These are the Voyages... as a middle of season episode

I always wonder if TATW episode was televised halfway through the season and we'd have some other episode as the Series Finale, that TATW would be better liked by the fans.

Even the scene where Trip dies -- say the episode was tweaked and he was just injured (and conveniently healed at the end of the episode) that fans would have liked the episode better.

I just did a re-watch and thought it wasn't THAT BAD of an episode -- I suppose as the SERIES FINALE, it a clunker, but if it was a middle of season episode, if fans would like it better.

Your thoughts?

 

The script should've been placed in the trash before filming commenced. Even Turnanabout Intruder is a better finale.

 

I thought it was a terrible and insulting finale but an interesting idea for an episode so I would have been fine seeing it anywhere else in the season (minus the stupid Trip bit!)

 

I read this episode was planned prior to the cancellation. I don't understand why they considered placing this episode in the middle of the series if it had continued until Season 7. Why tie their own hands by revealing the fates of all the main cast? Season 5-7 sure would've been lacking in suspense had they been made

 

But was it the exact story or just the basic premise of Riker running an Enterprise holodeck program.

 

I think it was the basic premise of Riker running the holodeck program. So if there were things that changed, it could always be construed as the "basic premise" so the writers hands weren't tied.

I suppose since we are making this "middle of season" episode, the Trip death scene had to be tweaked and a throw-away line about it being a "Basic premise" It almost had to be as there were "private conversations between T'Pol and Archer, for instance, that the computer must've made up.

Just like when we see movie "based on a true story", a lot of times conversations were added and we have no idea of what was really said but used to help the story move along -- and in this case, help Riker with his "Pegasus Decision".

 

They wrote it near the end of Season 3 when they thought S3 was going to be the last Season. When ENT got renewed for S4 - they shelved it. In fact the final Demons/Terra prime arc by Manny Coto was originally planed as a three episode arc. But when B&B got the notification of cancellation (Braga had pretty ,much left Coto and Co. to do their own thing as he was off working on getting "The 4400" ready for CBS - and Berman was moving on to pre production for his 'Romulan War' Star Trek film that never made it past pre-production as CBS was just allowing him to work on it until his contract with CBS ran out); they told Coto THEY wanted to do the final episode - so they took what they'd written at the end of S3 and filmed it as the series finale (which is why the characterizations in the script are off in a big way, especially Trip Tucker).

 

I've never once believed that out of them, to be honest. Berman and Braga changed up their story behind this so many times in the first year alone after it aired. It's hard to overstate just how much vitriol this finale caused. Like, I think the very first time I came to this forum without seeing one single thread on TATV--going back to when @Morpheus first leaked spoilers-- was last year.

Late last year, I might add.

Being on Tumblr, and especially a fandom that rivals Trek on outrage factor has....tempered my words to the producers a bit. But they deserve every bit of backlash they got for that finale.

 

The dislike for this episode is well deserved it's a lousy way to treat the Enterprise cast. They deserved a better send off and Trip Tucker's deserved a better storyline than he got too.It's just a crappy way to end a series.

 

They should recton that finale at the first opportunity. For all we know none of it happened the way history portrayed it. It was just a holo program after all. Poor Trip.

 

I always thought that I'm probably one of the very few persons who actually like this episode. Regarding the comments here it seems to be true But yeah, I could imagine that it would've been received better if they hadn't used it as a series finale. The idea itself is quite cool, but it's actually more a new TNG episode.

 

It's a complete slap in the face to anyone who had an investment in these characters, and this means ENT fans and the performers who breathed life to these characters. To make it some pocket episode of The Pegasus with Riker and Troi, who don't remotely look like what they were in 1993, while the ENT cast are guest stars in their own show is beyond shocking and insulting. A finale or a series finale should always be about the characters and a final bow for the fans who loved that series and followed it to the very end. It was as if the UPN brass came along to the Writers Room and told the team, "No one is watching your show, and we really want Trek fans to come aboard and watch this finale because we desperately crave a big ratings boost. So can you some how bring elements of ratings gold to this series finale?"

