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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.)

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“The truth is that domestic violence touches many of us. It is very possible that someone you know – a friend, sister, daughter or colleague – is experiencing abuse…  This violence is not a private matter. Behind closed doors it is shielded and hidden and it only intensifies. It is protected by silence – everyone’s silence…  Most people find the idea of violence against women – and sometimes, though rarely, against men – abhorrent, but do nothing to challenge it.”

- Patrick Stewart

Patrick Stewart is an English actor best known for his role as Captain Jean Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  This quote is from a piece Stewart himself wrote for The Guardian on the dangers of domestic violence, his own experiences of witnessing the abuse of his mother at the hands of his father, and his activism in the Refuge group and it’s Four Ways to Speak Out campaign.

Enterprise – the first episode “Broken Bow”

Original Airdate: Sept. 26, 2001

After a long break, I bring you the next installment in “Star Trek Through the Years.” We’ve made it past the beginnings of the franchise, through the three middle series, each achieving seven year runs, and we have now made it to the ever-controversial (among Trekkies) Enterprise.

Notice that’s just Enterprise. No “Star Trek” in that title. Part of the goal of Enterprise was to rejuvenate the series, try something new while bringing it back to its roots. So they went back in time, in terms of Trek chronology, to 2151 (for those looking for a frame of reference, the Original Series took place in 2265). The show chronicles the adventures of the first Enterprise and Starfleet’s (and mankind’s) first steps into the great beyond of space.

The ship is led by Captain Jonathan Archer. His dad worked hard on developing warp vessels with the Vulcans (the first alien race aliens encountered–that story is chronicled in the movie Star Trek: First Contact). The senior Archer never really got to see his ship take off, however, because the Vulcan’s were never too willing to give away information and Mr. Archer died before they perfected the technology. Due to this Cpt. Archer’s got a chip on his shoulder. He’s not a fan of Vulcans and likes to mock them snarkily whenever possible.

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Star Trek: Voyager – the Final Episode “Endgame”
Original Airdate: May 23, 2001

Voyager swoops in over San Fransisco, a fireworks show adding to the glory of the display. Crowds gather below and cheer. A news voice exposits that this celebration is honoring 10th anniversary of the return of Voyager.

An old, white-haired Janeway ends the display and looks out her window.

Endgame starts with a look at the future of the Voyager crew. I’ve never watched the finale right after the pilot before and I gotta say it’s interesting. If these were the only two episodes of the show you’d seen, it would be quite the change. B’elanna’s not yelling. The Doc isn’t worrying about being deactivated any time soon (he’s roaming wherever he wants to go with a wife, no less), Harry, the super-green ensign is now running a ship on years-long missions, and the former prisoner Tom Paris is now writing holo-stories as his wife goes out and patches up fights with the Klingons (remember how she whined about her Klingon past). Seriously…. this is a different group, folks.

As for the rest of the crew… Janeway is an Admiral, Tuvok is ill. He has some sort of mental deterioration; a Vulcan Alzheimers almost. Seven is dead. As is Chakotay. All in all, the future brought some sadness, but there’s also a pleasant contentment.

Janeway will have none of it.

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Final Episode “What You Leave Behind”
Original Airdate: June 2, 1999

Story:

I mentioned in my review of the DS9 pilot “Emissary” that this third Star Trek series is different that the ones preceding it. One thing that really set it apart was the complicated story arcs that extended across multiple episodes. Not only is there the story about the orbs and prophets and celestial temple that resonates throughout the entire show, but as the show went on there was also a war that broke out, the politics of which are relatively difficult for a casual viewer to discern. The finale of the show is difficult to sum up because of this. The last episode itself is 2 hours, but it’s really more like 10 hours as the series was finished off with an epic nine-part conclusion.

Memory Alpha (the Star Trek wiki) offers this episode summary: “In this final adventure, the Federation Alliance prepares a final invasion of Cardassia. Meanwhile on Bajor, Kai Winn releases the Pah-wraiths from the Fire Caves which threatens the safety of not only Bajor, but the entire Alpha Quadrant.”

The action picks up on the morning of the final invasion. First off, we see Julian Bashir and Ezri Dax wake up in bed together.Ezri was new to DS9 in season seven. After Jadzia’s death at the end of the sixth season, the Dax symbiont was transferred into Ezri. She’s a little spunkier than Jadzia but they are also very similar (having shared a symbiont).

