Consisting of a dozen withered roses, a box of chocolate coated laxatives, and a lovely luxury cruise on the Titanic.
20 years ago tonight the Enterprise finale aired. So....what's your opinion two decades on?
- Thread starter cooleddie74
- Start date
Division among Trek Fans aside, DSC primary fans got a better ending than ENT primary fans did.
Ah, I love the smell of TATV loathing in the morning! 
Usually so-called 'Bad Trek' or 'Good Trek' goes through periods in which it is critically reevaluated. Heads cool, feelings change and time softens blows and heals all wounds.
A bad episode usually has at least one fan out there too. Usually.
It says a lot about TATV that it has never been though the former and is entirely lacking in the latter. It really is that hated.
I haven't watched it since about 2008. Might be a good idea to crack it on and have another look.
A bad episode usually has at least one fan out there too. Usually.
It says a lot about TATV that it has never been though the former and is entirely lacking in the latter. It really is that hated.
I haven't watched it since about 2008. Might be a good idea to crack it on and have another look.
Please seek help from your nearest mental institution immediately!
That kind of self harm ideation is not good at all!!
Sad thing is, it's not a horrible episode per se. Not the way "Profit and Lace" was. With a few tweaks and different placement, it could be a decent but unexceptional fanservice.Please seek help from your nearest mental institution immediately!
That kind of self harm ideation is not good at all!!
As a midseason sweeps episode to cement the series in the canon as not some alternate timeline created by First Contact and establishing that the 1701-D in TNG knew who Archer was and his history it might have worked. As a series (and era of the franchise) swan song it's downright terrible.
Its the most horrible piece of media ever created in the history of all television.
Including TNG Code of Honor.
Just think for a moment: for all his faults we owe much more to JJ Abrams than we realized.
J.J. and Jason Lin did love to reference Archer and ENT. For whatever flaws their versions of Trek have, at least ENT got some long-delayed affection out of those films.
I never won't feel all sorts of warm nerdy feelings about this reference to the Xindi and the Earth-Romulan War in Beyond.
It's bad, but it's not that.
Agreed. Code of Honor would have been problematic no matter where you stuck it. TATV as anything but a series finale could have been OK fanservice, with a few tweaks.
Code of Honour or not. It's not 'the most horrible piece of media created in the history of television'. I really can't stand such polemic language.
TATV is bad Star Trek but there's things out there produced over the last century that are way worse.
Happiness equals Reality divided by Expectations.
For devoted fans, already mourning the imminent and premature demise of the show, hoping for a good sendoff to comfort them in the coming days and months, and years of rewatching, their expectations weren't simply dashed. They were stomped into the ground, with salt sowed into the bleeding wound. Emotionally, a kick in the teeth that might eventually stop stinging, but will never be okay. Not a "good death." And I'm not just talking about Trip.
Of course there are worse written shows. But the vitriol has a lot of emotion behind it, betrayal, hurt feelings - and if not emotional attachment, just simple WTF??? offense at the terrible, terrible writing, which no show with any kind of following deserves. The Beebs didn't even bother to send the show off with some dignity or respect by crafting something emotionally satisfying and giving the fans a two-hour finale, after the show had already lost a 7 year run. They grabbed a loser script rotting in a drawer and didn't even dust it off. They didn't take one day to update the setting. No promotions after 6 years and a war? Really? "Twilight" had promotions. (Tell me, somebody, did Mayweather have an extra pip on his uniform before they killed him off in "Twilight"? I don't remember.) They shoved the cast-- many of whom were suffering the same kidney punch as the fans after reading the script-- into the shadows as someone else from some other show took the spotlight. They broke up Trip & T'Pol for zero reason, given the end of "Terra Prime," which viewers saw five minutes earlier.
That's why people use hyperbole. It FELT like the worst thing that had ever been on TV. And years and years later, there's still no way to make sense out of that awful script and pretzel an explanation that makes it okay for people who had any regard for the show, the story, the characters.
TOS "The Alternative Factor" is an eyeroll, "Spock's Brain" is a WTF-were-they-thinking lame, VOY "Threshold" is a jaw-dropper that is just really stupid - but none of them made me angry and offended and put me in a bad mood. Because any showrunner or producer who has any regard for the viewers who tuned in, who searched for the reruns after all the preemptions, who stuck it out till the show hit its stride in S3 and S4, would never, ever phone in the finale and make the mistake of publicly calling it a "valentine to the fans." Clearly forgetting that ENT fans were fans too.
