These are the Voyages

[Dukhat]

UPN was the network that originally produced ENT (and VOY too.) Unlike TNG and DS9 which were syndicated (so the show's producers had more freedom to do what they wanted and tell the kind of stories they wanted), UPN suits interfered with production because they thought they knew better than the people they put in charge of the show. They forced the showrunners of both VOY and ENT to make only an episodic series without any real challenging story arcs other than just play-it-safe stuff. They also pushed for an over-reliance on "sexy" with 7of9 and T'Pol in their catsuits, decon gel bathing, masseusing, and other ridiculous crap, because they thought that was what their audience wanted. They were even going to put some boy-band of the week on ENT because they thought that was what their target audience of 14-year-old boys wanted. Even the Temporal Cold War was their idea because they didn't even have enough faith in their show that it would stand on it's own; they thought it needed some futuristic nonsense for the audience to accept it. By the time they realized that they'd fucked up, it was too late.

 

[Hopeful Romantic]

^^ Add to that poor advertising targeting the wrong demographics, numerous pre-emptions, shifting timeslots so viewers couldn't find the show to watch it, and too few markets across the country to generate decent ratings (UPN was a fledgling pissant little network that didn't have enough markets). This is how broadcast shows die. UPN actually folded the season after it killed ENT.

And this waste of an hour just twisted the knife...

♪ And IIIIII... eey-yaye-eey-yaye...
Will always love youuuu...
Ooo-uuuu-ooo-uuuu-oooo-uuu... ♬​

Terrible shame and a waste of opportunity that the show was hitting its stride when it got axed. Seasons 5-7, with Coto at the helm, would have been...glorious. [/Kor]

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

I see, thanks for the answers!

 

[JRS]

Horrible finale for the series, that is for sure.
But luckily we can still think this just as an simulation, with several historical errors in its programing
And I still think a Night in Sickbay is more horrid episode than this one.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Horrible finale for the series, that is for sure.
But luckily we can still think this just as an simulation, with several historical errors in its programing
And I still think a Night in Sickbay is more horrid episode than this one.

It is a more horrible episode than Voyager's Threshold, and that says something!

 

[Red Omega]

TATV is just such horrible crap. I just hate Enterprise went out with such a whimper.

 

[doubleohfive]

As I've said before, the problem with this episode was just that it tried to be too many things at once:

--A series finale for Enterprise
--A series finale for the previous 18 years of televised Star Trek and the TNG films
--A 'valentine to the fans'
--A gimmick-show featuring Riker and Troi looking to the past for answers in the future
--A story featuring the death of a major character
--A story advancing the plot of the Federation being created and Enterprise's mission ending.

Any one of these could have been a stellar episode on their own. Riker using the holodeck to visit Archer's time in a plain episode would have been fine. Killing Trip at another point in the series could have been brilliant. Bookending the series with a visit to the same planet they visited in Broken Bow would have been a lovely full-circle. But it's all crammed together here in a way that makes little sense and really doesn't honor anything about what was good about Enterprise the series, and that's why it's so poorly received, apart from the nice homage in the final moments of the show.

The preceding two episodes however are a wonderful finale to the show.

 

[Dick_Valentine]

Another overlooked fact is they spent so much money on recreating the ent-d internally and externally there was nothing left for the actual hero ship of the series.
This leads to a final episode of a show called Enterprise where...you don't see the enterprise at all apart from the final shot.

Also saving a few quid for the space battle on the way to earth might have been prudent too.
trips death might have had more punch to it if he wasn't taking out just 3 random aliens but instead 3 random aliens who had just come over from a very intimidating spaceship that hahad previously been owning the enterprise in battle.

I never understood why we saw lots of glory shots of the Ent-d but nothing of the nx01

 

[DonIago]

I can kind of understand that, in that since the majority of the episode didn't in fact occur in the reality of the NX-01, objectively one wouldn't observe the ship from the outside.

This is a common technique in television episodes where the typical format has been bent, actually. Not showing exteriors as a way of implicitly suggesting that people aren't where they appear to be.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Since it was a holodeck simulation there were no exteriors to be shot. Why would the compuyer recreate something that would never be seen by the people running the program?

 

[Dick_Valentine]

Well then another stupid reason why basing the stupid episode as a stupid holodeck program of a ship from a series 20 years previous.

Not seeing the enterprise in its own final episode just seemed weird.
Hardly a fitting goodbye.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Well then another stupid reason why basing the stupid episode as a stupid holodeck program of a ship from a series 20 years previous.

Not seeing the enterprise in its own final episode just seemed weird.
Hardly a fitting goodbye.

I wonder why they thought that they needed to make it a holodeck simulation. This doesn't make much sense.

 

[DonIago]

If the premise is "Riker interacts with the crew of the NX-01" then you've pretty much got holodeck or time travel, and I'm relieved they didn't use time travel in yet another final episode.

If you're suggesting they should have done something else entirely? Fair enough, but then it's impossible to tell whether that would have been better or actually worse.

 

[Dukhat]

If the premise is "Riker interacts with the crew of the NX-01" then you've pretty much got holodeck or time travel, and I'm relieved they didn't use time travel in yet another final episode.

If you're suggesting they should have done something else entirely? Fair enough, but then it's impossible to tell whether that would have been better or actually worse.

It's quite simple really. Frakes and Sirtis were going to reprise their roles. They had all the sets, props, uniforms etc. from Nemesis. Why the hell didn't they just make the finale post-Nemesis, with Riker and Troi on the Titan, at post-Shinzon Romulus, and finding the 200-year-old wreckage of the NX-01, and concocting a story around that? Wouldn't that have been more interesting than some ham-fisted attempt to shoehorn them into an old TNG episode that had nothing to do with ENT?

 

[Push The Button]

The best part of this episode was the tribute to the three Enterprises in the last 30 seconds, when we hear Picard, Kirk and Archer reciting the mission statement together (sort of). Otherwise, it was a big disappointment.

 

[2takesfrakes]

I like this episode. I like that "they" decided they'd just have some "fun" with the show and not be overly concerned with the particulars. Viewed as a self-contained, episodic "anything goes" story, it holds together well. Any excuse to reunite Frakes & Marina and I'm there ... but that's just me.

 

[DonIago]

If I wanted a "fun" episode I'd rewatch IaMD again.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

The best part of this episode was the tribute to the three Enterprises in the last 30 seconds, when we hear Picard, Kirk and Archer reciting the mission statement together (sort of). Otherwise, it was a big disappointment.

You didn't like Data's intervention?

 

[Dukhat]

I like that "they" decided they'd just have some "fun" with the show and not be overly concerned with the particulars.

But the thing is, it wasn't their intention to make a "fun" episode. It was to make an episode that was meant to send off both ENT and Star Trek in a completely serious way. The fact that they achieved the exact opposite of what they were trying to do, and also the fact that you perceived it as such, is a testament to just how bad they screwed up.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

I like that "they" decided they'd just have some "fun" with the show and not be overly concerned with the particulars.

But the thing is, it wasn't their intention to make a "fun" episode. It was to make an episode that was meant to send off both ENT and Star Trek in a completely serious way. The fact that they achieved the exact opposite of what they were trying to do, and also the fact that you perceived it as such, is a testament to just how bad they screwed up.

Everybody seems to agree that they screwed up, what they disagree on sometimes is how they managed it.