Star Trek Crews Ranked from Worst to the Real Number Ones

Star Trek is all about exploring the final frontier. But its also about how you can’t explore it alone. From the naval trappings that inform its starship setting to the utopian United Federation of Planets, Star Trek offers a fundamentally communal vision, a depiction of the future in which humanity has overcome its petty differences and work together.

That vision begins on the bridge of each ship in the respective Star Trek series. Yet, as anyone who’s ever visited a Trek-centric website knows well, not all crews are created equal. So here’s our attempt to rank the ten main crews across the Star Trek franchise.

10. Sirena (Picard)

Even if the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard didn’t reunite the TNG crew on a reconstituted Enterprise-D, the crew of the Sirena would be in last place. How could they not be? Owing to Patrick Stewart‘s reluctance to repeat too much of what he previously did as Jean-Luc Picard, the first two seasons of Picard didn’t have a proper crew. Instead, he gathered a rag-tag group to go on an unauthorized mission.

Some of those members did make for compelling characters. Jeri Ryan has made Seven of Nine only more nuanced over the years, Santiago Cabrera is endlessly watchable as Chris Rios, and Alison Pill manages to find something compelling in the disastrously-written Agnes Jurati. But with duds like Raffi and Elnor on board, Picard shows that rag-tag teams don’t work when audiences don’t enjoy watching the misfits interact. If only the current Trek producers learned that lesson before making Section 31…

9. NX-01 (Enterprise)

Certainly, some will point out that other, more recent shows deserve to be lower than the team on the NX-01, because Enterprise gave each member of its bridge crew at least one character trait. However, this writer contends that it would be better to know nothing about a character than to know that they’re insufferable jerks, which is too often the case aboard the NX-01.

This isn’t to say that Enterprise was completely devoid of interesting figures. Trip Tucker managed to embody the fighter-pilot mentality that the series wanted to harness, T’Pol’s arc showed just how hard it was to build the alliance between Earth and Vulcan, and Phlox is the best doctor on the show. But compared to Archer’s confused belligerence and Reed’s constant whining or creepiness, Mayweather becomes one of the best characters on the show because we can’t hate someone that we know nothing about.

8. Discovery (Discovery)

Discovery belongs toward the bottom because it eschews the ensemble approach that became the franchise’s trademark. Michael Burnham is a solo protagonist in the way Star Trek had not had since TOS (and even then, it was only a one-man show when Shatner got his way). One episode reveals that that Owosekun comes from a planet of space Luddites, another shows that Detmer is mad a Michael for a while about the hunk of mettle in her face, and one of the other guys says he likes to surf… I don’t remember which.

That said, there are some gems in Discovery‘s crew, even in its unusual structure. Sonequa Martin-Green’s considerable charisma isn’t quite enough to make Michael someone worth so much attention, but Mary Wiseman’s earnest and annoying Tilly helped bring out the best in the eventual captain. Doug Jones is incredible as Saru, adding a layered vocal performance to his remarkable-as-usual physical acting. Stamets and Culber sometimes suffered from uneven writing, but they managed to show how a marriage could work on a starship. And Tig Notaro may have just been playing herself in space, but Tig Notaro is great, and she killed every line.

7. Voyager (Voyager)

Voyager very much wanted to return to Next Generation-style storytelling after the more experimental Deep Space Nine. At first, that meant not just a return to episodic storytelling, but also a focus on the ensemble crew. Even better, the series’ premise gave Voyager a great storytelling engine with which to work, as getting stranded in the Delta Quadrant required members of the Maquis, ex-Starfleet officers who rebelled against the organization, to fall in under Janeway’s command.

In an incredibly frustrating move, the producers of Voyager decided to ignore the potential stories in such a conflict. Outside of a handful of episodes here and there, the former Maquis and the Starfleet officers had no issues. Sadly, missed opportunities became the hallmark of the show’s approach to the ensemble, especially once Seven of Nine. From that point on, Harry Kim, B’Elanna Torres, and Tuvok took a back seat to Janeway, Seven, and the Doctor. That trio got plenty of great episodes, and it was always nice when attention turned to some of the other members of crew. But it’s hard to give Voyager special condemnation for its ensemble work.

6. Protostar (Prodigy)

From this point on, all of the Star Trek shows do a good job with their ensembles, and all of the crews are good—the only question is about how good they are. And, for certain, the group of alien children who escape the confines of an alien overlord from the Delta Quadrant and become Starfleet cadets are very good. Prodigy somehow manages to be a kid’s show, a sequel to Discovery, and a darn good Star Trek show, all at once.

