Although we're talking about the last episode of a cancelled Trek show, three years after the TNG movies were dead. I'm sure they could have made an exception at that point. (Not that I would have wanted them to.)
One thing I do like about this episode is it really shows how a holo-novel would work. Even though holodeck adventures appear through TNG, DS9 & VOY, you never see them played out to this detail. I like how it shows you could play the part of an "extra" on the bridge and watch what's going, be a random security officer etc and take part in the action. Or then switch to subjective mode and just watch what's going on. I thought that was a cool concept to finally see.
This was not an idea worth saving. And The Pegasus wasn't a standout Next Gen episode. And there's nothing going on on Enterprise that help him deal with Riker's dilemma. It's just incompetent writing. You can't shoehorn Next Gen into Enterprise.
I think that it wasn't entirely necessary to go outside TNG in order to find a story that fit with the idea of learning from the NX to apply to present day. There would seem to be useful parallels between "The Outcast" and the Trip-T'Pol relationship that Riker could apply to his choices. I doubt that Berman and Braga would have the courage to use that episode as a reference, and Pegasus was much grander. The bigger problem would always be that there would be no interaction between the casts because of the framing device: the holodeck. Riker was never going to make an impact on the 22nd century, and the NX characters would be there more or less to amuse him.
Once i got bored and joined both episodes into 1 video once, but yeah the part where he said he is gonna talk to the captain and then he never does made edit bit fucked up
I think most TNG fans felt underwhelmed with it but not insulted by it. But it is pretty insulting to Enterprise fans and especially Trip fans. Less so than did a lot of season 1 and 2 episodes.
Riker could have been depicted as being in command of the Titan or the Enterprise-E and the Sovereign model not be shown. Surely the spirit Paramount restriction wouldn't have been violated by depicted an interior scene on the E-E, say Riker's quarters, a new lounge/10 Forward, Riker's ready room, etc... You can still end the episode with showing the exteriors of the NX-10 through 1701-D.
Set it on the Enterprise-E before Riker leaves? It's not like we know a lot about what they crew was doing between FC and NEM. I mean, you could have made it about whether or not Riker should leave the E-E for Titan. That, at least, has some level of thematic compatibility with the last voyage of the NX crew.
He and Data then went to Holodeck 2 to see if Captain Lorca had any insight into dealing with mutineers.
What if the Pegasus framing story was ANOTHER holodeck re-enactment? During the Titan era, Riker and Troi could be conducting it as part of a therapy session to work out lingering issues with Pressman, decide how he could have handled the situation better, etc. An additional simulation of TATV is just an incidental part of that. It'd explain the differences in their appearance, the lack of immediate relevance of TATV to the Pegasus incident, and the lack of sync to the Pegasus events. "I'm ready to go talk to Captain Picard" just means he's come to some new conclusion. The exercise is over. I don't have much desire to rewatch TATV just to see if that would work. Anyone know if there are specific references in the episode that keep it from working?
What's worse is that the writers actually think this is something a person could do during a crisis. What would they do if they were in the Navy, trapped in a secluded island inlet, with an enemy ship circling the island waiting for a chance to attack? Hang on, let me just spend an hour role-playing online and see if the game can make up my mind for me...
It still suffers from two problems: there are no real interactions between the two time periods, and the story is based upon the guest characters rather than growing organically from the stories that Enterprise was doing. If you want it to be based on the Titan, why not have a Living Witness type episode, wherein Riker, on his mission to the Romulans, attempts to correct the record on something that Archer did during the Earth-Romulan War. Perhaps Shran or Phlox are still alive to testify. Or they find the Enterprise (or its duplicate from the Xindi War) and try to piece together the story of how it was lost.
I'm not talking about rewriting it. I'm talking an alternate interpretation of what we actually saw. If it doesn't work, then okay.
There are exterior shots of the Enterprise D throughout the episode, with none of the NX-01, the reason being that since the stuff on the NX-01 is simulated, it would make no sense to include exterior shots of the ship. When objections were raised that the show's main ship should appear in the final episode, the montage of Enterprises was hastily thought up. So it would be odd that the Enterprise D does get exterior shots if that stuff is also a simulation done up on the Titan's holodecks.
"These are the Voyages" is just a bad episode all around. It's uneven dramatically, lacks any real sense of momentum, spends a lot of time with exposition, and leaves out many moments of drama.