Picture it: Los Angeles 2005.
After four kinda eh seasons, Star Trek: Enterprise
has been canceled.
Despite drawing lackluster ratings and never
approaching the popularity of its predecessors
in the franchise, especially the widely beloved
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Enterprise
has attracted a loyal fanbase of its own,
a fanbase full of people that now, in May
of 2005, gather in front of their televisions
eager to see how the creators of this, the
most recent and, who knows, perhaps last of
the Star Trek series, will wrap up its run.
And what they watch for the next hour turns
out to be one of the most reviled episodes,
and certainly the most reviled series finale,
in all of Star Trek.
What the hell happened?
Let’s see if we can figure that out as we
examine
Why Star Trek: Enterprise Actually Has the
Worst Ending Ever
Let’s start with the episode itself, and
I’ll do that thing where I summarize the
story in a really breezy, smart-alecky kinda
way.
Sound good?
Good.
Some of you may have objected, but I could
hear you because we’re not actually conversing,
it’s only a rhetorical device.
Anyway, the episode, the final episode of
Star Trek: Enterprise, is titled “These
Are the Voyages . . .”
This episode takes place several years after
the previous episode of Enterprise, so we
open with the crew carrying on some “as
you know” chit-chat.
Apparently they’ve now been serving aboard
Enterprise for ten years!
And coming up soon, there’s gonna be the
signing of a big, important charter!
And also, Starfleet wants Captain Archer to
bring Enterprise back to Earth so they can
decommission it real good.
You know, it’s funny, with all that exposition
I didn’t notice the guy sitting off to the
side there at that bridge station.
He looks just like Commander Riker, doesn’t
he?
That’s weird.
Oh, shit, did he just say “Computer, freeze
program”?
Oh, shit, did he just say “end program”?!
Oh shit, are we on the holodeck?
Of the Enterprise D?
Has the entire series taken place inside the
holodeck aboard the Enterprise D?
Did Berman and Braga just Tommy Westphall
this thing?
Oh my god, Riker cameoed in an episode of
Voyager, too!
Does that mean Voyager was all one of Riker’s
holodeck programs, too?
Even the episode where Barclay is running
his own holodeck version of Voyager?
Is Barclay’s holodeck version of Voyager
actually inside Riker’s holodeck version
of Voyager?
No, no, that’s just me latching onto the
mildly clever conceit of Riker running holodeck
programs based on another Star Trek show and
getting carried away with it.
Wouldn’t know anything about that, would
you, fellas?
Anyway, it turns out the Enterprise scene
was part of a holodeck program Riker is running
to help him figure out what to do about his
former commanding officer, Admiral Pressman,
who has just arrived aboard the Enterprise
D. You Next Gen fans will probably remember
that Pressman’s reunion with Riker and the
hyjinx that ensued were part of the episode
“The Pegasus” during TNG’s seventh season.
Now, that is a good episode.
Way better than this one.
Can we just talk about “The Pegasus” instead?
Nah, never mind.
I hate it when the creators change the premise
of something midway through – wouldn’t
know anything about that, would you, fell–
Anyway, Riker talks to Troi in Ten Forward
and he’s like “That holoprogram you told
me to run has nothing to do with the problem
I’m facing and this whole thing already
feels really forced and slapped together.”
And Troi’s like, “Just skip ahead to when
the Andorian hails them.”
So Riker goes back into the Enterprise holodeck
program and skips ahead to the part where
the Andorian – meaning Shran, Captain Archer’s
best frenemy – hails Enterprise to ask Archer
for help in rescuing his daughter, who has
been abducted by, I dunno, somebody.
Archer agrees to help, Shran comes aboard
the ship and tells him his daughter is being
held at the trading outpost on Rigel X, which
is a nice callback to the series’ debut
episode, when the crew of the Enterprise visited
Rigel X during their first mission.
[Bad George Lucas Impression:] So it’s like
poetry, it’s like they rhyme.
T’Pol meets with Archer and she’s like
“You know, the thing about Shran is, he’s
a dickweed and I don’t trust him.”
And Archer’s like, “You’re just racist
against Andorians.
Just like I was racist against Vulcans when
I met you, but now I’m cured, so you should
cure your racism, too, by not giving me any
more shit about helping Shran.
