Sixty years ago, on the 8th of September 1966, “The Man Trap,” the first episode of Star Trek, was broadcast on NBC. The stories of Captain James Kirk, Commander Spock, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy and the crew of the USS Enterprise, on a five-year mission of exploration that became a sixty-year legend. The series only ran for three seasons before being cancelled, but was popular enough in the long run to spur a vast fandom and a franchise consisting of eleven spin-off TV series (twelve if you count Short Treks), thirteen feature films, a TV movie, a kids’ YouTube cartoon series, a podcast radio series, and a metric buttload of books, comics, games, audio dramas and fan productions.
But never mind that lot. Let’s look back at that first iteration. Star Trek: The Original Series, once upon a time simply called Star Trek. I am, obsessive fool that I am, going to rank every episode of the series in order, from worst to best, like we do on the internet these days. This ranking is purely my own preference, although I doubt many people will argue too much with the bottom few episodes at least.
