These Are The Voyages playing now.
Like a lot of Enterprise's base plots, I actually think the episode set up could have been a good idea - future crews playing a mission on the holodeck. Not as a series finale, but obviously the writers didn't plan on it being the series finale so they get a free pass on that. Only a little bit in but moments are jumping out at me.
10 years since the Enterprise launched? Even if this wasn't the finale you just killed all tension for however much longer the series remained on the air. Now we know that no matter what no main crew member dies before this point or, hell, even gets promoted / transferred off the ship.
When Trip and Malcolm are in engineering and this exchange happens:
M: "...there will be another Enterprise before too long."
T: "I imagine."
M: " Won't be the same."
I was hoping Trip would answer
"No, it will be better."
Edit : Ten years seems pretty early to decommission the Enterprise when it looks to be in perfect working order. The Columbia took what, four years to build - so maybe there are three other NX class ships out there, and they're already decommissioning one of them? I get their tech is outdated compared to the other Federation planets, but it seems a waste to garbage the Enterprise so soon. This isn't a direct criticism of the episode, there are a thousand reasons it could be decommissioned, more a general question.
Edit again: Well, that's it for Enterprise.
I can see why Tucker fans were upset - his death wasn't particularly well handled. With all the moments through the series where a main character should have died killing him here was pretty lame. His death would have had more impact of the mission was more connected to the founding of the Federation, and not some random bad guys angry at Shran.
Over all, I have to say the series deserved it's fate. The few highs come no where close to cancelling out the sheer drudgery that most of this series was. Lots of potential, but it never came close to living up to it.
Goodbye Hoshi.