These Are the Voyages...

I won't recapitulate all the negative reviews of this horrible episode (with which I agree, incidentally); however, I noticed that even IMDb subtly disapproves, listing all the cast of "Enterprise" with the designation "(hologram)" next to their characters' names, suggesting it was as if...there weren't really even there.

Touche! The fact is, the B&B send off reduced the cast of "Enterprise" to ghostly afterthoughts, not unlike hologram characters -- photonic images created by the bending of light, and not fully-formed, fleshed out characters. The cast that dedicated four years of their respective careers deserved much better than to be pushed to one side (WAY to one side!) to make way for the bulky Riker and Troi.

A disgrace. (I gave it a four, simply because I liked the Shran story line, and Jeffrey Combs is always a welcome presence.)

To be blunt and to the point i didn't see much of a point to this episode. It took me a while to get into Enterprise and then they go and end it like that, it totally blew it for me. The whole link to Next Gen was a desperate one if they where gonna like it to another show they could have used time travel and had Captain Archer give his speech(one we actually get to hear rather than end programme) then leave on a new mission only to be flung into the future and get pick up during the anniversary of there disappearance in the Next Gen time line, i was always looking forward to more from this show.

There was always that rumour that they were gonna pull kirk out of the Nexus in there end of the time line.

This episode was just plain bad,

It jumps ahead 6 years, yet the ship and crew look the same, indicating literally nothing of interest happened. Most of the cast are little more then extra's in this episode with next to no dialogue

The story of Trip and T'pol, which had been building up for 2 seasons is suddenly cast aside for no apparent reason, which also undermines the ending of the previous episode in which the death of Elizabeth drew them together. 2 seasons of buildup (including a now mind-link) which is just tossed aside with a casual line here.

Shran is inserted out of nowhere, faked his death, has a child and quite a lot of other throwaway lines instead of actual plot on how this came to be.

Trip's death was just plain insulting and completely unrealistic and so tacked on that made it seems like it never happened and Troi just added it in there for Riker's "lesson". The Pirates were stated to be in a slower ship, yet somehow caught up with no explanation. They somehow not only reached the ship virtually undetected and unopposed, but also got to the heart of the ship without any effort and held Archer at gunpoint again with no opposition. Where were the MAKO's, security or any other defense against a ship stated vastly inferior to Enterprise.

Riker apparently did this simulation purely for the moment Trip defied orders and killed himself. The rest of the episode had nothing to do with this moment and the situation was in no way comparable to his own. Not to mention there are quite a few "order defying" moments in earlier episodes that served that purpose far better.

Then we get Trip supposedly dying while under Phlox's care, which not only lacked any kind of emotion to it (Trip winking didn't help) but an actual death is NOT shown and T'pol is missing.

Finally we have Troi ruining the episode multiple times. She says Trip will die 20 minutes before he does (why on earth was that line added) and she hypes up Archer's speech yet we never hear it.

In the end this episode just came of as a non-canon Holodeck novel and not the actual events, mainly due to aspects happening that literally couldn't happen. The crew couldn't be identical 6 years later and Trip couldn't have died because those pirates couldn't reach the ship due to a huge difference in warp capabilities and they certainly couldn't enter the ship completely unopposed.

Why bring Riker and Troi into this. The crew could have gone out in a blaze of glory with a script that was imaginative and exciting. We are pretty much told what happened and the characters act it out, stiffly and with little aplomb. This series was a bit inconsistent, at least in its first half, but the episodes became much more complex and creative in the second half. The final dual episode preceding this was one of the best of all. So we throw in this lame thing. I got to know these people, their trials and their accomplishments, and "The Next Generation" takes over with people telling Riker dull things as he pretends to be a chef. What a letdown.

People are really mad about this episode in the reviews, but I found it a fitting way for this series to go out. Yes the plot is very thin and probably too many wink-nod references eg "Here's to the next generation" but we get to see these characters 10 years in as Enterprise is about to be mothballed and they are moving on to other things. It provides a fitting setting for closure on the series and seeing some of the character arcs come to an end.

I also don't understand the hate for bringing some TNG cast into it. What's not fun about seeing Riker and Troy on screen with the Enterprise crew? It was a nice linkage to the next series (in stardate chronology). We even got to see Shran one last time.

Thanks for the memories, Enterprise. A good show with it's flaws but overall I enjoyed the ride.