The 10th Anniversary of the ENT Series Finale

[cooleddie74]

Tonight (May 13, 2015) marks precisely 10 years to the night since both "Terra Prime" and "TATV" aired and not only did Enterprise come to an end after a four-year run but the Star Trek television franchise officially went to sleep and began its current hibernation.

A million things both good and bad can be (and have been) said about the last two episodes of the series and the current state of the Trek franchise outside of the two most recent movies, but for right now I wanted to acknowledge not only the anniversary of the end of Enterprise but also of the Star Trek television franchise as we knew it for almost twenty years. What are your thoughts as we reach the decade-mark? What would you have changed about ENT's last episodes and what are your fondest and most vivid memories about that bittersweet May evening ten years ago tonight?

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkecbH6an0w[/yt]

 

[jespah]

I still love the very ending (3 ships). Of course there's a ton to complain about. Main thing that bugs me (which I haven't mentioned before) is that the details were leaked and spoiled. Don't know if I'd feel better about things if they hadn't been. I suspect I would not.

 

[cooleddie74]

I remember hearing that Trip would die in the finale and that was a major bummer considering he had been my favorite character on the series, and of course there'd been stories leaked to the press that the ENT cast wasn't too happy that Next Gen actors were hired to take up so much of the screen time in a rushed (and shortened to just one hour) finale.

I found the last minutes of the episode to be effective and entertaining and the flyby of the three Enterprises was just plain beautiful, but pretty much everything else between the opening credits and the other lead characters mourning Trip's death was a mess. Thankfully "Terra Prime" was a satisfying grand slam of an episode so the entire night wasn't a fizzle.

 

[Willow]

Maybe I should consider myself lucky, as I only got into Enterprise last year. I binge watched and it became my fave in the franchise. And I didn't have to,deal with all the "craziness" that probably was occurring as it was aired live. Since I "wasn't there" for it 10 years ago, I don't know how the cast reacted to the finale. But since that time , I have seen interviews with most of the cast about it, and they've been pretty cordial and diplomatic about it . (Well, aside from some of the comments I've heard from Jolene)

 

[eyeresist]

I only watched the show sporadically when it first aired (admittedly it was also aired very sporadically down here), and I only watched TATV once I had the DVD set. As someone who only really likes ENT and DS9 (and the movies), I did not find TNG and TOS horning in on the ending to be a good thing.

What would I have changed about the ending? I would have done away with the plot of TATV, and instead had an episode foreshadowing the Romulan war (which had been hinted at earlier in the season, during the Vulcan and Andorian arcs) and the forming of the Federation as a response. Finish with something that says "...and the adventure continues" (which was of course how they concluded TSFS when they didn't know if there would be any more Trek after that).

 

[jespah]

I could have gone with the plot, even Trip's death. Hey, people die in space - and a main character death or injury in the finale can be compelling, e. g. M*A*S*H, where Mulcahy, a listener character, is deafened, and Charles, an uptight and formal character, mourns for the deaths of poor street musicians.

But I hated the framing device. It completely took me out of the episode. And the framing device could have even - maybe - worked if it had taken place on the Titan and centered around some other sort of dilemma that actually fit in with the action on the holographic screen. Because even if you swallow the rest of it, hook, line, and sinker, you're still left with Riker consulting what appears to be the wrong program. What does Trip's death, Archer's unseen speech, and T'Pol peeling carrots tell him about the Pegasus, its illegal cloaking device, and the deaths of the people involved with it?

 

[Reanok]

It's hard to belive it's been 10 years since the finale . I still think Trip's death was stupid and unnecessary. I did like the ending scene with the ships but for for me the finale was Demons/Terra Prime.

 

[Long Syntax]

I remember being all like "man, I'm gonna get all emotional watching this ending" and then, nothing. Like many here, I was disappointed that TATV was handled the way it was - a holo-memory of the crew that fast forwarded through so much time and the unnecessary death of Trip. The show deserved it's own send off. As much as I loved TNG, having Riker ad Troi inserted into the finale just was unsettling.

I know it's been said a million times in this bbs, but those are my memories of that last show - disappointed.

 

[cooleddie74]

If Trip was going to die then his death should have been more interesting and had more of a visceral and visible impact on the other characters, and framing it with the holoadventures of Will Riker and Deanna Troi and allowing TNG characters to hog so much of the limelight and the final script was just irresponsible and profoundly stupid on many levels. The writers and producers should never have greenlit this idea as a series finale and the last episode of the modern Star Trek television franchise.

I know they didn't have much time to wrap up the series and write a finale after UPN cancelled the series, but come on. They could have done better than that. The fans deserved better, the series deserved better and the ENT cast members deserved better.

 

[Dukhat]

Because even if you swallow the rest of it, hook, line, and sinker, you're still left with Riker consulting what appears to be the wrong program. What does Trip's death, Archer's unseen speech, and T'Pol peeling carrots tell him about the Pegasus, its illegal cloaking device, and the deaths of the people involved with it?

Never mind the fact that in the actual Pegasus episode, Riker doesn't decide to tell Picard about the cloaking device until after he and Pressman beam aboard the Pegasus, so the holodeck bullshitting had nothing to do with his decision, like TATV would have us believe.

