Star Trek: Ranking The Main Bridges

Depending on which Star Trek series you grew up with, the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, USS Voyager, Defiant, even Discovery can be as familiar and comfortable as your own living room. These futuristic command centers are in many cases as iconic as Star Trek's starships themselves and as recognizable as any famous television or movie settings.

The interior styles of the main bridges have developed and evolved over the years, from the "cardboard" set of The Original Series to the literally metal bridge of Pike's Enterprise in Star Trek: Discovery. They've also been a distillation of the tone and feel of the shows themselves, cushy and comfortable during The Next Generation years, rougher around the edges on Enterprise, and blindingly futuristic in the Abrams films.

You definitely already know which starship bridge you've secretly dreamt of sitting at the center of, but here's our ranking of Star Trek's most iconic bridges from great to greatest.

Let's just get this out of the way up front: Space station Deep Space 9's Operations Center is not a main bridge. Ops is also not really the heart of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (that would be the Promenade, the most identifiable location on the station and the setting for most of the action in the show).

DS9's Ops is a set that's emblematic of the series – a confusing, hard-edged, Cardassian-styled location that in no way looks like a great place to work (Raktajino-dispensing replicators aside). Ops is dark and shadowy, with various steps and raised consoles arranged with seemingly no real reason, and an elevated commander's office looming over everything like a micromanaging boss.

As a set, DS9's Ops is an incredible achievement by veteran Star Trek production designer Herman Zimmerman (you'll hear a lot about him), a jumbled up mess of a command center that's a far cry from the easily recognizable, ergonomic Starfleet bridges that both the characters and the audience had been used to for decades.