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Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “These are the Voyages…”

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Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “These are the Voyages…”

Rewatching the series finale.

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Published on January 29, 2024

Image: CBS
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Screenshot of T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) in the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise
Image: CBS

“These are the Voyages…”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Season 4, Episode 22
Production episode 098
Original air date: May 13, 2005
Date: Stardate 47457.1

Captain’s star log. We have jumped ahead six years to 2161. After ten years in service, Enterprise is going home to be decommissioned—and also to be present for the signing of the charter that will make the United Federation of Planets a thing. Archer is still struggling with his speech, while Mayweather and Sato are speculating about what they’ll do next.

Then we pan over to a side console, where William Riker is sitting in an NX-01 uniform. He orders the holodeck to freeze and save the program then end it. We revert to the Enterprise-D holodeck, and Riker’s holographic Enterprise uniform is replaced by his Starfleet uniform.

According to Riker’s personal log, Admiral Pressman has just come on board, and he’s agonizing over whether or not to confide in Picard about the real reasons for Pressman’s presence. Troi is the one who suggested re-creating the NX-01’s final mission on the holodeck to aid him in making the decision. Troi also, over dinner in Ten-Forward, suggests he skip ahead to when they’re contacted by the Andorian. She also suggests Riker take on the role of the ship’s chef, who was the closest they had to a ship’s counselor.

Back on the holodeck, Enterprise is hailed by Shran, which comes as something of a shock, as they believed that Shran died three years previous. Shran admits to having faked his death because, after he left the Imperial Guard, he got involved with some unsavory characters, who have kidnapped his daughter, Talla. He needs Archer’s help to get her back, and Archer owes him. T’Pol advises against acceding to Shran’s request, as they can’t risk being late for the charter signing (and Archer not being present to give his speech), but Archer does owe Shran…

They head to Rigel X. Chef was planning a final meal with everyone getting their favorite dish. Riker poses as Chef preparing those meals discussing life, the universe, and everything with the crew. Later Riker brings Troi on board the holodeck to show off the ship. They observe a conversation between Tucker and Reed, with the latter teasing the former about his continuing to perform routine maintenance on a ship that’s about to be mothballed. But Tucker unconvincingly claims that he practically built the engine singlehandedly, and will care for her to the end. Troi then indulges in some foreshadowing by saying how sad it is that Tucker won’t be coming home from this mission.

Troi goes off to have a session with Barclay, and Riker now cosplays as a MACO who goes on the mission to Rigel X. Archer comments on how appropriate it is that the last planet they’ll visit is also the first one they visited

Screenshot of T'Pol and Shran in Star Trek: Enterprise "These are the Voyages…"
Image: CBS

Shran and T’Pol meet with the bad guys, T’Pol having fabricated a fake of the jewel the kidnappers think Shran has stolen (he hasn’t, but they don’t believe him). Once they get Talla back, all hell breaks loose, as the fake jewel flashes some lights and the rest of the away team, who has been lying in ambush, fires on the bad guys.

Tucker almost falls to his death, but Archer saves him. They all get back to the ship and head off. Shran is happy to accept a lift to get them far away from the kidnappers, who can only go warp two.

Riker-as-Chef has more conversations with the crew, then Riker watches Archer and Tucker talk about the impending charter signing and what it means. Then T’Pol reports an intruder alert.

The aliens have caught up to Enterprise and boarded her, er, somehow, and demand Shran and Talla. Tucker throws himself into the notion of enabling them to signal Shran with an elaborate rewiring of things that is utterly unconvincing, but the aliens fall for it anyhow, and one big-ass explosion later, all the aliens and Tucker are all mortally wounded. Phlox tries to save Tucker’s life (no such effort is made to save the aliens), but he dies on the table.

Riker then breaks the chronological sequence by going back to before the intruder alert, when Tucker visited Chef to discuss the final meal.

T’Pol and Phlox are present backstage to wish Archer well on his speech (T’Pol having to adjust his neckline). Archer impulsively gives T’Pol a hug before going out and giving his speech.

Riker and Troi are seen in the back of the arena, talking about the historic speech and the charter signing that would lead to the Federation. Riker says he’s ready to talk to Picard about the Pegasus, and they exit the holodeck.

