The last episode

[Hopeful Romantic]

I agree this is a major complaint, but my biggest one is that the fallout from Trip and T'Pol losing a child is completely glossed over.

Losing a child, plus talking about having another baby, which indicates they are staying together. THAT is a major complaint.

Amid soooo many others. But that one hurt the most. I remember watching that horrible, stilted scene of Trip and T'Pol inside the shuttlepod, both acting completely out of character, and being just slack-jawed in shock. All the potential and promise and hope set up in Terra Prime, tossed out like trash. For no reason. Awful.

 

[Reanok]

Yes Tatv is a lousy show it doesn't get any better the number of times you watch it. It was stupid Trip and T'Pol were no longer a couple .Like Hopeful romantic said it stinks.

 

[fireproof78]

Losing a child, plus talking about having another baby, which indicates they are staying together. THAT is a major complaint.

Amid soooo many others. But that one hurt the most. I remember watching that horrible, stilted scene of Trip and T'Pol inside the shuttlepod, both acting completely out of character, and being just slack-jawed in shock. All the potential and promise and hope set up in Terra Prime, tossed out like trash. For no reason. Awful.

1000% this. Terra Prime sets it up beautifully and it's left aside. And T'Pol dismisses it and I'm like..."Ok, why?"

I rarely ask this with Star Trek but I had a Guy moment: "Did you even watch the show?" Specifically, the episode right before the one you're making?

 

[Darth Thanos]

Well, T'Pol is Vulcan, and vulcans are infamous for their lack of emotions even in the harshest situations. But, to be fair, did Spock or Tuvok ever endure something like this (the death of their children) onscreen?

 

[Sumire]

T’Pol was rather infamous for having more than one source of damage to her emotional control. At least one of which we were specifically told would be irreparable to some degree. Adding that to such a devastating loss, it remains extremely puzzling why TPTB chose to handle (or rather not handle) it the way they did.

 

[fireproof78]

Well, T'Pol is Vulcan, and vulcans are infamous for their lack of emotions even in the harshest situations. But, to be fair, did Spock or Tuvok ever endure something like this (the death of their children) onscreen?

It's not the lack of emotion but the lack of acknowledgement from episode to episode. Just hollow.

 

[Mudd]

I have just ended the series, and I liked it, but for the love of the Bajoran gods, what the hell were they thinking with this last episode? The idea of making it all an holosuite play by Riker is fine... for any other episode. The last one should be the most important, the final climax that closes everything. Instead, the focus is transferred to someone from another series. The story (even if in holosuite form) should be about the creation of the Federation, but that's just an afterthought in a story about some kidnappers. And the final insult, Archer is about to give a grand speech, but Riker and Troi had enough and close the simulation.

Yes, I really wanted to hear more about the gazelles...

 

[FederationHistorian]

My only real complaint with this, is that the versions of Riker and Troi in the episode are completely out of place. The story is supposed to be set at the same time as a "TNG" episode, called "The Pegasus"...which was first in 1994. But in "These Are the Voyages", its obvious that both Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis are noticeably older. In particular, Jonathan seems more heavy-set in general, while Marina's older uniform doesn't do much to hide her increased bust size (she had the surgery sometime after "TNG" ended, but before "Nemesis"). Her wig for Troi also didn't look quite right, as if someone had just dragged it from a Paramount storage area the day before.

I think we don’t get the end sequence with the three Enterprises if Riker & Troi are on a different Galaxy class starship around the time of NEM – it would feel out of sync in a way. But in that case, it should have just been a “lost” episode of TNG.

Losing a child, plus talking about having another baby, which indicates they are staying together. THAT is a major complaint.

Amid soooo many others. But that one hurt the most. I remember watching that horrible, stilted scene of Trip and T'Pol inside the shuttlepod, both acting completely out of character, and being just slack-jawed in shock. All the potential and promise and hope set up in Terra Prime, tossed out like trash. For no reason. Awful.

It was stupid Trip and T'Pol were no longer a couple .Like Hopeful romantic said it stinks.

It’s odd because TPTB went with a different interpretation with the final scenes of “Terra Prime”. It sets up the birth of Spock decades later, and that’s all that mattered. Not the Trip/T’Pol relationship. Not whether Trip & T’Pol would try to bring Lorian into existence and in the process, some variation of the “E2” future into reality.

And the interpretation of TPTB suggest that the Trip/T’Pol relationship only lasted several months at best. So, there are several months worth of details missing. Including why it ended. That's never explained.

