All 8 Star Trek Series Finales Ranked (RMR 8th Anniversary Part 8/8)

By Redmanwriter on June 25, 2024

Julien Neaves, Sci Fi Head Writer

The series that kickstarted the newest era of the long-running Sci Fi franchise, Star Trek: Discovery, ended its fifth and final season on May 30th. Star Trek is one of my all-time favourite franchises and therefore what better way to end our Robot Mango Reviews eight anniversary celebration than with a ranking of Star Trek finales.

With a quadrant-sized SPOILER ALERT let's get right to it.

#8 These Are the Voyages, Star Trek: Enterprise (Season 4, Episode 22)

Oh, the cringe! The cringe of it all!

It says something when the episode is at the bottom of the list when two other entries were not even meant as finales. But this one continues to piss off Trek fans to this day, yours truly included.

After having its best, and unfortunately fourth and final season, the first Trek prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise ended with These Are the Voyages. Where do I even start with this shipwreck? Making Riker and Troi the focus and reducing the cast to holographic imagery? Riker's odd and at times cringe-inducing behaviour? The lame plot and uninspired action? Not letting us see Archer's speech at the commemorating the ratification of the charter for an interspecies alliance? Killing Trip and in a most hackneyed manner? What a conglomeration of crap!

During a recent rewatch I couldn't even bring myself to watch These Are the Voyages again because I knew it would upset me with its suckage. Rick Berman said the episode was meant to be a love letter to fans. It was more like finding a bag of poop on your doorstep. Let's all just pretend the very good Terra Prime was the real finale, okay?

#7 Turnabout Intruder, Star Trek: The Original Series (Season 3, Episode 24)

Look at her. Look at how pale she is. This woman has never seen a day of sun in her life!

The overall quality of Star Trek: The Original Series took something of a dip in its third and final season. While there were standout episodes like "The Enterprise Incident", "Day of the Dove", "The Tholian Web" and "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," there are the absolute stinkers like "Spock's Brain" and "The Way to Eden". And the final episode, "Turnabout Intruder", ended the season and the series on a wet fart.

The plot itself is absolutely terrible. Kirk's ex-lover Dr Janice Lester hates Starfleet because she believes sexism has prevented her and other women from holding the position of captain. She is so upset she uses alien technology to swap bodies with Kirk, take over his ship and attempt to kill him. Cue William Shatner giving a very weird, very awkward performance as the unstable Lester in Kirk's body and Sandra Smith acting passively in a lacklustre attempt to play Kirk in Lester's body. What could have been an interesting exploration of gender roles and sexism turns ends up being a cringe-inducing and quite boring episode.

#6 The Counter-Clock Incident, Star Trek: The Animated Series (Season 2, Episode 6)

That used to be my chair

The series finale episode, which sees the Enterprise enter a very literal reverse universe, is kind of hokey and involves the crew turning into babies. It is really only notable for introducing Commodore Robert April (James Doohan in one of many, many voice roles in the series), the very first captain of the Enterprise, and his wife, a medical pioneer. Yep, this dude predates Christopher Pike.

April is an amiable, capable guy who wants nothing more than to continue contributing to Starfleet. The character would later get a mention in Discovery as one of the most decorated Starfleet captains and feature in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, though he appears as a black man for some reason. Maybe he did a race change in his old age. Future technology and all that.

#5 Life, Itself, Star Trek: Discovery (Season 5, Episode 10)

Did you bring my new cat?

I usually do one or more articles reviewing the various seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. But there was so little happening in the fifth and final season I can knock it out in less than a paragraph. Now there are things I liked. The visual effects and production quality continued to be top tier. It was fun learning more about the mysterious Breen and I liked the tie in to the Progenitors from the TNG Season 6 episode "The Chase". The Saru/T'Rina romance continued to be sweet. And Moll and L'ak made for decent if underwhelming villains/anti-heroes. But the show continued the biggest flaw of the show, which was the inordinate focus on Michael Burnham to the detriment of the rest of the crew. Every time she volunteered for a mission I died a bit inside. The other characters that had arcs (Tilly, Adira, Culber) were all half-baked and went pretty much nowhere. And most of the first half felt like fetch quest missions in a video game.

This all culminated with "Life, Itself," a series finale that is the absolute definition of average. The truth about the Progenitor's device was anticlimactic. The action sequences were just okay. And other than the Saru/T'rina it was all about Burnham and the other characters felt like an afterthought. The scene that was meant to be emotional was Burnham remembering saying goodbye to the crew, but we still barely knew half of them, and I don't know about you, but I felt more emotional messing up my streak in Duolingo. And I could not bring myself to care about Burnham's future son nor the ship being sent off to wander the universe endlessly. A truly "meh" ending to what unfortunately remained a very "meh" series.