Screenshot of Troi and Riker in Star Trek: Enterprise "These are the Voyages…"
Image: CBS

Thank you, Counselor Obvious. Troi is the one who suggests that Riker visit the holodeck to help him with the decision he’s agonizing over.

If I only had a brain… Data briefly speaks with Troi over the intercom about finishing a discussion they started, but Troi asks for a rain check, an idiom that Data struggles with.

The gazelle speech. Archer, typically, leaves writing his speech until the last minute and refuses to take credit for anything during it.

I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol admits to Tucker that she will miss him after they’re no longer assigned to the same ship.

Florida Man. Florida Man Dies Hilariously Unconvincing Death!

Optimism, Captain! Phlox is unable to save Tucker after he’s in the middle of an explosion, and later is one of the last people to wish Archer well before his speech.

Blue meanies. Shran has left the Imperial Guard and faked his own death over the prior six years. He has mated with Jhamel and had a daughter, and apparently Archer hasn’t repaid all the favors he owes Shran…

No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. T’Pol and Tucker’s relationship ended not long after it began, apparently, though they’re both mature enough adults to continue to serve on the same ship for the next six years.

Screenshot of Archer and T'Pol in Star Trek: Enterprise "These are the Voyages…"
Image: CBS

I’ve got faith…

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

–The final lines of the episode, spoken first by Picard, then by Kirk, and finally by Archer.

Welcome aboard. Recurring regular Jeffrey Combs is back as Shran, while Jonathan Schmook plays the alien kidnapper. While this is Combs’s last appearance as Shran, he will return on Lower Decks as AGIMUS in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie.”

And, of course, the big guests are Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and an uncredited Brent Spiner as, respectively, Riker, Troi, and Data. The former two will next be seen in Picard’s “Nepenthe,” while the latter will next be seen in Picard’s “Remembrance.”

Trivial matters: The episode takes place simultaneously with the TNG episode “The Pegasus.”

While Jhamel is not seen, she is mentioned, and its made clear that the relationship with Shran hinted at in her appearance in “The Aenar” came to fruition.

This is the third straight Trek series finale, following DS9’s “What You Leave Behind” and Voyager’s “Endgame,” that is directed by Allan Kroeker.

Having written the lion’s share of the episodes from the first three seasons, this is the first (and, obviously, last) writing credit for Rick Berman and Brannon Braga in the fourth season.

After having one or two Trek TV shows in production consistently since 1987, there will be a gap of twelve years before the next one, when Discovery debuts in 2017. It will be four years before there is any kind of Trek screen production, the 2009 movie.

The novels Last Full Measure and The Good that Men Do, both by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, establish that the holodeck program Riker was utilizing was not an accurate portrayal of history, with most of what was depicted therein actually taking place in 2155, not long after “Terra Prime.” This is uncovered by Nog and Jake Sisko after some Section 31 files are declassified in the early 25th century. In the novels, the characters point out several inconsistencies in the program that indicated that it was fake, all of which were complaints made by fans after the episode aired. They also established that Tucker’s death was a fake as well, a cover-up for him to engage in a long-term deep-cover mission.

Aside from Riker, Troi, and Data, this is the final appearance of everyone in it to date.

Screenshot of Tucker in Star Trek: Enterprise "These are the Voyages…"
Image:CBS

It’s been a long road… “I’m sure you’ll make the right choice.” I have often stated that the idea is far less important than the execution, and this is a prime example of that, because the idea here actually isn’t all that bad a one. It’s a nice idea, knowing that this was closing off the then-current era of Trek television, to tie it back to the show that started the era in question eighteen years earlier.

But holy crap, is the execution an unmitigated disaster.

I remember back in 2005 when they were talking about how Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis would be appearing in the Enterprise finale, my first thought was how cool it would be to have a framing sequence on the U.S.S. Titan with Captain Riker and his wife Commander Troi consulting the historical documents about Enterprise’s final mission.

So imagine my shock that they were instead appearing as Commander Riker and Counselor Troi on the U.S.S. Enterprise-D.

