These Are the Voyages...

What an insult. While Enterprise was not as good or popular as TNG the decision to base the last episode of Enterprise around two stars from another show was a blatant insult to the cast of Enterprise who were not at fault for their show not being as good writing wise as the others. I was insulted and appalled and time has not diluted that feeling. It was decisions like this that lead to Enterprise being less popular than the others. I strongly recommend you run away from this episode full speed ahead. As a whole Enterprise the series has some good episodes mixed in. Best bet pretend Terra Prime is the series finale and pretend this one doesn't exist.

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.

I fully understand why this finale let down fans, especially those who watched the series in real time rather than binging it years later online. Yet I am okay with viewing this as the creators suggested, as a "coda" with the previous 2-parter as the true finale.

I am hugely sentimental, and this is why I appreciated the Next Generation callback. Typically I don't actually like guest appearances from a previous cast because they are cheap, and thus I despised the Troi/Reg episodes of Voyager.

But here, I can imagine the first Enterprise crew as having existed all along within the TNG episode "Pegasus," and existing forever to be called up and viewed when a crewmember of a future starship wants to watch the founding of Earth's space travel program in their holodeck. Otherwise, it's just too sad to me to think that all these characters are dead by the time TNG and the other spinoffs come around!

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.

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.)