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'All Good Things'. Yes DS9's finale had a massive arc building up to it and it felt more finale. However, the crappy Dukat/Sisko showdown ruins this arc, is the culmination of a crappy character treatment to Dukat and The Emissary's much needed role is reduced to pushing a crazy guy off a cliff.
TNG gave a terrific treatment to the whole series - looking past, present and future. It also tied in with the première episode and gave a certain closure but allowed the adventures to continue.
Voyager for that reason is a complete fail - it tried the future looking back approach but failed. It had a good idea of using the Borg conduits to get back home and that makes sense after treating the Borg as their personal enemy for so long. But it reduces the Borg and Captain Janeway by having super hero/ego Admiral Janeway swan in. It also meant the crew didn't get to bring themselves home but needed this ex dues machina after seven years of saving their asses.
As for ENT - the episode before the finale was good.
I think it was a shame how the Dukat/Sisko showdown was handled in the end. I'd actually liked that plot and felt it was appropriate in a way, that Dukat sold his soul and paid the consequences (it's one of the punishments of the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno... ). The trouble was that the pacing of it was awful, and it was done in a very cliched Wild-West-like showdown fashion once Sisko FINALLY got there. I think with heavy revision, it could've worked better. But it would've needed a LOT of work.
I think it was a shame how the Dukat/Sisko showdown was handled in the end. I'd actually liked that plot and felt it was appropriate in a way, that Dukat sold his soul and paid the consequences (it's one of the punishments of the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno... ).
You make it sound like it was some grand Faustian story. But it wasn't. It was just a lame, cheesy black-and-white good guy vs bad guy storyline that came to be because of Ira Steven Behr's contempt for the audience and misguided ideas about the nature of fiction - basically, the storyline was supposed to spell it out for everyone that "this guy is eeeeeevil and you need to hate him, and this guy is goood and he's the hero" in case that not 100% of people have gotten the memo. It cheapened the show and devalued years of complex characterization, moral ambiguity and intelligent storytelling.
I think it was a shame how the Dukat/Sisko showdown was handled in the end. I'd actually liked that plot and felt it was appropriate in a way, that Dukat sold his soul and paid the consequences (it's one of the punishments of the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno... ).
You make it sound like it was some grand Faustian story. But it wasn't. It was just a lame, cheesy black-and-white good guy vs bad guy storyline that came to be because of Ira Steven Behr's contempt for the audience and misguided ideas about the nature of fiction - basically, the storyline was supposed to spell it out for everyone that "this guy is eeeeeevil and you need to hate him, and this guy is goood and he's the hero" in case that not 100% of people have gotten the memo. It cheapened the show and devalued years of complex characterization, moral ambiguity and intelligent storytelling.
I don't think NG is saying that it is a "grand Faustian story," Devil/ElfEyes. I think she's saying it might have been. I agree with you that the attempt failed in many respects, but I also agree with NG that with the proper buildup and handling, it might have been really cool.
Dukat was a great as an ambiguous villain, but he might also have been great as an epic villain. There were some elements in the Pah-Wraith arc that I quite liked, and one of the things I liked a lot was the...the symmetry of good vs. evil - or rather, Good vs. Evil. Which we got, but it wasn't nearly as good as it might have been.
well, i'm fairly certain enterprise is not going to win this poll.....obviously, the next generation's finale is the winner here.with action, drama, humor ,and revelations such as the picard-crusher marriage and divorce and troi's death, there is enough here to satiate the palate.a fine ending to a great show
I, too, voted for All Good Things... DS9's just wasn't... memorable when I watched it... Endgame was good, but I would have liked to see them home in the alpha quadrant, and would liked to have seen something with Admiral Janeway's plan to go wrong so the crew had to do some last minute (hopefully not too technobabbly) thing to save themselves instead of getting a basically free ride from the captain's future self. As for These Are The Voyages... I liked seeing Riker and Troi again, but they made the episode too much about them. I can't think of any other way they could have fit them in though, so they probably would have been better off leaving them out. However, that last scene where they go through the usual opening speech split up between Picard, Archer, and Kirk was just beautiful. I loved it and thought that was a great last scene for what was (at the time) the "end" of Star Trek. As for The Turnabout Intruder, I've never seen it...