That said, the narrative of Prodigy demands that they aren’t quite on the level of the other more professional and seasoned crews on this list. Dal has all the makings of a great captain, Gwyndala will be a great linguist, Jankom Pog will be a great engineer, and so on. But they aren’t there quite yet, because they’re still kids learning about how Starfleet works. That fact makes for fantastic viewing, and we better get at least one more season of Prodigy to see how they develop. But it also puts the crew at the bottom of the good groups on this list.

5. Cerritos (Lower Decks)

At first, it seemed like Lower Decks would be a two-hander with a couple supporting characters, surrounded by thinly-sketched others. Ensigns Mariner and Boimler were the stars, Ensigns Rutherford and Tendi were their friends, and everyone else existed for jokes. But as Lower Decks developed, it became about more than just laughing about horga’hns and Spock Helmets. It became a proper Star Trek show, about exploration and discovery.

As it did so, the characters developed and the crew became more distinct. Mariner and Boimler evolved past just slacker and try-hard, into good Starfleet officers, just like Rutherford and Tendi became more than just players in the leads’ adventures. Even better were the rest of the Cerritos‘s crew, especially Mariner’s mother Carol Freeman. Neither a once-in-a-generation adventurer like Kirk nor a perfect diplomat like Picard, Captain Freeman is just trying to do her job, and she does it well. It’s Freeman’s no-nonsense watch over the Cerritos that allows her crew of goofballs to shine.

4. Enterprise (Strange New Worlds)

The Strange New Worlds crew aboard the pre-Kirk Enterprise is fun to watch. Beginning with Anson Mount’s take on Captain Pike as a cool, supportive older brother, Strange New Worlds feels less like the return to exploration suggested by its title and more of a romp across space starring familiar characters. While the individual episodes may not be to everyone’s tastes, such as the infamous musical episode or the self-parodying proto-holodeck episode, no one can help but smile while watching the cast interact.

Some of that fun comes from the compelling new characters added to the series, the security officer La’an or the cooky engineer Pelia. Likewise, the show has done remarkably well acting as a prequel, giving us belivably younger versions of Uhura, Scotty, and Spock. But the real pleasure of Strange New Worlds has been the way it develops characters we knew only by name. Number One, M’Benga, and Chapel have gone from being footnotes in Trek history to fully-formed characters who deserve mention alongside their more famous counterparts.

3. Enterprise (The Original Series)

I know, I know. The Original Series set the stage! Star Trek wouldn’t be Star Trek without Scotty and Uhura and Sulu and Chekov! While this is true, it’s also true that everyone who wasn’t in the central trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy never got much character development, even in films that purported to give them more to do. As director, Leonard Nimoy made a point of spreading the attention to his co-stars in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, but that attention still resulted in single bits: Scotty talking into a mouse, Chekov looks for nuclear ‘wessels,’ Sulu checks out a chopper.

However, the fact that the crew is so beloved despite their relatively small amount of screentime makes them all the more impressive. None of the side characters displace the main three, but Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, and George Takei manage to make the most of the attention they get, so that they feel far more fleshed out than they actually are. Thanks to the supporting cast’s work, TOS set the stage for the crews to come.

2. Deep Space Nine (Deep Space Nine)

Deep Space Nine has a bit of an unfair advantage, as its central cast isn’t the crew of a starship; they’re the staff on a space station. That difference allows us to include barkeep Quark and constable Odo, characters that otherwise might not fit on the main crew. But the real secret to DS9‘s success comes down to its commander-turned-captain, Benjamin Sisko. From the very beginning, Sisko was a different type of character than the other leads, a single father who was skeptical of Starfleet and thrust into the position of religious figure.

Because of this distinction, Sisko was able to have different types of interactions with those around him, making for unique interactions with the crew. He saw Dax as both a subordinate and a mentor, thanks to the symbiote she carried. He bonded with O’Brien over feeling like an outsider, while he recognized Garak as a necessary evil. From the top down, DS9 offered new team dynamics, all part of its groundbreaking approach to the franchise.

1. Enterprise (The Next Generation)

The Original Series crew felt like a group of compelling characters who worked and lived together. The Next Generation crew was a a group of compelling characters who worked and lived together. Well, eventually they became that. Part of the problem in the famously uneven first two seasons of TNG is that it tries to replicate the focus on three characters—originally, Picard, Data, and Geordi. But as the series went on (and Stewart gave into playing along with his co-stars), the Enterprise-D became a proper ensemble.

Several episodes demonstrate these dynamics, from the delightful holodeck romps to the gripping two-parters. But none illustrate it better than the series finale, “All Good Things…” Watching Picard check in with the crew across time, only to finally join them in a card game at the end puts the perfect capper on the show. These are explorers and scientists and military personnel, yes. But most of all, these are friends.