Brian Volk-Weiss, the documentarian responsible for the lively Netflix documentaries The Toys That Made Us and The Movies That Made Us returned to the Star Trek franchise last fall with The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek — and now that all 10 episodes are available to stream online, and the series is now set to arrive to fans in the UK, we thought it was time to share our thoughts on the project.

The 10 part documentary series — which aired its first four episodes on The History Channel in November (available to stream here) and released the subsequent six episodes on History’s paid streaming service, History Vault (available to stream here with a subscription) — covers the history of the Star Trek franchise from its creation all the way through the cancelation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005.

For fans in the UK, the docuseries is set to arrive March 18 on IMDB.tv, a free streaming service available through Amazon.

Each episode of the series follows a section of the franchise’s history. The first episode follows The Original Series, for example, while the second episode covers The Animated Series. There are also two additional thematic episodes, one focusing on the starships of the franchise, and the other on the many guest actors who have appeared in Trek.

The Center Seat is an entertaining documentary series. It features the same lively documentary filmmaking that has become Volk-Weiss’s signature if you’ve watched either of his Netflix shows, and as a result it’s a very watchable production. Volk-Weiss — who we spoke to last fall about this series — knows how to make documentaries fun, and The Center Seat significantly improves on his previous Star Trek complete history project, the 50 Years of Star Trek released in 2016.

Part of what makes The Center Seat enjoyable is that the 10-episode length gives it room to explore under-developed parts of the Star Trek story in previous documentaries. The Animated Series gets an episode to itself, as do each of the Rick Berman-era Star Trek shows including Star Trek: Enterprise. A highlight of the series is the Star Trek: The Motion Picture episode and the discussion of the difficult writing process for the script and the personality clashes between Gene Roddenberry and Harold Livingston.

But while The Center Seat is certainly entertaining, this is a documentary series better suited for fans who are looking for an entrée point to learning about the history of the Star Trek franchise — rather than fans already very familiar with the story of the franchise and looking for something new.

The Center Seat does not provide much information that has not already been covered elsewhere, and there has been some controversy over certain historical details as presented in the show, and over inclusion of at least one Star Trek writer/historian whose previous works have been called into question for factual inaccuracies.

But while The Center Seat itself doesn’t get too deeply into parts of Star Trek that have not previously been covered, I strongly suggest checking out companion podcast The Center Seat Aftershow, hosted by Volk-Weiss and frequent convention guests and Star Trek historians John and Maria Jose Tenuto.

Particularly worth your time are the interview episodes with Generations director David Carson and recurring Star Trek director and producer David Livingston, and the one with longtime writer/producer Brannon Braga.

These podcast episodes, which are longer form interviews, allow for the interview subjects to dive much deeper – though in Volk-Weiss’s excitement to interview his subjects the discussion often strays too often into non-Star Trek projects and the Tenutos get too little opportunity to speak and ask questions. I wouldn’t mind a few more episodes of that show even though there aren’t new television episodes to pair them with.

The Center Seat’s televised episodes also makes some unusual choices about which elements of the series to explore in more detail than others, sometimes to the series’ benefit and sometimes to its detriment. For example, The Center Seat dives into both the challenges working with Jennifer Lien — which led to the actress’ departure from the series — as well as the tension on set between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan, and Ryan’s mid-series relationship with producer/showrunner Brannon Braga, which most other Voyager projects have avoided.

This is a delicate, yet important part of the Voyager story — and while the rift is seemingly healed today, it’s one that gets tiptoed around too often. The Center Seat takes it head on, which is one of the more in-depth examination of the tensions on set that’s been conducted since Jeri Ryan first publicly revealed them.

But then in the Enterprise episode has a diversion that focuses on Jolene Blalock’s acting, with interview segments discussing the former model’s need for an on-set acting coach during the show’s first season, troubles with ratings and Paramount management, and the show’s cancellation… but very little about the content of the series itself.

There’s lots of other interesting angles the Enterprise episode could have pursued in more detail.

Sometimes, it feels like Volk-Weiss’s own tastes about the various Star Trek productions shine through a little too clearly, especially when you match the tone of each episode with his comments about the series on the aftershow podcast. That detracts a bit from the overall project, particularly for the later Berman-era shows that are undergoing a revival in the fandom (namely Voyager and Enterprise) which  no longer quite match the “everyone thinks the show is bad” framing the documentary occasionally posits.

The way that the series was released by The History Channel was also deeply frustrating. While the first four episodes, covering through the end of the TOS movie era, aired on The History Channel, the remaining six episodes were reserved for History’s streaming service, History Vault. This is an objectionable ploy by History Channel executives to encourage sign ups for their streamer — and The Center Seat suffers from it because many fans are not likely to hop over to a streaming service that offers them little else besides the remaining six episodes of this Star Trek documentary.

(They do have a free seven-day trial period at least, which gave me plenty of time to watch all the episodes and cancel the service without needing to pay for it.)

The most enjoyable episode of The Center Seat for me was actually the episode on guest stars, because we heard from some Star Trek guest stars who do not often appear at Star Trek conventions. If The Center Seat continues, which Volk-Weiss has indicated in interviews is a possibility, I hope they continue on the path of cutting together thematic episodes rather than the linear approach to the history of the franchise.

Though given nobody has yet done much by way of a documentary on the Kelvin Timeline movies or the ever-expanding Paramount+ era, that could explore some interesting ground that nobody has yet documented.

Overall, The Center Seat does not quite balance its enjoyable storytelling with giving long-time fans a new experience, which the Star Trek episode of The Toys that Made Us absolutely succeeded at. But if you are newer to the franchise or have some free time and episode re-runs aren’t catching your eye, The Center Seat is going to deliver you a very watchable ten hours of television.

The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek is available to stream today in the USA, with four episodes on The History Channel and an additional six episodes on History Vault. The series will debut in the UK on the IMDB.tv service on March 18.