Anyone else notice that neither of their uniforms had pips on them in the final ENT episode. And the rebuilt Enterprise D sets weren't quite right. It was immediately noticeable to me.
I did not notice the pips, but the "D" sets were not faithfully reproduced. I suspect this was due to aesthetic and/or convenience purposes. But the sets look great, regardless. Even the "D" exterior shots were completely new. I was left with the impression that this is how Rick Berman would've liked seeing it "now." Whilst it may not be "authentic," it wasn't like Riker or Troi were going to look exactly like they did on TNG, either. So, between that and this being the last TV show of the Berman Era, it felt OK for poetic license to be taken. At least, absurd license wasn't taken ....
They had pips on their uniforms. Jonathan Frakes: http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x22/thesearethevoyages026.jpg http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x22/thesearethevoyages109.jpg Most pictures of Marina Sirtis from the episode have her hair covering her collar, but in this one you can clearly see at least two pips: http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x22/thesearethevoyages211.jpg
The rebuilt sets definitely seemed "off", but I put it down to the lighting and filming techniques having changed quite a lot in the past 20 years. Scotty's classic Enterprise bridge was similarly not-quite-right in "Relics" The turbolift was definitely not the same type as they used in the original show. I think it was a TNG movie one they repainted to look more the TV version. IMO they were good enough. Just a shame the story wasn't.
The only thing that sort of threw me off for a second during the episode was that both of them had aged visibly (they still looked great, just not exactly like they did on TNG).
Nemesis had been out for 2½ years by the time TATV aired. It would've been better to have Riker in some conundrum as captain of the Titan, re: the aging of he and Troi. Did any Enterprise novels "rewrite" Trip's death, assuming the holodeck recreation was flawed?
There's the wide shot of ten forward grabbed from the third season that features crew members wearing first and second season uniforms. Riker looks palpably and obviously older, Troi speaks in an accent unknown to Troi in the TNG episodes and they actually managed to garble what happened in the Pegasus episode. I appreciate the attempt to recreate a previous era will inevitably see holes -- production staff are not omnipotent with unlimited resources. There's a few holes in All Good Things. But even taking the tolerant view, the effort here was very sloppy indeed. And that's leaving aside the whole question of whether it was appropriate to shoehorn in the TNG crew into Enterprise finale reducing the Archer crew to the status of simulations!
Most definitely. Creating new Titan sets shouldn't have been any harder than re-creating the TNG sets. And they could have pulled out any old CG mesh of any random 24th century ship for the Titan. Like the Akira class, maybe? Yes, the post-finale Enterprise novels completely re-write TATV and show the "real" events.
To this day I still have no idea why Berman & Braga chose "The Pegasus" as a framing story for TATV. Not a damn clue. I realize that they were short on time, but as you state, there wouldn't have been a negligible difference with setting the story on the Titan post-Nemesis, if all Riker & Troi were doing was dicking around in the holodeck. The only thing I can come up with is that B&B wanted to see the Enterprise-D again (which had nothing to do with ENT), and then proceeded to do that in the most ham-fisted, illogical way possible.
The most glaring error in the sets for me was in the briefing room scene the door was hung backwards. The orange part with the sticker identifying the room was on the outside during TNG but was on the inside here.
They wanted to go on a nostalga trip. Do something special like the DS9 tribble episode. Something more than simply hawking back old TNG actors for cameos which had been done numerous times before. The Titan sounds all cool but I actually think it'd probably be fairly pedestrian really. Ships come n' go. Bringing back D - the golden era of Berman - would've struck a chord with a certain generation. But they botched it for whatever reason.
In regards to the turbolift set, I think on one of the dvd/bluray extras or in some commentary Michael and Denise Okuda said that the turbolift set for the ENT D in TATV was made from scratch due to the fact that the old turbolift sets had been lost/destroyed/dramatically altered/redressed up to that point. I remember when first watching the episode as a kid that was the biggest WTF? moment for me seeing riker and troi back on the enterprise. I kept asking myself what the hell happened to the turbolift? Then again I assumed it was the same turboshaft from "Disaster" and Geordi just had not gotten around to fixing it.
That is a brilliant suggestion. A true 'love letter' to fans could have been an episode where the NX helps Captain Riker [and the Titan]. No need to awkwardly fit Riker & Troi into an episode of TNG 20 years prior, no underwhelming story... Ah that would have been great.
I agree. A post Nemesis setting would have been far superior, and remember thinking that when the episode first aired! Not to mention, the Pegasus episode was such a random choice of a TNG episode to choose from. Never read the novels, but from what I understand, TATV is retconned as some inaccurate historical record, but the actual event was not much better: Trip fakes his death so he could go join Section 31 or some nonsense.
I'd have loved the Titan to be following up on an NX-01 mission, showing the long term consequences of something Archer and company did. The narrative jumping between timeframes as the consequnces/cause stories played out.
Of course. Perhaps even an episode where someone from the future travels back to destroy the NX after having caused harm in Rikers time. The Titan comes back to stop the plot and works with the NX to do it. That or vice-versa: Archer learns of a plot from someone in the past to attack Riker and the Titan in the future. He travels forward, with his vastly inferior ship, to try and stop it. Either way, it sounds far, far better than TATV.