Create a Series Finale!

I would have ended the series by tying together the exploration aspects of Archer's mission with the necessity of politics that he has endured over the previous seasons.

The Enterprise is set upon by a Romulan vessel, which subsequently crashes on an inhabited planet among a range of high glatial mountains. The society is only at the industrial stage of development, capable of atmospheric flight and digital computing but have not yet mastered the atom. Archer sends a team to clean up the crash site in order to prevent cultural contamination. On the ground, T'Pol discovers that the crash has already created widespread enivronmental contamination of the water supply for a vast region, potentially poisoning towns and cities for generations, and could spread to other regions. Reed convinces Archer that any clean up would need to be too extensive and time consuming that it could be done without the notice of the inhabitants.

Archer, T'Pol and Hoshi beam down to one of the major cities in order to make contact. The inhabitants look very much like humans. However, they have no ability to talk to them. Their spoken language consists only of the most basic lingusitic concepts. T'Pol deduces that their high language functions are all telepathic, meaning that Archer has no means to speak to them. Their emotions, though, are on full display. Their faces show anger. Outside the hall where the meeting takes places, angry crowds have gathered, screaming hostile, wordless chants in unison.

Archer and company retreat to the Enterprise. Hoshi was able to record examples of the written language in the hope of making some breakthrough. From what she can tell, the inhabitants were well aware of vessel from other planets visiting their system. Indeed, they had observed the battle between Enterprise and the Romulan vessel, blaming Enterprise for the polution that the crash caused. Numerous people were already falling sick. Their impression of aliens was entirely negative based on these few incidents: they would cause disease and suffering without consideration for less developed. The humans, they believed, were advanced in technology, but primitive in thought and spirit.

Despite the inability to communicate, Archer sends down teams to start environmental work. They encounter angry mobs, who are restrained.Nonetheless,the teams flee in fear for their lives. Hoshi works on the language. Working with T'Pol, she devises a means of not just talking to the inhabitants, but also a strategy for winning their trust.

Archer and T'Pol beam down to meet with the same leaders. The meet in a large outdoor area that is similar to a zen garden. With a stick, Archer draws out the story of Enterprise, bringing the Vulcans, Andorians, and Telarites together, resolving the hostilities with the Xindi, etc. He explains in simple language as he goes. He finishes with two pictograms, turns to the inhabitants, saying, "Let me help."

A short woman steps forward. She says to Archer, speaking with great difficulty, "Yes, help."

Archer seems please. He says, "Thank you."

The woman says, "Welcome, humans."

Archer asks, "Who are you?"

The woman says three syllable word that Archer finds difficult to understand. Hoshi shows himthe word on her tricorder. He then repeats back, "Betazoids."

OK, so this is basically a first contact story, one that would be set against the Romulan-Federation conflict to come. I would have wanted to see some story that explained some part of the building of the Federation wherein its values were in question and that called back to other problems with communication, especially Darmok.

 

Al shows up and asks why the leap took so long..,

 

Honestly, I really loved TATV and thought it was a great episode.

(I'd better brace for impact, hadn't I?)

 

I don't know if I could think of a better idea than what Bry_Sinclair already said but I thought they could have made These Are The Voyages work as a finale by setting it on the Titan (I would use the NCC-1701-E bridge and other sets as Titan sets), having Troi and Riker as a married couple investigating some mission of the NX-01 and just having normal flashbacks to that period instead of the holoprogram. In this version of TATT it doesn't need to be set in 2161 and could just end with the ship just warping off to the next adventure. I don't buy into the idea that the ending of a show means everyone needs to go their separate ways or you need to kill someone off to make drama. I like the TNG style of ending, where the show stops but the D crew just went onto their next mission.

Nah, I think it's actually quite good if all the episodes have someone to love them. Myself I love Threshold. IDIC!

 

I haven't seen a lot of Voyager, but if I'm right, isn't that the one where a warp 10 shuttle trip turns Janeway and Paris into giant salamanders who mate? I agree, that DOES sound like a lot of fun! At least it's new and interesting!

 

I don’t think the issue of quality or storytelling is the problem most people have with it. It’s the idea that the series finale was basically an episode of The Next Generation.

If TATV had been a one off, middle of S4 episode (omitting Tucker’s death and some other minor story tweaks) I don’t think people would have any problem with it. It would just be like “Trials and Tribbleations” or “Flashback”.

