Star Trek: Voyager

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Star Trek: Voyager should have been a home run. It had a great premise, a strong cast, and was the flagship show of the brand new UPN network. Despite bringing in a massive audience for its series premiere, the show almost immediately began bleeding viewers; by season 4 Seven of Nine, a former Borg drone, was brought on in an effort to boost the show's lagging ratings, to little success. The show could never quite commit to its premise, the cast was uneven, and the writing was at times dire. Star Trek: Voyager ended on its own terms after seven seasons, but it limped to the finish line, rather than going out on top like The Next Generation. Voyager wasn't cancelled, but it was the first sign that there were serious cracks in the franchise's foundation.

Star Trek: Enterprise

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Prequels were all the rage at the dawn of the 21st century, and Star Trek decided to get in on the fad. It would prove to be a poor decision - Star Trek: Enterprise was greeted largely with ambivalence from regular TV viewers and scorn from Star Trek fans. The show's series premiere ratings were about half of what Voyager's brought in, and the ratings promptly fell off a cliff. Beyond its relatively low quality, audiences had simply tired of Star Trek by 2005. The show was almost constantly in danger of cancellation by UPN, and despite a fairly well regarded creative reboot in season four, the show was unceremoniously axed, the first Star Trek show to be outright cancelled by its network since TOS in 1969.

Discovery, Picard, And Lower Decks

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The future looks bright for the current crop of Star Trek series. It's unknown exactly how popular the current slate of Trek shows are, as CBS All Access doesn't release viewing figures, but Star Trek is the backbone of that streaming service. Current Star Trek executive producer Alex Kurtzman has confirmed there are multiple more seasons planned for Star Trek: Discovery, which just began production on season 4. Likewise, Star Trek: Lower Decks is already in production on season 2 and is likely to go beyond that.

Arguably CBS All Access' most popular series, Star Trek: Picard is in a curious position. The show brought in a massive new wave of subscribers to CBS All Access and generally garnered better reviews from both critics and fans than Discovery, but the entire show is contingent on how long Patrick Stewart is interested in participating. Kurtzman has suggested there's a three year plan and a five year plan, depending on how Sir Patrick feels down the line. Even if Picard were to end after three seasons, there's still Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, and the Emperor Georgiou spinoff in the pipeline. Star Trek is in a healthy place, and there's currently no end in sight for the final frontier.