Anybody remember "Alien Nation"? The TV show that was far better than the movie, beautifully realized by Ken Johnson, terrific acting by Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint, critical acclaim, and showrunners who were so confident they'd be renewed that the first season ender was a cliffhanger. And the show got shitcanned. Stunned everyone, cast, crew, producers, fans - everyone but the tiny wannabe network that killed it. It took several years for the TV-movie that resolved the cliffhanger and finally took some of the sting away for me, but to this day, I miss that 2nd season, and whatever would have come after. It would be a few years before Fox had a hit in "The Simpsons" and took a chance on a quirky ratings loser called "The X-Files" and didn't cancel it right away.
For those of you who don't think TATV was, as some say, an abomination, all power to you. I'm truly glad for you that you found something worthwhile in there. But I really loved ENT and its growing potential and that last show reminded me that support for a show means absolutely nothing to corporate suits and some producers, and it's sad to be told you don't matter in such a sloppy afterthought fashion.
my .02
For devoted fans, already mourning the imminent and premature demise of the show, hoping for a good sendoff to comfort them in the coming days and months, and years of rewatching, their expectations weren't simply dashed. They were stomped into the ground, with salt sowed into the bleeding wound. Emotionally, a kick in the teeth that might eventually stop stinging, but will never be okay. Not a "good death." And I'm not just talking about Trip.
Of course there are worse written shows. But the vitriol has a lot of emotion behind it, betrayal, hurt feelings - and if not emotional attachment, just simple WTF??? offense at the terrible, terrible writing, which no show with any kind of following deserves. The Beebs didn't even bother to send the show off with some dignity or respect by crafting something emotionally satisfying and giving the fans a two-hour finale, after the show had already lost a 7 year run. They grabbed a loser script rotting in a drawer and didn't even dust it off. They didn't take one day to update the setting. No promotions after 6 years and a war? Really? "Twilight" had promotions. (Tell me, somebody, did Mayweather have an extra pip on his uniform before they killed him off in "Twilight"? I don't remember.) They shoved the cast-- many of whom were suffering the same kidney punch as the fans after reading the script-- into the shadows as someone else from some other show took the spotlight. They broke up Trip & T'Pol for zero reason, given the end of "Terra Prime," which viewers saw five minutes earlier.
That's why people use hyperbole. It FELT like the worst thing that had ever been on TV. And years and years later, there's still no way to make sense out of that awful script and pretzel an explanation that makes it okay for people who had any regard for the show, the story, the characters.
TOS "The Alternative Factor" is an eyeroll, "Spock's Brain" is a WTF-were-they-thinking lame, VOY "Threshold" is a jaw-dropper that is just really stupid - but none of them made me angry and offended and put me in a bad mood. Because any showrunner or producer who has any regard for the viewers who tuned in, who searched for the reruns after all the preemptions, who stuck it out till the show hit its stride in S3 and S4, would never, ever phone in the finale and make the mistake of publicly calling it a "valentine to the fans." Clearly forgetting that ENT fans were fans too.
Anybody remember "Alien Nation"? The TV show that was far better than the movie, beautifully realized by Ken Johnson, terrific acting by Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint, critical acclaim, and showrunners who were so confident they'd be renewed that the first season ender was a cliffhanger. And the show got shitcanned. Stunned everyone, cast, crew, producers, fans - everyone but the tiny wannabe network that killed it. It took several years for the TV-movie that resolved the cliffhanger and finally took some of the sting away for me, but to this day, I miss that 2nd season, and whatever would have come after. It would be a few years before Fox had a hit in "The Simpsons" and took a chance on a quirky ratings loser called "The X-Files" and didn't cancel it right away.
For those of you who don't think TATV was, as some say, an abomination, all power to you. I'm truly glad for you that you found something worthwhile in there. But I really loved ENT and its growing potential and that last show reminded me that support for a show means absolutely nothing to corporate suits and some producers, and it's sad to be told you don't matter in such a sloppy afterthought fashion.
my .02
Very well said. @Lynx and I have both periodically theorized that certain VOY episodes (which came from the same source) were deliberately intended to piss us off... though I don't discuss this one as much (I was never that emotionally invested in ENT), I do wonder if it was just a spectacular display of jaw-dropping cluelessness on their part. How else would anyone take a Charlie Foxtrot like TATV and package it as a valentine?!
And a worthy contribution. Though you might have to up the ante to $0.05 soon. No more pennies and all.
Um, no. Nobody spends time and money to produce things to deliberately piss off their fans. It’s just something that somebody made that you two personally don’t like. Don’t confuse it with something that it’s not.
That would seem counterintuitive. But, when you consider that...
- When certain fans expressed their concern about a certain character's ridiculous lack of promotion, "Nightingale" pretty much told them to choke on it.
- When other fans expressed sorrow at losing a promising character, "Fury" brought her back briefly... but also destroyed the satisfying ending she got earlier in the series.
- And "These Are the Voyages"... there is almost nothing that putrid mess managed to get right. It's hard to believe that what was intended as a valentine turned into a gut-kick, but I guess you can't underestimate the power of human incompetence.
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