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Did TATV show a contempt for the characters and actors?

In a nutshell, the show was cancelled--dead. The story had been wrapped up in the two episodes preceding the finale. Right or wrong, Berman and Braga decided to end the show with TATV. It's over now, time to move on.

That said, I don't think it's all that bad.

Just cut all the parts with Riker and Troi out of it, add a few minutes on the end instead in which we actually see the Federation Charter being signed and you might have a reasoanble episode.
 
But I never really understood why having Riker relive Archer’s final mission on the holodeck could have any relevance to his moral dilemma in that episode.
A few weeks ago, I watched the Pegasus episode on BBC America. I only caught the last 20 min. or so of it. But it seemed to me like Riker made a spur of the moment choice to tell Picard about the cloaking device in order to get the Enterprise out of the asteroid. He may have been doing some soul searching in the other 40 min. of the show that I missed. And I don't recall from where I've watched it before. I just don't see how him hanging out on the holodeck with Archer's crew was going to help him with that.

The Pegasus episode was badly misremembered.
Agreed.

All that being said. I think the final couple of minutes with the video and audio montages of all 3 of the Enterprises and their Captains was a great way to honor the whole franchise.
 
I've been informed in the meantime (and I guess I believe it) that this isn't true, but in addition to seeming disrespectful to Enterprise, it seemed to some of us at the time that they were benching Enterprise early (when the 4th season had finally gotten good) and trying to use its finale to set up what they really wanted to do: a Riker-as-Captain series.

That can't possibly be true. There would have been no one else who would have produced such a show other than UPN. And UPN cancelled ENT because they hated Star Trek shows that cost tons of money to produce with little or no payoff in viewership. There's no way Berman & Braga made TATV as some kind of "back-door pilot" for a Riker series.
 
That can't possibly be true. There would have been no one else who would have produced such a show other than UPN. And UPN cancelled ENT because they hated Star Trek shows that cost tons of money to produce with little or no payoff in viewership. There's no way Berman & Braga made TATV as some kind of "back-door pilot" for a Riker series.
Well, I'm not really saying that was the case *now*, so much as pointing out that some of us believed it back then - and anger is not always logical enough to diminish with facts. ;)
 
Except for DSN and VOY.
Yes, I wish that could have been included as well. But I guess maybe because the program was called Enterprise it was a tribute to those 3 ships called that.

You know, the best tribute to the entire franchise I have ever seen was the 30th anniversary special (back in 1996). Although it wouldn't be complete since Enterprise didn't exist yet. And Voyager wasn't up to it's fourth season, so they didn't have Seven yet. Also, Leonard Nimoy and Patrick Stewart were out of the country working on other projects (but they both had recorded a brief message video to be played).

But anyway they had all of the other cast members of all of the Trek shows that existed at the time come up on stage and receive a commendation from NASA presented by Mae Jemison and I think it was also Buzz Aldrin.
 
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I don't blame Berman and Braga for wanting to do a valentine to the fans. They knew the show wasn't coming back and that it might be a number of years before anything else did. I feel like the whole episode was smashed down from two hours into a one hour finale. The episode was missing a lot of connecting tissue. There really wasn't a point to Trip's death. Maybe it could have been more believable if it was a two hour finale. It could have had more time to build up. I also would have loved to actually hear the speech at the end by Archer. I felt like the writers copped out of it. Berman and Braga had almost no input into season 4 of Enterprise. I felt like they should have reached out to Coto regarding the finale. That the three of them together could have made it work a lot better.

I personally love Pegasus but I don't feel like it was the right episode to use. I don't feel like anything that Riker experienced on the holodeck had any moral/emotional impact on Pegasus. I would have preferred if they used Riker/Troi from the Titan instead. That would have matched up with their age.
 
I thought it showed contempt for the audience/fans of "Enterprise". I mean you could tell it had been written at the end of Season 3 - because all the character development of Season 4 seemed missing; and what B&B did to the Trip character in general (past the ridiculous 'sacrifice' bit) was awful. Also, their constant - "Look it's really Riker and Troi...isn't this great?!" bits were just plain bad.
 
