TOS series finale

[Captrek]

TOS is the only Trek series without an ending. TNG has All Good Things..., DS9 has What You Leave Behind, VOY has Endgame, TAS has kind of an epitaph in The Counter-Clock Incident, and even ENT had a series finale, albeit premature and deeply disappointing.

TOS’s last episode is Turnabout Intruder by broadcast or production order, and All Our Yesterdays by stardate order. Either one is “just another episode,” not particularly conclusive in any way.

I nominate Day of the Dove as series finale. Ending the TV series with DOTD has a thematic parallel to ending the film series with TUC. The only stardate given in the episode is “stardate: Armageddon,” so it’s compatible with stardate order. Finally, it provides the series with an actual ending, if we assume that the last few lines are directed to the viewer:

KIRK: Get off my ship. You're a dead duck here. You're powerless. We know about you, and we don't want to play. Maybe there are others like you around. Maybe you've caused a lot of suffering, a lot of history, but that's all over. We'll be on guard now, ready for you. So ship out! Come on! Haul it!

MCCOY: Yeah, out already.

KANG: Out! We need no urging to hate humans. But for the present, only a fool fights in a burning house. Out!

(mocking laughter all around)

Making it work is that Shatner and Kelley say their lines looking directly into the camera, and Ansara almost does.


Alternatively, there’s SNL’s extracanonical finale.

 

[sonak]

It is kind of a shame it didn't get one, but TUC in the movie series makes up for it.


And am I the only one here who kind of likes "turnabout intruder?" (awkward gender politics aside)

 

[BillJ]

It is kind of a shame it didn't get one, but TUC in the movie series makes up for it.


And am I the only one here who kind of likes "turnabout intruder?" (awkward gender politics aside)

I like Turnabout Intruder, the episode is just plain fun to watch.

 

[Alia]

I kinda like it as well. The performances are hilarious and wonderful. But, yeah, creepy gender politics.

 

[22 Stars]

In an odd way, TOS not having a finale was the best thing that could ever have happened, on the road to it becoming a franchise and phenomenon.

It left viewers wanting more, wondering what would the next adventure be. It left the feeling that the Enterprise was still out there (for two more years at least) and our characters were immortalized just as we left them in season 3.

Trek now had the badge of being the show that got it 'stuck-to' by THE MAN. And in the late 60's and early 70's that gave it a lot of 'cred'. It became the little show that wouldn't die, that was killed before it hit its stride. STAR TREK LIVES was the cry, few shows get that attention.

 

[Alrik]

TOS is the only Trek series without an ending. TNG has All Good Things..., DS9 has What You Leave Behind, VOY has Endgame, TAS has kind of an epitaph in The Counter-Clock Incident, and even ENT had a series finale, albeit premature and deeply disappointing.

In a sense, TOS did have a finale. TUC. Because TOS was left open ended, it gave itself to a seamless transition to either Phase II, or eventually the movies. The way I've always looked at it is, TOS never really ended until the signatures showed up at the end of TUC.

Sure, TNG got AGT, but knowing that they were going right into movies, there was no reason to wrap everything up and put a nice little bow on it the way they did with DS9, VOY, and ENT. To be honest TNG is the one that didn't get a true finale. The train wreck that was NEM just kind of left everything hanging.

 

[plynch]

In my head, without a finale, the adventures just continue. Nice.

 

[bbailey861]

That's how I looked at it, too. It didn't 'end', it was just phased into something else - books for me - until the movies came along. Even then (and now) I read all the books to keep the adventure going.

 

[BillJ]

In my head, without a finale, the adventures just continue. Nice.

This is my feeling as well.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I prefer non-endings for shows like this. To me, it's better than having the crew split up, killing off characters, blowing up ships, and bringing the adventures to an end.

Look what happens if you end a show like that: novels go back and "re-launch." So some weird way Sisko comes back from the Celestial Temple, Voyager's crew goes out on missions, Trip is somehow not dead (nor is he where I want him to be). I like final episodes to be like TNG: a summing up but keeping everyone together. Sure they did it to keep things in line for the films, but it was a SATISFYING ending. The family remains intact. Since they're a fictional unit, why split them up?

