Even Jonathan Frakes did not like the finale, calling it an "unpleasant memory" and felt awkward while doing it. Frakes even mention that he felt it was an insult to Scott Bakula and the show and that the show was taken off the air too soon before it found its footing. If Trip was going to die, he should have died alone trying to fix the engines in order to keep the Enterprise from exploding. His last words would have been coaxing the engines to stay together until they can get to a starbase or friendly planet. The scene ends with Archer trying to contact engineering to congratulate Trip and panning upward to see the exterior of the Enterprise and a hole where engineering used to be. I still like Enterprise, but I detest the finale, though not the performances or actors.
Apparently, when Scott Bakula found out about the plot of the last episode, he yelled at Rick Berman. And this is Scott Bakula, who's extremely nice and never yells at anyone.
What did happen was there were novels literally right after that that Trip didn't die and he went undercover as a romulan which I thought was a good twist. It made sense. Those few novels actually justified what happened in that last episode especially where Trip gave that knowing wink. I just blame Les Moonves on how it was handled in the end and I'll be honest, I cried tears in the end because I've met several of those actors and felt bad for them. Star Trek is a passion. It really is and it's part of what shaped my life. A HUGE part. So there it is.
@Michael Waller: First, absolutely LOVE your idea of Trip's death!!!! I knew how Mr. Frakes felt about the finale (and agree with it), but I do have to say that his performance shows what a classy and professional actor he is. You would never guess that he was unhappy and "awkward" and would later say it is an "unpleasant memory." As always, he completely delivers.
I remember an interview with Blalock where she said in no uncertain terms (including a lot of four letter terms) how pissed off she was with the finale and how most of the cast felt the same way.
Everyone: WTF is this last episode of Enterprise? Did this story line actually happen, or is this just a figment of Riker’s fantasy fanfic? Jonathan Frakes: It didn’t happen. We made it up.
Alright, in my opinion, only the events that Riker personally watched were computer simulations based on reports filed and maybe "black box" recordings of Enterprise, this, interposed with the "reality" scenes of the times in private that Riker did not watch a simulation of and therefore the computer was not trying to simulate. This is the only way it could have happened, however, we know the clowns responsible for this episode did not think that far ahead. TLDR: So, basically, yes, the events did occur, and Riker was periodically watching a simulation of those events to answer his own questions.
Yeah, hate to say it, but nothing I have encountered says this is not canon... Nothing I know if (but I could be wrong) came out to disprove it. Riker rarely asked others for advice in TNG, so this could support that he did things like this, but in THIS episode, it was under Troy's direction.... I mean, we count Minuet as canon, right? He has a well-established affinity for Holodeck simulations.... Maybe he used them for additional guidance, knowing the effect it could have? That being said, where were the Federation's Marines? Was this a TNG, Pegasus-centric sim for the crisis he had at the time? Why would they have not been on-board? The NX-01 crew had already earned their respect prior to Pegasus. Maybe it was a reference, since they already stole a Warp Core coil from an alien race? Greater good and what not?
Scott Bakula got screwed twice in series finales: "Enterprise" and "Quantum Leap". Two series that could have had it all, but instead fell completely apart on the last episode.
I've come to appreciate the Quantum Leap finale a little more over time. Having it ultimately be Sam's choice to stay because he can't let wrongs not be put right. At least as far as they've told us the new series of Quantum Leap is put into motion to try and find out what happened to Sam. Don bellisario is an executive producer. I'm holding out a slim hope that the new series will actually be watchable because this is a show that still has loads of untapped potential and maybe, just maybe, with Don's involvement maybe he'll do a little retcon and bring Sam home. He could still be involved in the project since it is his so it makes sense for him to be there. It's impossible to replace Dean Stockwell. Maybe having Sam as the observer will make it slightly less awful. This is all wishful thinking of course. None of these rebooted series have done anything for me and I find it hard to imagine a way to possibly screw up as simple a premise as Quantum Leap. Then again, they somehow managed to take the simple premise of Macgyver and turn him into an undercover spy for a think tank that was actually the cover for a secret government organization. The original Phoenix Foundation was a non profit that the government would sometimes contract work to. The only thing the new series has in common is the very basic conceit with Macgyver creating something from nothing. The new series is about as similar to the original as Macgruber is. At least Macgruber understands it's a joke.
The scene between Tripp and Reed was genuinely beautiful, summing up the hope and trepidation of the end, or beginning, of a new Trek. "They'll probably build another Enterprise before long." "I imagine." "Won't be the same, though." "That's alright." It's so simple and brilliant that I'm convinced Manny Cotto hit B&B with a baseball bat and handed the scene to the crew on a napkin.
Even after 15 years after seeing the finale, I still feel angry thinking about it. I came to like the show in the last seasons, the episode Home being my absolute favorite while whishing for a different ending. Home and Terra Prime were dealing with things I had to deal with in my own life and made me absoluty relate to Trip and T'Pol. As a result, TATV felt like a slap in the face, a punch in the gut, an absolute insult. The ENT crew and the Trip and T'Pol relationship deserved a much more better and optimistic ending.
Yeah I can definitely understand that. I got angry about when they did something similar to my favorite show (seriously, the 'ending' has a lot in common with this episode and does a lot of the same weird fanfic-ish things, even though it's not sci-fi). I got angry enough to basically leave the fandom, because I won't be part of any community that accepts it. I was actually warned the Enterprise ending was bad before I watched it, so I was prepared for it, and my reaction was like "wow, they really screwed the pooch with this one" rather than being disgusted and angry. This episode, and the one in the other show I'm talking about share something else in common too: a huge middle finger to the fanbase from a producer that is leaving. (In Berman's case, he was fired - in the other case, the company was shutting down.) It's called Torch the Franchise and Run. "If I can't have this anymore, neither can you!" Of course in both of these cases, they don't seem to realize that fans can and do disregard garbage like that.
Trip's death was meaningless. He died by dealing with some random mooks who were barely seen before and were not central to the story, plus his actions were utterly needless: they dealt with way worse boarding than four guys with a standard laser gun. I believe they wanted to pull a Spock in ST2 (because the episode needed ANOTHER bit of lore fanservice), but failed.
Was it really meaningless? Where did those characters go at the end of the show? Trip was a vital character along with the others but, when it's all said and done, It's about Archer and the Enterprise.
I think sometimes a death like that in a TV show can be made poignant but not in the last show of the season. It didn't really resonate with the rest of the series, there wasn't a point to his death other than 'kind of guy that would sacrifice himself for someone else'. I think what they were going for was the Enterprise C going down fighting for Klingons approach, but it really didn't resonate with me at all. Afterwards all I could think was 'oh, okay'. I had no emotional reaction to it, even though I kinda liked Trip. It was very poorly done, it felt rushed. I felt the same about Data in Nemesis, that the character had been hard done by. Even so Data's death in Nemesis had more impact than Trip's.
I actually liked it cause it doesn't have to be meaningful, even for main charachters. It was just pure bad freaking redshirt luck. And Trip picked the least bad choice in the situation.
@@Jenks337 It is meaningless in terms of the economy of the story. It doesn't add nor remove anything. It's not a fitting end to a character arc (say, it could've made sense if Trip was the kind of character who took impulsive decisions which put him in some kind of mortal danger every other episode; or if the whole ship was at risk of being lost/destroyed, like with Spock's death in Wrath of Khan), nor is a fitting end to the episode's plot because the pirates were never presented like a terrible danger that was to be defeated at all costs. They could've made it interesting and poignant by, say, having the Earth Purists come back once again trying to screw the Federation Conference, and maybe put T'pol in danger. It's a much more interesting situation because there's something at stake: Archer's speach, the creation of the federation, it would've also tied up with the discussion between T'Pol and Trip about their relationship and their feelings.
Rick Berman: "I'm a fantastic showrunner. I've always done what was best for this franchise. I'm not a sleazy hack!" Jonathan Frakes: "No way." Jonathan Frakes again: "It's a total fabrication." Jonathan Frakes one more time: "It's an urban legend... that never happened." Jonathan Frakes one last time: "No."
@@evrbody Minus points for not correctly formatting the quotation to include the name of the character in the style previously used. Senator Vreenak: "It's a FAAAAAKE!"
Actually DS9 toyed with the idea of all of Star Trek being in Benny Russell's head and to reveal it in the finale of DS9 but they decided that was too big a position to take.
I’m STILL mad about the Enterprise finale being a standard TNG holodeck episode barely guest-starring the Enterprise crew. I get that it wasn’t the most popular Trek series, but the people who did enjoy it and had followed it this far deserved better for its ending.
Like I wouldn't even hate the premise so much as a random episode in the middle. Maybe they could be more creative by cutting back and forth between what actually happened and the holodeck, showing a mission that isn't remembered accurately by history and exploring why. But as a finale, and also the least interesting execution of the premise possible, it's just insulting to the show and its cast.
"lackluster ratings" - today, cable stations would die to have the viewership that Enterprise had. I always thought that ST:E was a decent show that dealt with the knotty problems of writing story lines with already established "canon". It's a shame that the series didn't end properly.
The only part about this episode that I liked was for Riker to play the Chef, until then an unseen character. I briefly hoped that the Chef was actually Riker gone time-travelling, an actually interesting plot line.