^You know the sad thing? I've read that Mike Sussman had to suggest the closing montage, as the original drafts had simply the Enterprise-D moving off into the astorid field. URG...
I didn't have a problem with Dukat's arc in S7 of DS9, because I understood Behr's frustration. Dukat is not a character to be admired people, he is not to be lusted after. He's evil, that's all there is to it. Behr just got sick and tired of the apologists and decided to spell it out in a way that couldn't be disputed. That's not treating a character badly, it's just setting the record straight.
I didn't have a problem with Dukat's arc in S7 of DS9, because I understood Behr's frustration. Dukat is not a character to be admired people, he is not to be lusted after. He's evil, that's all there is to it. Behr just got sick and tired of the apologists and decided to spell it out in a way that couldn't be disputed. That's not treating a character badly, it's just setting the record straight.
And that is the difference between him and those bad, bad writers of shows like The Sopranos or The Shield, who were able to show the destructiveness and monstruosity of their most popular characters without changing or ruining their characterization or reducing them to silly cliches. What can you do, not everyone went to Trek school of didacticism. There are weirdos who enjoy writing for bad guys and even making them the centre of a story, and don't see a problem with the audience liking them...
I even know some people, like yours truly, who think a writer should be happy for creating or participating in a creation of a great villainous character that has complexity and even can be sympathetic to the audience, that can be loved and hated at the same time. Some even hold the strange, subversive idea that a writer should value artistic integrity - or, to put it simply, making a good story - above preaching to the audience with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
I think it was a shame how the Dukat/Sisko showdown was handled in the end. I'd actually liked that plot and felt it was appropriate in a way, that Dukat sold his soul and paid the consequences (it's one of the punishments of the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno... ).
You make it sound like it was some grand Faustian story. But it wasn't. It was just a lame, cheesy black-and-white good guy vs bad guy storyline that came to be because of Ira Steven Behr's contempt for the audience and misguided ideas about the nature of fiction - basically, the storyline was supposed to spell it out for everyone that "this guy is eeeeeevil and you need to hate him, and this guy is goood and he's the hero" in case that not 100% of people have gotten the memo. It cheapened the show and devalued years of complex characterization, moral ambiguity and intelligent storytelling.
The execution could have been greatly improved. But I think that there IS a point where someone is simply too far gone, and he crossed that line beyond which madness lies. It was his just desserts, frankly.
Not to mention I have no love of the apologists, either. Complexity is one thing, and it's possible to sympathize WITHOUT excusing. That's where I get really and truly sick of the Dukat apologists, the ones who swallowed his propaganda hook, line, and sinker and spit it right back like it's gospel.
Now, if you would like to see the Pah-Wraith plot in a whole new light, I can recommend some stories to you that show the other side of the coin. You've seen the dark side. What about the light side?
I think it was a shame how the Dukat/Sisko showdown was handled in the end. I'd actually liked that plot and felt it was appropriate in a way, that Dukat sold his soul and paid the consequences (it's one of the punishments of the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno... ).
You make it sound like it was some grand Faustian story. But it wasn't. It was just a lame, cheesy black-and-white good guy vs bad guy storyline that came to be because of Ira Steven Behr's contempt for the audience and misguided ideas about the nature of fiction - basically, the storyline was supposed to spell it out for everyone that "this guy is eeeeeevil and you need to hate him, and this guy is goood and he's the hero" in case that not 100% of people have gotten the memo. It cheapened the show and devalued years of complex characterization, moral ambiguity and intelligent storytelling.
The execution could have been greatly improved. But I think that there IS a point where someone is simply too far gone, and he crossed that line beyond which madness lies. It was his just desserts, frankly.
Not to mention I have no love of the apologists, either. Complexity is one thing, and it's possible to sympathize WITHOUT excusing. That's where I get really and truly sick of the Dukat apologists, the ones who swallowed his propaganda hook, line, and sinker and spit it right back like it's gospel.
