**** UPN- 'Enterprise' cancelled.

[Darth_Anton]

I honestly think Star Trek really hurt Sci Fi on Tv as a whole.  The writing for that show has never been all that great...even in the original series.

I respectufully dissagree.

I think just the opposite to a certain extent. When Gene was alive, Star Trek was alway challenging and trying to push the envelope. Sure there were a bunch of stinkers in TOS and TNG, but there were episodes so utterly amazing that they have changed the way I think about life. Once Rodenberry past away, the show went down hill becasue it refused to take risks and the show runners began to have internal conflicts which resulted in all the good ones leaving (i.e Moore and Piller.)

The demise of Star Trek was purely political, the wrong people in charge making the wrong decisions and hiring people based on compatability  rather than talent (basically they hired a lot of Rick MacCallums.) Star Trek could still be going strong if Paramount had not left Berman with so much power.

[Nathan]

Gah ... the Riker and Troi gimmick was even lamer than I was expecting. What a huge misfire.

Don't get me wrong, TNG is my favorite ST series and I like both characters, but they had no place being shoehorned in like this. If I were the current writers I'd be PISSED. At least let the show go out on its own terms with some dignity.

That aside, simply from a storytelling perspective it completely killed the dramatic momentum from the previous hour and indeed the whole season. Every time R&T came on screen it jerked me out of my Suspension Of Disbelief. And chopping up the events into three-minute snippets interspersed with "future" characters did not help matters.

All else failing, at the very least it should have been set on the Enterprise-E or even Riker's Titan, i.e. relative to the actors' ages. Neither Frakes nor Sirtis can pass for 35 anymore, and this was the last nail in the coffin of the episode's credibility.

[Nicklab]

They seriously did that?  What, were they watching that season of "Dallas" where Bobby was killed off, only to have it turn out that the entire season was a dream?  What a bad joke.

[Nathan]

Worse actually.

Long story short, Riker and Troi were on the Enterprise-D, with holodeck recreations of events from the NX-01's last mission. It all had to do with the TNG episode "Pegasus" (itself dealing with an incident from Riker's early career before he came to the Ent-D), and Riker was trying to decide his next course of action. He wanted to gain some really deep philosophical insight from talking to the holodeck recreations, which leads to a whole 'nother problem--WHICH scenes were "real" ENT events and which were merely holo-recreations because CLEARLY the scenes in which Riker talked to the ENT characters were not "real". Bleh.

Now this COULD have been done well by cutting between two distinct but connected stories, a la Godfather Part 2 or the TNG finale "All Good Things", but the way it was done was really a mess. The TNG scenes chewed up so much time that neither storyline was done justice. In particular this was not a fitting conclusion to the ENT plotlines, arcs, and assorted loose ends which after all is the POINT of a series finale. I'm not the hugest ENT fan but the series at least deserved to go out with a little dignity.

[Ben]

Those TNG sequences just took me right out of the finale. More importantly, they ate up screen time that could have been used for Archer's speech at the end.

B&B are total ******* wankers.

Oh yeah, Trip's death was a total ******* joke. Those goofballs transported onto Enterprise while she was at warp 7? I would have written them as stowaways.

And sercurity couldn't take care of the raiders? What the ****? That episode had about as many plot holes as Nemesis did, in only half the time.

[Nathan]

I admit, it would have made a TINY bit more sense if I'd ever actually seen "Pegasus", but either way it's still a mess.

[Ben]

It had something to do with Riker having a conflict of interest-- On one hand, he was sworn to secrecy over a cloaking device on the Pegasus, and still loyal to the former commanding officer of that ship. Then he had his loyalty to Picard, and couldn't reveal why Starfleet had such a hard-on to get to a shipwreck. Riker couldn't choose between them, so apparently this is supposed to be how he worked out his decision.

And Riker got on Barclay about holo-addiction. 

[CorranHorn]

in retrospect this was a very weak episode, let alone series finale. here's the worse part to me, Riker is trying to make a decision based on events from the past right? the events from the past have nothing to do with the dilemma Riker is facing! Trip wasn't really defying a long standing order or principle, he was just trying to save his friend and ship, that's only a vague interpretation of what Riker was going thru at best.

the two parter "Terra Prime" was a better way to end the series, as it ended with hope for the future as well as an emotional attachment to the characters. the only good thing to come out of  "These are the voyages.." is the last scene, with Picard, then Kirk, and finally Archer stating the Enterprise's mission statement. I'd like to find that clip on it's own, that was well done and the only thing that saved the episode.

[Ben]

I think the current show runners wanted to get a decent finale in before Berman & Braga came in and mucked the final episode up.

I consider Terra Prime to be the ender before These Are The Voyages.

[SilverZ]

That's how I'm looking at it as well.

"Terra Prime" is the Enterprise series send-off, leaving you satisfied but full of what-ifs.

"These are the Voyages..." is Berman/Braga's franchise farewell, where they dance on the grave of their own accomplishments and piss on the bittersweet 4th season end of Enterprise.

[Matt_Fury]

I honestly think Star Trek really hurt Sci Fi on Tv as a whole.  The writing for that show has never been all that great...even in the original series.

I respectufully dissagree.

I don't mind that you disagree with me Anton, but you have to admit that the only reason Voyager stayed on the air is because it had the name Star Trek at thr front of it.  It just bothers me that crap like that show (and from what I've read about various forums, the first couple of seasons of Enterprise) get picked up when shows like Babylon 5 had to struggle for each season and B5 Crusade never even got a chance at a full season!  After listening to J. M. Straczynski's commentary about Crusade, we all got jipped out of a great series!