Everyone in this thread, or better yet this forum, better yet within the ENT cast, could have thought up a better finale for Archer and his crew. Wasn't THAT BAD??? Is an understatement to that episode. If it was a middle of the season episode and these 2 TNG veterans made this episode--with tweaks-- it would remind me of those dumb VOY episodes with Barkley. Sweeps week gimmick crap which is suppose to give a ratings boost but nothing to advance the mythos or the plots which were deep in development. This episode is stupid, since it's something from TNG's The Pegasus, fans of TNG series already know Riker's decision so why is it necessary to have a rundown of his thoughts??? So he injects himself as a Cook in a holodeck fantasy. Since its a fantasy to support and aid Riker in his plot, there's nothing about ENT is authentic and can easily be dismissed as not accurate.

 

ENT had loads of bad episodes. Had TATV been mid-season or if there was a season 5 it would have just been dismissed like "Vox Sola" or "Precious Cargo". It's that it was the finale to the show and 18 years of Star Trek where it failed.

Utterly.

 

Even as a mid-season ep it's still poor. Even if you set aside all the crummy ENT-based story decisions, you've still got the weird shoe-horning of The Pegasus framing device. TATV does not fit into the narrative of that episode.

 

One of the other main reason why I do not like TATV is, lack of any kind of consistency. As discussed in another thread, time point must be after Romulan Wars and we see every member of Enterprise after ten years unchanged again at Enterprise. Hey, it was a great war between. You had at least two perfectly experienced captain candidates at the staff (T'Pol and Trip) and one very good tactical officer (Reed) who can be a very useful captain or strategist at war times. Even more what about Archer who is the hero who saved the world and grown to be a talented diplomat? Generally, war times requested more staff, because of continuously lost at the front, building up new war machinery and without brilliant diplomats military victories have no meaning. Where would you recruit such kind of personal, wouldn't you consider your most important ship?

Even details as kitschy, hearth breaking Trip/T'Pol story line or the art of Hoshi's reflection about Trip were very odd to me.

We have Twilight as the middle of season which is also totally full of inconsistencies and acting of all main characters like from some parallel universe. As we know, it was written for Janeway and Chakotay, rejected for VOY and recycled for ENT. For me unexplained reasons, Twilight is favorite episode of some ENT fans. May be there would be also people who would find TATV great, if it is aired at the middle of the season.

For me in both cases, TATV is very weak and sloppy written episode, which shows no respect to the story or character developing of protagonists.

 

Erasing this episode might be the only retcon in standom that almost no one would object to.

 

Yes, it should have just been a regular episode, presented similarly to "Living Witness." With TATV as the finale, they missed the chance to take ENT out with a bang and took it out with a whimper instead.

Kor

 

^Yes. At its core, the idea of someone from the future observing past events is a good one, and would probably have even made a good finale if done properly (see Babylon 5's "The Deconstruction of Fallen Stars" for an example of this); however, TATV is a prime example of how to do this ridiculously wrong.

1. While I didn't have a huge problem with Riker & Troi being the observers (other than that I really had no interest in seeing those characters again unless it was post-Nemesis on the Titan), using "The Pegasus" as the framing story made absolutely no sense. Not only did that episode happen 11 years before, but the events in TATV don't line up with what we saw in the former ep.

2. In the aforementioned B5 episode, the future observer never speaks and isn't seen until the end, nominally because he's watching old footage instead of actually interacting with the characters via a holodeck, but that's not the issue. It's that Riker & Troi are blabbing to the viewing audience about these past events (and even giving away the fact that Trip dies even before it happens!) instead of letting the audience watch for themselves. Like in TDOFS, the episode should have been about the ENT characters, not the people watching them.

3. Everyone in the 22nd century acts completely out of character, and the circumstances behind Trip's death are so ridiculously contrived, that it almost feels like this entire holodeck simulation is just a big joke. Except that it's pretty clear that this is supposed to be an accurate recreation of these past events.