This project was born with one simple thought: Wouldn’t it be cool to watch the entire live-action Star Trek canon in chronological order as the events occur within the Star Trek Universe?
After doing some research online, we discovered that no such list exists. Well, not one we were satisfied with anyway. Some lists we found just listed “Enterprise” at the beginning and then basically listed all the episodes in the order that they aired on TV. Another listed all TNG followed by all DS9, etc. Still another listed only by stardate (with some missing episodes).
Some of these were pretty good, but we still had questions. We wanted to know how all the 24th century (TNG, DS9, VOY) stuff fit together. Where do the TNG movies fit in? What if no stardate is listed? What about multi-part episodes and arcs? (You can’t just split one complete story in half because another episode aired in between.)
We felt there could be a more comprehensive list based on all the available information. We wanted a list that would flow naturally, and provide both coherency and variety. To that end, we set out to create a chronological order that was absolutely comprehensive and, well… logical. A list that when viewed in sequence would let the complete story of the Trek Universe unfold naturally.
To do so, we devised a series of rules to follow. As with any set of rules, there had to be a few exceptions made. We did our best to account for as much as possible, including stardate, time travel, in-universe consistency, airdate, and in some cases even production number.
Below is an explanation of our process, followed by the list itself.
Enjoy!