Miles and Keiko are still together and they now have two children: Molly and Kirayoshi. Miles has decided to take a teaching job at Starfleet Academy on Earth but he hasn’t yet told Julian. He’s not sure how he’ll take the news. He tells him later while on board the Defiant. He’s sad, but understanding.

Benjamin Sisko is saying goodbye to his wife. Yup, Sisko got hitched! To Kasidy Yates, the captain of a freight vessel that delivered cargo to various Bajoran colonies. She’s pregnant, so her morning sickness gets in the way of Benjamin’s attempts to wish her farewell. Jake is also around and walks his dad to the Defiant. Read the rest of this entry »

Star Trek: Voyager – The First Episode “Caretaker”
Original Airdate: January 16, 1995

Voyager is my favorite Star Trek. After watching some DS9 (for the sake of writing these reviews and to up my own nerd quotient) I’ve determined that it is by far the best, but Voyager is still my favorite. Despite that, I’ll try not to get too rambly. Then again, this is the first series with a woman in command, so it’s bound to be a little lengthy anyway.

Story:

This new series starts with a Star Wars-style scroll reminding Trekkie’s and informing newbies about the existence of the Maquis. They’re a group of federation colonists that believe a new treaty is unfair, so they continue to fight Cardassia, making them outlaws to both their targets and the Federation.

Chakotay, Tuvok and B’elanna are part of this group. Their ship is being attacked so they hide in a plasma storm. Unfortunately, although they escape the Cardassian ship that’s trying to destroy them, they find themselves being “chased” by some sort of energy wave. The screen flashes to white as the wave engulfs them.

Captain Kathryn Janeway looks confidently and commandingly down on a youngish blond man who’s shining a futuristic light-ray on a metal contraption. He’s repairing something as part of his prison sentence. Not for long, however, because Janeway is here to offer him help at his next out-mate review if he will accompany her on her next mission. Paris, along with being the son of one of Janeway’s mentors, was a fantastic pilot before his involvement with the Maquis landed him in jail and Janeway wants his help finding her security officer who was serving as a spy aboard a Maquis vessel (Tuvok).

We get a little backstory on some of the characters here. Tom was asked to resign from Starfleet (for reasons we don’t yet know) and was then “willing to fight for anyone who’d pay [his] bar bills.” For a brief time, until he was arrested and ended up here, that person was Chakotay. Chakotay, we learn, resigned from Starfleet to fight for the Maquis cause.

Paris apparently agrees to help the captain, because in the next scene we see him on a shuttlecraft hitting on the woman flying him to Deep Space 9 where Voyager is docked.

Tom: Stadi, you’re changing my mind about Betazoids.
Stadi: Good.
Tom: (now practically breathing down her neck) Oh, that’s not a compliment. Until today I always thought of your people as warm and sensual.
Stadi: I can be warm and sensual.
Tom: Just not to me.
Stadi: Do you always fly at women at warp speed, Mr. Paris.?Tom: Only if they’re in visual range.

So, Tom isn’t exactly the most progressive guy Star Trek has ever seen. He’s actually the biggest skeazebag we’ve seen thus far (not counting Ferengi, at least).

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Star Trek: The Next Generation – the last episode “All Good Things…”
Original Airdate: May 23, 1994

Story:

I have to admit, it was kind of a struggle to make it through this. I found the whole episode rather boring, which is somewhat surprising to me, because I really love TNG. I’m pretty alone on my distaste for this episode. It won a Hugo award for Best Dramatic Presentation and Entertainment Weekly listed it at #5 of the top 10 episodes. I don’t know what my problem is: too many mentions of anomalies and tachyon pulses in a two-hour block? I wasn’t invested enough in the characters to care enough about their relationships or what happened to them? Or maybe the fact that nothing really seemed to happen anyway, except for in the mind of Picard? Don’t get me started on temporal paradoxes. I used to find them fascinating and amusing. Too much Star Trek, however, and now they just give me a headache. My point is, if this isn’t exactly what happened, I hope you’ll forgive me, because I’m going with what I could ascertain between the many times I mentally dozed off.

