Titles and Abbreviations of Star Trek Series and Movies

Star Trek Series Star Trek Movies

The titles of Star Trek TV and movie productions, the numbering of the movies and the abbreviations or acronyms used for the series are not consistent in all publications. The different way to refer to certain series or movies may cause confusion. Sometimes it even gives rise to controversial debates about what is the rightful title or abbreviation.

The following is a concise naming guide, based on official sources and on what is customary in the fandom.

Star Trek Series

This list includes all names and abbreviations/acronyms as they are used by official sources and as they are common on fan sites.

EAS	Memory Alpha	TrekCore	startrek.com	Encyclopedia	Full name	Production time	Annotations
TOS	TOS	TOS	TOS	TOS	Star Trek: The Original Series	1966-1969	Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) is a retronym that became useful after the creation of the sequels. In the US, TOS is usually pronounced as single letters, whereas "toss" appears to be more common in other parts of the world. While this acronym is the by far most common moniker in the official production and in the fandom, the original series is often referred to as just "Star Trek" in general interest news articles or in academic books and papers. This doesn't necessarily lead to confusion but in some cases seems to encourage the authors to neglect that the franchise consists of more than TOS (and perhaps the latest spin-offs that are in the news). Perhaps "The Cage" would deserve its own acronym "TC" for not being a regular TOS episode. But that acronym is very uncommon.
TAS	TAS	TAS	TAS	-	Star Trek: The Animated Series	1973-1974	The title cards of The Animated Series (TAS) just say "Star Trek", like those of TOS. The sub-title "The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek" was used for promotional purposes since the 1970s and still on the covers of the VHS releases until the 1990s. After the name had been popularized in the internet, the DVD and Blu-ray sets are labeled as "Star Trek: The Animated Series".
TNG	TNG	TNG	TNG	TNG	Star Trek: The Next Generation	1987-1994	Star Trek: The Next Generation is the first series that was referred to by an acronym during its original run, but more out of practicability than by design. Production documents from the series commonly used the short name "Star Trek".
DS9	DS9	DS9	DS9	DS9	Star Trek: Deep Space Nine	1993-1999	The series is named Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The correct spelling of the eponymous station, on the other hand, is "Deep Space 9". "DSN" for the series is very uncommon as a standalone acronym, although it is occasionally used when followed by episode numbers.
VOY	VOY	VOY	VOY	VGR	Star Trek: Voyager	1995-2001	The Star Trek Omnipedia (1995) and the Star Trek Encyclopedia II (1997) refer to Voyager as "VGR". Most fan sources such as notably MA and TrekCore follow the example of EAS (since 1998) and use the abbreviation "VOY". Perhaps surprisingly for many fans, the official Star Trek site too uses "VOY", never "VGR". Although John Van Citters still confirmed in 2016 that it is supposed to be the official abbreviation, the only notable use of "VGR" can be found in the Star Trek Encyclopedia IV that remains consistent with its predecessors. With Boimler referring to Voyager (the ship) as "VOY" in LOW: "We'll Always Have Tom Paris", we have sort of an in-universe confirmation of the acronym. ;-)
ENT	ENT	ENT	ENT	ENT	Star Trek: Enterprise	2001-2005	The full series title was just "Enterprise" until the third season.
DIS	DIS	DSC	DSC	-	Star Trek: Discovery	2017-2024	John Van Citters was fast to establish "DSC" as the acronym for Star Trek: Discovery, in a Twitter post on 24 July, 2016, the day following the revelation of the series name. This is consistent with the prefix of the shuttles of the eponymous ship. Yet, EAS and MA decided to maintain consistency with previous abbreviations and refer to the show as "DIS". "STD" showed up in a few early announcements in CBS social media accounts. In certain fan circles, Discovery is still referred to as "STD", now with a deliberate derogatory ring to it. A somewhat more friendly short name is "DISCO". Neither of these two is used anywhere in notable databases or articles.
SHO	ST	-	-	-	Star Trek: Short Treks	2018-2020	There is no known official short name for Short Treks.
PIC	PIC	PIC	PIC	-	Star Trek: Picard	2020-2023	PIC was confirmed by John Van Citters as the official abbreviation on 23 Jan, 2020.
LOW	LD	LOW	LDS	-	Star Trek: Lower Decks	2020-2024	John Van Citters uses "LDS" as the official abbreviation/acronym hybrid for Star Trek: Lower Decks. This alludes to Kirk's famous line about Spock taking "a little too much LDS" from "Star Trek: The Voyage Home". Van Citters announced "LDS" on Twitter on 13 July, 2020, after EAS and Memory Alpha had already settled on "LOW" and "LD", respectively. "LDS" doesn't show up at startrek.com yet. But it is a good supposition the site will go with that acronym.
PRO	PRO	PRO	tbd	-	Star Trek: Prodigy	2021-2024
SNW	SNW	SNW	SNW	-	Star Trek: Strange New Worlds	2022-
SFA	tbd	tbd	tbd	-	Star Trek: Starfleet Academy	tba

