Star Trek: Discovery Seasons Ranked

Full disclosure: part of why I love Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 is the very same over-the-top elements that certain fans endlessly complain about. I was fascinated to learn more about Section 31 and Emperor Geogiou’s role in it, and as a veteran Doctor Who fan, I am a real sucker for the time travel story in which Burnham spent all season essentially chasing her time-traveling self.

Plus, while the show didn’t make the most of the idea (more on this later), I have to applaud the boldness of ending this season by catapulting the show from the 23rd century to the 32nd century.

On top of that, though, this Star Trek: Discovery season had elements most fans loved, including the introduction of Pike and Spock. Anson Mount and Ethan Peck gave such strong and charismatic performances that nobody could really object to giving them their own spinoff. Additionally, the added wrinkle that Pike actually knows about his impending grisly fate but embraces his destiny to save young lives adds welcome depth to the franchise’s oldest character.

I realize this is a hot take among Star Trek: Discovery audiences, but I really like Season 1. If you can get past the admittedly big hurdles of the season not feeling like classic Trek (what with focusing on both a mutineer and a brutal war), there is much to love: the war itself is fascinating, contextualizing those famous Original Series episodes with Klingon antagonists.

Plus, it was fun seeing Jason Isaacs play a very different Captain, and the revelation that Lorca was actually from the Mirror Universe successfully paid off months of feverish fan speculation.

Speaking of which, my other big hot take about this first Star Trek: Discovery season is that the Mirror Universe arc was just stupid fun. It was great seeing our good guys pretend to be borderline space pirates, and Tilly deserves special recognition because her sexy imitation of the deadly dom “Captain Killy” awakened fans around the world.

As a Mirror Universe nerd from way back (I can’t be the only one who skipped the Homecoming dance to read Dark Mirror, right?), the introduction of this demented dimension’s hierarchy and the inimitable introduction of Emperor Georgiou made this a season to remember.

I am writing this only one day after watching Star Trek: Discovery’s series finale, so Season 5 might eventually move higher or lower in my rankings. Right now, I feel the series mostly went out on a high note: we see Burnham solve the Progenitor mystery and get her “happily ever after” ending with Booker. Saru also got his big wedding; an event made all the sweeter by a previous scene where he successfully bluffed an entire Breen fleet in the finest tradition of Captain Kirk. 

With that being said, this Star Trek: Discovery season had a few marks against it, including that the Progenitor plot, while exciting, made the structure of almost every episode predictable. Also, even the final season couldn’t fix the persistent problem of the show only focusing on select characters…by the time Burnham is hugging characters like Detmer in the final scene, you’ll find yourself asking, “wait, where the heck has that character been?”

While I generally enjoyed learning more about this mysterious race, it’s a little weird the final season revealed so much about the Breen if they were once more going to be (mostly) faceless thugs.

As with the final season, Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 might eventually move upward in my rankings, but my original impression was one of deep disappointment. For starters, the Starfleet of the 32nd century felt disappointingly underdeveloped…like, we went from drooling over what future Federation ships would look like to having to frantically freeze frames just to get a bad look at a fuzzy hull.

From the beginning to arguably the very end, Discovery never really leaned into the opportunity to show us future ships and bases, leaving the far future of this franchise feeling mostly overlooked and undercooked.

Your mileage may vary, but for me, this was the Star Trek: Discovery season where the “mystery of the season” format started to wear on me. I thought the Red Angel stuff of Season 2 was relatively exciting, but uncovering the mystery of the Burn in Season 3 felt as if the show, like the Starfleet vessels of the future without functioning dilithium, had lost the ability to move very fast. The reveal that the galaxy was nearly driven to ruin because of a random Kelpien’s mommy issues is almost too disappointing for words.

Not nearly as disappointing as seeing the inside of the turbolift corridor, though.

Last and most definitely least on my list is Star Trek: Discovery Season 4. When I think about what I hated about this season, there are two main things: it was the third season in a row to do a “mystery of the season” plot, and this mystery was the most boring of them all. Burnham and crew must deal with a random anomaly threatening the entire universe, and this threat feels like somebody wrote it on a bar napkin during a bender and then submitted it to Paramount as their best idea.

Season 4 had some fun stuff, of course…I’m a big fan of both Booker and T’Rina, so it was cool to see both of them get such a spotlight. The very end of the season wasn’t very exciting, but the endless focus on trying to communicate with some deadly new life feels very true to the hopefulness of Gene Roddenberry. Overall, though, this was a season of lazy and repetitive ideas, and no amount of talented performances can change that.