Ideal TOS series finale

[Romulus Prime]

What would be your ideal series finale if you could make one for TOS leading into movies...? Honestly, I don't know what it would be, but I'm interested to see what others may have in mind...

I would love to have seen something along the lines of a potential Klingon-Romulan alliance war story with the Feds which resolves in a way that the Klingons opt out of the alliance, becoming hostile against the Romulan Empire, and hint that there may be some level of respect for humans and Starfleet. But ultimately it would end in a three-way stand off with the Feds, Romulans and Klingons all keeping each other at arms length.

It'd still be an open-ended finale, and it would set the stage
for aspects which find their way into the movies anyways, plus make the Klink-Romulan thing official Trek history, rather than assumption based on the (D7) ships used both Empires.

 

[Maurice]

As it happens I did come up with a series finale that I would have liked to have seen made a few years ago. Here it is for any who might be interested....

Sorry, that's fan fiction stuff, and dependent on familiarity with two previous episodes.

Actually, elements of TMP would have a made a great series finale, the idea of finding where you belong, especially Spock being forced to come to terms with his human half. You could work that into many plots, not necessarily the V'ger idea.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Assuming that in this hypothetical scenario, it's 1969 and there's as yet no TMP, TWOK etc, I'd have a two-part story of the Enterprise on the last days of its 5 year mission heading home. The various senior officers would be making plans for the next stages of their lives.

En route, they'd be attacked by a joint Klingon/ Romulan force; I'd have brought back Kor, Koloth or Kang for the Klingons and the Romulan Commander from The Enterprise Incident - they're out to avenge themselves on Kirk on his final days.

Characters would be captured by the bad guys and would appear to be in genuine peril but of course all would end well.

At the end, the Ent would limp home, having succeeded in its mission but sustaining some damage. Kirk would see his superiors and, relinquishing command of the Enterprise, would be told that Starfleet is planning to refurbish the Enterprise and sent it out on an ongoing open-ended mission of exploration; would he like to renew his command?

We wouldn't hear Kirk's reponse but the grin on his face would be enough of an answer; the final shot would be of the Ent in spacedock being worked on, with the 'Space - the final frontier' voiceover being repeated - but amended to read 'its continuing mission...'

 

[RandyS]

The whole V remake pissed me off. It was a soulless exercise with no inspiration behind it beyond "We need a new genre property to fill the void now that Lost is ending," it totally failed to live up to the allegorical and philosophical underpinnings of the original, and it was just very badly written. It didn't deserve to exist at all, so I'm certainly not sad that it ended.

Reading your comments about the V remake reminds me of that that's pretty much exactly the way I feel about Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica remake.

Except for Bear McCreary's music. I DID enjoy some of that.

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

As it happens I did come up with a series finale that I would have liked to have seen made a few years ago. Here it is for any who might be interested....

Sorry, that's fan fiction stuff, and dependent on familiarity with two previous episodes.

Actually, elements of TMP would have a made a great series finale, the idea of finding where you belong, especially Spock being forced to come to terms with his human half. You could work that into many plots, not necessarily the V'ger idea.

I prefer to look at it as tying up loose ends. Or dangling plot threads. But to each his own.

 

[Christopher]

The whole V remake pissed me off. It was a soulless exercise with no inspiration behind it beyond "We need a new genre property to fill the void now that Lost is ending," it totally failed to live up to the allegorical and philosophical underpinnings of the original, and it was just very badly written. It didn't deserve to exist at all, so I'm certainly not sad that it ended.

Reading your comments about the V remake reminds me of that that's pretty much exactly the way I feel about Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica remake.

Well, I don't think that's defensible even on a factual level. BSG certainly wasn't a soulless, mercenary creation. Let me be absolutely clear -- I am not saying the V remake didn't deserve to exist simply because I personally disliked it. That would be petty, stupid, egocentric, and contemptible. I can strongly dislike something yet still respect the sincere creativity and talent that went into it. So if there'd been any sincere creativity or passion behind the V remake, I might still have disliked it but I would never have said it was soulless or didn't deserve to exist. The problem is that the people assigned to remake V had no idea what they wanted the point of the exercise to be, beyond churning out something to fill an hour of airtime per week. There was no vision driving the story, and so it was just a pointless mess.

There is an incarnation of Galactica that you could say much the same about, and that's Galactica 1980. Much like the V remake, it was commissioned by ABC for mercenary reasons -- they wanted to try to recoup the expense of the sets and FX from the original BSG by recycling them in a cheaper, Earthbound show. Nobody making G80 actually wanted to do it, there was no creative purpose driving it, and so it was a hollow, directionless exercise.

