10 Greatest Star Trek Moments In 2023
NOTE: Will update if Star Trek: Legacy is announced.
2023 has been a bumper, wall to wall year of Star Trek action encompassing four different shows, the announcement of a "Long Trek" with Section 31 and the plan to see Starfleet Academy finally make it to the screen after multiple failed attempts.
Strange New Worlds, Picard, Lower Decks and Prodigy have led the way on the screen proving that even after nearly 60 years this franchise can deliver time and time again.
Onscreen and off there have been highs and lows but here we're going to focus on the positives, the Big Wins of the year. We're celebrating those moments that dropped fans' jaws to the floor, cry like children trapped in a lift with Picard or punch the air like Soran reaching for the Nexus.
Every fan will have that one piece of 2023's Star Trek history that really hit home and sparked a new memory or scene to revel in. It might be spotting those Easter Eggs on Daystrom Station, Janeway's pursuit of the Protostar in Prodigy or maybe the whole of Una's trial. There's been something for everyone and now it's time to tackle what could well be the defining points of the year and firmly lay down the challenge for 2024 and that final season of Discovery.
10. I Don't See It
A season long mystery had kept every fan guessing. Was the mysterious ship apparently destroying vessels a super vengeful Badgey? Was it a new alien race? The Dominion? Something even more devastating?
Worse than that – it was Nick Locarno and doesn’t he look like Tom Paris? No?
In what has to be one of Star Trek’s best kept secrets and most jaw-dropping reveals, Robert Duncan McNeill returned to Lower Decks. Following on from his appearance in We’ll Always Have Tom Paris he dropped in to voice The First Duty’s Nova Squadron leader. No one saw it coming and perhaps just as brilliant was the return of Shannon Fill in Old Friends, New Planets as tragically doomed Sito Jaxa. It also included the only actual appearance of doomed Nova Squad pilot Joshua Albert - spoken of but never seen in TNG.
Now building his own Nova Squadron from a collection of alien races brought together across the season (and not destroyed as viewers were led to believe), it all came down to an oddly (and brilliantly) familiar ending involving a Genesis device...and a paywall?
Where Voyager had been unable to bring back Locarno as their Maquis bad boy, Lower Decks stepped into the fray to provide a cliffhanger reveal that could equal many of the season finales of seasons gone by – and it wasn’t even the last episode of the year!