Also, go talk to the chef because he wants
to know your favorite dish for the crew’s
last meal together.”
T’Pol goes to the galley to talk to the
chef, who is now being played by Riker, and
–
– does this seem fan-fickish to anyone else?
I mean, it was pretty fan-fickish to start
with, what with the premise of framing an
episode of one Star Trek show as a holodeck
program being watched by a character from
another Star Trek show, but now there’s
the added wrinkle of Riker playing a member
of the crew and interacting with the Enterprise
characters, so it’s become fan fic from
his perspective, too.
Oh, and right at the end of the scene T’Pol
says some shit about how she’s learned that
following orders isn’t always the most important
thing and she’s learned to embrace the human
way of relying on your instincts sometimes,
and Riker’s like “Hey, that’s relevant
to my present dilemma!
Thanks!”
And then he freezes the program and kisses
T’Pol on the cheek, like a creep!
They should have had Barclay walk in right
at the moment Riker was kissing T’Pol so
he could be like “Ah-ha!
GOT YOU, ya hypocritical bastard!”
And then Riker could say, “Just wait until
I find that Minuet program I’ve been looking
for since the first season and then I’ll
show you some holodeck hypocrisy!
I ain’t gonna take no nap in her skirt folds,
I’ll tell you that much!”
I’m writing a better episode instead of
summarizing this one.
I apologize.
Where were we?
Troi joins Riker in the program, he gives
her a tour of the ship, they reference Captain
Picard and Captain Kirk in tragically misguided
attempts at fan service.
Then they head to engineering to eavesdrop
on Trip and Reed talk about the mission to
Rigel X, and Troi’s like “Isn’t it sad?
Commander Tucker has no idea he won’t make
it back from this mission.”
And the first time watching this episode,
we were all like, “What’d she say?”
They wouldn’t do that, would they?
Kill off a main character in the final episode,
which has already worn out its welcome thanks
to its poorly conceived central gimmick?
No, they’ve pressed their luck enough already,
not a chance they’re gonna–
–They kill Trip.
But before that happens, Trip and T’Pol
are in a shuttlepod on their way down to Rigel
X, and T’Pol turns to Trip and says, “So,
do you ever miss me?”
Which she’s thinking about because during
her conversation with the chef earlier, he
asked her if she misses Trip since they broke
up like six years ago.
Except, that was Riker playing the chef who
asked her that.
So, T’Pol’s character in this holodeck
program is reacting to her interactions with
Riker.
Interesting.
Let’s come back to that.
So they go down to Rigel X, they rescue Shran’s
daughter, they make it back to the ship, everything
seems fine, Archer and Trip are hanging out
in the captain’s mess talking about the
charter that’s about to be signed on Earth
and the alliance it will form.
Archer pulls out a bottle of whiskey that
Zefram Cochrane gave to his father and they
drink a toast which Archer dedicates to “the
next generation.”
Oh.
Oh, god, you poor bastards, you really thought
the fans would love this, didn’t you?
It’s sad.
You had no idea you wouldn’t make it back
from this episode.
Obviously, things don’t continue to go smoothly.
The ship is attacked, the space pirates who
abducted Shran’s daughter are back.
They board the ship and Archer and Tucker
meet them in the corridor and Trip’s like
“Hey!
Knock the captain out and I’ll take you
to Shran and his daughter.”
The space pirates are like, “Cool!”
They knock out Archer, Trip leads them down
the hallway a little, then says, “Hey, I’ve
gotta take this comm panel apart to disable
security.
Cool?”
Space pirates are like, “Cool.”
Trip pulls a tube out of the panel, pulls
another tube out of the ceiling, and he looks
at the space pirates and he says “There’s
just one other thing: you can all go straight
to Hell!”
And he puts the tubes together and everything
goes boom – but is that really the best
one-liner they could come up with for Trip
to say before he blows up the bad guys, mortally
injuring himself in the process?
“You can all go straight to Hell”?
Kinda generic, ain’t it?
What about having one of the space pirates
get impatient and ask where Shran is, then
Trip could respond, “Sorry, fellas, looks
like you just Shran outta time!”
Too much of a stretch?
