What was wrong with "These are the Voyages"

What, for you, were the main problems with this episode?

For me, it was going forward all those years and none of the characters having advanced, particularly Trip and T'Pol's relationship having been put on ice for an unrealistically long amount of time for no apparent reason. And the useless death of Trip of course.
The framing device was fairly cool, but perhaps not great for a finale...

 

Agree with you on every point except the framing device. Hated that too.

For me it was less that Trip died... but why and how the characters handled his death (other than the scene between Archer & T'Pol).

In Terra Prime, as Archer gives his speech there is an understated grief from the rest of the crew over Elizabeth's death. There was none of that in TaTV. It was like he didn't matter at all.

Honestly, I'm sure that I've read something like this somewhere before, but it really did feel like the finale was written by people who didn't actually watch ENT past the first season, you know?

 

Now that I've read The Good That Men Do? That changed everything for me. I could not possibly give any less of a shit that novels aren't canon. I accept TGTMD anyway. With that taken into account, TATV's problems go away, and even make sense.

 

I - Surak - find T'Pol chatting with and confiding in the cook utterly disbelievable.
In addition the TNG or VOY or whatever characters looked like they were rescued from the street. He had that bloated drunk look and the short troll woman was simply disgusting. What a horrible end to the best Star Trek series of them all.

 

It would have been better if we'd actually met the real Chef. He could have been the kind of person T'Pol *would* have confided in.

 

My thought exactly.

I wrote recently about "T'Pol's issue" in that episode, I mean really - she was peeling carrots and chating about her love life?
Even her talk with Archer did nothing in sense of real grieving, and Reed, Hoshi and Travis chatting about VIP seats?!

 

Word, my wise Vulcan friend.

 

This is going to take a while:

Problem No. 1: The "framing device" is an 11-year-old episode of TNG, which means that pretty much everybody watching would already know how Riker makes his decision concerning the Pegasus device. And it bears NO RESEMBLANCE to what occurs in "This Ain't The Valentine."

Problem No. 2a: Bizarre characterization.
-- Having seen "The Pegasus," I remember Riker being under a great deal of stress. In TATV, you'd think he didn't have a care in the world: smiling while having a relaxing drink with Troi in Ten Forward, inviting her to dinner... At one point Troi tells Riker she has a counseling appointment with Barclay and if she's late "Reg will be furious." WTF?! More likely, Reg would be apologizing to her for being on time.
-- Archer had faced danger on many occasions throughout the NX-01's travels (including a suicide mission in Azati Prime) and yet Trip handled every one of those instances without going to pieces.
-- Trip was a pretty gifted engineer and the best plan to save Archer that he could come up with was to blow himself up.
-- Shran, who always seemed pretty savvy to me, couldn't tell the difference between business partners and criminals.

Problem 2b: The drink, the dinner invitation and Troi going off to her appointment, along with their little tour of the NX-01 took precious time away from the regular cast and added absolutely NOTHING to this 43-minute finale. It was the very last episode of Enterprise and supposedly a farewell to all of Trek for a while (tho' the only references made to other Trek were tributes to TNG).

Problem No. 3: According to "Bound," Trip and T'Pol were bonded mates. The excruciatingly touching scene at the end of Terra Prime is wiped out by a break-up that is mentioned but goes unexplained.

Problem No. 4: What kind of moron actually writes a SPOILER into a script?

Problem No. 5: An intruder alert is sounded and Archer and Trip dash off to confront the intruders without stopping by the armory.

Problem No. 6: Where the hell were Reed and the MACOs? Confined to their quarters?

Problem No. 7: No death scene. Did we really need one? Maybe not. But since...
Problem No. 8: ... There was no service for Trip, I think there should have been one. (Sim served Enterprise for two weeks and he got a funeral. In "A Night in Sickbay" Archer actually dreams about holding a funeral for his DOG.)

Problem No. 9: T'Pol is alone in Trip's quarters packing up his things. Archer arrives. T'Pol gripes that Trip told her that as time passed she would miss her mother less. She wants to know why he said that. Archer, the speechmaker could come up with nothing but cliches. Besides, I doubt very much that Trip would have told T'Pol that. Does anyone who actually watched the show doubt that Trip still missed his sister?

Problem No. 10: At the signing ceremony, nobody... and I mean NOBODY among Trip's so-called friends lament his absence. Archer, T'Pol and Phlox are in the green room waiting for the ceremony to begin. Archer is fretting about his speech, T'Pol is fretting about Archer's inability to dress himself, Phlox is just as cheery and perky as ever ... Malcolm, Hoshi and Travis are in the audience either griping about their nosebleed seats or chatting about their career ambitions.