 

My finale would be a regular episode, the Enterprise is back exploring, they encounter a new species, have a classic one off adventure and at the end they fly off into an unexplored sector of space.

After an entire season of TOS and TNG callbacks I really would have liked a "just Enterprise" finale and not every series has to end with people dying or leaving and things blowing up, sometimes it's okay to just have the characters keep going.

 

It's a fairly mediocre TNG episode. My main gripe with it is that it takes all the focus from the ENT crew, jumps them forward in time and doesn't expand on what they've been up too (there was an interstellar war in that time), but instead throws in an unwarranted character death.

 

And the glaring thing is that the TNG episode its part of, works perfectly fine on its own. Riker's character choices and decisions in the Pegasus make complete sense without him needing to go on an extended holedeck experience to figure things out.

 

I'd go the route of TOS and TNG, in the end the ship moves on to it's next mission/adventure. There's no "final episode" closure.

DS9 saw the disappearance of Sisko and the band was breaking up. End of story.

VOY reached Earth and the series reason for existing was satified, story over. I would imagine the crew all but ran to get off that ship.

Rather TPTB left ENT open ended, sailing off into space, bring the music up, cut to credits.

 

That's because those shows were episodic in nature. There was no story to end because there was no story in the first place. And TOS never actually received a proper ending because it got cancelled.

You are being far too simplistic. Of all the Trek shows pre-CBSAA, DS9 was the only one to have multiple story arcs that culminated in its series finale.

VOY ended abruptly because UPN didn't care about it anymore and wanted it to end so that they could focus on ENT, creating a finale that was hugely unsatisfying, all of which then ironically repeated itself four years later.

Again, UPN had given up on ENT's premise and just wanted the show to end because they didn't care about it anymore.

 

this is the direction I’d go too. But it would be awfully tempting to show the ship fly off but throw to a “100 years later” type thing and show Archer and T’pol attending the launch of the 1701.

 

And was better for it.

 

Worst of the worst of the worst version:
Travis Mayweather has his brain harvested to regulate a planet's environmental system. Given Travis's general unresponsiveness, it takes three months before anyone notices.
Hoshi is seduced by an alien plasma candle ghost. Did we mention that Dr. Crusher is revealed to be 1/128th Japanese? Well, she is.
Trip is kidnapped by the Ferengi who hand him over to the Vissians. Instead of becoming a woman a la Profit and Lace, he is genetically modified into a cogenitor, and made to replace the one he inadvertently killed.
Archer remodulates the engines and gets the Enterprise up to Warp 10. The "Threshold" mutation kicks in. It hyper evolves Porthos into a 6-ton reptilian monster who proceeds to eat all the salamanders on board like burritos.
And at the end, Riker says "End program" and leaves the Enterprise D's holodeck looking decidedly nauseous.

Maybe I'll write a serious one later on. Maybe.

 

This is how every last episode of Enterprise should have ended.

 

Maybe I should have incorporated "A Night in Sickbay" instead of "These are the Voyages". The latter was a decent episode but an appalling finale. "Sickbay" was more "completely awful but hilarious".

 

Jonathan Archer seems stuck in a time loop. He can't stop reliving one of the worst missions of his life - a near disastrous First Contact with the K'letho. Everything that could go wrong for him did go wrong. T'Pol is attacked by Romulan agents and left for dead. Trip is recalled to Earth to help brainstorm on the Warp 7 engine, and his replacement hates being on the "tin deathtrap". Hoshi has an untreatable ear infection and has diminished hearing. Dr Phlox is poisoned by one of his creatures. Malcolm gets spooked during a routine transport that leaves a crewman dead and deformed. And Travis learns his eyesight is rapidly failing because of a rare boomer condition. And Chef even manages to burn a roast. It looks like a conspiracy of circumstance to separate the NX-01 crew for good.

However...

T'Pol is rescued by T'Pau and her unlikely ally--Shran! Shran has been tracking a Romulan who stole his ship. The same Romulan who tried to destabilize the Vulcan government during the Forge crisis. T'Pol decides to go to Romulus permanently, undercover, and supply information back to Vulcan. T'Pau praises her for her logic...and her bravery. Shran offers her a ride...once he gets his ship back. She accepts.