How about this one: “Have a nice Trip!”
Or not.
I’m just saying, it’s the death of a major
character and the last episode.
Make an effort.
Trip dies, T’Pol is in his quarters smelling
his clothes in a tender, melancholy moment,
when Archer comes in and is like, “Hey,
don’t forget to pack his Frankenstein action
figure!”
Riker rewinds the tape a few hours and steps
into the role of the chef once more, to chat
with Not-Dead-Yet Trip about what he wants
for his last meal.
They end up talking about Captain Archer,
and Riker’s like, “So, what, are you guys
friends or something?”
And Trip says, “Archer is one of the few
people I trust, like really trust, like trust
so much that I know he’ll always be there
for me, like trust so much that I’d be willing
to tell him anything, any secret, even a secret
I’d been ordered to keep by a higher ranking
officer about an extremely sensitive matter
of interplanetary intelligence, a secret which
also involves a dark episode from my past
about which I’ve been concealing the truth
for over a decade, know what I mean?”
And Riker’s like, “Nah, not really.”
Then Archer, T’Pol and Phlox are backstage
before Archer’s big speech at the signing
of the charter.
Archer’s nervous because he hasn’t memorized
the speech, but T’Pol’s like, “Relax,
it’s a prequel but it’s still the future.
They’ve got teleprompters that project the
script directly onto your corneas or something.”
Then Phlox is like, “Well, I’ve got three
wives waiting for me out there, and I guess
leaving for ten years on a deep space assignment
is all I can do to avoid spending time with
them, so I’d better go.”
He leaves and T’Pol and Archer have a final
moment together, then he walks out to give
the speech.
Riker and Troi are watching from the balcony.
Riker resolves the central conflict of the
final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise by
saying, “I think I’m ready to talk to
Captain Picard about Admiral Pressman.
I should have done it a long time ago.”
And I’m watching this in 2005 like, “You
did, brother, that episode was like ten years
ago!”
Riker and Troi leave the holodeck, the episode
closes with a montage of Picard’s Enterprise,
Kirk’s Enterprise, and Archer’s Enterprise
all flying past camera, as we hear the voices
of Picard, Kirk, and Archer take turns reciting
lines from the “Space, the final frontier”
opening narration of Classic Trek and TNG,
and that’s it!
So, this is a bad episode and an even worse
series finale, but before I talk about why
I hold that opinion, let me do something that
those of us who dislike this episode don’t
often do, and talk about the parts of it that
actually work.
Because there are a few.
For instance, bringing back Shran.
Good idea.
Always nice to see Jeffrey Combs pop up in
a Star Trek show, and while I never felt like
Shran was on the level of Combs’s best known
character in the franchise, Deep Space Nine’s
delightfully obsequious Dominion middle manager
Weyoun, Shran did wind up being one of the
more memorable and well developed recurring
characters on Enterprise.
Another thing I like, at least in theory,
are the callbacks to the first episode of
Enterprise, like revisiting Rigel X, Archer
referencing his former mistrust of Vulcans,
the references to Archer’s father and Zefram
Cochrane.
They help to create the impression of a larger
arc, to pull the series together.
Another thing: while it’s not a good idea
in and of itself – it’s such a bad idea,
in fact, that the writers of the Star Trek
novels retconned it pretty much immediately
– I like the way they handled Trip’s death.
He sacrifices himself to save his crewmates,
in particular his best friend Captain Archer,
we last see him in sickbay about to undergo
an emergency treatment, trying to put on a
brave face, then we cut to T’Pol in his
quarters packing his things and the scene
allows us to catch up to the fact that Trip
has died.
Very understated, very effective.
Finally, the episode’s main gimmick of it
taking place within Riker’s holodeck program
could have worked – just under different
circumstances.
It’s a very clever device for getting Riker
onto a series that’s set two hundred years
before his time.
And, despite the problems it creates which
I’ll get to in a few minutes, having Riker
insert himself into the program by playing
Enterprise’s chef is a cute way of paying
off the running gag of never seeing the chef
without actually letting us see him.
But it’s all much better suited to a mid-season
episode – might have made a good stunt to
goose the ratings during sweeps.
As a series finale, though?
