Star Trek: Enterprise -[Final Mission]- Stardate:503150. Final Log

[DreadPirateMurphy]

In the light of morning, something occurs to me that didn't last night. The last episode was NOT an homage to Star Trek. It was B&B's self-centered assertion that Star Trek is over now that "their" shows are over. They clearly saw themselves as the focal point for all things Trek. Take for example their quasi-whining in the press that Enterprise hadn't become "the Manny Coto show."

Does anybody doubt that we will continue to see Star Trek comics, novels, games, trading cards, toys, etc.? Does anybody doubt that Paramount will return to the trough of a money-making franchise once B&B's mythical "exhaustion" passes? There was no reason to turn the series finale into an homage to Trek. The stars were correct to feel slighted, and the fans are correct to feel disgusted by the whole mess.

Jolene Blalock said it best. They had 13 million viewers. Somehow, they managed to convince 11 million of them to go away. I place that at the feet of B&B. They failed to understand that the Star Trek fan base was both intelligent and somewhat obsessive. The progressive dumbing down of scripts, the attempts to "better appeal to geeks" through sex and violence, and the lack of attention to series continuity got progressively worse the further from the legacy of Gene.

B&B strike me as typical TV execs, the same type of bozos who ruined Firefly and Crusade. They think they're better than the audience they serve, and they can't help but condescend as they meddle with shows created by people like Roddenberry, Joss Whedon and JMS, folks who actually get why fans watch.

If the end of Enterprise means that somebody new may take over the creative control of the franchise, then it was well worth the sacrifice.

 

[DaveMage]

I really wanted to like the finale.

*sigh*

At least the last 20 seconds were cool. (Always good to hear 'ol Kirk's voice. )

This wasn't a valentine - it was a lump of coal.

 

[Staffan]

BTW, wasn't Enterprise supposed to answer the Klingon forehead question? Did they?

Yes.
[sblock]Klingons tried using genetic materials harvested from augmented humans (a la Khan) to improve themselves. The whole thing backfired, leading to human-like klingons.[/sblock]

 

[Villano]

Thanks!

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Between the 5 series we had:

TOS's Turnabout Intruder which was not one of the good episodes of the series, and often ranked side by side with Spock's Brain. It wasn't a real ending anyways.

TNG's All Good Things sort of marked the end of one era, with some changes and he resolution of the Q storyline from the 1st episode. No one's storyline really got resolved though. It had too much time travel stuff though. And it lead right into Star Trek: Generations...

DS9's What You Leave Behind, had a bunch of changes and resolutions that came rather quickly and suddenly through a 9 parter (like the end of the Dominion War). But it completed the storyline for a lot of characters, though it was disappointing the Prophet story had no connection to the Dominion story.

Voyager's Endgame got the Voyager home in the final episode but in the most contrived and cheesy way possible. Complete with a bad time travel plot, and the fact that the Borg no longer resemble a threat anymore. Out of the actual finale it was probably the worst.

Enterprise's These are the Voyages, is an episode that desperately tries to bring closure to an incomplete series. Nothing much changed during the 6 years in between Terra Prime and this episode. The holodeck served as an all right plot device in this episode unlike many many others. Though I don't really see how watching the holodeck programmed convinced Riker to come clean about the Pegasus, from what I remember with that episode it was mainly Picard pressuring Riker for the truth.

As for Tucker's death, yeah it's pretty bad but not everybody dies a meaningful death. Other than that so far we've seen Tasha Yar's, Kirk's, Jazdia's, Data's, Spock's (though he came back) and Sisko's (though he ascended) deaths.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

In "Terra Prime," what was up with the weapon missing and hitting the bay? If they had been monitoring Trip's changes, wouldn't they presumably then fix any sabotage he committed? And even if I can buy the fact that he's soooo slick that he could fool all of them, I don't at all buy the fact that hitting the bay rendered it completely harmless. A weapon that powerful and with that much potential drilling into the bay would not just fry some fish and evaporate a little water.

I had the feeling that the mistargeting/sabotage that took place was actually done by Trip while Archer was battling Paxton. He was standing behind some kind of console thingy with the airmask on when he talked to Archer.

 

[Orius]

Terra Prime wasn't too bad. Sort of weak in spots, but nothing really surprising. I knew Trip was going to end up punching one of Paxton's goons, and I wasn't disappointed in how that was handled. The Carl Sagan memorial was a great touch too.

As for These Are the Voyages....

The fan complaints were right on the mark. I held off on complaining about the whole holodeck angle so I could see the episode for myself, but it was very very poorly done. The whole focus should have been about the birth of the Federation, but that was barely even touched in the episode. Instead we get half an episode of Riker agonizing over a decision that was made in a TNG episode that aired 11 or 12 years ago. Most of the rest of the episode was devoted to an abduction storyline that felt forced from the start. Even Voyager had a better series ending episode than this. And why the hell are Hoshi and Travis still ensigns? Surely they would have been promoted by 2161 what with the Romulan Wars and all. All in all, it seemed like a monument to Bermaga mediocrity.

However, it did have one bright spot at the very end. As the Enterprise-D flies off, we get a Picard voiceover doing the old "Space: the final frontier..." monologue which shifts to a shot of the original Enterprise with a Kirk voiceover, and then ended with the NX-01 and Archer ending the voiceover. That was a great touch, and the final episode would have been much better if B&B had focused on stuff like this rather than retreading an episode of TNG that had already been resolved years ago.

 

[Orius]

And then they tell us that Archer gave a great speech and end the episode before we get to hear any of it!

Exactly. I wanted to see the speech, and hear someone say something about the Federation. Instead we get Riker and Troi in the peanut gallery.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I remember thinking- wouldn't it have been a better idea to have Riker in the future agonizing over a decision involving a treaty with the Romulans (and thus paralleling the founding of the Federation, as well as providing a "bright spot of hope for the future" by ending the Romulan/Federation war? Not to mention following somewhat from the end of the last movie...)

Instead we got... what we got.

 

[Greylock]

And why the hell are Hoshi and Travis still ensigns? Surely they would have been promoted by 2161...

Good point. One of the few things I liked about this episode was Hoshi getting the reins of the ship. And I noticed Travis got a few lines, too. Almost like they were Last-Episode gimmees to the actors though.