And that's if T’Pol is being precise as expected of a Vulcan and the relationship ended exactly six years prior to the Federation's founding.

T’Pol was rather infamous for having more than one source of damage to her emotional control. At least one of which we were specifically told would be irreparable to some degree. Adding that to such a devastating loss, it remains extremely puzzling why TPTB chose to handle (or rather not handle) it the way they did.

I think TPTB only cared about the Archer/T’Pol, Archer/Trip, and Archer/Shran relationships. I can kind of understand it - the dynamic involving a Federation founder in Archer, and individuals representing three of the founding worlds.

But all they seemed to care about was setting up the founding of the Federation, and not how the characters developed six years later. Basically, ticking off the last item on a checklist.

 

[Captain59]

What burns me the most is that the actual characters never appear in their own finale. (Nor does the NX-01...only in the montage, which is not part of the episode.) I was always so hung up on the fact this entire episode takes place on the Enterprise-D that it never sunk in that the last time we see the characters themselves is in Terra Prime. Not only that, it wasn't even a two-hour finale. If you look back at how much ENT got the shaft, and continues to get the shaft even today, it's quite mindboggling.

 

[Tosk]

I really wish that the Blu-ray release had a "movie-length" edit of Demons/Terra Prime as an extra option, the way a few of the TNG two-parters got as separate releases. Just to make it that little bit extra "series finale"-like.

 

[Savath]

I'm just starting Enterprise for the first time and I hate this is where it ends already. I wish I didn't know about it.

 

[Hopeful Romantic]

@Savath, just remember that Barclay got drunk and rewrote the holodeck program to prank Riker. The whole Thing was a big stupid joke.

Enjoy your first Enterprise watch!

 

[Savath]

@Savath, just remember that Barclay got drunk and rewrote the holodeck program to prank Riker. The whole Thing was a big stupid joke.

Enjoy your first Enterprise watch!

Thanks! So far so good. I love the first few episodes

 

[Nerys Myk]

Yes, I really wanted to hear more about the gazelles...

They were killed by lions.

 

[Jack Wolfe]

I thought the episode was pretty hilarious.

 

[at Quark's]

I still wonder how this episode would have been viewed, had it not been the series' finale, but a random S2 episode.

(My feeling is that it would have been considered a lower tier ep, and a weird one at that (why does it feature TNG characters), but not as vehemently hated as it is now).

 

[Oddish]

I still wonder how this episode would have been viewed, had it not been the series' finale, but a random S2 episode.

(My feeling is that it would have been considered a lower tier ep, and a weird one at that (why does it feature TNG characters), but not as vehemently hated as it is now).

I would more say S4. That was the season for shaking things up: the mirrorverse, explaining the Klingons' different look, and the Vulcan change in philosophy. It would have fit right in.

Delete Trip's death, set it in 2155. Change a few pretexts, and slip in Troi and Riker. And, you have an unexceptional but cute piece of fanservice.

 

[at Quark's]

I would more say S4. That was the season for shaking things up: the mirrorverse, explaining the Klingons' different look, and the Vulcan change in philosophy. It would have fit right in.

Delete Trip's death, set it in 2155. Change a few pretexts, and slip in Troi and Riker. And, you have an unexceptional but cute piece of fanservice.

You may be right. I chose S2 because in my memory, S4 had mostly a continuing overarching background story, and this one would not have have fit in between other episodes as it deals with events 10 years later. That's why I thought it would work better in a season filled with isolated episodes (such as S2). But of course it could have been done by changing the (time) setting, as you note.

 

[AntonyF]

I still don't mind the episode and just can't get angry as others have done.

I think it was a Star Trek finale. This was the closure of 18 years of that era of Trek. The end of the Berman dynasty. It was a finale for it all, not just Enterprise.

I also like how it wove - through retrocon - Enterprise into the latter narrative.

I understand WHY people don't like it... but I think it needs to be viewed as a coda to it all.

Killing Trip was needless though.

 

[AntonyF]

Also random thought, what if it were someone else? I doubt it'd have changed the backlash... but Troi does feel like rent a guest star by this point and Riker's motivation was lacking.

Wouldn't it have been better as a Sisko story? He's facing the potential end of the Federation in the war against the Dominion and he wants to remind himself what he's fighting for? How Archer succeeded in uniting warring races for peace... when it seemed impossible.