A lot of pixels have been lit on the subject of how terrible this is as the Enterprise finale (both Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have spent a lot of time at conventions and in interviews apologizing for it since 2005), and while I’m happy to add to it here, I do want to take a moment to say how this is also a complete and total failure as a parallel story to “The Pegasus,” which was one of the highlights of a very uneven final season of TNG. We’ll leave aside the fact that Frakes and Sirtis are very obviously ten years older than they were when they filmed “The Pegasus” (this is why I figured it would be a story of them on Titan), there is absolutely nowhere in the episode where any of this fits. There is simply no opportunity for Riker to go haring off to the holodeck for hours at a time to agonize over this decision. And then at the end, he resolutely decides to confide in Picard—which is something he does not do at any point. Well, at least not willingly—he only comes clean to Picard when he doesn’t have a choice at the episode’s climax.

And that’s only the start of what a dreadful finale this is. Just as Frakes and Sirtis very much look ten years older, the rest of the crew looks not at all to be six years older. No changes in hairstyle (well, okay, Jolene Blalock’s wig is a bit froofier, but that’s it), and neither Reed nor Mayweather nor Sato have been promoted after a decade of service, which is completely unconvincing.

After finally having Tucker and T’Pol come together as a couple bonding over their unexpected kid in “Demons” and “Terra Prime,” we’re told that their relationship apparently didn’t live out the year, as they’ve been broken up for six years. To call that disappointing is a major understatement, though it’s as nothing compared to the disappointment of Tucker’s “heroic” death, which is so clumsily constructed you can see the strings, and is one of the most ineptly written death scenes in television history. Connor Trinneer stops short of actually saying, “I have to have my death scene now!” but that’s the only saving grace of this ridiculous scene.

It is fitting that Enterprise has proven itself once again to be completely incapable of repelling boarders despite having Space Marines on board, as the aliens have free rein on the ship before Tucker blows them up.

Watching it again for the first time in nineteen years, the thing that annoyed me the most was, bizarrely, the scenes of Riker-as-Chef talking to the various crew. Not that the scenes themselves were bad—quite the opposite, they’re charming as hell, and easily the best parts of the episode—but this is something we should’ve been seeing all along. To find out now in the 97th and final episode that people talk to Chef about their troubles is leaving it way late. I’ve never been fond of the often-discussed-never-seen character trope in television, and the use of Chef in this episode is so much more interesting than the way he’d been used in the 96 previous episodes.

Berman and Braga spent their three years as show-runners making the early days of space exploration as bland and uninteresting as possible, and their final episode lives down to that standard in pretty much every way.

Warp factor rating: 1 icon-paragraph-end

About the Author

Keith R.A. DeCandido

Author

Keith R.A. DeCandido has been writing about popular culture for this site since 2011, primarily but not exclusively writing about Star Trek and screen adaptations of superhero comics. He is also the author of more than 60 novels, more than 100 short stories, and more than 70 comic books, both in a variety of licensed universes from Alien to Zorro, as well as in worlds of his own creation, most notably the new Supernatural Crimes Unit series debuting in the fall of 2025. Read his blog, or follow him all over the Internet: Facebook, The Site Formerly Known As Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, YouTube, Patreon, and TikTok.
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Siphedious
1 year ago

A 1? That’s very generous of you!

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1 year ago
Reply to  Siphedious

I was expecting Full Impulse. Maybe Half.

krad
1 year ago
Reply to  Siphedious

I considered giving it a 0, but the actual concept was, as I said, a good one, and I have to admit to adoring the scenes with Riker cosplaying as Chef and chatting with the crew, which was enough to get it out of the cellar, as it were…..

—Keith R.A. DeCandido

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bob
11 months ago
Reply to  krad

1 should really be the lowest possible score anyway.
If you use a rating scale from 0-10 that is 11 possible choices.

krad
11 months ago
Reply to  bob

This is the penultimate Trek rewatch entry after 12 years of doing it, so you’re leaving it a little late to be nitpicking the ratings system……. 🤣

—Keith R.A. DeCandido

ChristopherLBennett
11 months ago
Reply to  bob

Nothing wrong with that. There are ratings scales with 0-3 stars, 0-4 stars, 0-5, etc. What matters is the comparative rank, how far up or down the overall scale something is. The scale itself doesn’t have to be a specific size, though a larger size allows finer tuning.

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Shaun B.
1 year ago
Reply to  krad

I think we were all not-so-secretly hoping you’d lay a goose egg on this one, ratings-wise. 🤔

Regardless, it’s almost universally considered the worst Trek finale ever.

krad
1 year ago
Reply to  Shaun B.