The apologists, the ones who defend his actions during the Occupation or the Occupation of Bajor in general, are a minority. Do I roll my eyes when someone claims that the Occupation was not so bad? Hell yeah... But that kind of thing happens with pretty much every show and every bad guy character who is not a complete moustache-twirling villain who laughs maniacally and tries their best to tell everyone he/she is eeeevil. You can be sure I got almost sick when reading posts on the BSG Skiffy forum by militaristic right-wingers who claim that Admiral Cain was a great leader, as opposed to the "hippy bleeding heart liberal" Adama or when I see people defending Vic Mackey's actions in The Shield such as his murder of a "rat" cop in the pilot - and it is particularly disturbing when you read that there were actually quite a few cops who watched the show and felt the same. I've even read that J.K. Simmons said that, while he was on Oz, he would sometimes get approached by people who would not just congratulate him on a great performance, or on playing a great character like Schillinger, but who liked Schillinger because they actually agreed with his beliefs, which of course shocked him - and I don't doubt that this was the case, since I've seen postings on a forum by a neo-Nazi who was defending most of Schillinger's actions, apart from
the kidnapping of Beecher's children.
But you know what? That's reality: people are different, and no matter how much you try, you're never going to get your message across to EVERYONE, or have 100% of people agree with you, even on the most basic things. If you're a writer on a TV show, learn to frakking deal with it. Letting the viewers dictate what you do with your own fictional work, in either way, is always detrimental to the artistic integrity of the work, and it's particularly stupid when it's a minority of the viewers. It's certainly not worth ruining the story and characterization of the show, in a misguided idea that this would allow you to "set the record straight".
Which it does not, anyway. So Dukat goes crazy and has the Pah-wraith possess him, and while possessed laughs maniacally and talks about destroying all life in the universe? And that is supposed to convince the apologists that the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor or the deal with the Dominion were wrong, or that Dukat committed awful crimes when he was in his right mind? That doesn't even make sense. Whatever Dukat did while he was insane or possessed by a Pah-wraith has no bearing on his previous actions, and says absolutely nothing about the Occupation of Bajor or about aligning Cardassia with the Dominion. (Heck, even if it were real life, you couldn't even convict Dukat of any crimes he committed while he wasn't himself - insanity defense, diminished responsibility and all that, and if people were responsible for what they did while possessed, then Keiko O'Brien and Jake Sisko would have been arrested.) And how did this brilliant idea by the DS9 writers work? You can see it on this forum as well - if you just read posts by posters who defend Dukat's actions before the Pah-wraiths storyline; did the Pah-wraith storyline change their minds? Hell no, it just made them disappointed and angry at Behr and others for performing a character assassination of Dukat (an opinion shared by many others who never had excuses for Dukat the Prefect or Dukat the leader of Cardassia), while not changing their opinion of his previous character one bit.
If Behr was frustrated about some people finding apologies for Dukat's actions and wanted to do something about it, he should have tried to convey the wrongness of his actions as Prefect or leader of Cardassia in an intelligent and subtle way, he could have made a point that Dukat was a bad man without making ridiculous changes to his character. That's what really good writers are able to do.
But I lost a lot of respect for Behr as a writer when I read such quotes as:
Ira Steven Behr said:
The problem I find with a lot of writers, including myself, is that once you get involved with a character you start to get to know him and you humanize him. Michael Piller did the rewrite of 'Defiant' where he had Dukat talk about his children; My reaction was, 'Uh oh, we've crossed the line.' I realized that he was going to lose all credibility as a villain; we were going to shower him with our usual writerish empathy, and, like all good liberals, we'd see him as neither fish or fowl." "I really responded against that. Here was the guy who had been in charge of Bajor, and right away we were looking for excuses for him."
(...)
Dukat could logically explain away everything he did, he could find justifications for all of it, and that's the horror; that's the thing Alaimo and I were always in disagreement about. His attitude was, 'We all have this inside of us, we're all many different people, and no one is truly evil.' Then I'd say, 'OK, if you take that to its conclusion, then no one has to stand accountable for their actions.'"
(...)
Much to the producer/writer's chagrin, many fans began to see the character and the Cardassians as "sexy" rather than horrific: "We'd sit in the writers room and laugh about it sometimes. We'd get the Cardassian newsletter and look at it and think, 'What has gone wrong?' of course it's science fiction; you put makeup on and suddenly it's OK. If it's Idi Amin or Pol Pot no one's thinking of spending a romantic weekend in his arms; but you give him a bony neck and a rubber outfit, and it's a whole different thing."