Trip volunteers to test pilot a star sled with a Warp 7 engine and calibrate it on the fly. It opens a wormhole in space and time, and deposits him in Daniels' time. He is reunited with Daniels, who won't send him back. He says he's done with that sort of thing, but he will show Trip why. And that there are engineering marvels to behold in this time. Trip is grief-stricken, but finds peace after all is explained. Daniels shows him a geologically restored Florida that was established as a living memorial.

Even suffering with acute poisoning, Phlox is cheerfully optimistic that he can cure Hoshi. He remembers an unorthodox treatment involving the wearing of an EV suit filled with Boridian spiders, whose silk evaporates into a restorative gas. He tasks the Captain with procuring a nest for Hoshi and himself...

Maclcolm discovers the crewman commited the first, "suicide by transporter" following an unhappy affair, and that he wasn't to blame. The machine had been tampered with by the deceased. He wonders why mental health professionals don't have a greater presence on starships.

Travis is indeed going blind. He resigns his commission and volunteers to undergo an experimental treatment involving cybernetic implants supporting an external vision sensor. It is successful, but he won't fly again. He turns his talents toward stellar cartography.

His regular crew unable to help with the First Contact, Archer makes do with their replacements. They are a mixed bag. His new Science Officer is a Female Tellarite who can't stop insulting him. HIs new Comm Officer is as green as an Orion, only from Brasil. Literally. She telecommutes to the ship via finicky subspace relay. The new Helmsman is Middle-Eastern man in his 60's. An Andorian female is his new Chief Engineer, whose scowling and twitching antennae drive him nuts. While Phlox and Hoshi recuperate, his new Chief Medical Officer is another Denobulan--one of Phlox's wives! She completes the procedure to heal her husband and Hoshi. Hoshi, rather than be creeped out by the experience, learns something new about arachnid harmonics and how they parallel with linguistic bases. She's off to write a book about it.

The First Contact mission succeeds mostly because the K'letho appreciate Archer's bond with Porthos and see the Starfleet crew as enlightened. It was a close call owing to the inexperience of the new crew. Chef confesses he tried to synthesize a roast because Porthos ate the real thing, and the machine failed.

They move on, eager to explore what's next...

 

The show starts at the end of season 7. The Romulan War and the founding of the Federation has been wrapped up. The Enterprise is returning to Earth to be decommissioned with Archer planning to step down as Captain because he will be start his term as the first Federation President.

Daniels suddenly appears on the bridge of the Enterprise looking panic stricken. He tells Archer he has to take the ship out of this era as they are being targeted by time agents. Suddenly there is a ripple in time and space that hits the ship. Things change, crew members disappear, including Archer who is replaced by another Captain (The guy from 'First Flight'). The ship changes also and became the Dauntless NX-01. The captain asks what happens when suddenly another ship appears on their scanners out of nowhere. They are hailed. On the view screen is William Shatner as Captain Kirk of the Enterprise- A.

We find out that Kirk had taken the A, now a museum ship out for a spin to celebrate Federation day with the most famous ship in starfleet. The crew of the dauntless discover they are in Kirks time. Kirk mentions the history of the dauntless. Fairly similar to the Enterprise, but no archer.

We see Archer wake up in the future. The 26th Century on Daniels ship. Daniels is heavily injured and tells Archer that the timeline with him as Captain of the Enterprise isn't the original timeline and was created when they Borg traveled back in time to stop first contact.

The people who attacked Archer were fundamentalists who want to purify the timeline by removing every event that was changed by time travel. But this would destroy Earth in the process because it wouldn't be saved by Kirk and crew.

Archer is told that he has to recruit a time faction to fight them and since he is stuck in the 26th century and Daniels' ship damaged he can only communicate with factions in the past. Yes, Archer is Future guy. It's all his fault!

Ok, that's how it starts. Massive fan service. Haven't thought how to conclude it yet.

 

I absolutely would have included Archer's speech at the founding of the Federation. After all Daniels' talk about Archer's important speech, instead of ever showing the speech, they showed the crew sitting and waiting for the speech, while complaining about having bad seats.
I would have made the episode about founding the Federation. Several delegates fiercely debate whether to unite, and it's not going well. Things then get far worse when terrorists hold the delegates hostage, including Archer, and the rest of the crew has to rescue them.

 

Finales were generally 2 hours...