All 3 Seasons Of Star Trek: The Original Series, Ranked

Is Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek: The Original Series" one of the best sci-fi shows of all time? That's up for debate. Is it the single most important sci-fi show ever? It very well might be. The series' revolutionary approach to science fiction storytelling launched an ongoing multimedia franchise, which is all the more impressive when you remember that "The Original Series" only ran for three seasons ... and frankly, kind of sucked for a chunk of its tenure.

The franchise's eventual expansion has left the timeline of "Star Trek: The Original Series" far more robust and convoluted than it was back in the day. However, the show's run was already pretty eventful, and you can really see a difference between all of its three seasons. But which one of them is the absolute best example of what the franchise's early days can offer? Let's take a moment to see how the three seasons of "Star Trek: The Original Series" fare in comparison to each other.

For its third season, "Star Trek: The Original Series" was moved to a bad late Friday night timeslot — the worst one during the show's complex relationship with NBC. This heavily sabotaged the audience's ability to keep up with the show, and Captain Kirk actor William Shatner himself thinks this timing is the cause of the show's cancellation.

The bad timeslot was only one of the issues the show faced. CBS had already looked into ending the show before, and slashed the budget for Season 3. There was also a significant creative overhaul behind the scenes, to the point that Gene Roddenberry himself chose to leave his role. All of this led to a series of cheap-looking, sub-par episodes that often fail to capture the show's signature magic.

The season did give us one of the best episodes of "Star Trek: The Original Series" — "The Tholian Web" — but all in all, its average episodes are a far cry from the show's finest hours. Critics agree with this assessment, as well. While the first two seasons of "The Original Series" are both solidly in the "classic" category, Season 3 boasts a comparatively abysmal 50% Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

"Star Trek" Season 1 sure got the job done, didn't it? The season that kicked off it all contains some of the show's best-known, stone cold classics like "The Menagerie" and "Arena," not to mention the gut-wrenching "The City on the Edge of Forever."

The main reason for Season 1 placing here is that it takes a little while to fully settle into the classic "Trek" groove and figure out the fullness of the show's lore. This is a very good season of a show that, at its finest, was unparalleled in its era ... and, in a way, still is.

"Star Trek" Season 1 is an excellent batch of sci-fi storytelling, and it boasts a very respectable 92% Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer rating. As such, the silver medal spot is by no means a zone of shame. It simply means that the season laid the groundwork for something that was even better, if only slightly.

It takes a lot for a TV show season to boast a full 100% Tomatometer ranking on Rotten Tomatoes. The fact that "Star Trek: The Original Series" Season 2 is in this exclusive club is a testament to its sheer quality. This is the season that best captures the show's essence — and since everything that came after leans on this show, it may represent the core of the franchise in general. The episodes are nigh-consistently great, the lore is stable, and the cast dynamic is excellent. It all simply works.

"The Original Series" Season 2 is the home for many of the the best-remembered "Star Trek" episodes ever, including the mirror universe intro "Mirror, Mirror," the introduction of the Vulcan's biological pon farr imperative in "Amok Time," and the legendary fuzzball episode "The Trouble with Tribbles." "The Original Series" Season 2 is not only the show at its purest. At its best, it's the entire "Star Trek" franchise in distilled form.