"Thought" ended with the finale the minute B&B seized creative control of the final episode from Manny Coto and UPN trimmed it to one hour in length.
TATV--what were they thinking?
- Thread starter KayArr
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They were thinking it was bad idea after all to drink and write.
Hi,
This is my first post here so hello everyone
I liked Ent, but was very disappointed with TATV. I read the book 'The Good that men do' and this has become my official ending to Enterprise...
I wont say anything about what it tells other than the Synopsis"Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker was not killed in an explosion, but rather, his death was staged. With the assistance of Captain Archer and Doctor Phlox, Trip is swept up by the shadowy organization that was employing his best friend, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, and sent deep under cover. After discovering that the Romulans have a new warp drive, faster than any vessel, Starfleet sends Trip to determine if this will be a threat to the new fragile alliance."
I really recommend this to anyone that wasn’t happy with the way the series finished.
This is my first post here so hello everyone
I liked Ent, but was very disappointed with TATV. I read the book 'The Good that men do' and this has become my official ending to Enterprise...
I wont say anything about what it tells other than the Synopsis"Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker was not killed in an explosion, but rather, his death was staged. With the assistance of Captain Archer and Doctor Phlox, Trip is swept up by the shadowy organization that was employing his best friend, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, and sent deep under cover. After discovering that the Romulans have a new warp drive, faster than any vessel, Starfleet sends Trip to determine if this will be a threat to the new fragile alliance."
I really recommend this to anyone that wasn’t happy with the way the series finished.
If a made-for/straight-to-DVD or Web download ENT movie ever got made for the fans, "The Good that Men Do" should be the script material the writers use.
At this point, almost ANYTHING---flawed or not---would beat "TATV." And at least we'd lose the superfluous, illogical Riker/holodeck crap from 200 years into the future.
Riker, oh that's just a horrible thing to do to those people. I have been wracking my brain trying to think of more annoying ST characters than smug-with-no-beard/smug-with-beard ... but really, I can't.
Neelix is my least favorite on Voyager, by a long shot, but even Neelix deserves better than Riker.
Captain X
Rear Admiral
I've seen two fan-made works that are metric fuck-tons better than TGTMD. One tries to explain the holoprogram (though there's still that flawed part in how it doesn't really fit in with what happened in Pegasus), and the other just completely ignores TATV and gives ENT an actual good and riviting last episode. Both are much better in terms of plotting and writing than TGTMD, and I'm willing to bet that there are other fan fics out there that do a better job than TGTMD did in terms of fixing the brain fart that was TATV.
I think they were thinking:
- a tie in with past Trek (they chose TNG because they'd worked on it and it was the start of "Modern Trek" with a non-stop run and was the most popular of the later Treks with the general audiences)
- a character death to add some emotion
and that was pretty much it. Then they pretty much made every bad execution of those thoughts that they could do. Although I am kind of glad they didn't show the speech - there was no way it would have lived up to expectations.
Wasn't the script originally written in Season 3 when they weren't sure they were getting Season 4 yet and then it was dusted off later? I think that explains the Trip & T'Pol business since they weren't really together at the end of Season 3. Or was that just a rumour?
- a tie in with past Trek (they chose TNG because they'd worked on it and it was the start of "Modern Trek" with a non-stop run and was the most popular of the later Treks with the general audiences)
- a character death to add some emotion
and that was pretty much it. Then they pretty much made every bad execution of those thoughts that they could do. Although I am kind of glad they didn't show the speech - there was no way it would have lived up to expectations.
Wasn't the script originally written in Season 3 when they weren't sure they were getting Season 4 yet and then it was dusted off later? I think that explains the Trip & T'Pol business since they weren't really together at the end of Season 3. Or was that just a rumour?
^ Why would they change it?
Lady Conq, the script was written at the end of season 3/beginning of season 4. And the script - why it was created - didn't have anything to do with Trip/T'Pol. You already know this, but I think it needs to be said: Enterprise wasn't about Trip/T'Pol -- it was larger than that. It was about humans learning to expand their horizons (in searching the stars and through meeting aliens). Through the series, the humans become less naive and more experienced.
It's why in TATV, Trip died -- he gave up his life so that quest could continue; Trip wasn't a bridge to the future. He was right. The Federation began where Archer lived out his legacy -- the one they'd alluded to for four years.
Lady Conq, the script was written at the end of season 3/beginning of season 4. And the script - why it was created - didn't have anything to do with Trip/T'Pol. You already know this, but I think it needs to be said: Enterprise wasn't about Trip/T'Pol -- it was larger than that. It was about humans learning to expand their horizons (in searching the stars and through meeting aliens). Through the series, the humans become less naive and more experienced.