I’m having trouble coming up with a worse
gimmick for a series finale.
After “These Are the Voyages” originally
aired, Peter David, prolific writer of Star
Trek novels and comic books, described it
as “a guy in a Starfleet outfit sitting
around watching a rerun of Star Trek,” which
is just about perfect.
He goes on to say “Then again, my ideal
episode would have involved Sam Beckett leaping
out of the body of Jonathan Archer and to
his next adventure, so . . .”
Did I steal that from Peter David?
I don’t think I did, but . . . did I?
Ah well, if you’re gonna rip somebody off,
it might as well be the guy who wrote “Retrospect”.
Peter David is right; it’s a problem when
the protagonist of the final episode of a
series is a character from another series,
and none of the characters from the series
that’s ending even appear as themselves,
only as holographic simulations of themselves.
But David only describes half of the problem.
Not only is Riker watching a Star Trek rerun
on the holodeck, the episode itself is set
during a Star Trek rerun, Next Gen’s “The
Pegasus”.
The only TNG characters we see are Riker and
Troi, and other than the holodeck the only
locations aboard the Enterprise D we see are
Ten Forward, some corridors, and Troi’s
quarters.
Would it have been so impossible to set the
Riker portions of the story post-Nemesis?
Come up with another excuse for why he’s
watching the Enterprise program and show us
a tantalizing glimpse of what life is like
for him as the Captain of the U.S.S.
Titan?
I know Berman and Braga were hoping setting
the episode during “The Pegasus” and recreating
the Enterprise D would be taken as a tribute
to TNG and a fun way to close out their era
of the franchise, but trust me, by the time
Enterprise ended, it was the last thing the
show’s remaining audience was interested
in seeing.
Instead of playing as a hat-tip to TNG and
the franchise as a whole, it comes across
as an insult to Enterprise.
Were those characters not fit to close out
their own series?
Did they really need ringers from TNG to come
in and take center stage?
During their last show ever?
If I were an Enterprise fan – which I wasn’t,
really – I watched the last episode when
it aired, but I was pretty over the show by
that point – they lost me when they added
“Star Trek” to the title, if you wanna
know the truth – but if I were an Enterprise
fan, I’d have been rather annoyed.
Because it’s not just that the episode is
Riker and Troi watching a holodeck simulation
of Archer’s Enterprise.
If that was the case, it would still be a
bad idea for a series finale, but at least
you could tell yourself, “Well, the events
Riker is watching did actually happen.
So we are seeing the final mission of Archer’s
Enterprise, just one step removed.”
Riker inserting himself into the program as
the chef and the other characters behaving
differently due to his presence ruins that,
however.
Remember the scene in the shuttlepod when
T’Pol asks Trip if he ever misses her?
That conversation is so obviously inspired
by T’Pol’s earlier conversation with Riker
as the chef that it’s difficult to imagine
it taking place without it.
But that conversation between T’Pol and
the chef never actually happened.
That was Riker interacting with a character
on the holodeck.
And his interaction with T’Pol affected
the way the rest of the program played out.
It apparently didn’t alter any of the major
events – Troi anticipated Trip’s death,
so that happened in real life, as did the
signing of the charter and Archer’s speech,
which Riker and Troi don’t even bother to
watch, though Troi does say she had to memorize
it in school, so maybe they’re sick of hearing
it by that point – but the point is, Riker’s
presence affects what happens in the program,
even if only in subtle ways, which reinforces
to us in the audience that we aren’t watching
the “real” Captain Archer and crew of
the Enterprise NX-01, we aren’t seeing what
“really” happened during their final mission,
we’re watching Riker view and participate
in a holodeck recreation of that mission.
It can be difficult enough to suspend disbelief
when you’re watching a sci-fi adventure
series to begin with.
I mean, I love Star Trek – I should hope
that’s obvious by now – but let’s face
it, even at its best, the show is full of
some deeply silly shit.
Spaceships travel from star system to star
system in the same amount of time it takes
for us to drive from city to city; everybody
dresses in pajamas and nobody ever says a
word about it; the aliens are obviously humans
with shit glued to their heads – it’s
just goofy.
In order for it to work as drama, you have
to see past the goofiness and emotionally
invest in the characters as though they were
real people.