Oh golly, where to begin. I'll start out with this - I agree with your assessment. I was an actual longterm fan of Star Trek in all its iterations when this finale aired. Though my parents thought it was silly and didn't expose me to the original series when I was a child, I began watching The Next Generation when it debuted as a young teenager and was introduced to the older show by Trekker friends. I came of age through the time TNG, DS9 and Voyager aired, and like you, I'm a Niner. What gets lost for folks viewing Enterprise in the decades since its debut is the context of time. The first several episodes were already in the can when it came time to debut. It's not Trek's fault that debut was to be in the second week of September 2001. Those of us eager for more Trek at that time had sat through the finale of Voyager and been smacked in the face with promo after promo about the newer, more exciting series to come... a series that should have debuted the week of 9-11. When it did air a bit later, the world it had been conjured in was gone. We didn't feel the optimism. We only felt the sinking malaise and residual shock of our 20th century views of our place in the world, shattered by an act of terrorism. Indeed, Enterprise's early episodes could have been a relief from any other troublesome time, but played out in odd contrast to the winds of change blowing, the War on Terror, anthrax attack scares and an overall survivor's guilt spread through its core audience. The production crew wanted so much to grasp onto the millenium-approaching joy behind The Next Generation - when they would have been well-minded to heed more the flaws and realism of the Deep Space Nine era. DS9 was early in its after-conclusion syndication run, and for many of those in my Trek-loving circles, it was DS9 that made far more sense in a post-9-11 world. You see the creators of Enterprise finally get this coming into the thrid season of Enterprise - not only with its terror attack on Florida but the entire swing of the Xindi war. The grip of uncertainty and the introduction of an entirely new concept in the franchise, tying in The Expanse and the Temporal Time War together, creating new species that were far beyond the glued-to-the-head prosthetics of past shows, and the destruction and rebuilding of the psyche you see primarily with Archer and T'Pol over the course of that year, broke new ground for Trek and broke away from the Roddenbery model for good. These episodes shared the stories of believable characters who reacted to the changes in their circumstances. Like DS9, the characters grew into new people, not perfect but certainly credible. It was too late. Or, maybe, too early. We've seen so many grimdark shows in the years in-between that grew extraordinary audiences (Battlestar Galactica, the first season of Discovery and even Farscape to a point, come to mind). If Enterprise had been reworked earlier on, or if it had not had the misfortune of debuting when it did, it might have prospered. The thougth of timing is similar to how Discovery and The Orville were received when both first arrived a few years ago. Many TNG-era fans clung to The Orville because it reminded them of just how much fun Next Generation was (particularly after TNG's first, sometimes cringe-inducing season) with humor and new concepts. The Orville was made in particular to pay homage to Picard's Enterprise and era, and did so with clean new sets, new ideas and so much interpersonal interaction, substituting 80s and 90s pop culture for the endless array of string ensemble concerts and dramatic presentations the Enterprise-D hosted on a fantastically frequent basis. Discovery, on the other hand, was hoping to appeal to the grimdark shows that were and are still popular in our 21st century mire. Don't get me wrong - I love both shows, but they have been night-and-day with each other (though after the progression at the end of the last season of The Orville, I'm curious to see how things happen - and whether MacFarlane is playing his version of the Borg card/Best of Both Worlds pivot like TNG pioneered). By the time Enterprise reached the second episode of its fourth season, the actors already knew the show was ending and most of us fans did, too. It was at that point that the fan service truly blossomed. The backstory episodes on the Andorians and Vulcan were excellent, and the Mirror universe episodes were made of so much fan-powered awesome. The T-Pol/Trip stuff got silly, but that didn't keep us from enjoying Brent Spiner's scenery-chewing run with the Augments. The good episodes in the last season gave us all hope. We were still waiting for some sort of salvation for the series, like a move to another network aka Stargate SG-1, or a wrap-up like Farscape's The Peacekeeper Wars. I remember standing in my living room and screaming at the TV about two thirds of the way through the final episode of Enterprise. It felt so faked, so much like a slap in the face to all of us die-hard fans. When it was over, the general consensus was that Trek was dead and we all needed to console ourselves that there were at least the movies, five series, books and comic books and fan fictions to relive and enjoy. Too bad Trek was done with TV. The announcement that the "new" Trek movies would be a reboot (before they came around to "alternate universe" version) of Trek seemed like a really large nail in our Trek coffin. It's good that Trek has made a comeback. Despite my initial television-directed hollering at the first few episodes of Discovery, I have come to love that series and see it as Trek. Rewatching the entire two seasons has helped. Folks forget that there were a lot of duds in the original series' run, that the first season of TNG and much of the first two seasons of DS9 were subprime, and that a LOT of Voyager (particularly anything to do with the Kazon) was downright awful. Enterprise gets a lot of hate because of its theme song and the time it took to react to the era it lived in, both in the Trek timeline and in the 21st century. But it had extraordinary characters and a neat premise. Like Voyager's "Threshold," I think it should be considered non-canon and disregarded. One other thing. I was so hoping that Rene Auberjonois would have been able to return as Odo in Discovery's third season - out of all of the characters (outside of Guinan) that could conceivably be part of that series, he seemed most likely. Now, though, with his demise and with the talk of other new series that could be developed, I would love to see a cameo of a well-aged Admiral Archer in a Captain Pike-led Enterprise show. Scott Bakula is way too good an actor to skip this possibility.
Honestly while the issues with the changing-of-an-era caused by 9/11 are valid.. Those first episodes of Enterprise still weren't good. Season one had a ton of problems completely divorced from the issues of the day. The third episode of the entire series is a comedy about a main cast member being raped for crying out loud. Truth of the matter is B&B were long in the tooth by the time of Enterprise and should have long since departed the franchise. They were really at the heart of the issues the property suffered with in throughout Voyager/Enterprise and the TNG films.
The thing that made me absolutely sick was there was this build up for Typol and Trip to finally truly express their feelings about eachother and say they love each other and eventually bang it out have a kid of there own. It is sad. this show was fun and I loved it. My hats off to the cast. They made me fall in love with this show not the writers. They deserved better.
They should add a scene where riker walks off the holodeck and says to Troi "why did geordie add the bit where tucker died?" Troi says "he was jealous because data played the program and told geordie that commander tucker was the best engineer starfleet ever had. He actually lived a long life and had loads of half vulcan children"
The final episode was clearly awful, but I feel like the show in general was unjustifiably underrated. In particular the character of T'Pol seems to have been dismissed maybe because the actress was attractive. Her performance of a Vulcan is pretty much bang on all the way through (as was Gary Graham's).
I, also, think it had great potential; if they had watched TOS and kept to trek history they could have done a magnificent show, AND had plenty of room to tell their own stories, but they kind of skimmed over everything before and told the writers to have at it. And while T'Pol might have been a great, even spectacular character, Spock was supposed to be the first Vulcan to serve with humans on a Federation ship. Of course, their excuse is that "It wasn't the Federation yet!".
Whenever I rewatch this series I just ditch the very last episode. Terra Prime works just fine as the last episode. Could have easily had a full 7 seasons as the later half of the series really found its feet but hey 🤷♂️
I agree. I find 95% of it to be a great watch, 4% an okay watch, and that last 1% goes to the finale. I have never and will never watch that crap again. I've been scarred enough. I just hope the do Discovery and Picard better.
I normally skip it but the last time round was part of watching all of trek with my wife and she wanted to see every single episode and movie so .... anyway all the way upto season 5 voyager now with only the rest of voyager left to go
I really wished we could have heard Archer's speech. That would have improved the episode and maybe even helped motivate Riker instead of the whole Trip thing. Though I was happy to see Shran again, it was the highlight of the episode, he was one of the best secondary characters in that show
I recently watched Enterprise after completely missing it when it originally aired. I loved it. I can imagine how it may not have played well when it aired, so soon after the others, but I think that overall it is brilliant as a stand alone science fiction series. Granted, the last episode was disappointing, but the fourth season was excellent and overall the series has become my favorite of the Star Trek universe. All the hatred? I don't get it.
It's a grittier prequel that doesn't stick to strict episodic story telling. That was completely new to Star Trek then. Even now, those are complaints leveled against Discovery.
@@virginiaconnor8350 - I think that even if we *did* get a 2 hr. ENT movie or even a limited series, who’d want to take on the herculean task of producing it, since there seems to be quite a large number of rather vocal fans who aren’t happy with Star Trek’s current management, and anything that would have been done, including depicting the Earth/Romulan War (which hasn’t been seen as official canon in 55 years) would be accused of either being “too woke” or “not woke enough”. As of now, NBC has apparently given the green-light to a “QL” revival, so… we shall see what we shall see.
As someone who watch TNG after finishing Enterprise I was very confused during this episode. "Who are these people? Oh I guess they're people from the future? Why?" A story can have fan service but not if that means the story doesn't stand on it's own merits without it.
No reason why the USS Titan couldn't have been a Galaxy class ship. Definitely big enough to be a "titan" of a ship...... But seriously though, it would have made a perfect call back.
On the upside, its perfect timing to revive the series set after the signing of the Federation Charter. Bring the whole cast back, if possible. Revamp the ship a bit (since Enterprise could get a refit to Columbia specs), add a few new crew and do a Romulan cold war story. Job done. Sure, Scott Bakula is a little longer in the tooth now - but Patrick Stewart is showing us that older guys can still be kick ass heroes. With some good writers we could have a great show - even if it only lasts one more season I'd be happy. Anything to erase the current final episode from my memory.
I have always had a soft spot for ENT. I love the early setting, the (ostensibly) lower tech level, and the overall "frontier" feel of the series. Also, because it was made last, the effects are some of the best in Trek. The Ensign's Log rocks, btw.
I fully agree except the effects, just because it was latest and had CGI does not make it the best by far. I mean look at the Gorn and some of the CGI creatures, the ship looked no better than a model, worse in many occasions. Also its not like they had much to show of it either
Sam Beckett on his neverending leap across history eventually leaps into a 22nd century star ship where he takes over captaincy of the Enterprise because the real Archer failed and it was Sam's mission to make things right that once went wrong. Which is the real reason temporal visitors chose Enterprise as a nexus for their time war.
@@abj136 Even better: Sam Beckett unintentionally STARTS the Temporal Cold War by leaping into Archer, because every time-faction thinks he's an agent from another faction coming back in time to screw with things, and don't realize that he's actually someone from the past who's jumped *forward*.
While I like the idea of the Quantum Leap ending, the nerd in me can't let it pass. Sam Beckett could only time travel within his own lifetime (although there is the odd "but this is why it's different" episode).
It might not work for Star Trek, but both NCIS and Quantum Leap were produced by Donald P Bellisario. So they could maybe do that with NCIS: New Orleans. :D
I need a fan fic of someone on the Enterprise J holodeck inserting themselves into the events of "the pegasus" and they watch Riker interact with the NX-01 crew.
The only redeeming thing in this episode for me is the last few seconds where Picard, Kirk, and Archer get to recite the classic intro. Also you should redo the finale for Enterprise like you did for Voyager. That's still my favorite video you've done!
I never really cared for Trip. Honestly, as the show focuses more and more on him, Archer, another character whom I didn't particularly like, and T'pol almost made me not want to finish the series, but I can see how having that in the final episode might anger some fans.
"Enterprise" was to an extent my introduction to the universe, coming home to reruns of it after school. While it missed the mark in a lot of places, some of their episodes offered something that really none of the other shows had a chance to do, describing how humanity goes from one species poking their heads out into the galaxy to a leading member of a galactic community. And then this ending hits, and it drops the ball just short of the finish line. Archer's speech at the end would have been very hard to write, but from the very first episode that's where the show was heading, especially given its time-travel plots that kept hinting at his role in the future. If they wanted to frame it as part of the future, that's fine. But they could have at the very least given the speech and made it someone watching who needed to hear it - as you suggest, Riker looking for inspiration, or even better some of the outsider characters of TNG or DS9 trying to understand their place in the Federation through its founding. At least something to make "Enterprise" mean something.
The episode would have been a perfectly serviceable *penultimate* episode. Setting up the wrap-ups of the character arcs, in a low-budget precursor to the grand finale. Have Riker step off at the end, his journey of self-discovery within the episode resolved, *as the events reach a critical cliffhanger moment*, and have him give the instruction to "Delete Program", then fade back to 2161, where the events continue from that point.
“Everybody dresses in pyjamas and nobody says a thing about it” They poked fun at that in Time’s Arrow, when Data gets asked if he was “thrown out in the middle of the night” when he suddenly appears in 1890s San Francisco in uniform.
