It's a good time to be a Star Trek fan and watch Star Trek movies in order. With three TV series currently on the air ("Discovery," "Picard," and "Lower Deck") and three more in production ("Section 31," "Prodigy," and "Strange New Worlds"), there are more Star Trek adventures on the air than at any time since the mid-1990s.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

While Star Trek TV shows have come and gone since the 1960s, Star Trek movies have maintained a fairly consistent release schedule between 1979 and 2016. On average, a new film was released every three years. However, with the fourth installment of the Star Trek reboot franchise reportedly cancelled, we may be waiting a long time before we see the U.S.S. Enterprise on the big screen again.

Still, one piece of the puzzle is missing. Unlike watching the "Star Wars" movies in order, we can't watch all of the Trek films in the same service.

On the other hand, there are 13 Star Trek movies to watch (or rewatch) on DVD or your favorite streaming service. I personally purchased the Blu-ray collection to avoid being at the mercy of the shifting streaming schedule, but if you prefer an all-digital experience, these films are almost always available somewhere online.

Watching the Star Trek movies in order of release is, for the most part, exactly the same as watching the Star Trek movies in chronological order. (There is some time travel, but the later films follow "after" the earlier ones.) There are 13 films in total. The first film was released in 1979, the last in 2016.

The only problem is that they are spread across many different subscription services: 10 of the 13 films are available on Amazon Prime Video, 7 of which are also on Hulu; FX Now and Fubo each have one Star Trek film; and the last two films are available on Hulu, Each film is a streaming exclusive (otherwise you would have to buy or rent to watch). And CBS All Access (soon to become Paramount Plus) and Pluto also have one film each.

In addition to the fact that not all films have one home, there are a couple of minor wrinkles to this plan. First one: the Star Trek films are not completely independent. It takes some knowledge to fully understand what happened in the Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation TV shows.

Furthermore, the 13 films do not tell one continuous story. Rather, they are based on three separate iterations of a long-lived franchise.

Like the Star Trek television shows, the Star Trek films do not all focus on the same characters or settings. While there is some crossover (see below), the films generally fall into three categories.

The first category is based on Star Trek: The Original Series. This is your dad's Star Trek, with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, the original U.S.S. Enterprise, and Scotty beaming people aboard. If you've heard about "KHAAAAN.", "the whale guy", or "Shakespeare written in the original Klingon language", that's where it comes from.

All of these are available on Prime Video, and nearly all ("Voyage Home" is absent) are also available on Hulu.

Star Trek: The Original Series movies

Next up are the Next Generation movies. Picard, Data, Worf and crew are the main characters in this Star Trek for the X-Generation/Millennial generation. The film begins on the Enterprise-D, but moves to the more sophisticated Enterprise-E in First Contact. There is a crossover with the original series crew in Generations, but otherwise the TNG cast is front and center, with occasional cameos by Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

All of this requires at least two streaming services to watch.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Movies

Finally, there is the "reboot" Star Trek movie, also known as the "Kelvin Timeline" movie. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are again the stars, but this time in an alternate reality, with different events unfolding. With fast spaceships, pulse-pounding action, and a soundtrack by the Beastie Boys, this is Star Trek for the cool kids. (Except for "Into Darkness", you don't have to be that smart. But we come back from where "Nemesis" left off, more or less, before winding back the hands of the clock.

This set is more divided across services than any other.

The Star Trek reboot movies

Watching the Star Trek movies is a very easy process, but it can be a bit confusing if you haven't seen at least some of the TV series. (I have watched the entire series, but that may not be realistic.) The movie is the story of what happened after The Original Series ended, and the same goes for Generations and The Next Generation.

Thus, if you are going to dive into the film, you need to watch a few episodes here. In general, the movie stands on its own, but it might be helpful to know about supporting characters and subplots:

Episodes of the movie "Star Trek: The Original Series"

Episodes of the movie "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

Episodes of the "Star Trek" movie reboot

Watching all 13 "Star Trek" movies will give you approximately 26 hours of screen time. This is more time than the casual fan is willing to invest. Fortunately (or unfortunately), not all Star Trek movies are created equal. For a long time, fans thought the even-numbered films were the good ones and the odd-numbered ones were the bad ones. However, with the recent reboots, the trend seems to be reversed: odd numbers are good and even numbers are bad.

In any case, if you want to start with films that are really worth your time, here they are:

Personally, I quite like the others ("Nemesis" is better than I remember, and "Generations" has quite a few touching moments), but at least they should be a good starting point. They should be a good starting point.

And when you're done with these films, you can move on to "Galaxy Quest": the best Star Trek film that isn't actually a Star Trek film.