Initially I just shared my personal top 10 lists (e.g., Star Trek: TOS) before pivoting to use IMDB ratings (e.g., Lower Decks). Having done that, I then started to wonder how long I have to wait after a premiere before an IMDB rating is stable.
My hypothesis has been that early ratings are by the biggest fans and therefore represent the peak rating, with stable ratings being lower as non-fans eventually catch up and watch something.
Section 31
That proved itself in spades with Section 31, which premiered at 4.4 before dropping to an average rating of 3.8 five days later. That makes it not only the worst-rated Star Trek movie of all time, but—had it been released theatrically—it would have tied at #100 on IMDB’s list of Top 100 worst-rated movies of all time.
| Date | Ranking | Votes | Popularity |
| 1/24 | 4.4 | 50 | NA |
| 1/25 | 4.1 | 3100 | NA |
| 1/26 | 4.0 | 4300 | #435 |
| 1/27 | 4.0 | 5900 | #19 |
| 1/28 | 3.9 | 6800 | #19 |
| 1/29 | 3.8 | 7500 | #19 |
| 7/21 | 3.8 | 16000 | #2,009 |
But it only took 5 days for it to find its stable rating, which it has held now for 6 months.
For me, the best part of Section 31 are the reviews:
- Engadget – Star Trek: Section 31 review: An embarrassment from start to end – “Star Trek: Section 31 is Trek at its face-punching, eye-gouging grimdark worst.”
- Nerds of a Feather – What the Hell, Star Trek? – “There was never going to be a good way to tell a story where Section 31 are the heroes, but it didn’t need to reach this abysmal degree of atrociousness.”
Lower Decks
You can see that most Season 5 Lower Deck ratings have dropped by a point or two since the first week they premiered. For those that dropped, it took an average of 12 weeks (3 months) for them to reach their current level, seven to ninth months later.
| E# | Episode | Premiere | First Rating | Last Rating | Delta | Weeks |
| S5.E1 | Dos Cerritos | 10/24/24 | 7.8 | 7.7 | -0.1 | 10 |
| S5.E2 | Shades of Green | 10/24/24 | 7.5 | 7.3 | -0.2 | 12 |
| S5.E3 | The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel | 10/31/24 | 7.4 | 7.3 | -0.1 | 10 |
| S5.E4 | A Farewell to Farms | 11/7/24 | 7.7 | 7.5 | -0.2 | 12 |
| S5.E5 | Starbase 80?! | 11/14/24 | 7.8 | 7.6 | -0.2 | 14 |
| S5.E6 | Of Gods and Angles | 11/21/24 | 7.5 | 7.3 | -0.2 | 17 |
| S5.E7 | Fully Dilated | 11/28/24 | 8.1 | 8.1 | 0 | 0 |
| S5.E8 | Upper Decks | 12/5/24 | 7.7 | 7.6 | -0.1 | 5 |
| S5.E9 | Fissure Quest | 12/12/24 | 9.0 | 9.0 | 0.0 | 0 |
| S5.E10 | The New Next Generation | 12/19/24 | 9.1 | 8.9 | -0.2 | 13 |
(Related, I wonder if early episodes of a new series have lower ratings than later episodes because the people who dislike a series stop watching it and aren’t around to rate later episodes. That’s not true for the ratings for Star Trek: Discovery though.)
I tracked these in a spreadsheet before discovering Historical-IMDB-Ratings.com:
This is the lowest rated SNW episode, and you can see it started at 7, dropped to 6 the next week, then increased to 6.2 over time.
Based on this, I think I’ll wait until Season 3 of SNW has been done for 3 months before updating my Strange New Worlds best-of links.
Photo credit: StarTrek.com.
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