To me, this episode reeks of this attitude of, "Oh god you guys liked TNG, right? If we throw some TNG in there you guys will like this, right?" which I kinda feel has been present in star trek to varying degrees ever since, well, TNG. Anyway, I am kinda curious - you did a script re-write of Voyager's finale a while ago, any plans/ideas about rewriting this one?
The thing is there is a way I wouldn't hate this premise, might actually really like it, it just needed alterations. 1. Don't be a finale, be an episode in the middle. 2. Include the actual crew, maybe make it an examination of how we record history by comparing actual events to what the future think they know, could do funny things like everyone's haircut being wrong. Kind of like Living Witness 3. Make a new dilemma Riker is considering don't just shoehorn it into an existing episde
@@sameo01 Did some digging after your comment because I didn't put two and two together before. Scotty manages to find and beam back "Admiral Archer's prize beagle" in a canon comic. But Porthos isn't mentioned, he would be 100+ years old at the time of Scotty's incident. Not saying it isn't Porthos, just that the jury is out if it is THE Porthos or a clone or what. I'll happily accept that science has evolved enough to prolong a dog's life that long so it can be Porthos in my head canon.
I remember watching Enterprise and it kept nagging me that Scott Bakula seemed familiar, when I was watching Quantum Leap on TV and it finally hit me and yeah, he is a very talented actor, especially having worked on a show like Quantum Leap where in cases he had to act like a totally different character each episode.
Enterprise flopped due to several reasons: 1) CBS' CEO did not want a Sci-fi show taking a prime tv slot (6PM to 9PM) 2) Rick Berman thought having a temporal cold war plot would make Enterprise different from TNG, DS9, and Voyager 3) Along with #2, S1 and S2 played too slow with the temporal cold war plot that no one was invested in it 4) Xindi plot was lackluster and most of S3 was wasted because of it 5) Romulans were introduced too late to Enterprise to save the show
I enjoyed the Borg episode and Affliction & Divergence because because it finally gave an explanation to why Klingons had a more human look in the original Star Trek series.
My reaction on seeing this finale for the first time: What’s going on? Why are we six years ahead now? What did I miss? Why is Riker here? Why is this a holodeck episode? Who wrote this? Who signed off on this shit? Why am I still watching? The show wasn’t great but it’s last couple of series were a marked improvement. That last episode though? Pure shit.
I was pretty upset by this episode when I first saw it. Enterprise was far from perfect, but I did like it and I thought it was starting to grow its beard. The finale was just so disappointing. Now, I love Riker and TNG, but, this was supposed to be the Enterprise cast's time to shine. One last hurrah for them. But it wasn't. Also, killing Tripp off in the last episode was kind of crappy. The guy went through a lot throughout the series. Probably more than any of the others. He was the O'Brien of Enterprise. To not give him a happily ever after is just kind of mean-spirited.
I always imagined that this was a really long experience for Sam Beckett as well. I think that would have been a really cool cross-over moment, BUT still wouldn't have cheapened anything.
@@duchesnejennifer More than you think, I should expect. I've never seen an episode myself, but I know all about how nearly all of American television is nothing more than the daydream of an autistic child. It is a well know piece of lore.
Before watching the vid, Steve, I would just like to say that I wish ST: ENTERPRISE had been given the green light for at least a 5th season...from what I understand, the producers and writers had plans to not only give the ship a refit so that it looked more like the Enterprise NCC1701, but also were planning on introducing the Romulans and the war that is talked about in TOS's "Balance of Terror"--which would have been a terrific idea. And with the addition, in Season 4, of Manny Colo ("Dexter," "24") as showrunner, executive producer, and writer, along with Judith and Garfield Reeves (New York Times bestselling authors and writers of many science fiction, horror, and techno-thriller novels ("Iceline," which Stephen King called "the best suspense novel of its kind since "The Hunt for Red October"), well-known for their many ST Universe novels as well as co-authoring books with William Shatner (the "TekWar" series), ST: ENTERPRISE was really finding its feet, addressing the history of the ST universe. I wish that CBS would bring back ENTERPRISE (as part of its ST streaming service) though I believe it would probably have to be with at least some new cast members, especially Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer, and follow up on these ideas.
I would hardly say after four 'ehhh' seasons. 1 and 2 fair enough, but Season 3 is highly thought of as Voyager done right, and Season 4 is at least on a par with 3 as a whole, excepting this final episode.
Don't forget the first two episodes, "Alien Nazis in the White House". What a disappointing coda to the Xindi arc, and an utterly nonsensical "conclusion" to the Temporal Cold War arc. Ugh.
Maybe T'pol actually had that conversation with the chef and Riker watched it before he stepped in to interact with her. I'm sure there was more going on than the freeze frame kiss knowing Rikers past holodeck experiences, that would've made a better episode.🧔👉👌👽
I never saw the finale as quite that bad first time around, but after hearing you explain it, I now have no choice but to agree. Being turned to the B-story for your own season finale is a kick in the sensitives that this cast definitely didn't deserve. Thank you for opening my eyes!
So did I. Concept wise thought it was a really nice way to do a cross-over without messy time travel. It was just a shame it had to become the series finale, instead of a season ending.
If Enterprise had gone in the direction of forming the Federation from the get go, it would have worked really well. We know even in Kirk's time there was the department of temporal investigations. All the temporal cold war stuff would kinda give a reason for that being there. Like, maybe the first few three seasons could have been devoted to developing a morality around time travel. The next four seasons could have been devoted to the Romulan War, where Vulcans, Andorians, Humans and Tellerites have to stand together to survive. The Romulan War could have had some amazing space battles. It would have also explained why Federation Ships all used Earth Starfleets ship chassis. Like maybe, talk about how the races had to share technology and build ships together.
The ending legit made me cry. Trip killed for no reason, an episode of TNG slotted into an episode of Enterprise, the entire thing was SO BAD. Like painfully bad. This was the last Star Trek series I watched together with my Uncle before he died. We used to watch the old Star Trek movies and TNG re-runs together but he died before this series was finished. He never saw the ending but I feel like it would have broke his heart too. Re-watching it as adult and seeing this series I loved to watch with my uncle end so badly was.... crushing.
2:40 : I'm confused; could somebody explain the reference here? 22:14 : And here is one of the main reason I liked Enterprise. That last season they were actually using concepts that were created in past shows, and expanding on them. We got to see one of the most interesting elements, the 'Children of Khan' as I call them, again, they were working towards the Romulan/Earth war (while sticking with the conceit that we never saw their faces), and even gave us an explanation for the running joke of why Klingons looked different (which I loved, I don't care what anyone says ^_^). I even think that 'Discovery' payed some homage to this last season, with Empress Georgiou, who can be seen as a descendant of Empress Hoshi Sato (from the episode where she took control of the future tech ship and declared herself so).
@chup smith I agree. In "Trials and Tribble-ations", Worf just waves off the question about the old Klingons. Enterprise's explanation was so satisfying because it made sense.
I haven't rewatched Enterprise, but when I watched it the first time I think i remember feeling like the show was finally starting to find its own thing... and the rug got pulled out from under it. It has been a while, but I remember wishing they had given them another season or two. I enjoyed it much more than Voyager, which I had watched immediately before.
The guy in charge of Terra Prime reminded me of that dull and annoying American documentary maker who always feels the need to say "Hi, I'm [full name]" for some inexplicable reason. Despite that, Terra Prime was a good episode. It shows that even in the future there are boneheaded xenophobic humans blindly vulnerable to rhetoric and mass psychology. Adds a bit of realism.
When this ep aired back in the day... I too was laughing my ass off how bad the ep was, part of the reason being that I was NOT an Enterprise fan either, in fact I used to down on it quite a bit...however as time went on, especially after the Trek reboots with JJ's movies, I missed that era of Trek so much, I gave the show another rewatch when it came out on blu-ray and found myself appreciating it more than I thought, particularly season 3 aka the Xindi arc. Still my fave season of Enterprise! The show got done dirty by this finale.
When William Frakes (Riker) is saying the fans won't like it and is an insult to the actors because the focus is gonna be on Riker, you should know it's a bad idea.
I didn't watch much of Enterprise when it was on the air. Later on, I tried to watch it on Netflix. I got about seven episodes in and tapped out. I hardly even remember it. I had no emotional investment in the end of the series as a result of that. ...Until now. Damn it, Steve. Thanks though.
Jolene Blalock aka T'Pol said in an interview at the time that the finale was "appalling". I agree with her 100%. I actually liked the 2 part episode before it titled "Terra Prime", that actually would've been a much better end to the series compared to what they gave us. Also, Tripp's death was pointless. They dealt with bigger threats than some random alien guys boarding the ship with guns. If they ever get a chance, which I doubt, they should retcon that death entirely and ignore that entire episode.
I dunno. As flawed and weird "These Are the Voyages..." is, I've been able to watch it many times and enjoy it for it's weirdness. On the other had, I've been only able to sit through Voyager's "Endgame" once. "Endgame" is such a pathetically, formulaic, forgettable episode with a dramatic cheat at the end, it makes "These Are the Voyages..." look like "The City on the Edge of Forever". (Then again, I love TNG, and maybe that's the reason I've watched it many times)
I think that's the point Steve is making. The episode would have been fine as a quirky, mid-season episode. It's not OK as a series finale (in my opinion).
If they would have had the cast from TNG, DS9 and Voyager talking about how this original crew of the enterprise brought them into Star Fleet it would have been a better send off to Star Trek Enterprise. Maybe O'Brien and LA Forge could have mentioned Trip knowledge on classic warp engines, Tuvok on Sub Tupol willing to try something new like pecan pie and addressing her health issues and many others. Dr Crusher and Dr Bashir could have mentioned about how they learned so much from Dr Phlox knowledge about medicine. It was a horrible episode. They did a huge disservice to this series. They could have tied them all together.
I didn't hate the show at all, it had its moments and overall I found it enjoyable.....until the final episode. I'll never forgive that mistake lol. They really did ENT dirty.
The funny thing is the final episode of Enterprise got me to watch TNG. I had no idea who Riker and Troi were as the only Trek I watched regularly for the longest time was DS9. So having finally binged Enterprise all the way through (I abandoned it early in it's original run) I started watching TNG.
I loved Enterprise. I felt genuinely insulted by the producers taking one of my favourite shows and ending with another in a long line of shitty hollowdeck episodes. This ruined the holodeck for me as a plot device. Meanwhile, Terra Prime would have been a decent finale. That was one of it's best. Loved your take on this. 🖖
I liked how they interfaced the formation of the federation and Star Fleet at the very end of the episode and series - sorta made things come full circle since it was a preface to TOS
Personally, the only thing I liked about this episode was the closing seconds, with the montage of different generations of Enterprise. That, at least, was the correct way to close the final episode. Everything else was garbage to me.
I know this is the _LEAST_ of the finale's problems, but...why the hell would the NX-01 be decommissioned after just 10 years of service? The ship is still pretty new! Hell, we have modern aircraft carriers that are designed to be in service for a half-century.
