Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)
Okay, at the risk of confusing everyone, Star Trek: The Next Generation is probably the best show of the franchise to follow the classic premise of humanity’s exploration of the stars. While Deep Space Nine is the better show (more on that shortly), it deviates from Roddenberry’s vision in a way that only a spin-off of a successful show still airing could. But the first continuation of the Star Trek franchise took the 60’s premise and explored it in fascinating and exciting ways over the course of its seven seasons.
Truth be told, it doesn’t start off strong and it took until the third season for the show to finally start to live up to its potential. But thanks to a strong cast (if not always the strongest characters) led by Patrick Stewart’s Jean Luc-Picard, fans were treated to some truly memorable stories, from alternate reality episode ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ to the Borg and Picard’s transformation into Locutus. And that was just the end of the third season.
Over the remaining four years we followed Data’s continuing efforts to become human, Klingon power struggles, Romulan schemes and true sci-fi gems like ‘The Inner Light’, ‘Chain of Command’ and the superb finale ‘All Good Things…’ before the series transferred to the big screen for four films.
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.