"These Are the Voyages" as a 'true' series finale

[marsh8472]

It was nice to see Riker and Troi again at first. Shran had a kid, presumably with the Aenar lady he met in episode "The Aenar", good for him. Attempting to show the formation of the federation at the end, nice try at an attempt at closure. Better to have some kind of closure then none at all I suppose.

 

[Hopeful Romantic]

Dead horse - beat it some more.

What, it's been two whole weeks! That's enough time for TATV haters to get the shakes and feel the burning vengeful need to express their outrage anew.

Personally, I remain slackjawed that this horrible thing's creators actually looked at the script and pronounced it good and worthy , authorized millions of bucks to be sunk into it, and maintained their blithe, myopically confident belief that it would be a fitting finale for not just the holograms-- er, the characters of ENT, but the whole fricking Trek TV franchise. Even when their own cast hated it.

I. Am. Still. Stunned. Been nearly 14 years, y'all.

Ha-ha. True. I think I remember one of the moderators, I forget which, noting how many threads there are on this episode, but since it was so rightfully hated that it deserved it, or something to that effect

I do consider these TATV threads cathartic for those fans who were kicked in the teeth many times over by the premature cancellation, the hijacking of the episode by the TNG storyline, that insipid characterization by the Beebs of this drek as a "valentine" , the really stupid, stilted script, etc etc. This level of offense never ceases to be galling, no matter how many threads we have, or how often. I will defend to the death your right to vent.

Always felt the topic should be pinned here to curb proliferation.

Mmmwell, we already have several pinned threads. Not a fan of adding another. If folks need to rant, the thread will stay near the top. Since this iteration is more general than the last one, it should suffice for a while. Vent or praise as you see fit.

 

[Damian]

In many ways it's sad. I love all Star Trek for the most part, and that includes Berman era Trek. I actually find it a shame that the Berman era ended on such a sour note. Had they ended with Terra Prime I think many fans would have been satisfied with that. It wasn't "The Best of Both Worlds" great, but it would have been a satisfying conclusion nonetheless.

I always said they should have ended the series with the opening salvos of the Romulan War. Enterprise was finally hitting all (or most) of the right notes by season 4. And Paramount went and cancelled it. How many fans would have complained to Paramount about cancelling it had it ended with the beginning of one of the pivotal moments in Star Trek future history that has never been on screen. The Berman team could have said 'we'd love to show you the rest of the war and the creation of the Federation, but alas, our show's been cancelled, sorry'.

 

[Reanok]

I recently rewatched Tatv and still dislike it as much when it originally aired in 2005. It sucks big time.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I just started my, probably 5th rewatch of ENT. It's been a few years and I was getting excited thinking of all the thingsI had to look forward to once the rather pedestrian first season is out of the way. Shran. Degra. Schlepping around on Vulcan. All those great 2 and 3 part story arcs. THE ROMULAN REVEAL! Twilight. North Star. That time Hoshi finally kicked ass.. anyway it was all coming back but I can honestly also say I was filled with dread thinking I would eventually get to TATV. Which I will skip. And I am not a skipper. But I still dread that it even exists.

 

[guyute03]

Worst Trek episode ever.
Makes 'Shades Of Grey' & 'Move Along Home' look good.

 

[Noname Given]

If they were going to do this, they should've set this post Nemesis

^^^
Remember B&B's WHPOLE POINT to this was going back to something Franchise fans actually watched a lot of, and remembered fondly <---- And that ain't ST:Nem.

Although to be fair to them, in the end, they created something that is disliked EVEN MORE than ST:Nem was in general.

 

[ScottJ85]

I didn’t mind the idea of a TNG tie-in episode, but making it the finale for series was not a good move.

 

[serdogthehound]

These are the Voyages never heard of it Enterprise ended with the wonderful two hour "Terra Prime" which was so so good. Enterprise really went out on high note

On a more serious note I also hate that the TNG was set when it was that Riker is going to play on the holodeck to make that decision one that defined him as a man ????

 

[Tim Thomason]

A couple of ideas:
- set it on the USS Titan a couple years after Nemesis with Riker dealing with some random crisis. Make it a true epilogue to Star Trek in a way. Can't afford the Titan? Just give Riker a redressed ready room and maybe a hallway set and have everything happen there.
- Don't timeskip Enterprise. Set in 2155, maybe months after Terra Prime. You can still kill off Trip, if you want to, I guess. Make Tala a baby, and maybe just set the final scene, unrelated, at the UFP founding years later.
- if it's an epilogue to all Star Trek, maybe toss in some references to other series. Maybe Nog is Riker's chief engineer, maybe he namedrops Admiral Janeway or a rendezvous with Voyager. Maybe Troi asks why he doesn't play some Kirk adventures. Can you afford an opening CG shot of Titan at Deep Space 9?

