The Star Trek Movies In Order: 2 Ways To Watch Them
You can watch them in order by release or in a chronological order based on the in-canon Star Trek timeline.
Star Trek has produced thirteen feature films, with a fourteenth on the way. What order should you watch them in? There are two possible approaches to putting the Star Trek movies in order.
The first and best way to watch the Star Trek movies is in order based on which was released first. That’s simple, and we’ve provided a handy guide to their release order below.
Star Trek Movie Order By Release
The second way to attempt watching them is using a chronological order based on the in-canon Star Trek timeline. And that’s where things get tricky.
Star Trek Movies In Chronological Order
For the most part, a chronological ordering of Star Trek movies matches up with their release date order, but there are a few outliers. Those outliers are the newly produced reboot movies that took the familiar Original Series and recast them.
Most Star Trek fans consider the reboot movies (which started with Star Trek in 2009) to have taken place in an alternate universe called the Kelvinverse. That would mean they don’t fit into Star Trek’s chronological timeline anywhere.
However, if you wanted to try and make them fit, you could start your chronological Star Trek movie viewing experience with the 2009 Star Trek movie.
The 2009 Star Trek movie tells the story of how (in the alternate Kelvinverse) James T. Kirk first became captain of the Enterprise. Chronologically, that would mean it takes place before Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Here’s where things get tricky. The next reboot movie is Star Trek Into Darkness. Star Trek Into Darkness is basically a soft reboot of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. So where can you fit it in? Really you can’t, and since it’s a terrible Star Trek movie, I suggest throwing it out altogether and skipping it.
From there things get interesting. In the next reboot movie, Star Trek Beyond, the original Enterprise is destroyed. By the end of that movie, the crew gets a new Enterprise, the Enterprise-A.
The original Enterprise is also destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. How can we fit these two things together? Simple.
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, we are introduced to an all-new version of the Enterprise. If you pretend that this new Enterprise in The Motion Picture is a replacement for the one you saw destroyed during Star Trek Beyond, the movies almost sort of fit together.
So in order, you’d have watched…
From there on out, it’s easy, and you can watch all the remaining Star Trek movies in order by release date. When you see the Enterprise destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, you’ll be watching the second Enterprise destroyed only for the crew to get a third Enterprise at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
To be clear, we don’t actually recommend a chronological viewing as the ideal way to watch the Star Trek movies in order. However, if you want to do it, we’re confident this is the best and only way to attempt it.
