Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005)
If Star Trek: Enterprise had ended after its second season, it would probably sit behind Voyager in a ranking like this. It suffered from the same problem of bland characters and being a dull copy of The Next Generation in its first two years. Yet again it was a Star Trek series that seemed to fail to live up to its premise – the beginnings of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet. Plus that theme tune was god awful.
In its third season, the show turned it around by being the first Star Trek show to devote a whole story to one storyline, in this case featuring new antagonists the Xindi. It didn’t meet the highs of Deep Space Nine‘s Dominion War arc but it certainly was exciting. Then the show finally delivered what it was supposed to do and gave us one of the best seasons of Star Trek in its fourth season, dealing with the Klingons, Brent Spiner’s Dr. Arik Soong, Khan’s augments, transforming the Vulcans from mistrusting aliens into the race we saw in the Kirk era, set up the Vulcans, Tellarites and Andorian alliance as a precursor to the Federation and even had a trip to the Mirror Universe.
Sadly it was undermined with the worst finale of all – ‘These Are the Voyages…’ – that turned the formation of the Federation into a Next Generation holodeck episode. Fortunately it had already delivered one heck of a final season…
Deep Space 9 is absolutely the best series in Star Trek, it’s cast are brilliant, their stories creative, and the Dominion War is still the best thing that Star Trek has ever done. I’d also put forward that ‘The Battle of AR-558’ is possibly their best episode.