It's why in TATV, Trip died -- he gave up his life so that quest could continue; Trip wasn't a bridge to the future. He was right. The Federation began where Archer lived out his legacy -- the one they'd alluded to for four years.
People,
My first thought is: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I also think no one ever sets out to make a crappy TV episode, movie, or song. It just happens. I have to say the idea was unsound to begin with. It was like a time travel ep without the time travel. Inserting TNG into ENT was gimmicky and unwieldy.
And the death of Trip was quite possibly one of the most pointless, and as pointles as, Tasha Yar's, and more hollow than even some of the other meaningless deaths. Think of it, with the exception of Spock's death, and maybe Jadzia Dax's, all the others -- Kirk, Yar, Data -- they were meaningless deaths. And Spock came back, after all, kind of rendering his sacrifice moot.
Red Ranger
My first thought is: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I also think no one ever sets out to make a crappy TV episode, movie, or song. It just happens. I have to say the idea was unsound to begin with. It was like a time travel ep without the time travel. Inserting TNG into ENT was gimmicky and unwieldy.
And the death of Trip was quite possibly one of the most pointless, and as pointles as, Tasha Yar's, and more hollow than even some of the other meaningless deaths. Think of it, with the exception of Spock's death, and maybe Jadzia Dax's, all the others -- Kirk, Yar, Data -- they were meaningless deaths. And Spock came back, after all, kind of rendering his sacrifice moot.
Red Ranger
Of course it wasn't about Trip/T'pol. But in fact, building that relationship had been impt for four years, and critical to the final 2 eps before TATV. So of course they could have changed the script to have them together--I'm thinking it would have taken an hour, for goodness sake. Change a couple scenes, the script didn't even have to be longer. I'm not saying Trip had to live, I don't care that they killed off--but it was meaningless, too quick, it had no resonance, and none of the characters seemed to care after. Let Trip be dead, but let it be done well and let it really mean something. Let T'pol go on as a widow or whatever--what would that hurt. Here's hoping that you aren't one of those always harping on continuity (I know I'm not)--because really, how hard would it be have a little continuity here? It would have made the final ep more dramatic, not less.
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If "TATV" was supposed to be the culmination and fulfilment of all that Archer was supposed to be and do in the leadup to the birth of the Federation and the STAR TREK universe we know and love, then it was executed VERY poorly.
I think that's a matter of opinion, not fact. In my opinion, really only the last 1.3 years dealt with an on again/off again (not building) "relationship." The writers seemed to be on different pages, too, which may have been part of the problem. For example, Reeves-Stevens when asked at a convention in season 4 discussed how they wanted T'Pol to really find herself as a Vulcan. I think Coto and Sussman had different plans for her, which we saw in the remainder of season 4 (after the Vulcan arc).
The last two episodes were less about a relationship and more about mankind getting past its provincial attitudes, a la Archer's speech. I also thought it was a nice way for Trip and T'Pol to get past the divide; they started the episode bickering about an unknown child and their differences. I did think the two-parter lacked what was the real point was: oh, neat, humans and Vulcans will go on to have babies one day, like Spock.
I would've rather had TATV wrap up the actual series and show nice friendship moments, which I believe they did. I also liked the possibilities ahead: TOS, friendship between Vulcans and humans and boldly going where no one had gone before.
This has been my position since TaTV first aired. Other than ratings, there simply were no other reasons to use TNG, or any of it's characters in the final hour of ENT. The most logical series to have used in TaTV was TOS since ENT was supposed to be it's direct prequal (particularly emphasized in season 4). But when TPTB couldn't lock up Shatner as Kirk (arguably the franchise's most popular character) they went for the next thing that would guarantee ratings; inclusion of characters from the franchise's highest rated show (TNG). "Ratings stunts" sometimes work out artistically, but usually when there is a lot of thought and caring in how the stunt is pulled off. This one seemed to have very little of that.
The inclusion of TNG and it's characters also added another layer of randomness and ambiguity to an episode that had enough problems even without the TNGers. It created an even bigger disconnect, especially for ENT fans. The fact that the Pegusus tie in was so poorly defined added to the episode's WTF(?) quotient.
IMO, in the end, the only thing the Beebs cared about less than ENT the show, was the ENT fandom.
I can certainly agree to disagree about that. Still, the fact that so many people were upset with what they did with TnT would seem to indicate that changing things just a little bit, a little tweaking, would have made this quite a bit better and made the episode better received. Would you be willing to agree that it wouldn't have actually hurt TATV to keep TnT as a couple as they were at the end of Terra Prime?
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