After years of declining ratings, 'Endgame' proved that the Star Trek franchise still has a lot of life left in it, as Star Trek: Voyager managed to win its best overnight ratings in four years.

According to MediaWeek, the two hours of 'Endgame' achieved an average overnight rating of 8.3, combined with an audience share of 13%. Those are the highest ratings the show has achieved since the start of the fourth season, when Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) was introduced in 'Scorpion, Part Two.'

From 8:00pm to 9:00pm, the first hour of 'Endgame' actually managed to beat all other network shows, getting a 7.9 rating. This was ahead of NBC's Ed (which scored a 7.4), ABC sitcoms Spin City and Drew Carey (an average of 6.4), the CBS film 'Conspiracy Theory' (6.9) and two FOX sitcoms (5.1). The WB's Dawson's Creek, which aired its season finale, managed no more than a 4.8 rating.

For the entire night, NBC was still able to beat UPN, thanks to the strength of two back-to-back Law & Order episodes. But for a series that almost never achieved more than a fifth place over the past year, landing at second place and getting more than twice as many viewers as usual is still an amazing achievement.

These high ratings are undoubtedly partly the result of the massive amount of media attention the Voyager finale achieved, and proves that there is still a large amount of interest in the Star Trek franchise. Hopefully, this will mean that Enterprise will also be able to achieve high ratings once it airs its two-hour premiere in a few months.

Please note that these figures only represent the overnight ratings from the top 47 television markets measured by Nielsen. The final national ratings, which measure all markets, should be available in a day. As Voyager is most popular in the large urban markets, the finale's national ratings will likely be a bit lower than the overnight ratings, but in any case this still represents Voyager's best performance in four years.

For the original ratings report from MediaWeek, please follow this link.

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!