 

[plynch]

That's how I looked at it, too. It didn't 'end', it was just phased into something else - books for me - until the movies came along. Even then (and now) I read all the books to keep the adventure going.

Maybe I'll start doing that. I've only read but a few. Picked up Hademan's Planet of Judgement awhile back. Weird. Lately, oddly enough, I've been reading Treasure Island. It was free on my iPad. Ripping good yarn, as they say.

 

[Christopher]

I don't see any reason why TOS should've had a finale. It was a 1960s series, open-ended and episodic by design. Finales just weren't a normal stylistic practice back then, and it was rare for any show to have one. The Fugitive was an exception, but that was a series where it made sense to have a finale because there was a specific goal the hero was seeking. The only goal Star Trek's characters had was to keep going forward in search of new things, and there's no reason why that should have an ending.

Besides, TOS being open-ended meant it was easy to continue it with TAS, and with countless novels and comics.

 

[sonak]

I don't see any reason why TOS should've had a finale. It was a 1960s series, open-ended and episodic by design. Finales just weren't a normal stylistic practice back then, and it was rare for any show to have one. The Fugitive was an exception, but that was a series where it made sense to have a finale because there was a specific goal the hero was seeking. The only goal Star Trek's characters had was to keep going forward in search of new things, and there's no reason why that should have an ending.

Besides, TOS being open-ended meant it was easy to continue it with TAS, and with countless novels and comics.

this makes sense. But "Lost In Space" was a '60s sci-fi series deserving of an ending by nature of its premise, and instead it was "junkyard in space."

 

[Christopher]

this makes sense. But "Lost In Space" was a '60s sci-fi series deserving of an ending by nature of its premise, and instead it was "junkyard in space."

Just because a show that doesn't need a finale didn't get one, it doesn't follow logically that a show that could've had a finale would've been guaranteed one. Gilligan's Island didn't get a finale either, nor did plenty of other "quest" shows like The Incredible Hulk. Which is because most TV shows get cancelled and don't get the opportunity to decide when they end. Like I said, The Fugitive was an exception to the norm. Series finales were a very rare thing in the '60s and '70s, and the modern attitude that TV shows are entitled to finales just didn't exist then.

After all, even the "quest" shows of the day didn't have the kind of arcs that shows today have; the quests were just excuses for an open-ended series of episodic adventures. So usually they'd just keep on churning out episodes until the network told them they were being cancelled.

 

[Alrik]

I don't see any reason why TOS should've had a finale. It was a 1960s series, open-ended and episodic by design. Finales just weren't a normal stylistic practice back then, and it was rare for any show to have one. The Fugitive was an exception,....

Initially, I was going to make this point as well. For the most part, it just wasn't done. I'm trying to think back to when it started becoming common. The 'biggie' I can think of off the top of my head was M*A*S*H* in '83. Did The Waltons do one when they went off in '81? I honestly don't remember (and by then wasn't paying attention to The Waltons anymore anyway).

 

[plynch]

I like the Hulk without a finale too. The sad movin-on music is playing in my head now.

 

[mb22]

The Mary Tyler Moore Show had a closing episode in 1977.

 

[Christopher]

Technically The Incredible Hulk did get a finale in a 1990 TV movie whose very title is a spoiler, The Death of the Incredible Hulk. Unfortunately, it was kinda lame. They went for a tragic angle and had David Banner all alone and despairing at how empty his life was, ignoring the fact that he had family established in the original series and had just made new friends and allies in the two previous revival movies. So it felt arbitrary and unconnected to the series. (Although they actually were making plans to do a fourth movie, so the death wouldn't have been permanent; unfortunately, that didn't apply to Bill Bixby's death a few years later.)

 

[Solarbaby]

I always wanted a TOS finale. Or a story to tie in what happened between the end of the 5 year mission and the TMP. I decided to make my own animated story in the end.

 

[Bixby]

We may yet see a finale of sorts to TOS. James Cawley and the Phase II crew have mentioned they plan their episodes to end just before Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Which means Kirk, Spock and McCoy leaving the Enterprise (Kirk for an admiralty, Spock for Vulcan and McCoy out of Starfleet).