^ Well, I did have a sig for a while that quoted Crewman No. 6 asking Bermaga if they ever watched the show.

Paramount has a policy that prohibit authors from writing anything that contradicts what has occurred on screen in their novels. "The Good That Men Do" is the exception to that rule. Margaret Clark, the editor of the Enterprise novels at the time, contacted the suits and got permission to "unkill Trip."

That whole Chef as ship's counselor? Honest to God, I couldn't believe they pulled that out of their colons! In ANIS, Phlox told Archer he had a degree in psychology. Why the hell would the crew be going to the cook?!

 

Long list time...

* What they did to the character Shran - Made into a nobody who was involved with criminals

* How they killed off Trip - so forced it was virtually rape

* Travis & Hoshi are 10 years Ensigns and I thought Harry Kim had it rough.

* TNG story forced out the actual characters of the show

* No great character moments for them to say farewell on

* ENT caught up despite doing warp 7 then the Maco's were having a slow day ey not coming to the Capt/Trip help.

* Trip actual death was offscreen so it felt more empty

* Trip/T'Pol no longer together despite the final scene of Terra Prime

* We don't get to see a funeral for Trip or the remorse of his crew mates

* We don't even get to see the Federation charter signed.

It had potential but it sucked, it ruined the characters and the show to a brutal point. Change the ENT sub plot totally and we might have a decent episode to show in season 2 or earlier in season 4 but ffs the series finale of ENT

Awful

 

I agree with everything that has been said already. Mostly though it was a disrespectful way to end the show in my opinion.

 

If it was in the middle of the season, and not the finale, then it may have gone over better. Terra Prime works best as a finale anyways.

 

I notice that a lot of people think it wouldn't have been so bad if it had been aired during an earlier season, as opposed to being the "finale."

My response: The timing of a crappy episode's broadcast has no impact on its quality.

Cases in point:

Terra Nova
Rogue Planet
A Night in Sickbay
The Seventh
The Communicator
Precious Cargo
Bounty
Exile
Extinction
Rajiin
Doctor's Orders
Deadalus
Chosen Realm

 

It can be argued though that this episode doesn't have that "umph" we've come to expect in finales. BoBW was a great finale (and premier) in my opinion, as was Scorpion. The series finale of DS9 was superb to me. They had power behind them that TatV just didn't step up to. Personally, I liked the episode, but I'd agree it didn't fit into a finale spot.

 

Ah, another TATV thread. All the venom directed at this abomination makes me happy.

And so, I again offer a link to TheGodBen's excellent review of this travesty....

http://trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=3777372&postcount=929

 

Thank You HR, I - Surak - always aim to please,
but it is easy with the material given.......

 

I hadn't read this review before, but it's pretty dang spot on.

 

What annoyed me the most was the Trip/T'Pol story being brushed off in two lines. As said earlier, they were bond-mates and going way back to novels from the 80's (which is where they got the concept from), that is a big fucking deal.

I had only the barest of recollections of the TNG episode in which it was based. When I found the DVD and watched it the next day I realized the stories don't even match up properly.

Had Riker's bit been set post-Nemesis, with him facing an important (and new) command decision on the USS Titan, and the ENT bits not being set 6 years after the bulk of the series, and the T'Pol/Trip brush off deleted, it wouldn't have been so bad. They could even have had Titan follow up on an Enterprise mission 200 years later, giving us an awesome look at the long-term effects of something Archer and co did.

Oh, and having watched Babylon 5 since, I think the episode is heavily influenced by the B5 season 4 finale "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars". That was rubbish too.

 

As a TNG fan who plodded my way through ENT's first two seasons only (then went to boarding school), I appreciated TATV when it first aired. I can easily see, however, why ENT fans wouldn't like it, and why even us TNGers have cause to raise eyebrow's over the Pegasus "connections".

But what I can't really understand is the praising of Demons/Terra Prime. One laser, sitting on a planet, can hold an entire system hostage? After four years of adventures and saving the world, the NX-01's chief engineer can waltz-stealth around in spacefaring environments with no fear of recognition? Montgomery hasn't been let go yet for total acting incompetence? None of the senior staff has moved on/died/been replaced?

Wtf?

TATV was far from perfect, but it did have Riker and Troi, a senior staff death, a glimpse at the Federation's founding, Phlox's double-wide smile, the inexplicably unseen chef (sort of), names on uniforms and no gratuitous Mirror sleaze or sexist dreck.

So pile on to TATV all you like, but there's at least one good reason the show that produced Demons/Terra Prime got canceled: it made shows like Demons/Terra Prime.

 

Fuck yeah, a TATV thread!

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