Okay, get ready to throw Tomatoes but I liked "Endgame".

Well, if Seven was into BDSM (not the way I read the character, mind you,) then C/7 was pretty much inevitable after Human Error. That episode laid the foundation for C/7. Carping about it in Endgame makes no sense.

 

The episode only laid the foundation for Seven's infatuation with Chakotay, not his feelings for her. It was a hologram that she programed, not him and that my friend is canon.

C/7 is wrong mostly because it ends with the older man leaving his SO for a younger woman. Now it may not feel that way to you, but it does to a lot of female viewers. It makes Chakotay look like an older guy that has suddenly gone middle-aged crazy, and that is a disservice to all the characters including Seven.

Brit

 

Well, if she was sad, then that certainly justifies jeopardizing the future of the galaxy. Oh, and don't bother arriving a few eps earlier in order to save Joe Cary or anything.

That's still far to great a risk to save less than 25 lives, sorry. What if the Borg had a mechanism to lock down the hub? What if they threw enough cubes on collision courses at Voyager to disable even their Batmobile shields? What if... etc.

Another excellent reason to forget about the ep.

 

I think its time to simply say, we disagree, and leave it at that.

 

Did someome say BDSM Chakotay hologram??

 

Actually, I think it was supposed to be the groundwork for a finale that involved Seven's self-sacrifice to get Voyager home. It was NOT Chakotay that was interacting with her on the holodeck, but just a hologram; in fact, the real Chakotay was extremely exasperated with her. At the end of the episode, Seven realizes that she will never really be able to experience life as a human, and this realization was supposed to fuel her decision to do whatever she could to get Voyager home. Obviously, they decided to do something completely different for the finale, with the Admiral making the sacrifice. The decision to pair up C/7 was NOT set up at all by Human Error.

 

Mate, I SO don't want to go there...

I don't hate Endgame, but it deffinetly sucked for a finale. And I have to agree with Gaith here. Returning and totally screwing up the timeline just because she didn't like a decision she made at the time? A no go from where I'm standing.

 

But... That just means that deep down: SHE WANTS TO BE BORG!

It's not a fantasy if BDSM 24/7 was the middle 20 years of her life, which means that BDSM isn't fantasy or escapism or release: It's nostalgia and perhaps regret. And even if she has the ferengi mentality "We don't want to topple the system, we want to rise to the top and take it over" that if she was a dom instead of the sub it would only underline all our concerns that she was being groomed to be Queen even while she was given the slack to assimilate informaiton as crew aboard Voyager. BDSM is a gateway fetsh to reassimilation.

Almost every thing I just said counts for Tom playing Captain Proton.

 

I love ENDGAME...beautifully moving and exciting, and an amazing feast for Janeway fans...other than the silly C/7 stuff, it's sublime.

 

Chakotay had no significant other to abandon. Regulations against fraternizing with subordinates (which I thought was supposed to be canon,) meant that Chakotay's only option was Seven. Also, inasmuch as Seven was the suitor in the relationship, Chakotay's "middle age crazy" doesn't come into it at all, no matter whose perspective is used.

When holoChakotay (BDSM version or not) goes for Seven, it means the real Chakotay goes for Seven, just as the holoCrell Moset is just as much a war criminal as the real Crell Moset. Or the holoEMH in Latent Image is healed by time just like a flesh and blood person could be healed by time, or the EMH in Virtuoso has holographic lungs and throat that sing like real lungs and throat.

 

How did you even make such a leap from Seven having an adolesant romantic fantasy to BDSM?

 

I actually loved Endgame.

Since “The Caretaker”, it was obvious that the series can't end with anything but some form of a deus ex machina, or at least by a several miracles. By the end of Season 7, the writers hadn't included any marvellous developments that would allow a less out-of-a-blue ending. Much less an ending that would involve hard work from the crew itself – a development or discovery made by them was too improbable for an ending, and a discovery by Starfleet wouldn't be their doing. Well, they could work hard to get into someone's transwarp conduit, but that's not interesting, much less if it is stuffed into a single episode.

Moreover, it seemed very likely that they won't have an easy way home, and I'd find any ending that featured such a bit too hard to believe. I would expect them to travel decades, lose half of the crew, and arrive at Earth not so happy any more. But anything else but a happy ending wouldn't work either – after 7 seasons of waiting, it would have been awful.

Endgame solved all this. They didn't find any way back home, they lost people, main characters died, they were no longer happy, when they arrived the family no longer existed – we saw new people, nothing was all right. Then Janeway broke all rules and managed to actually turn the things around.

I didn't like C/7 (although I liked the idea that they got together in the future in Admiral Janeway's timeline), I hated the fact that they destroyed the Borg so easily (and Voyager had too much encounters with the Borg already), and I'm angry that they didn't include anything about what happened after they returned (how were Seven and the Borg children accepted, did the ex-Maquis go on trial), but otherwise I found the ending fantastic.

It's not what I hoped for. I preferred a less spectacular and engaging episode, one that focus on what happened when they returned. Something like ENT “Home”. With at least the second half having nothing exciting going on, no time travel, no wars, no fighting. I think it would work well if in the first half, Starfleet, Reg and the Voyager crew worked together on an ingenious way home.

I would also have liked if they kept Starfleet in the dark about what had happened on Voyager until their return. The Borg children, having Maquis as senior officers, knowing who is alive and who isn't, knowing how they performed, etc. The writers could have introduced limited channels for all communication that would make it unreasonable to send irrelevant data. I'd take it even farther. Make it so that Starfleet only suspects that Voyager is in the delta quadrant, and only Reg believes they indeed are, and works against all odds to get them back.

 

No offense, but why the hell not? That would have been a far superior ending. Or, similarly, from the Whettestone review:

 

Well, in TNG it was already shown that the Borg had a Transwarp network so I'm not sure a plot of them defending the alien version of something they already had would work out.

 

On a second thought, yes, it would work. My point was:

1. They already had a few similar chances, so the discovery of a transwarp conduit/wormhole/derelict ship with transwarp/whatever wouldn't be all that exciting.
2. We already had 7 seasons where we saw the Voyager crew go through a lot to survive. And because of that, in order for the ending to be powerful enough, and come out as their own doing, there should have been development for half a season. (Like... They discover the transwarp hub, barely survivng the Borg, have to hide somewhere from the Borg because the queen wants to destroy them now, come up with ways to evade them and a plan to enter the transwarp hub, etc.)

I don't think I would like it if it was just one episode, and that's why I like the fact that they didn't find a quick way home after all.

 

Perhaps "Endgame" should have just glossed over how they got home, be set in the future, and just have it be about Janeway and co dealing with the anniversary of their return?

 

Maybe, considering that's what so many seem to want to see.

Me, I watch "Endgame" for Mulgrew/Alice Krige.............which nobody ever seems to talk about.

 

Oh, there were many complaints about "Human Error" as any search of this forum would reveal. One of them is that Chakotay was NOT acting like the real Chakotay.

 

Huh, I hadn't known that. Still, it wasn't previously established that the Borg had the means to just waltz into Sector 001 whenever they felt like it, so I don't see that option as being at all precluded.

No argument there; about anything would have been better than a deux ex Future Janeway.

Ideally, imho, the series itself would have covered thirty or forty years, gradually aging the characters as they went along, as impractical as the makeup budget would make that. Then when they finally do make it home bit by bit, it'd really mean something. Seven years is a long time, sure, but in Trek human years it's not all that long. Odysseus, remember, was old and gray by the time he at last made it home.

I'd have been perfectly happy to see the finale jump forward to such a return, and do a quiet, low-key episode in that vein. With J/C!