Riker going to that moment in Enterprise's history to learn a lesson about defying orders to do the right thing and trust in his captain doesn't even make sense. Like 4-5 episodes before they had that moment when Reed conceals important information from the captain because he had orders from Section 31 and he puts the ship in danger and he regrets it and learns a valuable lesson about trusting his captain.
Originally, i never watch Enterprise because of all the talk of it being a shoehorned series to rewrite the history of the lore. But once i ran out of Star Trek to watch [except for TOS cause i still havent decided to try that] i did watch it, and despite some shitty choices and weird plotlines, i liked, it hell i even loved it, certainly more than Voyager, and i thought the finale was such a shitty ending but most of all, i HATED that Trip died. I had gotten really invested in the relationship that was developing and that just soured it for me, for that all to end, hell for it to start and end off-screen, then to end with no chance theyd be together offscreen after the show ended. Ugh. All in all, i really came to love the show and its characters and seeing the finale be this, not even a true send-off of the characters i came to love, was beyond frustrating.
You have to watch TOS, including the movies! How can you not watch that? As far as I'm concerned, TOS is Star Trek The rest are just trying to be Star Trek.
As GoGreen said, yes watch TOS. Most of the "shoehorning" and revision of history attributed to Enterprise (And Discovery) was of TOS history. Things like meeting a TNG Klingon in the very first episode, then flying him all the way to the Klingon homeworld, a trip that should have taken a year, at least. Of course, having already watched the other Treks will alter you view on the subject!
As GoGreen said, yes watch TOS. Most of the "shoehorning" and revision of history attributed to Enterprise (And Discovery) was of TOS history. Things like meeting a TNG Klingon in the very first episode, then flying him all the way to the Klingon homeworld, a trip that should have taken a year, at least. Of course, having already watched the other Treks will alter you view on the subject!
For me personally, I didn't mind so much that Trip died. It was the WAY he died. My god that ship and its most of it's crew had survived all alone in the Expanse against an entire planet full of people wanting to kill it for an entire year. They had been boarded multiple times, attacked so badly at one point you would be hard pressed to even call what was left a working spacecraft. They were a well disciplined and battle tested crew and Trip gets killed because 4 pirates from a ship WAY inferior to Enterprise managed to sneak aboard somehow. While I am on this subject, were there no longer any MACO's on board? It was a forced, stupid, pointless death. Hell I think that they made it even worse by having Troi tell us he was going to die and then leaving us in our heads to imagine this massively heroic self sacrifice Trip would do that would be meaningful because there was no other way for the ship to survive. Instead what we got was 4 pirates that Enterprise security could have easily dealt with. Where the shit balling hell was security for that matter? The previous episode was a good way to end it. I am just glad that Enterprise didn't do a Scrubs and make an entire season that can be called nothing but an abortion of a season, they just did one episode.
I actually enjoyed Enterprise. The first 2 seasons were really kind of meandering but earnest. Season 3 was a great serial story starting out as angry "they attacked us!" and getting more and more pieces to the puzzle as time went on and realizing it's not nearly as cut and dry as we originally thought. Season 4 was really when it got around to being "Star Trek" in my opinion, the augments/klingon augment story lines really stand out in my opinion. But yes "These are the voyages" really is a very disappointing finale. Back when i aired Voyager was a my favorite as it's the one that really pulled me into Trek, and despite it's flaws was really enjoyable for the most part. Since then as i've aged and grown and re watched the various shows, DS9 has risen to the top of the pile and Enterprise has risen to number 2 in my opinion. As far as series finale episodes go it's definitely at the bottom of the list.
I think I'm the odd one out, because I really liked it in the way back when it aired. And unless I'm totally mistaken (which will, of course, never happen) when playing certain simulations one has to follow a script more or less, and that's what he was doing. My then-housemate was annoyed that we didn't get to hear the speech, but it's the speech that changed the galaxy, so not likely there was a way to live up to that.
Hello, Mr. Shives. I would like to tell you that I find your "Trek, Actually" episodes very interesting and very entertaining. These videos are very informative concerning your own personal point of view of Star Trek and they are also very funny. My favorite episode so far is "Who is actually Star Trek's most reckless time traveller?" So I wish you all the best for 2020, stay healthy and keep up the good work. Thumbs up!
I totally agree with you about Enterprise. I tried to watch it because Star Trek, but I could never get into it. And having it end with Sam Beckett leaping out would have been epic to me. They should have done that! It would have been a way better ending imo.
The fact they said cheers to the next generation... even if it was power rangers (which I still love) and aimed at prepubescent kids, that would be cheesy.
In the 2nd to last episode T'pol and Trip lost their child, then the last episode Trip died. I was hoping that they would have ended on a happier note. My problem with the series was related to having the entire 3rd season focused on the Time War instead of focusing on some of the less explored alien races. Earth being basically alone and surrounded by more technologically advanced aliens. They could have played with the idea of being a developing planet trying not to be conquered by more powerful aliens that has a large Military Industrial Complex think Vietnam vs USA.
I'll always give Enterprise credit for ONE thing, and one thing only: giving us an explanation for the "changing Klingons" business. Such as it was, of course. 😆
Ah, the episode that was about to show us the founding of the Federation of Planets, the most important speech in Star Trek episode. Riker: "Computer, end program"
Choosing to wrap up this video with the synopsis of Enterprise was an interesting call... I agree with you on almost all fronts. I think I may be a bigger fan of Enterprise overall, but this ending is just an insult. And even if it weren't a poor concept, it's poorly executed, as you explained!
One reason I hated this episode is because there were plans for season 5 and beyond that this episode jettisoned. For example, Captain Shran lost his ship in season 4 so the Imperial Guard would have assigned him to the Enterprise as a kind of ambassador. That was going to be fantastic - like a buddy cop show in space. And it looks like Trip and T'Pol would have developed into a good relationship going into season 5 but the characters talking in the final episode makes it sound like their relationship never went too much farther. The stories seemed like they were going to get better and this stinkbomb episode blunted all those storylines. The Voyager episode Threshold was taken out of canon, this episode should be too.
Enterprise is most memorable to me for the episodes that did voyager episodes better than voyager did. The human Wildwest colony of abducted humans is a more interesting take on the alien abduction caused human colony than Voyager's one with enterprise. In fact, season 3 in general, the whole being stuck, or you could say stranded, in unexplored space, was a good example of what Voyager should've been.
Jeffrey Combs can make anything better. Loved him in Enterprise, the man is a legend. I didn't mind the final Enterprise episode, but get the feeling that's because I caught it without watching the entirity of the rest of the show. I dipped in and out of E, as I far more prefered DS9 and TNG with a slight guilty pleasure of some voyager episodes. But still, you like what you like.
Even Jonathan Frakes did not like the finale, calling it an "unpleasant memory" and felt awkward while doing it. Frakes even mention that he felt it was an insult to Scott Bakula and the show and that the show was taken off the air too soon before it found its footing.
If Trip was going to die, he should have died alone trying to fix the engines in order to keep the Enterprise from exploding. His last words would have been coaxing the engines to stay together until they can get to a starbase or friendly planet. The scene ends with Archer trying to contact engineering to congratulate Trip and panning upward to see the exterior of the Enterprise and a hole where engineering used to be.
I still like Enterprise, but I detest the finale, though not the performances or actors.
I like that ending, but it only combines the "death" of Spock and the "death" of Kirk. So nothing new, just the standard Star Trek Charakter death.
Apparently, when Scott Bakula found out about the plot of the last episode, he yelled at Rick Berman. And this is Scott Bakula, who's extremely nice and never yells at anyone.
What did happen was there were novels literally right after that that Trip didn't die and he went undercover as a romulan which I thought was a good twist. It made sense. Those few novels actually justified what happened in that last episode especially where Trip gave that knowing wink.
I just blame Les Moonves on how it was handled in the end and I'll be honest, I cried tears in the end because I've met several of those actors and felt bad for them. Star Trek is a passion. It really is and it's part of what shaped my life. A HUGE part.
So there it is.
This! A fantastic cast, a great premise, and half the production crew of Stargates awesome designs, and it fell to lack of vision.
@Michael Waller: First, absolutely LOVE your idea of Trip's death!!!!
I knew how Mr. Frakes felt about the finale (and agree with it), but I do have to say that his performance shows what a classy and professional actor he is. You would never guess that he was unhappy and "awkward" and would later say it is an "unpleasant memory." As always, he completely delivers.
I remember an interview with Blalock where she said in no uncertain terms (including a lot of four letter terms) how pissed off she was with the finale and how most of the cast felt the same way.
I love how Jolene tells it as she sees it. She's a treasure.
Everyone: WTF is this last episode of Enterprise? Did this story line actually happen, or is this just a figment of Riker’s fantasy fanfic?
Jonathan Frakes: It didn’t happen. We made it up.
Alright, in my opinion, only the events that Riker personally watched were computer simulations based on reports filed and maybe "black box" recordings of Enterprise, this, interposed with the "reality" scenes of the times in private that Riker did not watch a simulation of and therefore the computer was not trying to simulate. This is the only way it could have happened, however, we know the clowns responsible for this episode did not think that far ahead.
TLDR: So, basically, yes, the events did occur, and Riker was periodically watching a simulation of those events to answer his own questions.
I see what you did there! Frakes sci-fi show!
Yeah, hate to say it, but nothing I have encountered says this is not canon... Nothing I know if (but I could be wrong) came out to disprove it. Riker rarely asked others for advice in TNG, so this could support that he did things like this, but in THIS episode, it was under Troy's direction....
I mean, we count Minuet as canon, right? He has a well-established affinity for Holodeck simulations.... Maybe he used them for additional guidance, knowing the effect it could have?
That being said, where were the Federation's Marines? Was this a TNG, Pegasus-centric sim for the crisis he had at the time? Why would they have not been on-board? The NX-01 crew had already earned their respect prior to Pegasus.
Maybe it was a reference, since they already stole a Warp Core coil from an alien race? Greater good and what not?
Scott Bakula got screwed twice in series finales: "Enterprise" and "Quantum Leap". Two series that could have had it all, but instead fell completely apart on the last episode.
At least NCIS: New Orleans - which was a pretty decent-to-good series - gave him a very good series finale.
@@Dman3827 the change to the enterprise theme was bad as well. It’s funny to hear a similar thing happened on Quantum Leap.
