Star Trek Movies Ranked for Newcomers

The best place to start, and it barely needs the show. Ricardo Montalbán's Khan comes from a single episode of the original series, but the film tells you all you need in a few lines: Kirk marooned him on a dying planet 15 years earlier, and he wants revenge. What follows is a cat-and-mouse duel between two starships, kept lean by director Nicholas Meyer, who reportedly had not seen much Star Trek before taking the job. It is also a film about getting older, about Kirk facing the cost of his own legend, and its ending lands even if you met these characters only two hours earlier.

The funniest Star Trek film and the friendliest to newcomers. To save Earth from an alien probe, the crew travels back to 1986 San Francisco to fetch two whales, which turns the story into a fish-out-of-water comedy about future people out of step with 1980s life, down to a run-in with a punk rocker blasting his music on a city bus. Leonard Nimoy directed it, his second film in the chair after The Search for Spock. It follows on from two earlier films, which explains why the crew arrives in a captured Klingon ship, but the opening minutes cover that, and the rescue plot itself needs no background at all. If you want to show a skeptic that Star Trek can be light, this is the one.

The strongest film with the Next Generation crew, and the one that works best cold. Captain Picard's Enterprise chases the Borg, a cyborg collective that absorbs whole species, back in time to 2063, where they mean to stop Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) from making the warp flight that leads to humanity's first contact with aliens. The film splits neatly in two: a tense, haunted-house fight through the decks of the ship, and a looser, funnier story on the ground with a hard-drinking, reluctant inventor. Alice Krige's Borg Queen is one of the franchise's great villains. Picard's grudge against the Borg comes from the show, but an opening dream sequence explains enough for it to land. Jonathan Frakes, who also plays Riker, directed.

Built for people who have never seen Star Trek. J.J. Abrams restarts the story with a young Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) in an alternate timeline, so nothing you missed on TV counts against you, and it plays as a fast, funny origin story about two rivals learning to be a crew. Leonard Nimoy appears as an older Spock, a bridge to the original that becomes a lovely bonus if you go back to the earlier films later. It is also the only Star Trek film to win an Oscar, for its makeup. If the 1980s effects of the older films put you off, start here.

The original crew's farewell is a political thriller. A Klingon moon explodes, leaving the Empire suddenly ready to make peace, and Kirk, who still blames the Klingons for his son's death, is sent to escort their chancellor to the talks. A conspiracy follows, with a murder mystery and a Klingon show trial along the way, so it plays more like a spy story than a space opera. Christopher Plummer is a delight as General Chang, a Klingon who quotes Shakespeare between volleys. Nicholas Meyer, who made The Wrath of Khan, directed. The politics need no Star Trek history to follow, though the goodbye at the end means more if you have seen a couple of the earlier films first.

The rebooted crew at its warmest. Director Justin Lin, best known for the Fast & Furious series, has the Enterprise ambushed far from home and torn apart, leaving the crew stranded on an alien planet and scattered into small groups, which gives the supporting characters real scenes. Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty, co-wrote it with Doug Jung, and it has the feel of a classic exploration episode on a blockbuster budget. Idris Elba plays the villain Krall, and Sofia Boutella's Jaylah is a standout new character. It follows the 2009 film, but you can skip Into Darkness and lose nothing.

The most like serious science fiction, and the slowest. Robert Wise, an Oscar winner brought in to give the first film weight, made it as a stately space epic: a vast, unknown force destroys three Klingon cruisers and heads for Earth, and Kirk returns to a newly refitted Enterprise to meet it. Jerry Goldsmith's score is one of the best things the franchise ever produced. Its long effects sequences test patience, but if you love the cerebral, slow-burning side of science fiction, it has the most thoughtful premise in the series. Set five years after the original show, it reintroduces the crew from scratch.

Watch this one only after The Wrath of Khan: it picks up shortly after that film and depends on how it ends. Leonard Nimoy's first film as director is a smaller, more personal story about how much the crew will risk for a friend, defying Starfleet's orders to do it. Christopher Lloyd plays Kruge, the Klingon commander hunting the secrets of the Genesis device, and it is the middle chapter of a loose trilogy that ends with The Voyage Home. That makes it worth a look before the whale film, even if on its own it is the most dependent on what came before.

Fast and handsome, but the reboot film that leans hardest on what came before. Benedict Cumberbatch plays a terrorist whose true identity is one of the film's big reveals, and several of its biggest moments deliberately play on The Wrath of Khan, so they land very differently depending on which you see first. If you enjoyed the 2009 film, it works fine as a sleek action movie with the same likable crew, and J.J. Abrams directs again. Anyone planning to watch the older films may want The Wrath of Khan first, then this, to see what the reboot is playing with.

The handover film, and the one that most assumes you know both crews. The original series' Kirk (William Shatner) and the Next Generation's Picard (Patrick Stewart) meet in the Nexus, a strange realm outside time, and join forces to stop Malcolm McDowell's scientist from destroying a planet. Shatner and Stewart are fun together once they finally share the screen, but newcomers may struggle to care about a crew the film never properly introduces. Director David Carson came from the Next Generation TV show, and it shows. Better as a second Next Generation film, after First Contact, than a first.

The Next Generation crew at its gentlest, closer to a long TV episode than a big film. Picard's crew rebels against Starfleet to protect the people of a small planet with regenerative properties, which an alien race and factions within Starfleet want for themselves. Jonathan Frakes directed again after First Contact, and the humor and warmth between the crew are intact, but the stakes feel small next to that film, and many critics at the time said it lacked the scope of a movie. A pleasant follow-up if First Contact left you wanting more of these characters, and an easy one to skip if it did not.

A darker Next Generation finale, with a young Tom Hardy as Shinzon, a clone of Picard who has taken power among the Romulans. Picard facing a younger version of himself is a strong idea, and the space battles are the biggest of that era. The trouble for newcomers is that the film spends its emotional energy on farewells to long-running relationships, which only fans of the show will feel, and director Stuart Baird came to it with no background in Star Trek. Audiences stayed away too: it took about $67 million worldwide, and its North American gross is the lowest of any Star Trek film, even before adjusting for inflation.

The one to leave until last. William Shatner directed it, and the story has a renegade Vulcan named Sybok, who claims a surprising family tie to Spock, hijack the Enterprise to search for God at the center of the galaxy. The campfire scenes between Kirk, Spock and McCoy are warm and funny, and they are the reason fans forgive it, but the big idea fizzles and the effects look cheap even by the standards of the era. Once you are fond of the original crew it has its charms; as a first Star Trek film, it would give the wrong impression entirely.