I dunno, man, as I said elsewhere, Trek‘s track record for finales is dreadful, and I don’t think I can say that this is worse than “Turnabout Intruder” or “Endgame” with a straight face.

—Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Shaun B.
1 year ago
Reply to  krad

IIRC, you gave “Endgame” a 1, while “Turnabout Intruder” gets a 2.

Back when you reviewed these episodes, did you consider giving either one a zero?

krad
1 year ago
Reply to  Shaun B.

This is the part where I remind everyone that the warp factor rating is the least important part of any rewatch entry…. *laughs*

—Keith R.A. DeCandido

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1 year ago

The main thought that I had when I was watching this episode 19 years ago was that Berman and Braga were finally confirming what I think that a lot of us had long suspected: that they’d spent all four seasons of Enterprise (and seven seasons of Voyager) desperately wishing that they could still be writing TNG.
I cannot, in good conscience, say that it’s the worst Star Trek series finale (“Turnabout Intruder” and “Endgame” both exist); I can no longer even say that it’s the finale that feels the most contemptuous of the series that it is, in theory, a finale of (hellooooo Picard season 3!); but by God, does it suck nonetheless.

Last edited 1 year ago by jaimebabb
krad
1 year ago
Reply to  jaimebabb

Honestly, Trek‘s track record with finales suck. “All Good Things…” worked — though flawed, it brought the series full circle and was an entertaining time travel romp — but that was it. “Turnabout Intruder” was hot garbage, “The Counter-clock Incident” was ridiculous, “What You Leave Behind” mistook the end of the war for the end of the show and also resolved the Prophet/Pah-Wraith (and Sisko/Dukat) conflict in the most awful way possible, “Endgame” was even hotter garbage, and, as you say, “The Next Generation” was a self-indulgent piece of nonsense that ended a season that was almost entirely self-indulgent nonsense.

Let’s hope Discovery is able to double the total of good finales this summer…..

—Keith R.A. DeCandido

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago
Reply to  krad

I’m not that fond of “All Good Things…”. It’s a decent episode, but superficial, an exercise in nostalgia without any deeper message. Also, Q goes on about how he’s testing whether Picard can expand his mind enough to grasp the solution to this intractable mystery, but it’s actually ridiculously simple.

“What You Leave Behind” was probably the best overall, though I agree it was seriously flawed in a number of ways.

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1 year ago
Reply to  krad

I usually exempt “Turnabout Intruder” from consideration, since it was the one Trek series finale that wasn’t planned as such (in live action, anyway).

…I suppose I’ll have to offer the same exemption to Discovery‘s finale this year.

krad
1 year ago
Reply to  terracinque

You won’t have to discount Discovery– they did reshoots of the finale after they found out that it was now the series finale.