But that is obviously not true of Moore's Galactica. Like it or not (and there's a lot I don't like about it, though a fair amount that I do), there's no question that Ron Moore and his collaborators had a very definite creative vision motivating their work. Indeed, it was clearly a very personal project for Moore, his vehicle for doing all the stuff he wasn't able to do while on Star Trek. It was clearly the show he'd wanted to make for a long time, though he had to graft it onto the skeleton of Glen Larson's creation. So it certainly can't be said to be a shallow exercise done only to fill airtime. There was a very strong central vision driving it throughout, and I acknowledge that even if I didn't always find that vision appealing.

And you certainly can't say that Moore's BSG had less allegorical or philosophical substance than Larson's BSG. Larson's started out as sort of a space-opera retelling of the Book of Mormon, and it did have a recurring, proto-Reagan-Era philosophy of hawkishness in several storylines (in that every character who favored making peace with an enemy was always either a fool or a traitor), but all in all it didn't have much of a driving message or much in the way of allegorical depth. Moore's BSG, on the other hand, was deeply allegorical, loaded with social commentary and philosophical themes.

So there's really no comparison between the two shows. I can understand disliking Moore's BSG, but it's completely dishonest to say it was without a driving vision or a philosophical underpinning. Whether you liked those things about it is a completely separate matter from whether they existed at all.

 

[Maurice]

As it happens I did come up with a series finale that I would have liked to have seen made a few years ago. Here it is for any who might be interested....

Sorry, that's fan fiction stuff, and dependent on familiarity with two previous episodes.

Actually, elements of TMP would have a made a great series finale, the idea of finding where you belong, especially Spock being forced to come to terms with his human half. You could work that into many plots, not necessarily the V'ger idea.

I prefer to look at it as tying up loose ends. Or dangling plot threads. But to each his own.

But the series is full of such loose ends. Why those?

I want stories to be about something, not just plot events. What's the theme?

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

I picked those two eps because they suggested an exciting plot to me. It also seemed like a good way to set up the major changes made in the Enterprise for TMP.

The theme was that all actions, even good intentioned ones, have consequences. And somtimes those consequences can be bad. Thus our heroe actions in the past came back to haunt them, although, being our heroes, they still managed to win through in the end.

 

[Ssosmcin]

As I say, I personally dislike "final" episodes that close off relationships, split up characters and end the premise of a show that used episodic storytelling (ie not arc driven). Star Trek had no central storyline to resolve and merely ending on a really fine episode would have been good enough for me.

Having said that, if they had opted to make a "final" episode, I would have enjoyed an exciting and thoughtful "summation" episode that represents Trek's core values. Not a clip show or anything, but something that restates and emphasizes the hopeful vision of mankind's continued success and solidarity. Maybe something about Kirk completing a diplomatic mission, welcoming a new planet into the Federation. Just as it's finalized, missiles from another faction are detected headed to the capital. The Enterprise destroys the missiles and Kirk investigates the cause of the hostilities. In the end, the planet's membership is put on hold until they can live without harboring hate and prejudice. We leave them as they take their first tentative steps toward lasting peace. The final few minutes would have the Big 3 having a final discussion about the planet, mankind and so on, whil Kirk makes statement about going boldly into the final frontier. With the crew intact, every still together, the last shot would be the Enterprise warping away to its next adventure.

If you'll indulge me...

INT. - BRIDGE OF THE ENTERPRISE

Kirk is in his chair with Spock and McCoy standing on either side.

UHURA: Captain, message from the Federation Council. They fully support your decision and will monitor the situation going forward.

KIRK: Thank you, lieutenant.

McCOY: So they're rejecting the application.

KIRK: Tabling it. For now. They show promise, I didn't want to see it lost without at least giving them the chance to live up to their potential.

SPOCK: Do you believe they'll fulfill that potential?

KIRK: They have the same chance Earth had at that stage of development.

McCOY: And look how well we turned out.

SPOCK: But not before a great many lives were lost, Doctor.

KIRK: Hopefully they can learn from our mistakes. If not. . .

McCOY (bitterly): Of course, there's nothing we can do to help.

SPOCK: The Prime Directive, Doctor -

McCOY: - is damned inconvenient at times.

SPOCK: Perhaps. However, it is necessary.

McCOY: Well, maybe Earth wouldn't have lost so many lives if we had some help back then.

