At the end of the day the question becomes: Is Star Trek a force for good in American society? Is it escapist nonsense that drags the American public deeper into delusion or is it a futuristic vision to be constructively contrasted with modern failures? I understand the argument of the former, but I prefer the latter. We need more positive visions in our media. Life should be respected. Differences should be respected. We have to work with one another. It's a trite message, but it's healthy.

Fairly junky television series that has managed to survive in different incarnations for fifty years: in part thanks to clearly-drawn characters and relationships; in part because it fed the new, interstellar fantasies of a generation that had borne witness to the birth of manned space flight; and in part because, in the depths of the Cold War, there arose a need for escapist dreams in which American adventurism somehow combines with a mission to spread some new, more rational form of peace.

When a rerun comes on, my Mom and I have a game where we try to name the title of the episode before the other person gets a chance. That is to say, Star Trek is not for the faint of heart - it's not simply the kind of show that improves over time, it enriches over your life. It represents a Golden Age of science fiction - when exploring the frontiers of culture, science, philosophy, and art was both unexpected and welcome. It went Boldly Where No Man Has Gone Before, and is iconic for a reason.

A lot better than I expected, even the worst episodes were still entertaining and had something of value to offer. Nimoy and Kelley had great chemistry, and Shatner is both charismatic and hilariously over the top. Only problem is that as the series went on the episodes became more repetitive, by the third season it became obvious they were running out of ideas. Still if you love sci-fi then you owe it to yourself to check this one out, it rightfully earned its legacy as far as I'm concerned.

I haven't seen all the episodes but considering the structure of the show I'll make an exception and rate this anyway. Even disregarding its seminal role in the evolution of scifi television, this is a pretty great experience. Boldly visionary work that tackles a ton of interesting (or just fun) ideas with infinite camp charm and open minded optimism. The value of these qualities is easy to recognize nowadays but honestly there will never come a day when they are uncalled for.

It is more interesting than most US TV from the era, but unfortunately that isn't a hugely high bar. Some episodes are pretty good, but many are awful. Shatner is remarkably charismatic and easily the strongest aspect. It's all incredibly dated; for example, the rampant sexism is painful to watch today, even if the treatment of race and gender was progressive in some ways for the time.

When you're diving into the past you encounter some episodes that don't age perfectly. Most episodes are one of 4 themes. "Woman learns empathy by kissing Kirk." "Man vs God." "The Machine is following orders wrong." "Oh no, the Kids have God powers." The first season had a unique tone and superior lighting / color. And by god I wish they kept the Pike pilot episode uniforms for the women characters because they looks 5x better than the mini skirts.

I've watched a few handfuls of the top-rated episodes, and they were decent, but I like the movies more (the first and the sixth one are, by far, my favorites).

dated, political, fantasy, science, character driven, queer, costumes, fun

90% of the episodes the plot is "someone is space horny".

I grew up with this. Racing home on my bicycle to plop myself in front of the TV and watch it. Great childhood memories.

A hard show to score as some of the episodes are the best Science fiction has to offer and this show is one of the pioneers of the genre. However it has many episode which are honestly pure garbage and a drag to get through especially in season 3. Some of the show hasn't aged well as it's a product of it's time mainly the rampant sexism. Personally I enjoyed the show overall but on future watches I think I will skip a bunch of the weaker episodes to improve my enjoyment.

7 eps in. started some 80s- then some 60- cuz repetitive

Based on 6/7 episodes that sounded interesting to me when this turned up on Netflix (less than 10% of the series). I'm not the target audience but felt compelled to dip my toe in because of the cultural weight of ST. It was groundbreaking in the 1960's, but shorn of nostalgia it is a cheesy sci-fi anthology series that suffers when compared to say The Twilight Zone. No doubt much of its appeal came from the utopian, post-scarcity idealism presented during unprecedented real-life turbulence.

Really difficult to score, because there's so much variance in quality from episode to episode. At it's best it's compelling, using science-fiction to explore contemporary sociopolitical issues and the human condition, at it's worst, it's boring and laughably bad. The dated fx and over-acting actually add to its charm, but as a modern viewer it's still hard to get past it's rampant sexism and racism, even if Star Trek was the most progressive show on American TV at the time it came out.

Don't like the stories here at all. While this captain fights a lot in this Series and Spock is the only Unique one on this show that can make people go unconscious with his Vulan death Grip.

While watching this there were many, many, many instances where I had to remind myself that the reason something seemed overdone was because TOS had done it first and so well that everybody had ripped them off later. And of course, sometimes it was because this series was ripping off older stories. They didn't invent everything from scratch, you know. Delightful, if you can manage to forget how massive a misogynist (even for his time) Roddenberry was.

Old school charming (10ish episodes)

Technically this is a TV series not a movie and so the score is actually all over the place. "City on the Edge of Forever" would be a 100 while "And the Children Shall Lead" be a 10.

Its cheesiness is only equaled by its brilliance. One of the most important science fiction shows of its era and of all time. Its very easy to get past the overacting of Shatner and the very low budget because the ideas presented are very well considered and it continues to define science fiction even 50 years later.

In all honesty, I have no idea how to rate this (but that's never stopped me). It's laughable trash by any objective measure, but for about two decades after they ran it, it had an undeniable magic about it: That psychedelic color spectrum, the total sincerity turned campy in retrospect, the interesting picture of what 1960s America saw as audacious speculative fiction - thus reflecting its own values.

Some great episodes.

very good series

A formative classic. A picture of science fiction television in its hammy, gold-shirted, absolutely lovable infancy.

I hope this doesn't lead to my immediate expulsion from nerddom, but I've never really been that into Star Trek TOS. I would definitely say I respect it and its impact on science fiction and pop culture, without ever really particularly loving it. Episodes always feel kind of awkward to me. Leonard Nimoy often rescues it, as Spock is of course a classic and iconic character.

I know it enjoys major cultural success, even today, but the original Star Trek feels dated, awkward and simple compared to its later spinoffs. It seems to have lost something with age, or without nostalgia, to me. I find Kirk insufferable.

[1st season] I think the boring, cheesy and stupid was more frequent than the clever and interesting sci-fi things one would expect from Star Trek. There were some good episodes, but not enough to keep me watching. I think I will go straight to "Star Trek: Next Generation" that will probably be (by many many comments I've read) pretty much what I expected from Star Trek TOS.

Clunky, silly and sometimes boring, it did however serve as one of the first true interracial casts in an era where space exploration was new and exciting.

I love everything about the original series. Even the shit episodes are wonderful fun.

I never particularly gave a shit but apparently in today's culture this is considered the greatest thing in history. can't live a day without seeing it referenced somewhere. still don't give a shit