It remains to be seen what Rotten Tomatoes score the upcoming Paramount+ movie Star Trek: Section 31 will wind up with, but it may surprise people that of all the franchise features, the one with the highest Rotten Tomatoes score is... Star Trek (2009), directed by J.J. Abrams. Everyone tends to forget how much they liked the first Kelvin big-screen adventure. It actually boasts a better score than either of the highest-rated movies featuring the cast of Star Trek: The Original Series or Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Star Trek (2009) maintains a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The best-regarded and most financially successful of the Next Generation movies, the Jonathan Frakes-directed Star Trek: First Contact, comes in at 93%. As for the original cast features, Nicholas Meyer’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan tops the list with a 86% rating, a number that might strike some fans as surprisingly low.

Intriguingly,...