—Keith R.A. DeCandido

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1 year ago

Well, we nearly made it to the end of this rewatch before they redecorated and I didn’t like it. Are we ever going to get the comments for the last 12 episodes back or have they disappeared into the ether forever? Because the longer it goes on, the more tempted I am to just say “To hell with it” and paste my comments back in there. Anyway, onto, believe it or not, more pleasant matters…
“Been a hell of a run, Malcolm. Never thought it would come to an end.”
There are some things that you know can’t be as bad as their reputation. Sometimes you’re wrong and they actually are that bad. But over the course of more years than I care to remember rewatching Voyager and Enterprise with you all, there have been several times that I’ve gone in with low expectations and been pleasantly surprised. So prepare to throw me out of the guild because…
I really really enjoyed this.
I found pretty much all the standard criticisms of it are not entirely deserved. Saying it’s a TNG episode is an exaggeration: Only two and a bit of the TNG cast turn up, and they’re very much secondary to the show’s stars. I’ve always felt that the idea of an episode being seen from the point of view of characters from another series is an interesting one but it should never have been the last episode. (I also feel like, with them now being 20 years older, it’s easier to accept Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis as their TNG-era selves than it was at the time.) It’s very awkward that the exterior shots are all of the Enterprise-D rather than the NX-01 (and seeing any 1701 in CGI always feels wrong to me, which is why I’ve never managed to watch the remastered versions without grimacing). It means that it’s easy to dismiss this episode as not featuring the real characters and that this isn’t really what happened. (Some people even prefer to believe it never happened, which is a debate I’m really hoping not to get sucked into.) Personally, I prefer to believe that we actually are seeing the last voyage of Enterprise NX-01, aside from a few bits when Riker’s presence has influenced the narrative.
But, yes, those are some of the weakest parts, especially since, as krad says, we know that’s not how ‘The Pegasus’ went and Riker didn’t come clean to Picard until the Enterprise got trapped inside an asteroid and they needed the phased cloak to escape. I know at least one person who thought this episode meant the entire series was just Riker’s holo-fantasy!
While it’s a bit disappointing that we get a time skip and find everyone in the same rank and positions (although they’re hardly the first hero crew to stay in the same jobs far longer than is plausible), the episode does a better job of showing the passage of time than I thought, with new hairstyles (at least I thought they were new?), changed set dressing and nametags on the uniforms. Every now and then though I was left thinking that the time skip was added to the script at a late stage because, ironically, Shran is the only one who’s allowed to have had his life move on. He’s left the Imperial Guard, faked his death for three years, implictly married Jhamel (he’s said to be happily married and she’s the mother of his daughter) and gained a rather cute little moppet. As I mentioned earlier, I wonder if him seeking Enterprise for help here was originally setting up him being a regular in Season Five. (Talla calling Archer “pinkskin” is a slightly awkward moment that’s not as cute as it was probably intended.)
Not all the regulars are well-served but we get to see all the tropes we need. Of course Archer risks his crew and himself to help Shran out again, it’s what he does, and there is a full circle element to them returning to Rigel X from ‘Broken Bow’. And it is great to see Shran one last time, even if he does get lost in the mix in the second half, disappearing from the episode after getting Talla back to Enterprise.
Tucker’s death is unfortunately just as bad as we all remember. It’s horribly shoehorned-in, as if the scenes were written overnight when the cancellation order came in and they needed to have something big happen in the finale. He just decides out of nowhere to sacrifice himself when confronted with a bunch of generic villains who don’t have names who threaten Archer a bit. I know Troi all but said that he doesn’t survive the mission earlier in the episode, but cutting from him being taken for treatment while Archer and Phlox share a grim look, to him having died between scenes is awfully bad television grammar: We should have seen him slipping away in Sickbay.
But…one scene. One scene where I realised “Ah, that’s what they were getting at when they called this a valentine to the fans.” Tucker and Riker finally come face to face across the centuries and Tucker talks about how he can count on one hand the number of people (Archer among them) who he trusts to never hurt him and always have his back. “You ever know anybody like that?”he asks. “Yeah, one or two,” Riker confirms. Maybe having watched Picard Season 3 recently it hit home harder. As with that final shot of Picard, Kirk and Archer intoning the famous opening narration over their own Enterprises, it’s telling us that successive generations of Enterprises have produced crews that became like a family to each other and were always there for the rest of their lives. I’d totally forgotten the scene near the end where Reed and Mayweather predict that Archer will have a new ship soon and they’ll sign up aboard it with him: They might have just lost one of the family, but these people will keep on being drawn together.
And I love how much of Archer and T’Pol there is here. They get another of those ready room scenes where Archer is unnecessarily harsh while similtaneously showing how their relationship has grown since ‘Broken Bow’. Her adjusting his collar leaves me convinced they’re off to get married (“You look very heroic”). I genuinely teared up at that final hug.
But…yeah, they really miss the landing. I can see what they were going for by having the last proper line of the show being Riker announcing “Computer, end program” and the characters fading away but it was too meta for me. I really wanted them to cut to the real Archer at the real ceremony. I guess cutting to the real NX-01 was their idea of that but it didn’t work as well.
There continues to be an odd reluctance, even with the jump to the magic year of 2161, to admit this is the Federation: Shran’s still calling it a coalition and Archer, Tucker and Phlox all refer to it as an alliance (as does Troi, oddly). T’Pol noting her “intimate relationship” with Tucker ended six years ago means either they resumed it after ‘Bound’ but it didn’t last long or it ended for good circa ‘Home’. Archer mentions Shran helping destroy the Xindi weapon in ‘Zero Hour’. T’Pol refers to her mother and her death in ‘Awakening’. Phlox’s anecdote of Tucker negotiating an order to sleep for six hours down to four happened in ’The Forgotten’. There’s a reference to Phlox’s three wives. An Admiral Douglas is mentioned, possibly Gardner’s replacement. Riker comments on the lack of chair for the first officer on the bridge: That’s because, in those days, the first officer actually had a job to do on the bridge… In production terms, we last saw Riker, Data and Troi in Star Trek:Nemesis.

