Should a Star Trek TV series be comprised of stand-alone episodes, or, should the whole thing be a huge serialized story arc? While The Original Series pioneered the classic planet-of-the-week storyline in the '60s, the '90s and early aughts saw both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise play with season-long arcs that predated prestige TV as we know it. Ever since Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds debuted in 2020 and 2022, respectively, the Trek franchise has split the difference. Some shows still have a lot of serialization — Picard and Discovery for example — while LDS and SNW stick close-ish to self-contained episodes.