KIRK: You can't hold people by the hand, Bones, and expect them to move forward on their own. We can show them the door, but they have to choose to walk through it. If they can come together and stand unified in peace, then they can go boldly into the final frontier. (Spock and McCoy nod in agreement) Speaking of which; Mister Sulu, take us out of orbit. Ahead warp one.

Or something like that. It's probably been done on a later Trek series or as a novel, but hey, in 1969, it would have been new.

 

[Gary7]

^ I really like that. Well done!

 

[Bubbles McGee]

As I say, I personally dislike "final" episodes that close off relationships, split up characters and end the premise of a show that used episodic storytelling (ie not arc driven). Star Trek had no central storyline to resolve and merely ending on a really fine episode would have been good enough for me.

Having said that, if they had opted to make a "final" episode, I would have enjoyed an exciting and thoughtful "summation" episode that represents Trek's core values. Not a clip show or anything, but something that restates and emphasizes the hopeful vision of mankind's continued success and solidarity. Maybe something about Kirk completing a diplomatic mission, welcoming a new planet into the Federation. Just as it's finalized, missiles from another faction are detected headed to the capital. The Enterprise destroys the missiles and Kirk investigates the cause of the hostilities. In the end, the planet's membership is put on hold until they can live without harboring hate and prejudice. We leave them as they take their first tentative steps toward lasting peace. The final few minutes would have the Big 3 having a final discussion about the planet, mankind and so on, whil Kirk makes statement about going boldly into the final frontier. With the crew intact, every still together, the last shot would be the Enterprise warping away to its next adventure.

If you'll indulge me...

INT. - BRIDGE OF THE ENTERPRISE

Kirk is in his chair with Spock and McCoy standing on either side.

UHURA: Captain, message from the Federation Council. They fully support your decision and will monitor the situation going forward.

KIRK: Thank you, lieutenant.

McCOY: So they're rejecting the application.

KIRK: Tabling it. For now. They show promise, I didn't want to see it lost without at least giving them the chance to live up to their potential.

SPOCK: Do you believe they'll fulfill that potential?

KIRK: They have the same chance Earth had at that stage of development.

McCOY: And look how well we turned out.

SPOCK: But not before a great many lives were lost, Doctor.

KIRK: Hopefully they can learn from our mistakes. If not. . .

McCOY (bitterly): Of course, there's nothing we can do to help.

SPOCK: The Prime Directive, Doctor -

McCOY: - is damned inconvenient at times.

SPOCK: Perhaps. However, it is necessary.

McCOY: Well, maybe Earth wouldn't have lost so many lives if we had some help back then.

KIRK: You can't hold people by the hand, Bones, and expect them to move forward on their own. We can show them the door, but they have to choose to walk through it. If they can come together and stand unified in peace, then they can go boldly into the final frontier. (Spock and McCoy nod in agreement) Speaking of which; Mister Sulu, take us out of orbit. Ahead warp one.

Or something like that. It's probably been done on a later Trek series or as a novel, but hey, in 1969, it would have been new.

That's pretty good!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Actually, I'd have been thrilled if all Our Yesterdays was the final episode. First, it was, for that late in the game, a good episode. My only niggle was that the Enterprise sets were not used at all. The final image of the Enterprise warping away with the nova behind them with that amazing music would have been a quite satisfying end shot of the series.

I said this recently in another thread. For some reason, the penultimate shot in the episode, of the planet winking out to that music, under the original effects, has always moved me.

I also like your "summation" of TOS core values. Hits it pretty well.

 

[Gary7]

Actually, I'd have been thrilled if all Our Yesterdays was the final episode. First, it was, for that late in the game, a good episode. My only niggle was that the Enterprise sets were not used at all. The final image of the Enterprise warping away with the nova behind them with that amazing music would have been a quite satisfying end shot of the series.

I really think it could have worked as a final episode with a few tweaks.

They could have shifted the dialog between Spock and McCoy to the Enterprise... because in fact, they were in a dire hurry to get out of there. And suddenly you have a full minute or two devoted to that interchange when Kirk should have been in contact with Scotty in mere seconds. I think they did that to avoid the overhead costs of filming on the bridge and then likely having to call in Takei and Koenig to man their stations (or at least one, with a substitute for the other).

So they beam up, and then you've got about 5 minutes of "catching up" on the bridge... and of course a few things could be said along what has been mentioned, echoing the values of the show. And maybe Uhura gets a priority message from Starfleet, and the Enterprise is requested to return to the primary Starfleet station above Earth. Then Kirk makes some remark about how "it'll be good to be home, if only for a little while."