I've come to appreciate the Quantum Leap finale a little more over time. Having it ultimately be Sam's choice to stay because he can't let wrongs not be put right. At least as far as they've told us the new series of Quantum Leap is put into motion to try and find out what happened to Sam. Don bellisario is an executive producer. I'm holding out a slim hope that the new series will actually be watchable because this is a show that still has loads of untapped potential and maybe, just maybe, with Don's involvement maybe he'll do a little retcon and bring Sam home. He could still be involved in the project since it is his so it makes sense for him to be there. It's impossible to replace Dean Stockwell. Maybe having Sam as the observer will make it slightly less awful. This is all wishful thinking of course. None of these rebooted series have done anything for me and I find it hard to imagine a way to possibly screw up as simple a premise as Quantum Leap. Then again, they somehow managed to take the simple premise of Macgyver and turn him into an undercover spy for a think tank that was actually the cover for a secret government organization. The original Phoenix Foundation was a non profit that the government would sometimes contract work to. The only thing the new series has in common is the very basic conceit with Macgyver creating something from nothing. The new series is about as similar to the original as Macgruber is. At least Macgruber understands it's a joke.
@@uosdwiSrdewoH I'm not hopeful of the new series being good. I'll still give it a chance.
At least he finally got a W with NCIS NOLA
The scene between Tripp and Reed was genuinely beautiful, summing up the hope and trepidation of the end, or beginning, of a new Trek.
"They'll probably build another Enterprise before long."
"I imagine."
"Won't be the same, though."
"That's alright."
It's so simple and brilliant that I'm convinced Manny Cotto hit B&B with a baseball bat and handed the scene to the crew on a napkin.
Manny should have hit B&B with that bat in the second season and taken over. Then it might have been saved.
@@CameronHuff Manny and the Reeves-Stevens' were the best thing that happened to Enterprise. They should have been doing all four seasons.
Even after 15 years after seeing the finale, I still feel angry thinking about it. I came to like the show in the last seasons, the episode Home being my absolute favorite while whishing for a different ending. Home and Terra Prime were dealing with things I had to deal with in my own life and made me absoluty relate to Trip and T'Pol. As a result, TATV felt like a slap in the face, a punch in the gut, an absolute insult. The ENT crew and the Trip and T'Pol relationship deserved a much more better and optimistic ending.
Yeah I can definitely understand that. I got angry about when they did something similar to my favorite show (seriously, the 'ending' has a lot in common with this episode and does a lot of the same weird fanfic-ish things, even though it's not sci-fi). I got angry enough to basically leave the fandom, because I won't be part of any community that accepts it. I was actually warned the Enterprise ending was bad before I watched it, so I was prepared for it, and my reaction was like "wow, they really screwed the pooch with this one" rather than being disgusted and angry.
This episode, and the one in the other show I'm talking about share something else in common too: a huge middle finger to the fanbase from a producer that is leaving. (In Berman's case, he was fired - in the other case, the company was shutting down.) It's called Torch the Franchise and Run. "If I can't have this anymore, neither can you!"
Of course in both of these cases, they don't seem to realize that fans can and do disregard garbage like that.
Trip's death was meaningless. He died by dealing with some random mooks who were barely seen before and were not central to the story, plus his actions were utterly needless: they dealt with way worse boarding than four guys with a standard laser gun.
I believe they wanted to pull a Spock in ST2 (because the episode needed ANOTHER bit of lore fanservice), but failed.
Was it really meaningless? Where did those characters go at the end of the show? Trip was a vital character along with the others but, when it's all said and done, It's about Archer and the Enterprise.
I think sometimes a death like that in a TV show can be made poignant but not in the last show of the season. It didn't really resonate with the rest of the series, there wasn't a point to his death other than 'kind of guy that would sacrifice himself for someone else'. I think what they were going for was the Enterprise C going down fighting for Klingons approach, but it really didn't resonate with me at all. Afterwards all I could think was 'oh, okay'. I had no emotional reaction to it, even though I kinda liked Trip. It was very poorly done, it felt rushed. I felt the same about Data in Nemesis, that the character had been hard done by. Even so Data's death in Nemesis had more impact than Trip's.
I actually liked it cause it doesn't have to be meaningful, even for main charachters. It was just pure bad freaking redshirt luck. And Trip picked the least bad choice in the situation.
I like to think the holodeck program was modified to learn Riker a lesson somehow. Trip didn't die in my head canon 🙂
@@Jenks337 It is meaningless in terms of the economy of the story. It doesn't add nor remove anything. It's not a fitting end to a character arc (say, it could've made sense if Trip was the kind of character who took impulsive decisions which put him in some kind of mortal danger every other episode; or if the whole ship was at risk of being lost/destroyed, like with Spock's death in Wrath of Khan), nor is a fitting end to the episode's plot because the pirates were never presented like a terrible danger that was to be defeated at all costs.
They could've made it interesting and poignant by, say, having the Earth Purists come back once again trying to screw the Federation Conference, and maybe put T'pol in danger. It's a much more interesting situation because there's something at stake: Archer's speach, the creation of the federation, it would've also tied up with the discussion between T'Pol and Trip about their relationship and their feelings.
Rick Berman: "I'm a fantastic showrunner. I've always done what was best for this franchise. I'm not a sleazy hack!"
Jonathan Frakes: "No way."
Jonathan Frakes again: "It's a total fabrication."
Jonathan Frakes one more time: "It's an urban legend... that never happened."
Jonathan Frakes one last time: "No."
The only acceptable last words for trip: "Keep your shirt on!"
It was a common reply whenever Archer wanted something done RIGHT THEN - Trip's version of Scotty's inflated estimates.
@@KatRobinsonArkansas Basically Trip's version of calm your tits
It was something to the effect of, "Keep your shirt on, Lieutenant. You're shit'll be here by the time we leave space dock."
"I was a perfect gentleman"
@@myah528 "That would depend on how you define the word "gentleman"..."
Steve Shives: "Has the entire series taken place inside the holodeck aboard the Enterprise-D?"
Benny Russell: "IT WAS REEEEAAAAALLLLLLL!!!"
It's a FAAAAAKE!
@@evrbody Minus points for not correctly formatting the quotation to include the name of the character in the style previously used.
Senator Vreenak: "It's a FAAAAAKE!"
Using Star Trek memes in a Star Trek video is super easy, barely an inconvenience.
@@Dargonhuman Pitrch meeting catchphrases are tight!
Sometimes I wonder if all Star Trek series are actucally simulations inside a primitive 2D holodeck called "Television"
Oh my go I never noticed!
@@kennethrapp1379 Love it. (Wonder how many people will get your reference?)
Actually DS9 toyed with the idea of all of Star Trek being in Benny Russell's head and to reveal it in the finale of DS9 but they decided that was too big a position to take.
My god, they even hinted at that at the end of the second Moriarty episode... I think you may be onto something.
Wrong universe, Neptune. You think of Men In Black that pull such stunts :-p
I’m STILL mad about the Enterprise finale being a standard TNG holodeck episode barely guest-starring the Enterprise crew. I get that it wasn’t the most popular Trek series, but the people who did enjoy it and had followed it this far deserved better for its ending.
Like I wouldn't even hate the premise so much as a random episode in the middle. Maybe they could be more creative by cutting back and forth between what actually happened and the holodeck, showing a mission that isn't remembered accurately by history and exploring why. But as a finale, and also the least interesting execution of the premise possible, it's just insulting to the show and its cast.
"lackluster ratings" - today, cable stations would die to have the viewership that Enterprise had. I always thought that ST:E was a decent show that dealt with the knotty problems of writing story lines with already established "canon". It's a shame that the series didn't end properly.
As a TNG/DS9 fan, season 4 of Enterprise holds it's own as one of the best of the Star Trek franchise...until the series finale happened.
The series finale was an insult to Enterprise fans
The only part about this episode that I liked was for Riker to play the Chef, until then an unseen character. I briefly hoped that the Chef was actually Riker gone time-travelling, an actually interesting plot line.
Oh golly, where to begin.
I'll start out with this - I agree with your assessment. I was an actual longterm fan of Star Trek in all its iterations when this finale aired. Though my parents thought it was silly and didn't expose me to the original series when I was a child, I began watching The Next Generation when it debuted as a young teenager and was introduced to the older show by Trekker friends. I came of age through the time TNG, DS9 and Voyager aired, and like you, I'm a Niner.
What gets lost for folks viewing Enterprise in the decades since its debut is the context of time. The first several episodes were already in the can when it came time to debut. It's not Trek's fault that debut was to be in the second week of September 2001. Those of us eager for more Trek at that time had sat through the finale of Voyager and been smacked in the face with promo after promo about the newer, more exciting series to come... a series that should have debuted the week of 9-11. When it did air a bit later, the world it had been conjured in was gone. We didn't feel the optimism. We only felt the sinking malaise and residual shock of our 20th century views of our place in the world, shattered by an act of terrorism. Indeed, Enterprise's early episodes could have been a relief from any other troublesome time, but played out in odd contrast to the winds of change blowing, the War on Terror, anthrax attack scares and an overall survivor's guilt spread through its core audience.
The production crew wanted so much to grasp onto the millenium-approaching joy behind The Next Generation - when they would have been well-minded to heed more the flaws and realism of the Deep Space Nine era. DS9 was early in its after-conclusion syndication run, and for many of those in my Trek-loving circles, it was DS9 that made far more sense in a post-9-11 world.
You see the creators of Enterprise finally get this coming into the thrid season of Enterprise - not only with its terror attack on Florida but the entire swing of the Xindi war. The grip of uncertainty and the introduction of an entirely new concept in the franchise, tying in The Expanse and the Temporal Time War together, creating new species that were far beyond the glued-to-the-head prosthetics of past shows, and the destruction and rebuilding of the psyche you see primarily with Archer and T'Pol over the course of that year, broke new ground for Trek and broke away from the Roddenbery model for good. These episodes shared the stories of believable characters who reacted to the changes in their circumstances. Like DS9, the characters grew into new people, not perfect but certainly credible.
It was too late. Or, maybe, too early. We've seen so many grimdark shows in the years in-between that grew extraordinary audiences (Battlestar Galactica, the first season of Discovery and even Farscape to a point, come to mind). If Enterprise had been reworked earlier on, or if it had not had the misfortune of debuting when it did, it might have prospered.
The thougth of timing is similar to how Discovery and The Orville were received when both first arrived a few years ago. Many TNG-era fans clung to The Orville because it reminded them of just how much fun Next Generation was (particularly after TNG's first, sometimes cringe-inducing season) with humor and new concepts. The Orville was made in particular to pay homage to Picard's Enterprise and era, and did so with clean new sets, new ideas and so much interpersonal interaction, substituting 80s and 90s pop culture for the endless array of string ensemble concerts and dramatic presentations the Enterprise-D hosted on a fantastically frequent basis. Discovery, on the other hand, was hoping to appeal to the grimdark shows that were and are still popular in our 21st century mire. Don't get me wrong - I love both shows, but they have been night-and-day with each other (though after the progression at the end of the last season of The Orville, I'm curious to see how things happen - and whether MacFarlane is playing his version of the Borg card/Best of Both Worlds pivot like TNG pioneered).