Last edited 1 year ago by cap-mjb
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1 year ago

I’m more shocked about tor.com being changed to something new than about how bad this episode was. :D

But as you said, this entire series is really terrible, only Picard can compete with it in terms of quality of stories from the whole franchise…Watching the series was mostly painful even if I skipped the worst episodes. :D

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago

Definitely a dud on many levels. I think I read somewhere that this was originally planned to be just a season finale set in 2155, and they hastily rewrote it into a series finale set 6 years later so they could jump to the founding of the Federation, which is why it just doesn’t work as a 6-years-later story, with none of the characters (but Shran) having advanced in any way at all.

And then they go and have Troi say at the end that the 2161 signing was just what would eventually lead to the Federation, rather than the actual founding itself, which makes me think it was a line left over from a 2155 draft where it was just the signing of the Coalition Charter, and they missed the line in the hasty rewrites.

No doubt all of this is why the novels reworked it into a coverup of events that actually did happen in ’55, though that doesn’t make sense on many levels. Surely that would create countless discrepancies with known history recorded elsewhere. But I guess there’s no real way to make sense of this.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that even in the simulation, we never actually see Trip die. We see him rolled into the surgical scanner, then cut to a scene of Archer and T’Pol talking about his death afterward. Which suggests that Berman & Braga were leaving the door open to reveal that it was faked and Trip was still alive, just in case they got an opportunity to revisit the series later. Although I doubt they would’ve done it the same way the books did.

I confess, I do kind of like that the payoff to the running gag of the unseen Chef is that Chef finally gets an on-camera role and it’s not really him.

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1 year ago

I’ve heard that Manny Coto wanted to get Shatner to play Chef if the series had been picked up for a fifth season. I’m a bit disappointed that this never happened.

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Ham
1 year ago
Reply to  jaimebabb

I would have accepted this if Shatner went real big with a Cajun accent or something.

krad
1 year ago
Reply to  jaimebabb

I, on the other hand, am massive grateful that that never happened…. *shudder*

—Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Shaun B.
1 year ago

Back in the day, I only watched a bare handful of first-run Enterprise episodes. They included, yes, “These Are the Voyages,” as well as “A Night in Sickbay.” I did eventually watch all the episodes on DVD, but in the meantime, I was understandably left with a poor impression of the series.

I agree that TATV is basically a complete failure on every level. It might have been cool to see Riker and Troi pop up, but this should have been some other story in the middle of the season. As things stand, the characters are upstaged in their own series finale. And the tie-in with “The Pegasus” is clumsy at best.

Trip’s death scene is definitely one of the low points in the entire Star Trek franchise. Just watching it makes me angry, but at least the story set-up gives us some wiggle room. I haven’t read the novels that supposedly retconed it, but I hope that a future episode does address the issue.

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ryan
1 year ago

If only they had framed this with “Shades of Gray” instead of “The Pegasus”. It’s just slightly more acceptable as a Riker’s hallucinatory near-death fever dream.

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1 year ago

All that being said, this story was at least the basis for the only episode of Very Short Treks that was actually funny, so I guess that gives it a small degree of redeeming value.

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago
Reply to  jaimebabb

I didn’t like that VST episode much, since it was just the same single joke repeated and driven into the ground (although it was at least inoffensive, unlike most of the rest). But admittedly, it fixes a lot of the episode’s problems if you assume someone was watching an inaccurate simulation of Riker and Troi in “The Pegasus” watching an inaccurate simulation of NX-01’s final mission.

Another possible handwave is that these were the Riker and Troi from some “Parallels”-style alternate quantum reality version of “The Pegasus.”

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1 year ago

I try to resist the urge to simply ignore the fact that certain awful episodes actually exist, but this one makes it so very tempting. They should have just let the previous episode be the finale, because it does a much better job of it than this disaster. The only thing I don’t mind that everyone else seems to complain about is the fact that Frakes and Sirtis look older. The fact that everyone else doesn’t is much more difficult for me to accept.

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1 year ago

I often scoff at people who talk about head canon, and movies or episodes that in their minds do not exist. But as much as I defer to the decisions of the writers, this episode was a hard pill to swallow. It was just awful.

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