In this episode Picard finds himself in three different time periods, the present (2370, following the continuity of the series), the past (2364, “Encounter at Farpoint”), and the future (circa 2395). In the present he’s ordered on a mission to go hang out at the border of the Neutral Zone in the Devron System, which he does. In the future he’s an Ambassador who’s retired at home in France and is getting a visit from Geordi (who’s now married and has some kids). In the past, he’s meeting everyone the way he did the first time around, except for this time the orders are changed. Instead of going to Farpoint Station, the Enterprise is supposed to go to the edge of the Neutral Zone in the Devron System. Sound Familiar? It should, but this time it’s because a spatial anomaly’s been detected.

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Star Trek: Deep Space 9 – The first episode “Emissary”
Original Airdate: January 3, 1993

I’m reviewing episodes in chronological order of airdate, therefore, fans of Next Generation will have to wait until my next post for my review of the finale episode “All Good Things….”

Story:

DS9 begins with the most emotional opener yet as we meet up with a ship in the middle of a Borg attack.

A little background here: At one point, Picard got kidnapped by the borg and assimilated and led a borg attack on the Saratoga, a Starfleet vessel. Aboard that ship was Benjamin Sisko, who orders a ship-wide evacuation and then goes in search of his wife and son. While he finds them both, his wife dies before anyone’s able to help her. After watching his wife die, Benjamin Sisko joins his son on an escape pod, and as they go to warp, he looks back to see the ship he was on, along with the body of the woman he loved, blown to smithereens by a borg cube.

By the end of this opening sequence, the show has already established itself as more character-driven than previous Trek (at least the Trek I’ve reviewed). As such the major premise of this episode doesn’t revolve around some big scary alien (like Q or the salt-creature). Sure there are Cardassians and wormhole aliens, but the big over-arching story of “Emissary” is Sisko’s personal journey from sad and bitter to happy and hopeful.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation – The first episode “Encounter at Farpoint”
Original Airdate: September 28, 1987

Story:

Next Generation is the Star Trek show I grew up on. Every Saturday until I was 9 my family would heat up a frozen pizza in time to watch the latest episode at 6:00. I wonder what stereotypes and ideologies were being fed to me without my knowing…

We get an idea immediately with the opening narration: “Space. The final frontier…” It’s the same Kirk said every episode of the Original Series with one difference. While Kirk ended it with “to boldly go where no man has gone before,” Picard offers a more egalitarian “where no one has gone before.” A small change, but a telling and important one.

When the 2-hour pilot “Encounter at Farpoint” begins, the Enterprise, newly under the command of Jean-Luc Picard, is going to investigate a mysterious space station on the far side of the galaxy.

As Picard records his log entry he roams through the ship and we see at least two women in Engineering. They’re easy to spot in their super short mini-skirts. He then walks on to the bridge and the first thing we see there is a woman (in pants!!) standing at a console. As Picard glances over the rest of the bridge and takes his position in his chair, we see another woman on the bridge (in another super short skirt).

Troi (mini-skirt) starts sensing a powerful mind and the space around the enterprise starts going goofy and the Enterprise becomes trapped in some giant chain cage or forcefield.

A man dressed like one of the three musketeers shows up on the bridge telling the Enterprise to go back to their own star system. His name is Q, and while changing into various “captains” (old-fashioned naval and WWII–and some futuristic military guy) and freezing a redshirt to prove he’s powerful, this strange creature explains that he’s witnessed humans and understands that they’re a savage race. He threatens to kill Picard and such if the ship doesn’t go back to where they came from.

Everyone including Chief of Security Tasha Yar wants to get rid of Q, but Picard wants to talk. He acknowledges humans used to be pretty bad they’ve made a lot of progress. Q doesn’t really listen and eventually disappears. Troi suggests they avoid future contact with him. Picard decides to take him (although, still confused by the entity he refers to him as “them”) by surprise. Oh, he has no idea what he’s getting into. Outrun Q? Silly Picard.

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“We fight against a room full of men over whether we should wear pants [in an action sequence]
when they think I can do it in a skirt and Gucci boots.”

- Zoe Saldana

Zoe Saldana is an actress best known for her roles as Uhura in Star Trek and Anamaria in Pirates of the Carribean.

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