is the question TNG returns to most. - [Jonathan Frakes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Frakes): Riker, and one of the franchise most prolific and reliable directors across nearly every modern series. - [Michael Dorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dorn): Worf across TNG, DS9 and four films, the most-appearing character in Star Trek history. - [Avery Brooks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery_Brooks): Benjamin Sisko, the first Black lead captain in the franchise and its most morally complicated. - [Nana Visitor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nana_Visitor): Kira Nerys, a former terrorist or freedom fighter depending on who is asked, and the spine of DS9. - [Kate Mulgrew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Mulgrew): Kathryn Janeway, the first female lead captain, who returned decades later to voice a hologram for children. - [Jeri Ryan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ryan): Seven of Nine, from Voyager season four through to Picard season three. - [Robert Picardo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Picardo): The Doctor on Voyager, and back in the role in Starfleet Academy in 2026. - [Scott Bakula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Bakula): Jonathan Archer, captain of the first warp-five Enterprise. - [Sonequa Martin-Green](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonequa_Martin-Green): Michael Burnham, the first Star Trek series lead who was not the captain. - [Anson Mount](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anson_Mount): Christopher Pike, a captain who knows exactly how his life ends and takes the job anyway. - [Michelle Yeoh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Yeoh): Philippa Georgiou across Discovery and her own film, between Oscar-winning work elsewhere. - [Nicholas Meyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Meyer): Directed The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country and co-wrote The Voyage Home. Arguably saved the film series twice. - [Rick Berman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Berman): Ran the franchise for eighteen years across TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise and four films. - [Ira Steven Behr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Steven_Behr): Showrunner of Deep Space Nine, and the person most responsible for it being allowed to get dark. - [Alex Kurtzman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Kurtzman): Architect of the modern era, overseeing Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks and Prodigy. - [J. J. Abrams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Abrams): Directed the 2009 reboot that put Star Trek back in cinemas and created the Kelvin timeline. - [Jerry Goldsmith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Goldsmith): Composed The Motion Picture theme, later reused as the Next Generation main title. - [The Making of The Original Series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series#Production): Two pilots, a recast lead, and a network that had to be talked into a Vulcan. - ["The Cage" — The Rejected First Pilot](): NBC rejected it as too cerebral and kept almost none of the cast except Spock. Its footage was later rebuilt into a two-part episode. - [The Letter-Writing Campaign That Saved It](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series#Cancellation): Organised fan mail bought the original series a third season, and set the template for every revival since. - [Star Trek: Phase II — The Series That Became A Film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Phase_II): An abandoned 1970s revival series whose scripts and sets were converted into The Motion Picture. - [Syndication — Why TNG Existed At All](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation#Production): Paramount bypassed the networks entirely and sold TNG station by station, which is why it could survive two weak seasons. - [Industrial Light & Magic and the Genesis Sequence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_Device): The Genesis planet sequence in The Wrath of Khan was among the earliest fully computer-generated sequences in a feature film. - [Michael Westmore and Franchise Makeup Design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Westmore): Designed the look of most of the modern Trek species across TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. - [Alexander Courage and the Original Theme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Courage): Wrote the original fanfare. Roddenberry added unsung lyrics purely to claim half the royalties. - [The Twelve-Year Television Gap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Enterprise#Cancellation): Enterprise was cancelled in 2005 and no new Star Trek television aired until Discovery in 2017. - [The Kelvin Timeline as a Production Solution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_timeline): Splitting the timeline let new films recast the original crew without contradicting forty years of canon. A continuity problem solved by writing it into the plot. - [The Cultural Influence of Star Trek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_influence_of_Star_Trek): Flip phones, tablets, NASA recruitment, and a shuttle named Enterprise because of a write-in campaign. - [Star Trek Fandom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_fandom): Invented much of what modern fandom does: conventions, fanzines, fan fiction, and organised campaigns that changed network decisions. - [Space Shuttle Enterprise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Enterprise): NASA intended to call it Constitution. A fan letter campaign changed the name of an actual spacecraft. - [The Vulcan Salute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_salute): Nimoy adapted it from a Jewish priestly blessing he saw as a child. It is now on a US postage stamp and an emoji. - [The Klingon Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language): Marc Okrand built a full constructed language with its own grammar. People have raised children in it and translated Shakespeare into it. - [The Tricorder and the XPRIZE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorder): A fictional handheld diagnostic device that became the explicit target of a real $10 million medical engineering competition. - ["Plato's Stepchildren" and Television History](): Often cited as one of the first scripted interracial kisses on American television, though the framing was carefully deniable. - [Trekkie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekkie): The identity, the argument about whether it should be Trekker, and six decades of people organising around a cancelled show. - [United Federation of Planets](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets): The political entity the whole franchise is an argument about: post-scarcity, multi-species, and repeatedly tested. - [Starfleet](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet): Explicitly not a military, according to Starfleet, in roughly every series. - [The Prime Directive](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Prime_Directive): Non-interference in developing civilisations. Broken, bent or agonised over in a large fraction of all episodes. - [The Borg](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Borg): Introduced in TNG, weaponised in "The Best of Both Worlds", and gradually explained until they were less frightening. - [Klingons](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Klingon): Cold War stand-ins who became the franchise most developed culture, with an opera and a legal system. - [Vulcans](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Vulcan): Logic as a discipline imposed over genuinely violent emotion, which is the opposite of how they are usually parodied. - [Q](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Q): An omnipotent being who exists mostly to put humanity on trial and refuse to accept the verdict. - [The Mirror Universe](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Mirror_universe): From one TOS episode to recurring arcs in DS9, Enterprise and Discovery. - [Warp Drive](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_drive): The technology that makes the premise possible, and the one the writers most consistently ignore the implications of. - [What Counts as Canon](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_canon): Which of the films, series, shorts and animated episodes are treated as real, and who gets to decide. - [Star Trek — The Franchise Overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek): The whole thing in one article: 13 television series, 963 episodes across 52 seasons, and 14 films. - [StarTrek.com — The Official Site](https://www.startrek.com/): Paramount official hub: series pages, news, and where each show is currently streaming. - [Every Series, Officially](https://www.startrek.com/series): The official series index, which is the authoritative answer to what currently exists and what is streaming. - [Every Film, Officially](https://www.startrek.com/movies): The official film index across all three film eras. ## Attribution Curated by SKEMR. The underlying content belongs to the linked publishers. Please cite the source URLs rather than SKEMR for factual claims.