And of all those finales, it's by a light-year the worst for the respective series and the most insulting for both TNG and the other series' cast.
20 years ago tonight the Enterprise finale aired. So....what's your opinion two decades on?
- Thread starter cooleddie74
- Start date
Had it been anything other than the series finale, had a 5th season been coming, it would have been satisfactory fanservice. Indeed, I think I would have found it a cool way for Jonathan Frakes to get on yet another Trek show.
But truth is, everything about it was just awful.
- The characters were already overly static by Year 4. Evfn without half-pip ranks, Hoshi snd Mayweather should have been lieutenants, and Phlox probably needed to get home. Having nothing change (not even hairstyle or appearance) in 6 more years was ludicrous.
- It made no sense for Shran to go from decorated military officer to criminal.
- Killing Trip and nullifying the series' flagship romance was a slap in the face.
- It shouldn't have been about Troi and Riker. Even Jonathan Frakes admits he shouldn't have been there.
- In the same vein, Frakes was 53 IRL, while Riker was about 35. The 11 years between "The Pegasus" and that episode... they showed. Sorry, Jonathan, you're not immortal.
- And they didn't even play the speech.
The last 30 seconds or so was good... but way too little and way too late.
Some "bad" episodes are underrated. This one is not. It deserves its bad reputation.
But truth is, everything about it was just awful.
- The characters were already overly static by Year 4. Evfn without half-pip ranks, Hoshi snd Mayweather should have been lieutenants, and Phlox probably needed to get home. Having nothing change (not even hairstyle or appearance) in 6 more years was ludicrous.
- It made no sense for Shran to go from decorated military officer to criminal.
- Killing Trip and nullifying the series' flagship romance was a slap in the face.
- It shouldn't have been about Troi and Riker. Even Jonathan Frakes admits he shouldn't have been there.
- In the same vein, Frakes was 53 IRL, while Riker was about 35. The 11 years between "The Pegasus" and that episode... they showed. Sorry, Jonathan, you're not immortal.
- And they didn't even play the speech.
The last 30 seconds or so was good... but way too little and way too late.
Some "bad" episodes are underrated. This one is not. It deserves its bad reputation.
Besides TATV, did any of those TNG characters overshadow the main cast’s series finale at their expense?
O'Brien was no longer associated with TNG. And Worf was brought onto the show halfway through for ratings. By the time of WYLB, they were considered DS9 characters.
Barclay was not remotely the focus of the story.
Did anyone from TNG show up in the series finale to overshadow Michael Burnham et. al?
And one could argue that the entire TNG cast in season 3 overshadowed the PIC cast from seasons 1 & 2, either by killing them off, diminishing their importance, or just forgetting about them entirely. So PIC season three was an even worse offender than Riker & Troi in TATV in this regard.
Having Dorn play Worf's ancestor was just an easter egg. The movie wasn't about Colonel Worf trying to win his big court case.
Irrelevant.
And as I've mentioned before, if the story was about people from the future watching past events, that would have been fine. But not for a show's series finale, not for a half-assed story about the Pegasus which doesn't line up with the actual events anyway, and not to have Frakes and Sirtis shamelessly intrude into a show which they had no business being part of.
Last edited:
I don't think my opinion has changed much over the last 20 years. I was never a huge ENT fan, but I thought it was better than VOY. I still think Bakula is not a great actor. "Always Angry Archer" pretty sums it up. It made me sad when they devoted an entire season to war. One of my all-time favorite Star Trek episodes from any series is "Carbon Creek" for the very human story it told. And I still think T'Pol is hot. 
I think TATV wouldn't be as loathed as it is if it hadn't been the final episode, but even if it wasn't, the things you've noted would remain concerns that would drag down my opinion of it.
But he wasn't like that early on... he was mostly pretty affable. But then Earth got laserblasted, and he went super crabby pants on us, like a preschooler who missed his naptime.
Maybe Riker and Troi could be on the Titan instead, so that Riker looking older would make sense.