 

[cooleddie74]

I suppose that in half-hearted defense of Brannon Braga he never said it was a good Valentine to the fans. I think it was more of a Valentine to himself and other members of the ENT production staff who had once worked on TNG. One last hurrah from the Beebs to their favorite chapter of the Star Trek franchise before that franchise went into hibernation for a while.

 

[Dukhat]

I think it was more of a Valentine to himself and other members of the ENT production staff who had once worked on TNG.

That's the only reason that makes any sense as to why this episode actually exists.

 

[Corran Horn]

This could've really tied-in to the Titan's mission post-Nemesis - I've no idea why they tried to shoehorn "The Pegasus" in there.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, given that both Jonathan and Marina had aged more than 11 years since "The Pegasus(TNG)" and looked older and different from the way they did in Season 7 of their own series it would have been a much better idea to set the 24th century sequences of the finale in the years immediately after Nemesis and have the holodeck program be running aboard the Titan.

That would have been a fantastic opportunity to see the starship that Will commanded after 2379 and see Riker and Troi in their married life aboard another vessel. I get that using "The Pegasus" was an original and completely out-of-left-field idea and we can't slam the Beebs for being repetitive and predictable in this instance, but it just doesn't work very well beyond the concept. The actors had aged and there were other inconsistencies between the two episodes that were too distracting to ignore and just shrug off.

 

[Dukhat]

^Exactly. As I've always said, the concept of someone from the future using a holodeck recreation to study past events is a good idea. But it should not have been shoehorned in to the "Pegasus" episode, and the story should not have been about Riker and Troi. They should have just been silent observers. To this day I still can't fathom why anyone thought this was a good idea.

They already had the Enterprise-E CGI model. They had the TNG movie uniforms. They had the Ent-E sets (I think). They had all the Romulan stuff from Nemesis. Why oh why couldn't they have set TATV post-Nemesis on the Titan (Ent-E with a new name), and have a better story, like say, that the Romulans found the NX-01's flight recorder from the Earth-Romulan War and Riker & Troi use the Titan's holodeck to play the last moments of the ENT crew?

 

[jespah]

Or even lead into something like - "Most of the records of this mission and this ship were suppressed, Will. Do you have any idea why?"

"Deanna, you want to solve that mystery?"

"I do, and you've got just the clearance to get me the records I need. The children are asleep and I need something to occupy my time for a few hours."

"Maybe it'll take longer than a few hours."

"We'll see about that."

Cue ENT theme song.

 

[cooleddie74]

That's better than what we got.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Yeah, given that both Jonathan and Marina had aged more than 11 years since "The Pegasus(TNG)" and looked older and different from the way they did in Season 7 of their own series it would have been a much better idea to set the 24th century sequences of the finale in the years immediately after Nemesis and have the holodeck program be running aboard the Titan.

That would have been a fantastic opportunity to see the starship that Will commanded after 2379 and see Riker and Troi in their married life aboard another vessel. I get that using "The Pegasus" was an original and completely out-of-left-field idea and we can't slam the Beebs for being repetitive and predictable in this instance, but it just doesn't work very well beyond the concept. The actors had aged and there were other inconsistencies between the two episodes that were too distracting to ignore and just shrug off.

^I LOVE this idea.

My memories of the original finale night are a bit sour. My local UPN channel preempted the finale for a sporting event (don't ask me what) and ultimately aired it at something like Saturday night around 11pm. I say "around 11pm" because another sporting event delayed the start time for the second airing back even further than announced.

This all was par for the course with our UPN station for the entirety of Enterprise's run (and Voyager before it), so the delayed airing was typically the norm and not surprising.

But, like cooleddie wrote upthread, this night marked the end of an era for Trek and should have been given a momentous send-off. Instead, in our area, we got a late Saturday night airing between sports and the beginning of infomercials.

Sad that both eras of primetime televised Trek (TOS and the TNG-DS9-VOY-ENT series) would be exiled to Friday nights to end their respective runs quietly and without much fanfare on the network's part.

Reading about the CSI TV movie this fall that will put a bow on that franchise, I feel a little envious that something similar wasn't done for TV Trek back in '05. A Romulan War TV movie or mini-series would've taken some of the sting away, I think.

 

[Keith1701]

Tonight (May 13, 2015) marks precisely 10 years to the night since both "Terra Prime" and "TATV" aired and not only did Enterprise come to an end after a four-year run but the Star Trek television franchise officially went to sleep and began its current hibernation.

A million things both good and bad can be (and have been) said about the last two episodes of the series and the current state of the Trek franchise outside of the two most recent movies, but for right now I wanted to acknowledge not only the anniversary of the end of Enterprise but also of the Star Trek television franchise as we knew it for almost twenty years. What are your thoughts as we reach the decade-mark? What would you have changed about ENT's last episodes and what are your fondest and most vivid memories about that bittersweet May evening ten years ago tonight?

Wow, I didn't realize it has been 10 years.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Let's all watch TATV in memory of the end!!

j/k