By the time Enterprise reached the second episode of its fourth season, the actors already knew the show was ending and most of us fans did, too. It was at that point that the fan service truly blossomed. The backstory episodes on the Andorians and Vulcan were excellent, and the Mirror universe episodes were made of so much fan-powered awesome. The T-Pol/Trip stuff got silly, but that didn't keep us from enjoying Brent Spiner's scenery-chewing run with the Augments. The good episodes in the last season gave us all hope. We were still waiting for some sort of salvation for the series, like a move to another network aka Stargate SG-1, or a wrap-up like Farscape's The Peacekeeper Wars.
I remember standing in my living room and screaming at the TV about two thirds of the way through the final episode of Enterprise. It felt so faked, so much like a slap in the face to all of us die-hard fans. When it was over, the general consensus was that Trek was dead and we all needed to console ourselves that there were at least the movies, five series, books and comic books and fan fictions to relive and enjoy. Too bad Trek was done with TV. The announcement that the "new" Trek movies would be a reboot (before they came around to "alternate universe" version) of Trek seemed like a really large nail in our Trek coffin.
It's good that Trek has made a comeback. Despite my initial television-directed hollering at the first few episodes of Discovery, I have come to love that series and see it as Trek. Rewatching the entire two seasons has helped. Folks forget that there were a lot of duds in the original series' run, that the first season of TNG and much of the first two seasons of DS9 were subprime, and that a LOT of Voyager (particularly anything to do with the Kazon) was downright awful. Enterprise gets a lot of hate because of its theme song and the time it took to react to the era it lived in, both in the Trek timeline and in the 21st century. But it had extraordinary characters and a neat premise. Like Voyager's "Threshold," I think it should be considered non-canon and disregarded.
One other thing. I was so hoping that Rene Auberjonois would have been able to return as Odo in Discovery's third season - out of all of the characters (outside of Guinan) that could conceivably be part of that series, he seemed most likely. Now, though, with his demise and with the talk of other new series that could be developed, I would love to see a cameo of a well-aged Admiral Archer in a Captain Pike-led Enterprise show. Scott Bakula is way too good an actor to skip this possibility.
You made some excellent points, Kat. Thank you for posting!
this is a top-tier quality comment, thanks for posting!
Only the Star Trek community would read this entire comment in this day and age and genuinely enjoy it. Live lo' and pro~
Outstanding points!!!
Honestly while the issues with the changing-of-an-era caused by 9/11 are valid.. Those first episodes of Enterprise still weren't good. Season one had a ton of problems completely divorced from the issues of the day. The third episode of the entire series is a comedy about a main cast member being raped for crying out loud.
Truth of the matter is B&B were long in the tooth by the time of Enterprise and should have long since departed the franchise. They were really at the heart of the issues the property suffered with in throughout Voyager/Enterprise and the TNG films.
"A valentine to Star Trek fans"?? It's like tmy partner sent me a valentine explaining in detail how much I'm not as cool as their ex.
And then her sending a video of her and the ex having sex and her saying it's OK because she faked her orgasms! 🤯🤮🥴
The thing that made me absolutely sick was there was this build up for Typol and Trip to finally truly express their feelings about eachother and say they love each other and eventually bang it out have a kid of there own. It is sad. this show was fun and I loved it. My hats off to the cast. They made me fall in love with this show not the writers. They deserved better.
They should add a scene where riker walks off the holodeck and says to Troi "why did geordie add the bit where tucker died?" Troi says "he was jealous because data played the program and told geordie that commander tucker was the best engineer starfleet ever had. He actually lived a long life and had loads of half vulcan children"
The final episode was clearly awful, but I feel like the show in general was unjustifiably underrated. In particular the character of T'Pol seems to have been dismissed maybe because the actress was attractive. Her performance of a Vulcan is pretty much bang on all the way through (as was Gary Graham's).
I, also, think it had great potential; if they had watched TOS and kept to trek history they could have done a magnificent show, AND had plenty of room to tell their own stories, but they kind of skimmed over everything before and told the writers to have at it. And while T'Pol might have been a great, even spectacular character, Spock was supposed to be the first Vulcan to serve with humans on a Federation ship. Of course, their excuse is that "It wasn't the Federation yet!".
T'Pol being attractive wasn't my issue, it was the way the show oversexualized her for the sake of ratings.
Whenever I rewatch this series I just ditch the very last episode. Terra Prime works just fine as the last episode. Could have easily had a full 7 seasons as the later half of the series really found its feet but hey 🤷♂️
Rhi Sands Camp, Time Travelling space Nazis... there’s gotta be a show in that somewhere 😂
I agree. I find 95% of it to be a great watch, 4% an okay watch, and that last 1% goes to the finale. I have never and will never watch that crap again. I've been scarred enough. I just hope the do Discovery and Picard better.
I normally skip it but the last time round was part of watching all of trek with my wife and she wanted to see every single episode and movie so .... anyway all the way upto season 5 voyager now with only the rest of voyager left to go
I really wished we could have heard Archer's speech. That would have improved the episode and maybe even helped motivate Riker instead of the whole Trip thing.
Though I was happy to see Shran again, it was the highlight of the episode, he was one of the best secondary characters in that show
Not hearing the speech really annoyed me. Especially after all the build-up to it.
I recently watched Enterprise after completely missing it when it originally aired. I loved it. I can imagine how it may not have played well when it aired, so soon after the others, but I think that overall it is brilliant as a stand alone science fiction series. Granted, the last episode was disappointing, but the fourth season was excellent and overall the series has become my favorite of the Star Trek universe. All the hatred? I don't get it.
It's a grittier prequel that doesn't stick to strict episodic story telling. That was completely new to Star Trek then. Even now, those are complaints leveled against Discovery.
@@thomasjenkins5727 DS9 followed longer, serialized arcs as opposed to fully contained episodes before Enterprise.
@@virginiaconnor8350 - I think that even if we *did* get a 2 hr. ENT movie or even a limited series, who’d want to take on the herculean task of producing it, since there seems to be quite a large number of rather vocal fans who aren’t happy with Star Trek’s current management, and anything that would have been done, including depicting the Earth/Romulan War (which hasn’t been seen as official canon in 55 years) would be accused of either being “too woke” or “not woke enough”. As of now, NBC has apparently given the green-light to a “QL” revival, so… we shall see what we shall see.
As someone who watch TNG after finishing Enterprise I was very confused during this episode.
"Who are these people? Oh I guess they're people from the future? Why?"
A story can have fan service but not if that means the story doesn't stand on it's own merits without it.
What's sad is if they did this episode today, the TNG boys might eat it up unironically and uncritically
Exactly, it should have been post Nemesis. Have it be Riker struggling in his first command looking to his inspiration for good command.
For some reason I actually remembered it as this...
That would have been perfect.
@@Twilord_ when we start to forget things, our brains tend to fill in gaps with what seems to make sense.
@@dynamicworlds1 makes sense. My memory makes waaay more sense.
No reason why the USS Titan couldn't have been a Galaxy class ship. Definitely big enough to be a "titan" of a ship......
But seriously though, it would have made a perfect call back.
On the upside, its perfect timing to revive the series set after the signing of the Federation Charter. Bring the whole cast back, if possible. Revamp the ship a bit (since Enterprise could get a refit to Columbia specs), add a few new crew and do a Romulan cold war story. Job done.
Sure, Scott Bakula is a little longer in the tooth now - but Patrick Stewart is showing us that older guys can still be kick ass heroes. With some good writers we could have a great show - even if it only lasts one more season I'd be happy. Anything to erase the current final episode from my memory.
I have always had a soft spot for ENT. I love the early setting, the (ostensibly) lower tech level, and the overall "frontier" feel of the series. Also, because it was made last, the effects are some of the best in Trek. The Ensign's Log rocks, btw.
I fully agree with this comment.
I actually dislike Enterprise so much I like to pretend that it doesn't exist, but to each their own.
I fully agree except the effects, just because it was latest and had CGI does not make it the best by far. I mean look at the Gorn and some of the CGI creatures, the ship looked no better than a model, worse in many occasions. Also its not like they had much to show of it either
"If you've never died before, you're gonna find it trippy."
An Enterprise / Quantum Leap crossover would have been the best thing ever!
Sam Beckett on his neverending leap across history eventually leaps into a 22nd century star ship where he takes over captaincy of the Enterprise because the real Archer failed and it was Sam's mission to make things right that once went wrong. Which is the real reason temporal visitors chose Enterprise as a nexus for their time war.
@@abj136 Even better: Sam Beckett unintentionally STARTS the Temporal Cold War by leaping into Archer, because every time-faction thinks he's an agent from another faction coming back in time to screw with things, and don't realize that he's actually someone from the past who's jumped *forward*.
While I like the idea of the Quantum Leap ending, the nerd in me can't let it pass. Sam Beckett could only time travel within his own lifetime (although there is the odd "but this is why it's different" episode).
It might not work for Star Trek, but both NCIS and Quantum Leap were produced by Donald P Bellisario. So they could maybe do that with NCIS: New Orleans. :D
Sam leaping into archer... yeah...
What makes all this even sadder is that terra prime already was a very good, fitting finale for the series.
I need a fan fic of someone on the Enterprise J holodeck inserting themselves into the events of "the pegasus" and they watch Riker interact with the NX-01 crew.
Daniels taking Archer to the 29th century, to watch someone on Enterprise J watch Riker watch Archer...
@@MyMagnificentOctopus The future is the past, the past is the future, it all gives me a headache.
Its equivalent to the Dallas "dream sequence" episode, except it turns the entire series into a dream sequence. Its dismissive.
The only redeeming thing in this episode for me is the last few seconds where Picard, Kirk, and Archer get to recite the classic intro.
Also you should redo the finale for Enterprise like you did for Voyager. That's still my favorite video you've done!
I was actually very upset when they canceled Enterprise, and also upset when they killed Trip
I never really cared for Trip. Honestly, as the show focuses more and more on him, Archer, another character whom I didn't particularly like, and T'pol almost made me not want to finish the series, but I can see how having that in the final episode might anger some fans.
It actually felt more like a weak TNG episode than a series finale for Enterprise. While I wasn't an Enterprise fan, the series deserved better.
It's not too late to have a Enterprise-CSI New Orleans crossover that will smooth things over.
"Enterprise" was to an extent my introduction to the universe, coming home to reruns of it after school. While it missed the mark in a lot of places, some of their episodes offered something that really none of the other shows had a chance to do, describing how humanity goes from one species poking their heads out into the galaxy to a leading member of a galactic community. And then this ending hits, and it drops the ball just short of the finish line.
Archer's speech at the end would have been very hard to write, but from the very first episode that's where the show was heading, especially given its time-travel plots that kept hinting at his role in the future. If they wanted to frame it as part of the future, that's fine. But they could have at the very least given the speech and made it someone watching who needed to hear it - as you suggest, Riker looking for inspiration, or even better some of the outsider characters of TNG or DS9 trying to understand their place in the Federation through its founding. At least something to make "Enterprise" mean something.
I think the best bit of Enterprise memorabilia I'd like to own is a copy of the call Bakula made to Braga where he screamed at him over this episode.
