I never understood why so much negativity was attached to the finale. I recently re-watched the episode, and thought it wrapped up the show nicely. Your thoughts?
Been a while since I watched it but off the top I have two reasons Trips death, I never liked the character but it was a meaningless death for the sake of it. If it was any other episode he would have thought of an alternative way to resolve the situation but because he was slated for death the best he could come up with was a suicide attack. Its a TNG/Enterprise finale. Not opposed to crossovers but not for a finale, it should be a Ent only ep without TNG or any other show coming into steal some of the limelight. Jonathan Frakes himself said it was a disservice to the Entrprise cast and what the heck happened to Trois accent anyway? It didnt even make sense if you watched the TNG episode because Riker didnt go and see Picard to tell him the truth. Line it up alongside the two part finales of TNG, Voyager and DS9 and it was dissapointing. They all had big storys to tell, this was a filler episode at best.
I see your point but maybe the Vulcan belief in the 'needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few' resonated with him. Lol never even considered that. But, if you think about it, he used the NX era programme because he was uncertain. Maybe, he chickened out of speaking with Picard after the holodeck.
1. All the action takes place in the 24th century. 2. Inconsistent with the character development over season four. 3. Low stakes of Trip's sacrifice. 4. The lack of historicity of the holoprogram. 5. Poorly shoehorned into Pegasus plot. 6. Decline of quality from previous Enterprise episodes. 7. The episode was a warmed over Braga story, rewritten at the last minute.
It was seven years after the last, IE penultimate, episode and yet none of them had been promoted or reassigned. They pretty much look and sound all like they do in the penultimate episode. Doesn't seem likely or plausible.
It was a holo re-creation of the ENT crew. This might account for the the crew not aging. Plus, it does seem unusual that none of the bridge crew advanced in rank but not impossible.
If they had ended it with Archer's speech, which was supposed to be so historic but we left as he was just starting. Trips death was like an afterthought and that whole 'last mission' seemed pointless. Riker spliced in playing fry cook just did not work- the idea he was running the holo-simulation to help resolve a personal issue trivialized the Enterprise series. The only good thing about it was showing the different Enterprises at the very end.
If they'd done this first then the preceding two-parter as the TRUE finale and not just the de jure one, IMO everything would have been so much more accepted by the fandom... Mark
This sums it up for me. I wanted to like the finale, but after it was done, all I could think was "what the hell was that?!"
Best thing about TATV was in the season's bloopers. Frakes, as Chef, asks Malcolm, "Do you find yourself attracted to him?" Keating, caught off guard, cracks up with "That's-- a bit personal, isn't it?"
The whole "Valentine" build-up didn't pay off. It was just badly done. In all honesty, I'd pretty much given up on Enterprise early in the 3rd season. I tried to catch an episode here and there, but life was busy and the VCR had become a pain to deal with. What I did see up to the end was disappointing. I made a special effort to see the finale, and it just left me cold. The best part was the ship thing at the end. Pretty sad.
You know it was really bad when Paramount gave Simon & Svhuster permission to retcon the whole "canon" story in the novels line---and really the novels (starting with "The Good That Men Do" and explain we went from Terra Prime and the Coalition Of Planets to the Romulan War and the United Federation of Planets). But also with the Pegasus story, the whole question of Riker talking to Troi was never answered---especially since in the original episode Admiral Pressman very clearly tells Riker to discuss the situation with no one, not even Picard (and these "Be Quiet" orders in the original episode apparently came all the way from the heads of Starfleet Security and Intelligence, since in the same scene Riker is surprised when Pressman mentions that an Admiral Rainor, who is apparently head of Starfleet Security, is involved and is watching how events unfold). Also, in the original episode Riker barely has time to be visiting the Holodeck as much as TATV has him visiting. Also, the NX-01 herself only shows up once in the episode: in the montage at the end. But for the whole episode I found the CGI Enterprise-D looked like a pile of vomit flying through what appeared to be Nintendo 64-era asteroids (the reminded me of the asteroids that were used in Starfox-64---in 1996 those visual graphics were acceptable, but in 2005 they were not acceptable) space. It was a horrible modelling job---but the CGI on the series never was stellar to begin with.
