Which Character Had the Best Sendoff in Season 7?

My wife and I finished TNG a few days ago, as well as the TNG movies.

I don't know if this has been done before, but I wanted to get some opinions on who had the best sendoff in TNG's final season.

For the purposes of it being a 'not seen again' character, I did not add Lwaxana, Barclay, or Alexander because they each appeared in DS9 or VOYAGER. (Since we only see Wesley very briefly in the wedding scene in NEMESIS, with all his dialogue in deleted scenes, I don't count him so I put him on this list.)

Who do you pick, and why?

 

I voted for Jaxa because I have, and always shall be, a big fan of the episode Lower Decks. But I do quite love Preemptive Strike too. ...Descent Part II and Journey's End not so much.

 

Crusher because I foresee him returning one day. They left it wide open.

 

Don't know about the best, but I'd argue Wesley's was by far the worst and most cliche.

Bored college kid goes on a vision quest of the "wise nature people"(tm) to "find himself" (tm) and drops out to "explore existence" (tm) with the creepy alien guy from season 1. Gag me with a spoon.

Ro was just her becoming a criminal, so not that good either.

I guess Sito jaxa would be the best, since she died a hero. And respect to the writers that they had the guts to kill her off.

 

"Preemptive Strike" gets mine.

1. Lore = His demise involves Data flicking the "off switch" with sappy forced maudlin dialogue and muzak. Then again, the whole episode is hollow and fluffrubbish
   
2. Sito = Picard and Worf seem out of character and hypocrites (and yes, I do like the episode and a couple great scenes therein, but bits and scenes seem highly contrived and go too far against the grain, to the point Koenig's lamentation of his being "out of character" in "The Way to Eden" are wholesale understated by comparison)
   
3. Wesley = Trite sendoff that everyone claims nurds cling to as some sort of teddy bear or security blanket: Cliche kid who feels like an outcast is saved by old guy who acts a little too strange (not even deemed "misunderstood" either) and that's before the Native American who also helps Wes along and the Cardassian pew pew fights and more worn-out wallpaper muzak (and isn't the Traveler/Crusher arc just a parallel of Q/Picard's?)
4. Ro. Gets my vote. Melancholy and despite being another take on "outcast officer nurd finds solace in some other venue" shtick, it at least feels authentic and not loaded with corn and syrup* that Wesley's sleepytime climax and denouement were... it's also more worthy of a DS9 arc but at least she got a semblance of closure that, again, didn't feel like pulling a card from a hat... then again, Wesley's sendoff easily could have been worse. Almost seems to be a running theme in TNG7, at least for Ro and Wes

* the primary ingredients of an overly sweet confectionery known as "cornball"


Yeah, Ro easily got the best script of the bunch. Though the mispronunciation of "hasperat" almost seems not a deliberate "accents between societal members" but "actor doing a subtle send-up". As with guitars or noses, take a pick as to which is best...


Of course, some might equate it with asking which of the following is the best:

1. gonorrhea
2. syphilis
3. HIV
4. herpes

But not me, of course.

 

I'd have to go with Ro.

Though they could've really made more of her, she had a nice little arc in the series, going from troubled wildcard to a dependable and forthright member of the crew to having earned a place at advanced tactical training, only to then find a cause that gave her purpose--something she never had on Bajor or with Starfleet. It is just a shame she never reappeared in DS9 or VOY.

 

I voted for Sito Jaxa even though I preferred Ro Laren. Lower Decks is a great episode and I remember thinking at the time that they were clearly setting up a spin-off series and, once again, I was wrong. But at the time, with that in mind, for the character to be offed I found quite shocking. And, yep, Ro Laren was a favourite and it's a bit of a shame we never saw her in DS9 (although that worked out fine in the end).

 

I voted Ro... But the correct answer? Q.

 

We see Q three more times on VOYAGER, so I don't count him.

To be honest, I feel "DEATH WISH" should have been his last appearance. A great episode... should have ended on a high note.

 

Sito Jaxa was not a regular or even much of a recurring character, and never made any kind of impression on me. So while her death was tragic for her (I've actually heard of fanfic where it was faked and she's really still alive), it doesn't really matter to the show. Did it give Picard some great epiphany as to how he treats crew he's not friends with? Who knows?