(...)
In the end, Behr says he's mostly pleased with how the character met his end fittingly: "I think he got what he deserved, let me put it like that. I can't say I feel sorry for him, I really don't. He and Winn were two characters I just could not sympathize with. Though we tried in all fairness to give them their points of view and give them their attitudes, they were very deluded, and they did horrible things."
No amount of can accurately convey how this made me feel. "Tried in all fairness to give them their points of view and give them their attitudes"?! Oh gosh, what a great concession it must be not to write villains as cartoons? If you have problems with writing for a character, guess what: leave it to people who can. "Good liberals"? Thinking that good characterization prevents characters from being great villains? Confusing understanding people's behavior with finding excuses for them? Believing that a criminal's love for his children excuses his crimes? Maintaining that people having a potential for evil inside of them means that nobody is responsible for the things they do, and for the choices they make to do or not do evil things? How the hell did this guy manage to run a show that was known for complex characterization and intelligent political writing for at least 5.5 seasons?!
And don't even get me started on the hypocrisy of Behr's whining over, oh shock, horror, female fans finding Dukat sexy! I suppose those scenes of The Intendant in her tight leather outfit making out with Mirror Ezri and all sorts of people were never intended to give a hard-on to the straight male audience, eh? Certainly that couldn't have been the case, since The Intendant is as bad as Dukat (and Mirror Ezri is hardly a nice person, either). Funny, I don't remember anyone expressing any outrage over the attempts to make the Borg Queen a sexy femme fatale, or over Number Six's status of the sex symbol of RDM's Battlestar Galactica - despite the fact that the lady had, you know, committed genocide! Or dozens of other hawt robot chicks or hawt alien chicks, like Natasha Henstridge's character in Species, who were murderous, dangerous and deadly, and who abused, mistreated or killed men - but that didn't stop thousands of SciFi male fans from masturbating to them. Same thing with the mainstream audiences drooling over vamps like Sharon Stone's sadistic serial killer in Basic Instinct, even though, if they happened to meet a woman in real life who was remotely like that, they'd run away a thousand miles from her. But I don't remember anyone ever expressing outrage over it and condemning all those men as sick, twisted, masochistic fucks who would write love letters to imprisoned female serial killers. However, when the genders are reversed, suddenly our concerned writers are eager to protect the womenfolk from drooling over big, bad fictional guys? Is that another instance of the old attitude that the sexual rules are different for women, because we hold our women to higher standards, so we can't allow them the same freedom?
Now, if you would like to see the Pah-Wraith plot in a whole new light, I can recommend some stories to you that show the other side of the coin. You've seen the dark side. What about the light side?
I would certainly like to see what could be done with the Pah-wraiths. I don't think it was necessarily wrong to introduce them, if only they and their conflict with the Prophets had been treated differently. They could have just made them into two warring factions of aliens, each with some sort of legitimate or at least logical motivations, not into a cheesy representation of cartoonish Good and Evil. Especially since the Prophets never really lived up to the role as "Good" gods. I've said it before and I'll say it again: they just went from looking like aliens more or less indifferent to humanoid existence, or at best, vaguely interested in it, to assholes who got involved in humanoid business by ruthlessly used people to their own ends - in the same way that the Pah-wraiths did - as seen in the way they used Sarah Sisko. I have to wonder if the writing staff ever realized just how creepy that story is - the Prophets basically possessed a woman, made her have sex, live with a man, get pregnant and give a birth, all with no regard to her own will - and probably against her own will, judging by her reaction once the Prophet left her body. That's horrible to Sarah, and horrible to Joseph, who basically fell in love with a person that never really existed, then lost her and never learned that he was being manipulated. How ironic is it that this plot was used to confirm Sisko as some sort of Jesus figure and by extension the Prophets as good godlike beings.
In order to make Prophets look good in comparison, they tried to make the Pah-wraiths look really bad - unless the audience starts wondering what the hell is the difference between the two, anyway. So, we got the story about the Pah-wraiths wanting to destroy all life in the universe, or something... without any explanation why the hell do they want that? But hey, they needed utter evil, so they had to come up with something as extreme, even if it didn't make sense!
