These Are the Voyages...

Hey Rick Berman, you just sent off Enterprise into a smouldering pile of dung. The second last episode "Terra Prime" is how my heart will remember Enterprise ending, dignified and heartwarming.

Why would you crush the hearts of loyal fans with such drivel? The entire dialogue, premise and plot were incredibly amateurish as if it was written at lunch break by the company accountant.

After "Terra Prime"'s sad yet beautiful ending it really tied a lot of loose bits for fans. Nothing more was needed.

Please never touch anything Trek related again before you completely destroy the franchise.

Pathetic.

In what would have been a fine premise for a standard episode, Riker's uncertainties in the Holodeck simply blemished the Enterprise farewell. The death of Tripp left me feeling as violated as a drive-by shooting witness. Senseless and gratuitous, it still baffles me that this seemed like a good idea to anybody. The episode, arguably the worst of the four year run, probably contributes to the trepidation of Paramount in allowing a new TV series to this day. All of that being said, I don't HATE it. It is Star Trek, and it features people that I've enjoyed for years. Hopefully, any new adaptation in the Star Trek universe will put this episode into perspective as a teachable moment and the producers will remember rule number one. The fans are the only reason that Star Trek exists. Abusing their loyalty will have repercussions.

Chef is Commander Riker, it's all a holodeck program, yadda yadda yadda. Everyone knows that this is the worst part of the episode. This should have been a 3- or 4-parter that followed directly, chronologically speaking, from the last non-Mirror Universe arcs that the show explored. The whole season was structured to lead up to the formation of the Federation. The letdown is the way it's addressed here. Instead of giving the NX-01 a proper sendoff, the writers chose to lean on the goodwill of TNG fans. What we got was, honestly, more contrived than season 2 of Picard. It would be one thing if the Riker segments showed us things we didn't already know. Daniels accomplished that in the third season, though, when he told Archer why the mission to destroy the Xindi superweapon was important and showed him the future. So who cares!?!? I seriously don't understand the rationale behind this. Maybe Frakes just wanted to run around in his uniform again and Marina Sirtis probably just wanted a paycheck (nothing against her, actors are workers and this was probably an easy gig; she gave everything the performance required). All in all this is pointless and embarrassing.

Conceptually this episode is solid: an episode in an episode to explore duty and self-sacrifice, wrapped in one of TNG's finest episodes on the same topics ("The Pegasus"). The major character event is tipped too easily and less impactful. A poor end to a beloved character. Worst of all is that this good concept for an episode is used at the wrong time in the season/show. It shouldn't be used as a season finale, no less the series finale. Sadly, fans of the series were robbed of a pointed and focused conclusion to the story of characters they loved. There are a few utterly pivotal moments in Star Trek history that this episode is set around, but each is shortchanged in being explored. The overarching storyline that includes characters from TNG is repetitive, drawn-out without progression of the narrative, and eventually snuffs out any vitality to what should have been the focus in the first place: culmination of the storylines of Enterprise's main characters.

The most disappointing finale to any Star Trek series because it doesn't provide trust in the characters that had driven a fine, but underappreciated series, for four seasons. After a truly strong fourth season, this finale will leave you feeling betrayed.

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.)