But in Enterprise’s final episode, most
of the characters we’re watching aren’t
even real people within the fiction of the
episode – they’re holographic simulations
of real people who are long dead by the era
in which the episode actually takes place.
The only real characters are Riker and Troi,
and of those two the only one who has anything
remotely meaningful to do is Riker, and the
only thing he has to do is make a decision
that, from our perspective in the audience,
he’s already made, because it was part of
an episode that first aired in nineteen-ninety-goddamn-four.
I mean, imagine if the final film in the Star
Wars prequel trilogy had a frame story set
during Luke’s first visit to Dagobah in
Empire Strikes Back, and the scenes set during
the era of the prequels were presented as
a story Yoda was telling Luke in order to
get some bullshit Jedi lesson through his
thick skull, and as the story went on it became
obvious that Yoda was embellishing and changing
things for his own purposes, so the version
we were seeing wasn’t even what “actually”
happened.
You know what?
Bad example.
Because that would have been way better than
what we got.
But I thought the prequels were terrible.
Lots of other people really liked the prequels,
and cared about those characters – I can’t
for the life of me figure out why, but they
did, and I’m sure they would have been very
annoyed had the last film of that trilogy
sidelined those characters in favor of characters
from another, more popular trilogy.
And, utterly inexplicable taste in Star Wars
movies aside, they would have had every right
to be annoyed!
Because it doesn’t make sense to end a series
with a story centered on characters from a
totally different series.
It’s just a bad idea and looking back, it’s
baffling how it ever made it out of a pitch
meeting, let alone into production and on
TV.
Of course, the “Riker on the holodeck during
‘The Pegasus’” bits aren’t the only
troubles the episode has.
Even without those scenes, it would still
be difficult to pull off as a series finale
because the Enterprise-set elements of the
story take place six years after the events
of the next-to-last episode.
So even if we judged the show based only on
what happens to Archer and his crew and ignore
the Riker/holodeck stuff, we’ve still got
a story that plays more like a reunion special
that a series finale.
Enterprise has never been my favorite Star
Trek series, but I do have a soft spot for
it.
Of all the Star Trek projects produced during
the TNG golden era, it feels the most like
a missed opportunity.
There are missed opportunities aplenty in
Voyager, too, but looking back it seems like
the creators of Voyager never had much ambition
beyond making a blandly likable show that
would run for seven years and then get added
to the syndication package.
When it began, Enterprise felt like an honest
attempt to do something different, to take
the franchise in a fresh direction.
It was a prequel, it was set during an era
of Star Trek history that had never really
been explored, the technology wasn’t quite
as advanced as it had been in TNG/DS9/Voyager,
many of the familiar aliens had not yet been
encountered by humanity, and – for the first
two seasons, anyway – “Star Trek” wasn’t
even in the title!
Unfortunately, the show spent most of its
four-year run searching for an identity.
The producers of Enterprise could never quite
settle on what kind of a show they wanted
it to be.
It was too dorky and wholesome to work as
a sexy sci-fi show, but its attempts at being
sexy and edgy often made it an awkward choice
for family entertainment, too.
It began as a show about a mission of exploration,
tried to be a gritty 9/11-inspired serial,
then spent much of its final season playing
around in the sandbox of Star Trek lore.
This lack of narrative focus put a lot of
weight on the shoulders of the show’s cast,
and they carried it the best that they could.
You’ll never hear me say a bad word about
Scott Bakula – he’s an immensely talented
and likable actor, and he leads a terrific
cast – look up and down the roster, you
won’t find a clunker in the bunch, and a
few of them are consistently excellent, especially
John Billingsley as Phlox and Jolene Blalock
as T’Pol (once the writers give her a character
to play other than “grumpy sexy Vulcan in
catsuit”).
Enterprise was never a great show, was very
often not even a good show, but it and its
cast deserved better than the ending it got.
Rick Berman described “These Are the Voyages
. . .” as a Valentine to Star Trek fans.
It marked the conclusion of an 18-year run
during which there was always a Star Trek
TV series in production.
Instead of reminding fans of what they loved
about that era of Star Trek, the final episode
of Enterprise made that ending feel underwhelming,
and long overdue.
