Every Star Trek Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Incredibly, Star Trek has survived more killer blows than most creative franchises over its 50 years of existence. The Original Series was cancelled thanks to itchy-trigger-fingers, the latest show Enterprise proved to be utterly forgettable and several of the movies are labelled Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes.

And yet, the enduring quality of Gene Roddenberry's core idea and his vision for a perfect sci-fi show transcends the pitfalls and failures of what was made later in his name. Even now a fourth film in the Kelvin Timeline has been optioned and a new TV show is heading to small screens. And they won't be the last, you'd have to assume.

With the latest film - Justin Lin's surprisingly excellent Star Trek Beyond - turning critical heads and delighting cinema fans numbed by a poor year overall, now is the perfect time to look back at the film franchise more closely. After all, a franchise film doesn't exist in a vacuum, and comparing it to its siblings can often highlight its successes even more pointedly.

So how do the films rank from Worst to Best?

Who would have thought that William Shatner's cinematic directorial debut would end up being such a disaster?

Having cut his teeth helming episodes of TJ Hooker, Shatner jumped into the Star Trek movie franchise on the back of three hits in a row and proceeded to "help" write a story that was a stretch too far even for the Original Series crew. He takes a lot of the blame for his part in the worst film in the series, and it's hard to wholly defend him.

The Final Frontier saw the crew of the Enterprise battling a God-like being with plans to destroy the galaxy, which must have absolutely delighted the Church at the time. The story, which was problematic from the start was hampered further by the 1988 writers' strike and a lower budget than the original film (despite the franchises successes). For some reason Shatner also decided to dial up the comedy, but struggled to actually write anything funny, at the same time as openly critiquing populist religious indoctrination.

That it wasn't very good shouldn't really have come as too much of a surprise. That any more came after it is even more surprising.