It was an appalling approach to handle these characters that way and I felt the actors should've protested or walkout from the stage after a reading it. I understand they're professionals and they have to do this but how interesting a series finale could've been if Riker all of a sudden transported into ENT reality and has to face events, whatever it may be, and has to watch his own actions so he doesn't destroy his families existence. The stakes should be high, no matter what the series finale maybe, and all of the characters, including Will Riker, has to face something which could mean their doom.
A lot of TATV’s problem could have been prevented if there had been better editing, and the writers didn’t panic and change aspects of it for the sake of it being a finale for all of Trek.
From the perspective of the ENT crew:
- Keep it set in 2155, and don’t flash forwards to 2161 at any point.
- It’s a ceremony regarding the signing of the Coalition of Planets Charter, and not the founding of the Federation (Troi basically hints at it anyways). It would have tied in with the previous episodes as well if they had.
- Acknowledge the crew is parting ways after a five-year mission and taking on new assignments/being placed on reserve/being promoted, instead of the end of a ten-year mission.
- Trip doesn’t die, MACOs rescue him *prevents the biggest grievance of the finale*
- Shran goes from being dead for three years to being MIA for a year.
From the perspective of Riker & Troi:
- If it has to be set during TNG, set it during “Birthright, Part I” instead of “The Pegasus.” That way, Riker’s holodeck use can be explained away as him testing out new holodeck tech (since he never wore a costume into the holodeck, as was custom in TNG), and the image of the Ent-D docked at DS9 would fit in better with the idea of a tribute to all of Trek in the final scene.
- Otherwise, set it onboard a Galaxy-class USS Titan post-Nemesis. And if a tie-in to “The Pegasus”: is still needed, say Admiral Pressman died or something and it caused Riker to flashback to his days on the USS Pegasus and he’s bingeing on ENT to cope. And replace Data’s voiceover with B4.
- Have Riker or Troi acknowledge that its nice to look at how everything was pre-Federation, before the Romulan War changed everything. Or instead of saying that Trip doesn’t make it back, say the crew didn’t know the Romulan War would bring them back together.
Then, what was presented to viewers would have been a passible finale at least. And would have left the door open to more Trek from this time period.
But the writers panicked due to ENT's sudden cancellation. And while I understand that Memory Alpha was a brand-new thing at the time so they are not going to be looking up every detail on a website to get all the info right, they did not have to give ENT a decisive end like DS9 or VOY. It should have been open ended like TNG. And its partially the fault of the S3 finale “Zero Hour” too, since that episode built up anticipation for a speech at the UFP founding by Archer that was supposed to happen, so the writers attempted to tie up loose ends in a sloppy way. When in reality, they should have ignored it. Temporal Cold War strike again.
I don’t think the tribute to all of Trek idea was mistake. But the episode could have been handled much better than it was. And a lot of it is just changing dialogue.
Your idea is more interesting though. It would make for a better link between the TNG era & ENT era instead of a historical holodeck program.
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