TV Shows Like Star Trek
If you like Star Trek, here are 9 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
NBC · Sci-Fi & Fantasy · Star Trek is ended
Star Trek works because it treats its audience as adults. The original series, running on NBC in the late 1960s, used the premise of a five-year deep-space mission as a license to ask hard questions about war, race, power, and what it means to be human, often through the friction between Kirk's gut instincts and Spock's cool logic. The ship and crew gave the show a reliable home base, but the real draw was the sense that any given week could drop the Enterprise into something genuinely strange: a planet run by children, a godlike entity with a grudge, a genetically engineered tyrant. That mix of episodic adventure and larger ethical stakes is what fans remember most.
The best shows like Star Trek
1. Star Trek: Voyager
Voyager takes the core Trek formula and adds real urgency by stranding the crew 75 years from home with no backup from Starfleet. The uneasy alliance between Starfleet officers and Maquis rebels mirrors some of the ideological friction that made the original series crackle, and the sheer distance from familiar space means the writers had to keep inventing new threats and civilizations. It is not always consistent, but at its best it captures exactly the sense of isolation and wonder that made Kirk's five-year mission feel high-stakes.
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2. Star Trek: The Next Generation
The Next Generation is the most natural next step for any fan of the original series. Captain Picard commands a new Enterprise a century after Kirk, and the show keeps the same structure of exploration and moral dilemma while developing its ensemble with unusual care over seven seasons. If anything it leans even harder into the idea that the best science fiction is really about ethics, and the interplay between its core characters eventually rivals the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triangle in depth.
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3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars
The Clone Wars earns its place on this list by being a much darker and more ambitious show than its animated format might suggest. It expands a corner of the Star Wars galaxy the films only sketched, giving real weight to the Jedi, the Republic, and the war that destroyed both. Fans of Star Trek who enjoy large-scale space conflict alongside questions about loyalty, sacrifice, and the cost of war will find more here than they might expect.
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4. Star Trek: Enterprise
Enterprise is the prequel series, set a century before Kirk, following Captain Archer as Starfleet takes its first uncertain steps into deep space. It is slower to find its footing than the other Trek series, but fans of the original will appreciate seeing how the rules, the alliances, and even the familiar alien species came to be. The later seasons in particular recapture the serial energy of the original, especially around the build-up to the Earth-Romulan War.
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5. Doctor Who
Doctor Who runs on the same basic engine as Star Trek: a brilliant, eccentric protagonist travels the universe, lands somewhere strange, and has to think his way out of trouble while protecting the people around him. The time-travel element adds a layer the Trek franchise rarely explores, and the rotating cast of companions keeps the show from ever feeling static. Fans who loved the sense that any episode could be set anywhere and feature anything will feel right at home.
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More on shows like Star Trek
Fans of the original series tend to want two things from their next show: a sense of wonder about the unknown, and characters who are worth spending time with across a long run. The best recommendations here share at least one of those qualities, and the strongest ones share both.
The most obvious places to go are the other Trek series. Star Trek: The Next Generation is the direct heir to the original's spirit, with a new captain and crew carrying on the mission of exploration and moral inquiry. Star Trek: Voyager pushes the premise further by stranding its crew on the far side of the galaxy, adding genuine desperation to the familiar format. Star Trek: Enterprise goes in the opposite direction chronologically, showing how the world of Kirk and Spock came to exist in the first place. Outside the franchise, Doctor Who offers something that scratches a very similar itch: a lone figure traveling through time and space, encountering alien civilizations and moral dilemmas, accompanied by companions who keep the show grounded. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is the outlier here in that it is animated and operates within a different universe, but it shares the large-scale space-opera energy and the pleasure of watching familiar characters in fresh, often surprisingly dark situations.
None of these are perfect substitutes for the original, but that is not really the point. The original Star Trek was a specific product of its moment, and chasing that exact feeling is a losing game. What these shows offer instead is the same fundamental curiosity about the universe and the same conviction that science fiction is a good place to think about serious things.
More shows like Star Trek
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Star Trek?
- Star Trek: Voyager is the most popular show similar to Star Trek in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Star Trek still on the air?
- Of the 9 shows similar to Star Trek listed here, 1 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Star Trek?
- The recommendations come from TMDB's similar-titles data, and each is shown with its current AI renewal verdict so you know which are still going.