This is me but Kate Mulgrew calling Berman to tell him he was smoking crack for writing “Fair Haven” 😭😂
The episode would have been a perfectly serviceable *penultimate* episode. Setting up the wrap-ups of the character arcs, in a low-budget precursor to the grand finale. Have Riker step off at the end, his journey of self-discovery within the episode resolved, *as the events reach a critical cliffhanger moment*, and have him give the instruction to "Delete Program", then fade back to 2161, where the events continue from that point.
It would be a program he wouldn't be able to delete as he did not write it. He was watching a "historical" record.
“Everybody dresses in pyjamas and nobody says a thing about it”
They poked fun at that in Time’s Arrow, when Data gets asked if he was “thrown out in the middle of the night” when he suddenly appears in 1890s San Francisco in uniform.
To me, this episode reeks of this attitude of, "Oh god you guys liked TNG, right? If we throw some TNG in there you guys will like this, right?" which I kinda feel has been present in star trek to varying degrees ever since, well, TNG.
Anyway, I am kinda curious - you did a script re-write of Voyager's finale a while ago, any plans/ideas about rewriting this one?
Watch to the end to answer your question.
@@CrashM85 Oops, how embarrassing. That'll teach me not to watch the last 60 seconds.
Little Mako throw it in the trash
That’s it, that’s the plan 👍
The thing is there is a way I wouldn't hate this premise, might actually really like it, it just needed alterations.
1. Don't be a finale, be an episode in the middle.
2. Include the actual crew, maybe make it an examination of how we record history by comparing actual events to what the future think they know, could do funny things like everyone's haircut being wrong. Kind of like Living Witness
3. Make a new dilemma Riker is considering don't just shoehorn it into an existing episde
The best, most well developed character in Enterprise was Porthos.
And then Simon Pegg's Scotty kills Porthos during a long range transporter error in the new films 😢
@@sameo01 Did some digging after your comment because I didn't put two and two together before.
Scotty manages to find and beam back "Admiral Archer's prize beagle" in a canon comic. But Porthos isn't mentioned, he would be 100+ years old at the time of Scotty's incident. Not saying it isn't Porthos, just that the jury is out if it is THE Porthos or a clone or what. I'll happily accept that science has evolved enough to prolong a dog's life that long so it can be Porthos in my head canon.
@@OGdadpool
Much of that time was spent with Porthos in limbo until Scotty rescues him. Kinda like what happened to Captain America!
@@snate56 emergence of Mirror Porthos!!!!!
I remember watching Enterprise and it kept nagging me that Scott Bakula seemed familiar, when I was watching Quantum Leap on TV and it finally hit me and yeah, he is a very talented actor, especially having worked on a show like Quantum Leap where in cases he had to act like a totally different character each episode.
Enterprise flopped due to several reasons:
1) CBS' CEO did not want a Sci-fi show taking a prime tv slot (6PM to 9PM)
2) Rick Berman thought having a temporal cold war plot would make Enterprise different from TNG, DS9, and Voyager
3) Along with #2, S1 and S2 played too slow with the temporal cold war plot that no one was invested in it
4) Xindi plot was lackluster and most of S3 was wasted because of it
5) Romulans were introduced too late to Enterprise to save the show
Accurate
Season 3 with the xindi was quite good, and gritty in parts.
But yeah, the closer was such a let down.
@@derpimusmaximus8815, point taken.
I enjoyed the Borg episode and Affliction & Divergence because because it finally gave an explanation to why Klingons had a more human look in the original Star Trek series.
My reaction on seeing this finale for the first time:
What’s going on?
Why are we six years ahead now?
What did I miss?
Why is Riker here?
Why is this a holodeck episode?
Who wrote this?
Who signed off on this shit?
Why am I still watching?
The show wasn’t great but it’s last couple of series were a marked improvement. That last episode though? Pure shit.
I was pretty upset by this episode when I first saw it. Enterprise was far from perfect, but I did like it and I thought it was starting to grow its beard. The finale was just so disappointing. Now, I love Riker and TNG, but, this was supposed to be the Enterprise cast's time to shine. One last hurrah for them. But it wasn't. Also, killing Tripp off in the last episode was kind of crappy. The guy went through a lot throughout the series. Probably more than any of the others. He was the O'Brien of Enterprise. To not give him a happily ever after is just kind of mean-spirited.
I always imagined that this was a really long experience for Sam Beckett as well. I think that would have been a really cool cross-over moment, BUT still wouldn't have cheapened anything.
Who got the Tommy Westphall reference without Googling?
I salute you.
St Elsewhere is a savagely underrated show, so I'm guessing not many
@@duchesnejennifer More than you think, I should expect. I've never seen an episode myself, but I know all about how nearly all of American television is nothing more than the daydream of an autistic child. It is a well know piece of lore.
@@duchesnejennifer I did. And St Elsewhere is overrated.
I watched it when it was broadcast, and I'm still a little angry at the show runners.
Before watching the vid, Steve, I would just like to say that I wish ST: ENTERPRISE had been given the green light for at least a 5th season...from what I understand, the producers and writers had plans to not only give the ship a refit so that it looked more like the Enterprise NCC1701, but also were planning on introducing the Romulans and the war that is talked about in TOS's "Balance of Terror"--which would have been a terrific idea.
And with the addition, in Season 4, of Manny Colo ("Dexter," "24") as showrunner, executive producer, and writer, along with Judith and Garfield Reeves (New York Times bestselling authors and writers of many science fiction, horror, and techno-thriller novels ("Iceline," which Stephen King called "the best suspense novel of its kind since "The Hunt for Red October"), well-known for their many ST Universe novels as well as co-authoring books with William Shatner (the "TekWar" series), ST: ENTERPRISE was really finding its feet, addressing the history of the ST universe.
I wish that CBS would bring back ENTERPRISE (as part of its ST streaming service) though I believe it would probably have to be with at least some new cast members, especially Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer, and follow up on these ideas.
I would hardly say after four 'ehhh' seasons. 1 and 2 fair enough, but Season 3 is highly thought of as Voyager done right, and Season 4 is at least on a par with 3 as a whole, excepting this final episode.
Don't forget the first two episodes, "Alien Nazis in the White House". What a disappointing coda to the Xindi arc, and an utterly nonsensical "conclusion" to the Temporal Cold War arc. Ugh.
Maybe T'pol actually had that conversation with the chef and Riker watched it before he stepped in to interact with her. I'm sure there was more going on than the freeze frame kiss knowing Rikers past holodeck experiences, that would've made a better episode.🧔👉👌👽
A show that was just getting good when it got cancelled. The ending(both of them) is/are terrible.
I never saw the finale as quite that bad first time around, but after hearing you explain it, I now have no choice but to agree. Being turned to the B-story for your own season finale is a kick in the sensitives that this cast definitely didn't deserve. Thank you for opening my eyes!
I've never told this anyone, but when I first saw that episode I thought it was fantastic and I actually loved the tie in with TNG.
So did I. Concept wise thought it was a really nice way to do a cross-over without messy time travel. It was just a shame it had to become the series finale, instead of a season ending.
I hadn't thought of Riker inspiring T'Pol's behavior in the episode before, but you're absolutely right. That's an excellent point.
If Enterprise had gone in the direction of forming the Federation from the get go, it would have worked really well. We know even in Kirk's time there was the department of temporal investigations. All the temporal cold war stuff would kinda give a reason for that being there. Like, maybe the first few three seasons could have been devoted to developing a morality around time travel. The next four seasons could have been devoted to the Romulan War, where Vulcans, Andorians, Humans and Tellerites have to stand together to survive. The Romulan War could have had some amazing space battles. It would have also explained why Federation Ships all used Earth Starfleets ship chassis. Like maybe, talk about how the races had to share technology and build ships together.
The ending legit made me cry. Trip killed for no reason, an episode of TNG slotted into an episode of Enterprise, the entire thing was SO BAD. Like painfully bad. This was the last Star Trek series I watched together with my Uncle before he died. We used to watch the old Star Trek movies and TNG re-runs together but he died before this series was finished. He never saw the ending but I feel like it would have broke his heart too. Re-watching it as adult and seeing this series I loved to watch with my uncle end so badly was.... crushing.
2:40 : I'm confused; could somebody explain the reference here?
22:14 : And here is one of the main reason I liked Enterprise. That last season they were actually using concepts that were created in past shows, and expanding on them. We got to see one of the most interesting elements, the 'Children of Khan' as I call them, again, they were working towards the Romulan/Earth war (while sticking with the conceit that we never saw their faces), and even gave us an explanation for the running joke of why Klingons looked different (which I loved, I don't care what anyone says ^_^). I even think that 'Discovery' payed some homage to this last season, with Empress Georgiou, who can be seen as a descendant of Empress Hoshi Sato (from the episode where she took control of the future tech ship and declared herself so).
He's accusing Berman and Braga of doing the exact same thing he was doing just before.
@chup smith I agree. In "Trials and Tribble-ations", Worf just waves off the question about the old Klingons. Enterprise's explanation was so satisfying because it made sense.
Making the protagonist of your series finale be a character that has never been in any previous episode of your series is never a good idea.
Trip's final line should've been "You've been Tripped up"
"Enjoy your Trip, assholes!!"
@@KnowYoutheDukeofArgyll1841"blowing up the shuttle? I must be trippin!" BOOM
“You can all go straight to hell.” This was Berman and Braga talking to the fans.
Looking toward to the rewrite of the Enterprise finale - the Voyager rewrite was really fun to watch.
I haven't rewatched Enterprise, but when I watched it the first time I think i remember feeling like the show was finally starting to find its own thing... and the rug got pulled out from under it. It has been a while, but I remember wishing they had given them another season or two. I enjoyed it much more than Voyager, which I had watched immediately before.
Can i skip the finale??
@@suzalahlawat3738I wouldn't. There is no other wrap up episode.
I never understand the issue with the final, i allways thought Terra prime was a nice final episode ...
The guy in charge of Terra Prime reminded me of that dull and annoying American documentary maker who always feels the need to say "Hi, I'm [full name]" for some inexplicable reason.
Despite that, Terra Prime was a good episode. It shows that even in the future there are boneheaded xenophobic humans blindly vulnerable to rhetoric and mass psychology. Adds a bit of realism.
I watch The Cage & Where No Man Has Gone Before after Terra Prime. If I must watch These Are the Voyages, I do it after The Pegasus
When this ep aired back in the day... I too was laughing my ass off how bad the ep was, part of the reason being that I was NOT an Enterprise fan either, in fact I used to down on it quite a bit...however as time went on, especially after the Trek reboots with JJ's movies, I missed that era of Trek so much, I gave the show another rewatch when it came out on blu-ray and found myself appreciating it more than I thought, particularly season 3 aka the Xindi arc. Still my fave season of Enterprise! The show got done dirty by this finale.
When William Frakes (Riker) is saying the fans won't like it and is an insult to the actors because the focus is gonna be on Riker, you should know it's a bad idea.
