Wow, that makes very little sense from a storytelling perspective, given their last scene in "Terra Prime." Source?
TATV is certainly my least favorite ENT episode. Much as I like Riker and Troi on TNG, I think that's where they should have stayed... The only Trek episode I like even less than this is Turnabout Intruder. In the 60s, shows just ended and there were no finales as we understand them, but even so, I wish they'd ended TOS with a better episode...
I didn't really feel like it was that bad IF you take the episode without all of the TNG stuff framed around it. That's what did it in. That and Trip dying. I do have to admit I like Riker as the cook, though.
Only things I like about this episode: The external shots of the Ent-D And the montage at the end with the narration. That's about it.
The episode was planned and put off over and over. There was a plan to have William Shatner appear as "chef" in a season 4 episode, but Paramount wouldn't pay his fee, so it never happened. After Shatner's documentaries, I could totally see him in the Riker role here.
The Shatner/Chef story was totally different to this. That was going to be a ripoff of the movie Dave, where chef just happened to look so much like the famous Captain Kirk that Daniels recruits him to fill in for the real deal during some big event the real Kirk is mysteriously absent for.
So I had a long drive this morning and listened to it again. it's been uploaded to Youtube. It's really a great interview, and very informative, covering many things discussed in this thread. He talks about the finale a bit, the William Shatner thing, etc. In regards to Trip and T'Pol, he says he thought they were going to end it, but have some kind of crisis between them that would effect the whole ship, and maybe have some kind of ongoing thing with them. Another great interview on this same show, is with Mike Sussman, a few episodes later. He covers much of the same information, from a different perspective, as he was a writer for the series all 4 seasons. yeah, I could see him in that role as Chef, though, "interviewing" the crew. There was also something about Shatner reprising his role as mirror Kirk(referred to as "Tiberius") That after Mirror, Mirror, (mirror)Spock used that device on Kirk and took over the Enterprise, and that the device doesn't kill them, but sends them to a different dimension. It's too bad that Shatner never got to show up in modern trek, considering Spock, McCoy, and Scotty did.
I truly feel that for the final episode of Enterprise that if they wanted someone to tell the story it should have been Captain Archer or at least Admiral Archer (after the UFP was formed). We don't even know what happened to the rest of the crew. There was one episode where Lt. Reed became Captain Reed of the Intrepid. Wonder if that is what happened? At the Cons, they keep suggesting that "Trip's demise" was a coverup and he actually went on to work for Section 31. Funny, Lt. Reed was one of their operatives. You think they'd let him know? I guess we'll never know now.
I find this quite annoying - it seems to have become a bad sci-fi trope that a random main cast member has to die in the last episode of the series to add some “weight” to it. It can be done well when it serves a real dramatic purpose, and has been well set up, but often it seems like the showrunners just threw a dart at a picture of the cast to decide who to bump off.
I didn't like "Trip" being bumped off either. They could have chosen Travis, Hoshi or even (God Forbid!) T'Pol. Trip & Malcolm were best buds and worked well together. I did not like the fact that they had "Trip" kill himself just to save Captain Archer. He could have died (as Worf would say) "a more glorious death with honor". It seems that Connor didn't mind but he knows his fans did.
I'm new to the series - never knew it existed until January of this year!! So, where can I get the novels based on Enterprise?? Can I get them through Amazon?
Yes you can. The reading order is HERE (but beware spoilers lower down on that page) There were also a few novels set during the TV series, kind of inbetween episodes.
The Enterprise books are really good. I've enjoyed reading them. I think you'll enjoy reading them and the continuing adventures of the Enterprise crew. I just wish there was a new Enterprise novel coming out in 2018.
I know it really can't be so, but, this ep sure feels like the producers wanted to deliberately stick it to fans for getting their gravy train cancelled. Killing off the most popular character is almost too obvious that this was the thinking behind this ep. But like I said, this can't really be the reason. Can it?
No, the episode was conceived as a season 2, normal episode. Killing Trip may have been Braga. He wanted to kill Seven in the Voyager finale. He thought they needed to have a price to get home, and that Seven would sacrifice herself to get them there. He was overruled by Kenneth Biller(and probably Berman).
Re-watching the Xindi storylines now. With what all the Enterprise crew goes through, yeah, you would think they could find a better way to bump off a character. I would have preferred they lost Hoshi or Travis - NOT Trip!