10. Star Trek Ruled Sci-fi On Television
Star Trek had a bit of a resurgence in the 1980s.
Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan showed how a Star Trek film should be done and began a fantastic loose trilogy of films that concluded with commercially successful and very fun
Star Trek: The Voyage Home. And then in 1987, Star Trek returned to television with
Star Trek: The Next Generation. The first two series showed promise but it wasn't until the third season that this series delivered. In February 1990 the first classic episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation aired. To this day 'Yesterdays Enterprise' is well loved, and deservedly so. So much that it warranted the eighth position in my very first article for WhatCulture, the
top 10 WTF moments of Star Trek.
From then on,
Star Trek: The Next Generation shone, nailing the art of the season cliff-hanger with
Best Of Both Worlds (also in the above article) and set itself up as one of the best sci-fi shows on television, easily rising out of the shadow of its predecessor. This show brought sci-fi into the mainstream map in a way that had never been done before. Over the course of the series, it won 18 Emmys and three Hugo awards. By season six, the show was huge and with another excellent film
Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, under its belt, another television show was born.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was an altogether different beast. For its first two seasons it was a support act to
Star Trek: The Next Generation, but when that show moved on to the big screen, the new series really showed what is it was made of. It may have been the dark sheep of the Star Trek, but with its morally grey stories, epic arcs, a bitter depiction of war and amazing recurring characters (Gul Dukat, Kai Winn and Garak to name a few), this show is now regarded as one of the best. For me,
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was always the shining light of the television franchise. And it didnt stop there. After
Star Trek: The Next Generation we had
Star Trek: Voyager. It never really delivered on its promise for me, but it was still a big, mainstream sci-fi show and its best moments (seasons three and four) happened in the latter half of the 1990s. There was no denying that Star Trek was a television juggernaut. Never would a cult franchise rule the airwaves again in the manner that Star Trek did.