Wesley... ghah. What a miserable episode. There were better ones before that. I'd say it would have been best to call it done with Wesley after he finally left for the Academy, but then we wouldn't have had the episode that guest-starred Robert Duncan MacNeil, and then someone else would have played Tom Paris in Voyager - and that would have been a shame since he's one of my favorite Voyager characters.

Though it might have been interesting if Nog and Wesley had met at some point... I predict they would not have been friends.

Lore? I loathe the character. I was never fond of Data, either. So I don't care. I don't even remember what happened to him.

Ro Laren is light-years ahead of the rest. She was an interesting character who had a recognizable, relatable motive for the attitudes she had and the actions she took. We might not agree with them as they weren't legal, but I understand that she considered them to be the morally correct thing to do, given her life experiences and what her people had been through.

 

The Maquis seem to pretty much stick it to everyone except Janeway, don't they? Sisko's pal deserts him for them despite his best efforts, and his Starfleet security chief betrays him to join them and proceeds to drive him pretty much nuts afterward (consider what Sisko finally wound up doing to stop him). And when Picard sends a deep cover operative to infiltrate them, she promptly betrays him and joins them for real!

Because that stings, I couldn't choose Ro. Lore was underwhelming. And Wesley... this was not the ending of his journey that I would have expected, or that made the most sense.

Sito's ending was certainly dark, but there was redemption in it. And, it gave a name and face to those random redshirt ensigns we see so many of. I will go with her.

 

It was 50/50 between Ro and Sito for me, but I went with Ro in the end because she was a bigger and more important character that Sito. It seems Season 7 only did good send offs for Bajorans.

Wesley’s last episode was genuinely terrible I thought, I didn’t mind the premise of him having “super powers”, but I felt they should have used something other than the Traveller to explore that.

Of course Descent Part II is also terrible. I rewatched both parts recently and I realised that actually the first part is really quite good it’s just the second part which left me massively disappointed.

 

One thing I've noticed about TNG two-parters is the second part is generally disappointing, especially if it's the season premiere.

The one notable exception is "Chain Of Command, Part II". I actually think that was better than the first part, primarily because of Sir Patrick Stewart and David Warner's powerhouse acting performances.

VOYAGER suffered a similar issue.

 

I agree it's between Ro and Sito, and give it to Ro just because she's an established character in the show.

That being said, I actually liked the Wesley send off. I guess I'm in the minority. I didn't like the cliched native portrayals that foreshadowed Voyager, but I liked that Wesley stopped just doing what was expected of him.

There are always the novels...

 

I can't choose between Wesley , Sito and Ro. Data being a fave of mine I still wasn't all that impressed with Lore's send off. I should have felt something but that was mostly due to Data.

 

Yeah, Q is the correct answer. Although, really All Good Things... had quite a good send-off for Picard and the Enterprise-D as well.

Sure, they all reappeared, but that's neither here nor there. All four characters in the poll later returned in novels or video games (in the case of Sito Jaxa, sigh), so they definitely didn't have a complete send-off as well, non-canonically.

Alexander Rozhenko's send-off in Firstborn was quite good, as well as the already-mentioned Lwaxana Troi send-off in Dark Page. The Traveler, Bok, Barclay, and Ogawa all have terrible send-offs.

 

Descent and Lower Decks are good while the others are not so it is one of those.

 

I have said it before and I'll say it again, 'All Good Things...' was an amazing final episode.
This is something completely new I just thought of, in AGT first everything changed but in the end everything remained the same.

 

"Five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky's the limit."

 

Sito for me. Ro just went back to where her character started, a disavowed officer who cast off everything she worked for after becoming disillusioned with Starfleet and the Federation. Sito had the better redemption arc, even if it was only over one and a bit episodes. After the events of The First Duty and Picard requesting her assignment to the Enterprise, she gave her life in the line of duty and erased the black mark on her record.

Lores was ok, but a bit of an anticlimax. Shot in the back and turned off. Meh.

The less said about Wesley, the better tbh.