Jonathan Frakes. William is Riker's first name.
Trip's death in Enterprise always thought was a big mistake and so was the cancellation of show. and finale episode was stupid too.
I didn't watch much of Enterprise when it was on the air. Later on, I tried to watch it on Netflix.
I got about seven episodes in and tapped out. I hardly even remember it. I had no emotional investment in the end of the series as a result of that.
...Until now. Damn it, Steve.
Thanks though.
Jolene Blalock aka T'Pol said in an interview at the time that the finale was "appalling". I agree with her 100%. I actually liked the 2 part episode before it titled "Terra Prime", that actually would've been a much better end to the series compared to what they gave us. Also, Tripp's death was pointless. They dealt with bigger threats than some random alien guys boarding the ship with guns. If they ever get a chance, which I doubt, they should retcon that death entirely and ignore that entire episode.
I dunno. As flawed and weird "These Are the Voyages..." is, I've been able to watch it many times and enjoy it for it's weirdness. On the other had, I've been only able to sit through Voyager's "Endgame" once. "Endgame" is such a pathetically, formulaic, forgettable episode with a dramatic cheat at the end, it makes "These Are the Voyages..." look like "The City on the Edge of Forever". (Then again, I love TNG, and maybe that's the reason I've watched it many times)
I think that's the point Steve is making. The episode would have been fine as a quirky, mid-season episode. It's not OK as a series finale (in my opinion).
If they would have had the cast from TNG, DS9 and Voyager talking about how this original crew of the enterprise brought them into Star Fleet it would have been a better send off to Star Trek Enterprise.
Maybe O'Brien and LA Forge could have mentioned Trip knowledge on classic warp engines, Tuvok on Sub Tupol willing to try something new like pecan pie and addressing her health issues and many others. Dr Crusher and Dr Bashir could have mentioned about how they learned so much from Dr Phlox knowledge about medicine.
It was a horrible episode. They did a huge disservice to this series. They could have tied them all together.
I didn't hate the show at all, it had its moments and overall I found it enjoyable.....until the final episode. I'll never forgive that mistake lol. They really did ENT dirty.
The funny thing is the final episode of Enterprise got me to watch TNG. I had no idea who Riker and Troi were as the only Trek I watched regularly for the longest time was DS9. So having finally binged Enterprise all the way through (I abandoned it early in it's original run) I started watching TNG.
I loved Enterprise. I felt genuinely insulted by the producers taking one of my favourite shows and ending with another in a long line of shitty hollowdeck episodes.
This ruined the holodeck for me as a plot device.
Meanwhile, Terra Prime would have been a decent finale. That was one of it's best.
Loved your take on this. 🖖
I liked how they interfaced the formation of the federation and Star Fleet at the very end of the episode and series - sorta made things come full circle since it was a preface to TOS
Personally, the only thing I liked about this episode was the closing seconds, with the montage of different generations of Enterprise. That, at least, was the correct way to close the final episode. Everything else was garbage to me.
I know this is the _LEAST_ of the finale's problems, but...why the hell would the NX-01 be decommissioned after just 10 years of service? The ship is still pretty new! Hell, we have modern aircraft carriers that are designed to be in service for a half-century.
Living witness on voyager show how a holodeck episode could be done
Riker going to that moment in Enterprise's history to learn a lesson about defying orders to do the right thing and trust in his captain doesn't even make sense. Like 4-5 episodes before they had that moment when Reed conceals important information from the captain because he had orders from Section 31 and he puts the ship in danger and he regrets it and learns a valuable lesson about trusting his captain.
Berman said These Are The Voyages would be "a love letter to Star Trek fans." Instead, it was a drunk dial.
frakes and sirtis both regret it, sirtis said she was excited until she actually got there lmao
Originally, i never watch Enterprise because of all the talk of it being a shoehorned series to rewrite the history of the lore. But once i ran out of Star Trek to watch [except for TOS cause i still havent decided to try that] i did watch it, and despite some shitty choices and weird plotlines, i liked, it hell i even loved it, certainly more than Voyager, and i thought the finale was such a shitty ending but most of all, i HATED that Trip died. I had gotten really invested in the relationship that was developing and that just soured it for me, for that all to end, hell for it to start and end off-screen, then to end with no chance theyd be together offscreen after the show ended. Ugh.
All in all, i really came to love the show and its characters and seeing the finale be this, not even a true send-off of the characters i came to love, was beyond frustrating.
You have to watch TOS, including the movies! How can you not watch that? As far as I'm concerned, TOS is Star Trek
The rest are just trying to be Star Trek.
As GoGreen said, yes watch TOS. Most of the "shoehorning" and revision of history attributed to Enterprise (And Discovery) was of TOS history. Things like meeting a TNG Klingon in the very first episode, then flying him all the way to the Klingon homeworld, a trip that should have taken a year, at least.
Of course, having already watched the other Treks will alter you view on the subject!
As GoGreen said, yes watch TOS. Most of the "shoehorning" and revision of history attributed to Enterprise (And Discovery) was of TOS history. Things like meeting a TNG Klingon in the very first episode, then flying him all the way to the Klingon homeworld, a trip that should have taken a year, at least.
Of course, having already watched the other Treks will alter you view on the subject!
For me personally, I didn't mind so much that Trip died. It was the WAY he died. My god that ship and its most of it's crew had survived all alone in the Expanse against an entire planet full of people wanting to kill it for an entire year. They had been boarded multiple times, attacked so badly at one point you would be hard pressed to even call what was left a working spacecraft. They were a well disciplined and battle tested crew and Trip gets killed because 4 pirates from a ship WAY inferior to Enterprise managed to sneak aboard somehow. While I am on this subject, were there no longer any MACO's on board? It was a forced, stupid, pointless death. Hell I think that they made it even worse by having Troi tell us he was going to die and then leaving us in our heads to imagine this massively heroic self sacrifice Trip would do that would be meaningful because there was no other way for the ship to survive. Instead what we got was 4 pirates that Enterprise security could have easily dealt with. Where the shit balling hell was security for that matter? The previous episode was a good way to end it. I am just glad that Enterprise didn't do a Scrubs and make an entire season that can be called nothing but an abortion of a season, they just did one episode.
This wasn't just a bad series finale for Enterprise, it was one of the worst series finales in TV history.
It's no _How I Met Your Mother_ or GoT, but TATV is certain in podium position for third place
I actually enjoyed Enterprise. The first 2 seasons were really kind of meandering but earnest. Season 3 was a great serial story starting out as angry "they attacked us!" and getting more and more pieces to the puzzle as time went on and realizing it's not nearly as cut and dry as we originally thought. Season 4 was really when it got around to being "Star Trek" in my opinion, the augments/klingon augment story lines really stand out in my opinion.
But yes "These are the voyages" really is a very disappointing finale. Back when i aired Voyager was a my favorite as it's the one that really pulled me into Trek, and despite it's flaws was really enjoyable for the most part.
Since then as i've aged and grown and re watched the various shows, DS9 has risen to the top of the pile and Enterprise has risen to number 2 in my opinion.
As far as series finale episodes go it's definitely at the bottom of the list.
It would have been VERY funny if Barkley walked in on Riker kissing a hologram.
I think I'm the odd one out, because I really liked it in the way back when it aired. And unless I'm totally mistaken (which will, of course, never happen) when playing certain simulations one has to follow a script more or less, and that's what he was doing. My then-housemate was annoyed that we didn't get to hear the speech, but it's the speech that changed the galaxy, so not likely there was a way to live up to that.
My dad said the reason they didn't air the speech was because they suck at writing speeches as evidenced in the previous episode.
@@shimonnym See, that's just cruel. They wrote a lot of fine speeches. They wrote a lot of Picard speeches. I wasn't going for that at all.
Hello, Mr. Shives. I would like to tell you that I find your "Trek, Actually" episodes very interesting and very entertaining. These videos are very informative concerning your own personal point of view of Star Trek and they are also very funny. My favorite episode so far is "Who is actually Star Trek's most reckless time traveller?" So I wish you all the best for 2020, stay healthy and keep up the good work. Thumbs up!
“You had no idea you wouldn’t make it back from this episode” lmao
I totally agree with you about Enterprise. I tried to watch it because Star Trek, but I could never get into it.
And having it end with Sam Beckett leaping out would have been epic to me. They should have done that! It would have been a way better ending imo.
For me, "Enterprise" ended with 'Terra Prime'.
The fact they said cheers to the next generation... even if it was power rangers (which I still love) and aimed at prepubescent kids, that would be cheesy.
LOL at "delightfully obsequious middle-manager" so you're saying that Weyoon works at the DMV?
Yes, he works on many dominion military vehicles.
Actually, that description has me considering "Weyoun" as a good name for a dog.
In the 2nd to last episode T'pol and Trip lost their child, then the last episode Trip died. I was hoping that they would have ended on a happier note. My problem with the series was related to having the entire 3rd season focused on the Time War instead of focusing on some of the less explored alien races. Earth being basically alone and surrounded by more technologically advanced aliens. They could have played with the idea of being a developing planet trying not to be conquered by more powerful aliens that has a large Military Industrial Complex think Vietnam vs USA.
I'll always give Enterprise credit for ONE thing, and one thing only: giving us an explanation for the "changing Klingons" business. Such as it was, of course. 😆
@@tparadox88 well Troi did say in the season one finale that Romulans evolved over the years
Ah, the episode that was about to show us the founding of the Federation of Planets, the most important speech in Star Trek episode.
Riker: "Computer, end program"
Choosing to wrap up this video with the synopsis of Enterprise was an interesting call...
I agree with you on almost all fronts. I think I may be a bigger fan of Enterprise overall, but this ending is just an insult. And even if it weren't a poor concept, it's poorly executed, as you explained!
One reason I hated this episode is because there were plans for season 5 and beyond that this episode jettisoned. For example, Captain Shran lost his ship in season 4 so the Imperial Guard would have assigned him to the Enterprise as a kind of ambassador. That was going to be fantastic - like a buddy cop show in space. And it looks like Trip and T'Pol would have developed into a good relationship going into season 5 but the characters talking in the final episode makes it sound like their relationship never went too much farther. The stories seemed like they were going to get better and this stinkbomb episode blunted all those storylines. The Voyager episode Threshold was taken out of canon, this episode should be too.
Enterprise is most memorable to me for the episodes that did voyager episodes better than voyager did. The human Wildwest colony of abducted humans is a more interesting take on the alien abduction caused human colony than Voyager's one with enterprise. In fact, season 3 in general, the whole being stuck, or you could say stranded, in unexplored space, was a good example of what Voyager should've been.
Jeffrey Combs can make anything better. Loved him in Enterprise, the man is a legend. I didn't mind the final Enterprise episode, but get the feeling that's because I caught it without watching the entirity of the rest of the show. I dipped in and out of E, as I far more prefered DS9 and TNG with a slight guilty pleasure of some voyager episodes. But still, you like what you like.