#4 The Last Generation, Star Trek: Picard (Season 3, Episode 10)

Once more unto the breach dear friends

After the uneven Star Trek: Picard Season 2 the Powers That Be decided to go the nostalgia route with Picard's third and final season by reuniting the entire The Next Generation crew. And it worked for me. The finale, "The Last Generation" continued that trend with epic action, huge stakes and lots of TNG love.

But the issues with the finale stem mostly from the series itself. The first two seasons of Picard were all over the place in terms of quality and the show never seemed to know what it wanted to be. The third season can't be blamed for mostly ignoring what came before, but they took things overboard. They brought back the Borg (THIRD time for the series) and ignored the Juranti-led version from the previous season. They also ignored Picard's previous love interest Laris (played by the lovely Orla Brady) which is just unforgivable. You can actually skip the first two seasons and jump right into Season 3, and you would not be confused in the slightest. So, while "The Last Generation" is an entertaining and effective swan song to the final season and to TNG by extension, it falls short as a coda to the series itself.

#3 Endgame, Star Trek: Voyager (Season 7, Episode 25-26)

You owe me, Harry. Didn't I finally give you that promotion? It only took 15 years

I revisited Endgame for this list, and it holds up pretty well. I loved seeing future versions of the Voyager crew including Tom and B'Elanna's daughter, and Alice Krige was terrific as the Borg Queen, reprising her role from the second-best Trek film of all time First Contact. But the standout is easily Admiral Kathryn Janeway, a future version of Captain Kathryn Janeway. Kate Mulgrew killed it in the role, and she carried the entire the episode. "I bring chaos to order" is such a great line. And it was sweet seeing the birth of Tom and B'Elanna's child and watching Voyager finally make it home.

But the out-of-left-field Chakotay/Seven romance is extremely cringe-inducing, the episode is light on the action, and we needed at least one scene after the ship returned to Earth to wrap things up effectively. It just felt so anticlimactic and something of a disservice to the characters. Still a cool finale though.

#2 What We Leave Behind, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Season 7, Episode 25-26)

I'll be back. I'm sure of it. If Picard can get a belated spin-off series, why not me? Star Trek: Sisko. Coming soon to Paramount+

I have frequently declared that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the greatest Trek series EVER! But the two-parter "What We Leave Behind" has to settle for the second-best finale of all time. It is still pretty brilliant though. The end of the war with the Dominion and the Federation Alliance reaches epic proportions with an exhilarating fleet battle. Kira, Garak and Damar fighting back on Cardassia is the awesome chaotic trio we never knew needed. Jeffrey Combs does his usual great work as Weyoun and the Female Changeling is as cold, calculating and chilling as ever. And Dukat goes full villain while the vilest Trek baddie Kai Winn gets burnt to a crisp. We also get several emotional send-offs for the crew members.

But things are not perfect. The pacing of the second half is not that great. Worf's memories of the station as he leaves not including his late wife Jadzia is downright criminal. And Sisko choosing to stay with the Prophets and abandon his wife, unborn child and beloved son (who he didn't even say goodbye to) still does not sit right with me. Making them also wait for his return is also quite out of character and kind of cruel. It would have been better that he died in the fire caves and had no other choice than to float around as a Prophet himself. I would pay good money to see a film or even a limited series where Sisko did return but it is highly unlikely.

Issues aside, I still do feel the emotional pang at the end of the finale, like I was saying goodbye to a good friend never to see them again (Lower Decks appearance notwithstanding).

#1 All Good Things..., Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 7, Episode 25-26)

Even in the 24th century old dudes still be taking awkward selfies

And here we are. The best Trek finale so far. The two-parter "All Good Things..." was excellent when it premiered way back in May 1994 and its high caliber remains. Patrick Stewart is pitch perfect as a time-jumping Jean-Luc Picard who confronts a universe-ending problem in the past, present and future. John de Lancie gives his usual delightfully devious self as the seemingly omnipotent Q. It was great seeing Denise Crosby back as Tasha Yar. And I also enjoyed future versions of Geordi, Data and Crusher. My only quibble is the Worf/Troi romance and its repercussions for the future felt very forced and unnecessary. Unfortunately, Voyager went on to make a similar mistake with the above-mentioned Chakotay/Seven romance.

But returning to this entry, the main reason the TNG finale tops this list is the plot itself. It feels so much like the best episodes of the cerebral series only elevated. And, unlike some of the entries, it is strong as both a standalone story and a finale. The final scene of Picard joining the crew for the poker game was just icing on the cake.

So that's my ranking of Trek finales. Agree? Disagree? Sound off in the comments. And you can boldly go into more Trek content from Robot Mango Reviews below:

Julien "Editor Jules" Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by the Cryptkeeper, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like "13 flavours of awesome sauce". Read more.