Star Trek: Enterprise – the final episode “These are the Voyages…”

Original Airdate: May 13, 2005

The final episode of Enterprise doesn’t quite seem as epic as it could have. TNG and Voyager both ended with a look ahead to the future as well as a nod to the past. DS9 left everyone parting ways with a farewell that served the characters and audience equally well. Enterprise, however, falls flat.

The episode takes us 6 years into the future (from the perspective of the last episode, 10 years after the pilot). The Enterprise is returning to earth where it will be decommissioned as the new, faster fleet comes to take its place. Captain Archer will give a speech honoring a new charter between humans and a handful other alien races. A hitch in the trip home comes when a former acquaintance, Shran, shows up. Apparently Archer owes this guy a favor, so the Enterprise helps him get his kidnapped daughter back.

(Click the link to check out the rest of the entry, but I’m putting SPOILER ALERT on this post. If you ever plan on watching Enterprise you might want elements of this episode to remain a surprise. The episode itself actually spoils those moments early on, but, well… I’m warning you anyway.)

The crew of the Enterprise helps Shran successfully get his daughter back, until the mean guys that initially kidnapped the daughter show up on the Enterprise itself and threaten to kill Captain Archer if he doesn’t turn over Shran to them. Trip, worried the Captain will be killed, jumps to action. He tells the mean guys he can lead them to Shran as long as they don’t kill the Captain. Captain Archer reprimand’s Trip’s behavior and tells him to calm down and stop getting so worked out, so Trip tells the bad guys to knock Captain Archer unconscious with the butt of a gun so Trip can defy his superior officer’s authority more easily. Trip leads the bad guys to a conduit that he says is a comm unit, but is, in fact…. Well, I’m not sure what it is, but Trip tells the bad guys to go to hell and then connects two cords causing an explosion that takes out everyone in the general area, including Trip. That’s right. Apparently someone decided that the most hated Star Trek series ever should kill off a main character in the last episode for no apparent reason. Because if you’re going to go down in history as the lamest in the franchise, you might as well go all out.

The Enterprise then makes its way back to Earth where, upon arrival, most of the crew whine about their bad seats and T’Pol and Phlox wish their captain good luck with his speech. After a heartfelt hug between Archer and T’Pol (the only successfully sentimental part of the episode), Archer heroically approaches the podium to give an important speech to hundreds of listeners about the new charter. The speech apparently is so epic that schoolchildren centuries later are still encouraged to memorize it in school. We in the viewing audience, however, never get to hear it.

This whole story (which is really uncomplicated) is framed as being part of the shenanigans of a couple characters from The Next Generation, primarily Commander Riker. Actually, nothing of what we see is actually real. It’s merely a holographic simulation Riker is running to help him make a difficult decision. Riker is in the 7th season of TNG, in the episode “The Pegasus.” Counsellor Troi occasionally joins him on his holo-viewing.

“These are the Voyages…” was super controversial when it first aired. Many in the cast publicly expressed their distaste. Jolene Blalock, avid Trekkie, supposedly even intentionally delivered her lines strangely as a form of protest against the ridiculous ending. I haven’t found any hard evidence to support this, but it would explain why T’Pol, a vulcan, seems uncharacteristically super emotional throughout and in her last shot on the show shakes and grooves like a weed in the wind as Archer makes his epic farewell.

For the most part, I must say I agree with the dislike. The whole episode seems a little contrived and Trip’s death seems totally nonsensical. He and Archer had gotten out of worse scrapes before. Additionally, it did seem more like an episode of TNG than Enterprise. There were the appearances of Riker and Troi (and a voice cameo by Data) as well as various shout-outs to the earlier series. Reed remarks “All good things…” uttering the name of TNG’s series finale, and at another time Riker offers a toast “to the next generation.” Also I haven’t heard it mentioned anywhere else, but there also seemed to be a lot of shout-outs to Quantum Leap with mirror shots and such, but I digress.

Back to the point… let’s see how this episode measures up.

What Made Me Happy:

• I never cared for Counsellor Troi much during The Next Generation. She always seemed highly dramatic and a little… boring. I love her, however, in everything in which she has appeared since TNG has gone off the air, including her appearances on Voyager and here. Although I think this episode’s reliance on TNG is lame, I do love that the awesome, laid-back, fun yet professional Troi is along for the ride.
• We don’t see a lot of Archer’s behavior in terms of his relationship with other races, but it seems there’s been some improvement. He and T’Pol are now great friends, and Archer is clearly one of those behind a charter that will eventually lead to the Federation where multiples species and cultures live together in peace.
• No decon chamber!

What Irked Me:

Other than the most ridiculous main character death in television history and the fact that this whole episode only exists on the holodeck, there’s not much in this episode that really bugs me.

Final Score: 7

Improvement Score: +2 (good, but not back up to DS9’s high of

Final Thoughts:

Next in the series I’ll review the new movie, but because movies are different than TV and the franchise is basically being started anew with new people behind it, I figure now is the time to reflect on the franchise up to this point.

I’ll be the first to admit my scoring was incredibly arbitrary and subjective, but it’s quite obvious that Star Trek as a franchise improved substantially over the years. That’s to be expected, however, given its 40 year run. There were some small steps back (Seven’s catsuits), and some larger ones (the decon chamber), but all in all Star Trek has been rather reflective of the changing role of women in American society, and occasionally has been a little ahead of the curve. Although, that didn’t stop them from reverting back to the original “where no man has gone before in the last 30 seconds of the show…

In the end this is all my own personal opinion. What do you think? Am I being too hard on Enterprise? Thinking too highly of DS9 and Voyager? Overlooking subtle progressive messages in the original series? I’m interested to hear your thoughts. I can’t be the only Trekkie around here.