Star Trek: Every Bridge Ranked Worst To Best

For three decades of Star Trek series and movies, Starfleet bridges tended to have one command chair. Then, TNG gave us three. DS9, which opted for an Operations centre, gave us precisely ZERO, presumably to help Worf feel right at home...

Voyager took a completely different route to all of them, and gave her Bridge a staggering TWO command chairs... then promptly killed off the person who was supposed to be sitting in one of them.

On first impressions, Voyager is a lot wider than the bridge sets that came before--despite her being a much smaller vessel. The oval shape pointed sideways instead of towards the viewscreen. The Captain and XO sit much further back from the singular person operated helm, and Ops is located behind them--a departure from the usual frontal positioning. The grey, silver and blue colouring was fresh at the time, and could have been too dark, but Voyager's lighting was so much more dynamic.

It works. Remember, most of the show was set on the bridge. The aesthetic is uniform for the rest of Voyager, but the streamed down design, mixed with the reflective surfaces, mean that the whole scene would be awash in the vibrant colours of whichever alert status (or Borg invasion) the ship was in at the time.

An animated version of Voyager's bridge also appeared in Lower Decks, still looking as interesting as ever, and may even inspire the new Voyager-A's command deck in Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2.