Many would say it would be better with one less. :whistle:

To me it seems the offence revolved mostly around the way it cast ENT as being essentially worthless without TNG, a second rate offshoot which can only hope to have meaning within the context of it's parent show.
Mostly this.

Enterprise for all its flaws did have a huge number of fans, myself included, for which this was their introduction to the Trek universe. There were some who enjoyed this the best outta all the Treks. This finale was a slap in the face against all of those folks, like TNG was the only one that mattered.
 
Well, I'm not really saying that was the case *now*, so much as pointing out that some of us believed it back then - and anger is not always logical enough to diminish with facts. ;)
Pardon my French, but anyone who thought this was high on enough cocaine to K.O. Charlie Sheen.

Who would have produced it? YouTube hadn't even launched yet, and CBS sure weren't gonna hand over rights to another network. Nor would anyone line up to buy them after the shit ratings for season four.
 
Pardon my French, but anyone who thought this was high on enough cocaine to K.O. Charlie Sheen.

Who would have produced it? YouTube hadn't even launched yet, and CBS sure weren't gonna hand over rights to another network. Nor would anyone line up to buy them after the shit ratings for season four.
That isn't how the phrase "pardon my French" works - you didn't cuss in the sentence you attached it to.

And as to who would have thought that: people who were upset about it, and who were working with insufficient information otherwise. It happens all the time on the Internet - hell, it got a President elected recently. ;)
 
The writers' intentions were not malicious, but this episode had no connection to the Pegasus; how does talking to the ENT crew pretending to be chef help Riker? And made the ENT crew look like complete idiots. Ten years service as the first deep space Earth ship, one Romulan war an NOONE gets promoted? (plus other plotholes that make Swiss cheese look whole) Thank heavens for The Good that Men do, sadly its non canon.
 
Well, I'm not really saying that was the case *now*, so much as pointing out that some of us believed it back then - and anger is not always logical enough to diminish with facts. ;)

That's cool. And honestly, if B&B really wanted to make a backdoor pilot for a Riker series, then why didn't they just have Riker & Troi on the Titan post-Nemesis instead of shoehorning their old asses into a TNG episode that made no sense in context?
 
Taking a place on the holodeck of the Ent-D is TATV's biggest strengths. I can tell myself it never happened, because it didn't. Riker watched a story. And while I like to think Carbon Creek's story was (mostly) true, I also like to tell myself TATV's cold shower of a story isn't, and that Connor Trinneer may have a short cameo appearance in Discovery. Maybe Trip will have to tell people he isn't dead, thanks to an oft-repeated rumour that went mainstream. :lol: (Not sure if that's a Beatles reference, or a 2016/Facebook reference.)

One good thing though – Riker appearing as Chef was all sorts of awesome. If it wasn't in an episode that sucked so much...

ETA: The holodeck nature won't undo the fact that it pissed on The Pegasus too, as the connection between the two stories made no sense. Unless Riker was merely procrastinating, and he made up the whole thing about being unsure of his decision – he just wanted to be on the holodeck, and made up a fake reason to be there.
 
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Maybe the holodeck episode nudged him in one direction, so when the moment came he was more inclined to make the choice he did?
 
One good thing though – Riker appearing as Chef was all sorts of awesome.
I was really hoping that when they eventually showed Chef he would be played by William Shatner. In my mind, his role as The Chairman on the short-lived Iron Chef USA was making that a gimme - a way of enticing the Shat into a cameo by combining it with a recent and well-known interest of his.

But Frakes as Chef would have been cool, I guess, too, if, as you said, it hadn't been in such a sucky episode - and also probably if he had not been Riker but had simply been playing a different role altogether as Chef (or, if he *had* been Captain Riker, and they played his presence on the NX-01, and maybe even Deanna's, off of the Temporal Cold War in some clever way).
 
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