Like a lot of Enterprise, I feel that the finale missed the mark. If ever the actors were going to loosen up and deliver, then this was going to be the time. I love Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap, but he brought none of that charm, wit and humanity to Archer. He's always stiff in his line readings.
Maybe as a two parter with some more tension, TATV could have worked. I get that they wanted to pay tribute to the more successful elements of the franchise.
Maybe as a two parter with some more tension, TATV could have worked. I get that they wanted to pay tribute to the more successful elements of the franchise.
As bad as that was, their promotions frankly should have happened at the start of the Augments arc earlier in the season. They just saved humanity from being wiped off the face of the galaxy, ffs! For that reason alone, the lack of a promotion for the - let alone any member of the crew - will never not make sense.
For that matter, the bridge refit pillar, and the TATV uniforms should have been introduced at the starts of the Augments arc too. It makes sense that United Earth would be more war ready in the aftermath of the Xindi attack. And a uniform change would reflect that, as would upgrades to the ship. I'm not sure why the producers waited until ENT was over to introduce them.
That the worst part about S4. they waited too long to make visual changes that might have kept the series on the air. Even something as small as that.
Shran made it clear that once an Andorian captain loses a ship, they don’t get another one. So perhaps Shran chose to fall back on other hidden talents he had. And as Archer said, Shran’s involvement with disreputable people did not make him a criminal. It was not like that was a career ender for Shran, as he became General of the Imperial Guard a few years later, according the Archer bio in IAMD.
Also, how do we know know that that Shran was not a part of Archer's crew between 2155 and 2158 before he "died"?
But was in completely line with making T’Pol suffer, like Harry Kim and Miles O’Brien before her.
It was not even about Troi. It was only about Riker. Troi could have been replaced by literally anybody.
But since the person that played Chef was Frakes’s body double, it makes sense that Frakes is involved. What does not make sense is having Frakes play Riker again instead of just Chef. It did not even need to be an ancestor of Riker. Look at all the different roles Rene Auberjonois played in Trek, including the one in ENT.
It’s forgivable that they don’t look they way they used to 11 years prior if it’s an alternate timeline a la “Parallels”. Who says everyone must look exactly the same in different timelines? The problem is that the finale plays it like it’s the prime timeline, and never hints at the possibility that it’s a different timeline. In a series that introduced us to the Temporal Cold War and constantly reminded us that there are ripples happening up and down the timeline.
Are we supposed to interpret that Trip dying caused Riker and Troi to age 11 years faster than they would have?
They overhyped it. The writers probably could not top Archer’s speech in “Terra Prime” (which is a damn fine speech, btw). Still, the speeches Archer usually gave in ENT were only a couple of minutes long anyway. Not one that last half an hour.
That said, they could have had audience applause play when we hear Archer say “to boldly go where no one has gone before” and see the NX-01 fly by. It’s not like as the audience we could not connect that Archer took from Zefram Cochrane’s speech we saw in “Broken Bow”. Would have made for a nice callback, actually.
The Cochrane speech actually got a nod in a Deleted Scene of NEM when Picard goes into Sickbay, sees Beverly's medical staff armed and preparing their weapons and laments that the crew can't properly live up to Cochrane's words to seek out new life and new civilizations.
Huh? The entire first season consisted of him and Trip being angry at Vulcans in general and T’Pol specifically, treating her like shit and having nothing but contempt for her people for holding humans back.
I still think it's not too bad (not stellar, but OK-ish) when seen as a regular episode. (i.e. if this had been a random, mid-season S4 ep, with enterprise completing a full 7-year run).
It's no good as a series finale though.
It's no good as a series finale though.
Precisely. Matter of fact, it would be a neat way to slip Jonathan Frakes into yet another Trek. I mean, he was obviously in TNG. He played his duplicate on DS9, and cameoed on VOY. And he directed DIS and SNW episodes, and played himself on LD and PIC. And as far as TOS goes, I'm giving him credit for this:
They should have found a way to sneak him into PRO, too. Even if just as a Kobiashi V.O.
Because it's like John Ratzenberger in Pixar films. You either get it or you don't.
I’m pretty sure it’s nothing like that.
Similar threads