Annotations

Regarding the full titles of the Star Trek series, depending on the context, it is very common to simply omit the "Star Trek" from their names.
A full series title should usually include a colon. Well, at EAS this is not quite consistent because I admit it is tempting to drop the colon from short names such as in "Star Trek Picard", as opposed to "Star Trek: The Next Generation" where the colon has a clear purpose.
Policy at EAS: One- and two-word series names are represented by an abbreviation, always made up of the first three letters. An acronym is used for longer titles.
Policy at Memory Alpha: One-word series names are represented by an abbreviation, always made up of the first three letters. An acronym is used for longer titles.
Apparent official policy: One- and two-word series names are represented by an abbreviation. Sometimes this is a contracted "consonant-style" abbreviation like in "DSC" or "LDS", sometimes it consists of the first three letters like in "ENT" or "PIC". An acronym is used for longer titles.

Commentary

The disagreement about the short forms for Discovery and Lower Decks likely won't be settled in the near future. CBS and John Van Citters may have the authority to stipulate "DSC" and "LDS" for startrek.com and other official publications, but fan sites such as EAS or MA use series abbreviations far more often and simply have their own system for them.

It is debatable anyway whether there is anything such as an "official" series abbreviation. Most likely neither "VGR" nor "VOY" was used during the production of Star Trek: Voyager; the series was commonly called "Voyager" in production documents. The usefulness of the three-letter abbreviation only came into play as soon as people began to refer to episodes of the series, with the fandom "VOY" eventually overruling the "VGR" that was chosen for the Encyclopedia II.

Star Trek Movies

The following list shows how the Star Trek movies are commonly referred to by official sources and in the fandom.

Acronym	Numbering	Full name	Release year	Annotations
ST:TMP	"Star Trek I"	"Star Trek: The Motion Picture"	1979	"Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is sometimes retroactively referred to as "Star Trek I" (in fandom media, rather than in official publications).
ST:TWOK	"Star Trek II"	"Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"	1982
ST:TSFS	"Star Trek III"	"Star Trek III: The Search for Spock"	1984
ST:TVH	"Star Trek IV"	"Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home"	1986
ST:TFF	"Star Trek V"	"Star Trek V: The Final Frontier"	1989
ST:TUC	"Star Trek VI"	"Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country"	1991
ST:GEN	-	"Star Trek Generations"	1994
ST:FC	-	"Star Trek: First Contact"	1996	To be distinguished from the episode TNG: "First Contact".
ST:INS	-	"Star Trek: Insurrection"	1998
ST:NEM	-	"Star Trek Nemesis"	2002	To be distinguished from the episode VOY: "Nemesis". There is a press release from Paramount from 30 Aug 2002 that explicitly mentions the omission of the colon from the title.
ST09	-	"Star Trek (2009)"	2009	The first J.J. Abrams movie is officially just called "Star Trek" (with quotes or in italics, depending on the style used). This is unfortunate because it requires extra information to tell apart "Star Trek" (the movie from 2009), Star Trek (TOS, The Original Series) and Star Trek (the franchise). "Star Trek XI" is often used in the fandom still today. Since Roman numerals are customarily only assigned to the TOS movies and since it is a new continuity, EAS and most other sites (TrekCore, Trekmovie.com, Memory Alpha, as well as startrek.com) refrain from using "Star Trek XI" for that movie and have switched to "Star Trek (2009)".
STID	-	"Star Trek Into Darkness"	2013	Damon Lindelof explicitly stated he didn't want to have a colon in the title.
STB	-	"Star Trek Beyond"	2016
S31	-	"Section 31" (tv movie)	tba

Annotations

Only the first six Star Trek movies (the ones with the complete TOS crew) are officially referred to with Roman numerals. The TNG movies are only informally assigned the numbers VII to X, notably in the Blu-ray collections in which they are sold together with the TOS movies I to VI.
Some sources, such as Memory Alpha, prefer the full name of the movies over any abbreviations. For the TOS movies, EAS sometimes uses the "Star Trek {Roman numeral}" format as a short name, rather than the acronym.
The film acronyms are common in the fandom and in some official publications. The Star Trek Encyclopedia uses the full acronym with "ST" for Star Trek and the colon, which are often omitted in other sources.
The typography of the big letters on movie posters usually does not give away whether there is supposed to be a colon between "Star Trek" and the movie title, and in normal typesetting there are sometimes slight variations. Among the Star Trek movies, "Star Trek Into Darkness" and "Star Trek Beyond" are always spelled without a colon, consistent with the marketing campaign since the very first announcement. Among the Prime Universe movies, it is customary to omit the colon from "Star Trek Generations" and "Star Trek Nemesis" but not from "Star Trek: Insurrection". "Star Trek - The Motion Picture" and "Star Trek V - The Final Frontier" are two movies with a dash in the title in the fine print of the movie poster, but this is almost always replaced with a colon today.
At EAS, all episode titles and all movie titles are in quotes (except if they appear in HTML headings). This is the style recommended in the Associated Press Stylebook. Some other sources put series and movie titles in italics.