All Good Things is a fun two hours with a few nice character moments. But there is also some insipid technobabble. What You Leave Behind isn't perfect, but it had some excellent character moments.
All Good Things. There's one huge logical error in relation to anti-time and the future Enterprise, but other than that it's a near-flawless episode. The concept was brilliant; showing us the beginning, the end, and what came after the end all in one episode, and tying it all together as part of Q's arc was perfect. This was a finale which summed up all that was good about TNG and gave the crew a perfect send-off. I still feel sad every time I see the camera pan away from that card table and we watch the Enterprise fly off into the distance.
What You Leave Behind gives AGT a run for its money, but the resolution to the Dukat/Pah-Wraith arc was terribly poor and drags down the episode. The final battle of the Dominion War was excellent, stock shots and all, and the farewell for each of the characters was pitch-perfect. Ending with Jake staring out the window was a great little throw-back to The Visitor, and there was a very bittersweet feeling as the camera panned away from this place I loved for the last time. I was sad to go, but I was happy the story was completed.
The Undiscovered Country (the real finale to TOS) was a great film and it served as a good send-off for the original cast. It didn't focus on its characters as lovingly as AGT and WYLB so it's not as good as a finale, but it does a much better job than Turnabout Intruder.
Endgame is poor, it summed up a lot of what I thought was wrong with Voyager. The story wanted to be like AGT but it didn't manage it, and the reliance on time-travel to get the ship home brings up too many unanswered questions and invalidates their achievement, in my opinion.
These Are The Voyages... I didn't believe all the horrible reviews I read before I watched the episode, I thought it was just the show's bigger fans being angry because their show was cancelled. Then I watched it and learned that all the anger was justified, because the episode really is that bad. Cool final scene though, one of the best scenes in the franchise.
^You know the sad thing? I've read that Mike Sussman had to suggest the closing montage, as the original drafts had simply the Enterprise-D moving off into the astorid field. URG...
It's worse. That montage was the only time we see an exterior shot of the NX-01 in the entire episode. Meaning that if Sussman hadn't suggested that, Enterprise's final episode would have ended with no image of the lead ship whatsoever.
TATV still sticks in my craw. I don't argue it was probably well intentioned on someone's part but well intentioned crap is still crap.
AGT is proabably the best, although WYLB tried - it was just uneven. I did enjoy Endgame but I didn't really want that Voyage to end so it is pretty bittersweet for me.
More than one poster has noticed the dichotomy of their favorite series letting them down the most in terms of the series finale. I'm sure it's a matter of having higher expectations for one's favorite. - more is on the line in terms of emotional investment. In that respect it may well nigh be impossible to really please the true believers as a series finale is the FINALE.
^^^^At the time, TNG was my favorite series, and AGT is still my favorite finale. However, at the time, it was well known that they were moving directly into films, so that may have taken out an emotional attachment that may have led to dissapointment, since that series finale was not its finale.
). The trouble was that the pacing of it was awful, and it was done in a very cliched Wild-West-like showdown fashion once Sisko FINALLY got there. I think with heavy revision, it could've worked better. But it would've needed a LOT of work.
or when I see people defending Vic Mackey's actions in The Shield such as his murder of a "rat" cop in the pilot - and it is particularly disturbing when you read that there were actually quite a few cops who watched the show and felt the same. I've even read that J.K. Simmons said that, while he was on Oz, he would sometimes get approached by people who would not just congratulate him on a great performance, or on playing a great character like Schillinger, but who liked Schillinger because they actually agreed with his beliefs, which of course shocked him - and I don't doubt that this was the case, since I've seen postings on a forum by a neo-Nazi who was defending most of Schillinger's actions, apart from
Oh gosh, what a great concession it must be not to write villains as cartoons? If you have problems with writing for a character, guess what: leave it to people who can. "Good liberals"? 
That's horrible to Sarah, and horrible to Joseph, who basically fell in love with a person that never really existed, then lost her and never learned that he was being manipulated. How ironic is it that this plot was used to confirm Sisko as some sort of Jesus figure and by extension the Prophets as good godlike beings. 