This was a post made just after the episode aired: Problem No. 1: The "framing device" is an 11-year-old episode of TNG, which means that pretty much everybody watching would already know how Riker makes his decision concerning the Pegasus device. And it bears NO RESEMBLANCE to what occurs in "This Ain't The Valentine." Problem No. 2a: Bizarre characterization. Having seen "The Pegasus," I remember Riker being under a great deal of stress. In TATV, you'd think he didn't have a care in the world: smiling while having a relaxing drink with Troi in Ten Forward, inviting her to dinner... At one point Troi tells Riker she has a counseling appointment with Barclay and if she's late "Reg will be furious." WTF?! More likely, Reg would be apologizing to her for being on time. -- Archer had faced danger on many occasions throughout the NX-01's travels (including a suicide mission in Azati Prime) and yet Trip handled every one of those instances without going to pieces. -- Trip was a pretty gifted engineer and the best plan to save Archer that he could come up with was to blow himself up. -- Shran, who always seemed pretty savvy to me, couldn't tell the difference between business partners and criminals. Problem 2b: The drink, the dinner invitation and Troi going off to her appointment, along with their little tour of the NX-01 took precious time away from the regular cast and added absolutely NOTHING to this 43-minute finale. It was the very last episode of Enterprise and supposedly a farewell to all of Trek for a while (tho' the only references made to other Trek were tributes to TNG). Problem No. 3: According to "Bound," Trip and T'Pol were bonded mates. The excruciatingly touching scene at the end of Terra Prime is wiped out by a break-up that is mentioned but goes unexplained. Problem No. 4: What kind of moron actually writes a SPOILER into a script? Problem No. 5: An intruder alert is sounded and Archer and Trip dash off to confront the intruders without stopping by the armory. Problem No. 6: Where the hell were Reed and the MACOs? Confined to their quarters? Problem No. 7: No death scene. Did we really need one? Maybe not. But since... Problem No. 8: ... There was no service for Trip, I think there should have been one. (Sim served Enterprise for two weeks and he got a funeral. In "A Night in Sickbay" Archer actually dreams about holding a funeral for his DOG.) Problem No. 9: T'Pol is alone in Trip's quarters packing up his things. Archer arrives. T'Pol gripes that Trip told her that as time passed she would miss her mother less. She wants to know why he said that. Archer, the speechmaker could come up with nothing but cliches. Besides, I doubt very much that Trip would have told T'Pol that. Does anyone who actually watched the show doubt that Trip still missed his sister? Problem No. 10: At the signing ceremony, nobody... and I mean NOBODY among Trip's so-called friends lament his absence. Archer, T'Pol and Phlox are in the green room waiting for the ceremony to begin. Archer is fretting about his speech, T'Pol is fretting about Archer's inability to dress himself, Phlox is just as cheery and perky as ever ... Malcolm, Hoshi and Travis are in the audience either griping about their nosebleed seats or chatting about their career ambitions.
TATV highlights how tone deaf and out of touch B&B were with the audience of franchise. On the ENT season 2 Blu-ray, Braga apologized for what him and Berman did with this episode. Berman having apologized years prior. Want to know how poorly put together TATV was? Give me the name of the aliens who are hunting Shran, board Enterprise and die along with Trip. I'll save you the effort there isn't one.
You guys didn't like your valentine? Anyone else remember the shitstorm on this board when a pissed off somebody-or-rather from the studio came here and leaked the details of the finale weeks before it aired?
I liked the cast. I think they were good actors who were put in an untenable position. Having rewatched ENT a few years ago, I can say it was decent, but that these people got the short end of the stick when it came to TATV. Of course, I feel that way about Riker & Troi's part in the episode as well.