 

[Lance]

I couldn't believe it. We're ready to watch the speech, he steps up to the dais, then 'end program'. Dammit Riker.

It puts me in mind of Voyager's final scene. We've spent seven seasons watching to see them return home and... it ends with Voyager approaching Earth and a fade to credits. We don't even get to see her enter orbit. The most we get is a flashback to the ship's arrival in the future scenes, but that feels unsatisfying. Enterprise's final scene feels just as unsatisfying, for very much the same reason. We've been loyal viewers to each series and have been invested in the characters and the powers that be don't seem to share the same investment. It feels like a slap in the face. It was unsatisfying 14 years ago and its still unsatisfying today.

 

[DonIago]

Given the writing of ENT to this point, it may be valid to worry that if they had written a speech it might have been a let-down in any case.

All About Antelopes

 

[GulBahana]

Wasn't effective at all. Brannon Braga even regrets it. I would recommend skipping it to anyone who likes Enterprise.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

And oh yeah, promotions for the crew, at least, c'mon.

Archer, T'Pol and Trip are pretty much stuck promotions wise unless they're going to split off to different ships, however Reed could potentially have been promoted, and Hoshi and Mayweather definately should have been.

 

[ALF]

Yeah, that's sort of what I was wondering. Can TATV be salvaged taking out TNG elements and if it were after the war and the end of a 7 year run.

My feeling is much the same though. You might retain the Archer speech preparation angle, but I didn't care for the Shran story angle too much and Trip's death and the way that was handled. So at this point I see maybe one or two minor story angles that can be saved but nothing significant IMO.

There wouldn't be much there... maybe 5-10 minutes of story? Once you take out all the scenes with Riker and Troi, there's not too much left. That's including the scenes Riker was "there" but not really part of the action (objective mode?) - like the extremely personal conversation between T'Pol and Trip that they decide to have in the shuttlecraft about being missed. You can still include that and omit the cutaways of Riker reacting.

I figured by now YouTube would be filled with fan edits of These Are The Voyages - I couldn't find one. Back in 2005, a poster on this board was threatening to make a fan edit that 'undid' the ending via some clips of Geordi LaForge talking about a holodeck malfunction. It was great but lost to the mists of time I suppose.

Additionally, I'd like to add that I don't think the episode would nearly so maligned by fans if

Spoiler

Trip had survived, which he would have had to 'fix' if they done Enterprise S5.

 

[ALF]

On a more serious note I also hate that the TNG was set when it was that Riker is going to play on the holodeck to make that decision one that defined him as a man ????

Sorry, can you rephrase that? You mean the decision for Riker to choose between his loyalty to Picard vs Eric Pressman?

Watched TATV again last night. I think it improves with repeat viewings. The whole production was such a strange endeavor... I will never understand why B and B thought that fans were gonna love it.

Best line:
"You can all go straight to hell!" - Trip

 

[Hopeful Romantic]

Welp, now that the 2 most recent TATV threads are now side by side and being posted in simultaneously, it's time to merge them.

 

[Damian]

I figured by now YouTube would be filled with fan edits of These Are The Voyages - I couldn't find one.

Honestly it's so bad that even fan edits can't save it .

I can tolerate it now because I'm a big novel reader and the Enterprise relaunch offered an, um, alternate version of those events. Riker still went in the holodeck as we saw in TATV, and all that happened (after all novels can't outright contradict on screen canon), but with a little bit of litverse license they re-explained things that this was an altered historical account, it's not how things really happened. So I watch TATV through that lens.

Otherwise it would probably be the first Star Trek production that I actually would find unwatchable.

 

[CommanderRaytas]

I think it would do the show even less justice: a mediocre show with OOC characters who act particularly stupid and a plot that doesn't make a lot of sense? Meh.

Though I hate the space nazis more, tbh.

 

[Dukhat]

^^^
Remember B&B's WHPOLE POINT to this was going back to something Franchise fans actually watched a lot of, and remembered fondly <---- And that ain't ST:Nem.

And if that was their intention, then the worst thing they could have done was to shoehorn the story into "The Pegasus," since it totally doesn't fit and audiences watching ENT who never saw TNG or that episode would be scratching their heads, since it has nothing whatsoever to do with ENT.

Now if they decided to make a "lost" TNG episode, that might have worked a bit better. There was actually a TNG porn parody that did this exact thing. Set during the 6th or 7th season of TNG, it had to do with the crew finding a stasis pod containing an older Tasha Yar from "Yesterday's Enterprise" after the Ent-C went back in time. Turns out that it's a plot by Sela to gain control of the Ent-D, as she has her mother under mind control. If one were to watch the thing without the actual sex scenes, it makes a fairly good TNG ep. But honestly, getting the whole TNG cast back for TATV probably wouldn't have happened anyway.