Sure, me too. But, even as a finale I'd still have liked it much better than tatv. Its a good, fun episode, well executed with strong roles for most of the main cast. TaTV isn't any of those things.
These are the Voyages... as a middle of season episode
- Thread starter Nathan
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Sure, me too. But, even as a finale I'd still have liked it much better than tatv. Its a good, fun episode, well executed with strong roles for most of the main cast. TaTV isn't any of those things.
You wouldn't be wrong to think that. Apart from the bashers who were here to get their jollies off one last time, the only people who didn't outright hate the finale (with two exceptions I could identify by name even 13 years later, that's how little anyone supposed this finale) were those who didn't care that much about Trip as a character to begin with.
But even if Trip had lived, this was a whole mess. ENT was my first foray into Trek fandom (and even fandom as a whole, really, because I was 19 when it ended). I liked TNG well enough, but they already had their finale 12 years earlier.
And I hated the interviews that came out about this being a "love letter to the fans"--which ones, exactly? The ENT fans that stuck it out through two horrid seasons before anything remotely decent made it to air? The TNG fans that largely left fandom once DS9 went off the air? The Voyager fans whoses asses were still chapped over their own lackluster finale?
It was clear to many of us at the time that this finale was written as a pat on the back for their glory days of TNG...or at least, it felt that way to many of us, most of who were like me and never cared about Trek before this series.
(That's partly why despite objective stating Season 4 was the most consistently best written season, it honestly isn't my personal favorite...it felt like TOS part 2 and not Enterprise. But that's another post entirely.)
TATV was just badly written. The story could have worked even though it left most people perplexed. I would rather of course they finished the series with Enterprise actually off to do some exploration which was after all why they were out there. Even if we,the viewers, knew that they were heading into troubled times, It would have ended Enterprise on a more positive note.
I think a rewritten TATV could have been cool. I thought the script sucked but the core idea of looking back at a point in Trek history had real merit. It being part of Riker's crisis was dumb but you could have had "modern" Riker and Troi on the Titan (using some repainted Enterprise-E sets) and just have them discussing the birth of the UFP and instead of using the holodeck we just have flashbacks to what occurred in the 22nd century. And this probably wouldn't work for everybody, but I would have had no villain story and just do something like 'Family' and have a bunch of moments between characters and where they ended up. Finally, the NX-01 would definitely not be decommissioned and it would still be out there exploring the galaxy.
I think it would have been better received, but all the chef stuff wouldn't play well.
Well making it a tribute to that doesn't seem so wrong, at least it's understandable, given that yes for Berman & Braga TNG is where they got their start in the franchise or television generally and it was a high mark, critically and commercially, for both the franchise and them. And they would understandably also be bitter that even among the remaining fans of Enterprise most were very hostile to what they had done with the show and insisted on giving the credit to others.
The episode was also hurt by it probably being a bad idea to try to convey the forming of the Federation in one episode, and maybe particularly because the immediate predecessor "Terra Prime" had already tried to do that story (or the forming of a precursor to the Federation).
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