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Scott Bakula and Jolene Blalock co-star on Enterprise.
Generally I try to get the reviews for Enterprise posted by Monday. The sooner the better, really, because the episode is still fresh my mind. However, in the case of “These are the Voyages…”, I had to give it time to stew. I wanted to give myself time to relax, and my brain to really process the episode in order to look at it fairly.
Yet nearly a week later, I still think it’s the second worst finale I have ever seen to a television series. And that’s a close, second.
The concept behind “These are the Voyages…” might have made a good episode somewhere in the middle of a season. Or perhaps as a season finale of some sort. But as the send off for the series? Personally, I can understand why several of the actors felt insulted. I as a fan of Enterprise felt insulted. To have the last episode of the show be some kind of half-assed sequel to a Next Generation outing was just dumb.
In “These are the Voyages…”, Commander William T. Riker is struggling with a moral dilemma. For one reason or another, he chooses to escape into the holodeck and experience the last mission of the NX-01 Enterprise, as it heads to Earth to participate in the beginning of what would become the United Federation of Planets.
He interacts with several members of the Enterprise crew, both as a participant in events as well as an observer. Joining him from time to time is Counselor Deanna Troi.
They watch as Captain Jonathan Archer and crew get a surprise message from Shran, the Andorian captain long thought dead. His daughter has been kidnapped by criminals, and Shran calls in a favor with Archer to help rescue her. Archer agrees, even though he needs to get Enterprise back to Earth for a special signing ceremony regarding a multi-species treaty that is about to be signed, and the ship itself is about to be decommissioned.
Although the mission to help Shran succeeds, the aliens he double crossed come after Enterprise, and Commander Trip Tucker is killed as a result.
First, let’s start with Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis. The most obvious thing is that neither of them look like they used, since it’s been more than a decade since they appeared on television as their respective characters, Riker and Troi. This is not an insult, simply a fact of life. Yet for some reason Rick Berman and Brannon Bragga, the show runners and writers of the episode, chose to have their part of the story take place during The Next Generation episode, “Pegasus”. One of my favorite episodes, although this extension of that story only serves to hurt it.
Physical appearance aside, the “moral dilemma” that Riker suffers is completely inconsequential. Any Next Generation fan would be familiar with the episode, and know how it concludes, and what Riker’s ultimate choice is — he tells Picard the truth and ultimately gets punished for his role in the cover up. This storyline fails to add anything of worth to either “Pegasus”, or “These are the Voyages…”.
I understand the logic of tying it into an episode of The Next Generation. The show had been doing it all season, only with The Original Series, as well as Deep Space Nine. But at least in those cases it was adding to the overall story. Here, it actually manages to detract.
Lastly, I just didn’t think Riker’s motivation for watching this particular moment in history made sense. It didn’t really relate much, or at all, to his own personal dilemma. You could have removed that whole part of the story, and perhaps just had Riker watching this moment for other reasons, and it would have worked better. Heck, why not just say Riker and crew were getting ready for some kind of celebration about the anniversary of the founding of the Federation?
All season I think the writers have generally done a great job of tying Enterprise into the other series that make up Star Trek. Sadly, Berman and Bragga’s last attempt at it lacks any of the cleverness that graces most those other stories.
There were a few things I liked, however. I thought the scenes with Riker as the chef were actually pretty good. Mostly, I think, because they were not about Riker, but about the Enterprise characters. The exchanges seemed fun, and at the same time it appeared to be the only time the actors were comfortable.
I also liked the brief scene where Riker and Troi walk around the Enterprise bridge, as well as Archer’s ready room. It did help provide a little perspective between this ship and ones that follow it, namely the Enterprise-D. And while the bits of scenes that take place on the Enterprise-D are fun to look at — like the pseudo-Picard cameo — they largely served to point out just what was wrong with the finale.
It wasn’t an Enterprise episode at all. It was Berman and Bragga striving to relive the days of The Next Generation, when they still had some originality left in them. Scott Bakula and the others were just making cameos in their own show’s finale.
As for the storyline featuring Archer and his crew, it’s pretty weak, even if it had been a episode in and of itself.
I’ve long believed that Enterprise managed to be excellent whenever Jeffrey Combs’ Andorian character, Shran, made an appearance. Ultimately, however, I was proven wrong. His appearance proved that not only had Berman and Bragga decided to show no respect to the actors of Enterprise, they also wanted to show the same disrespect for the single most popular recurring character in the show.
By putting the focus largely on Riker and Troi, Archer and crew get very little to do. The story basically skips through the events. We just see them acting, but the consequences of those events are not explored (such as the death of Trip, which gets little to no mention afterwards).
To a degree, this probably makes some sense. We’re seeing holodeck representations of these people, not the actual characters themselves. But that kind of logic only serves to echo how “These are the Voyages…” is largely dismissive of the Enterprise characters. What we see is what history has made of these people, but not who they really were.
Performance-wise, there was definitely a lot of questionable acting. Sirtis didn’t sound quite like Troi normally would, and Conner Trineer seemed to be playing a totally different character when Trip wildly sacrifices himself in order to save Acher from the alien criminals (who somehow get onto Enterprise rather easily). His over-the-top reaction to the aliens and the threat to Archer’s life, where he seemed nearly on the brink of tears, was completely out of tone. It’s not like this is the first time something like this has happened, and you would expect after more than a decade of facing death and all kinds of alien species, he’d have more of a sense of control over himself.
But the most questionable performance came from Jolene Blalock. Normally, she does a terrific job of balancing logic and emotion in her deliverance of T’Pol. But this time out, she seemed to simply be walking through the part. In interviews, Blalock has often remarked about her disdain for “These are the Voyages…”, going so far as to call the script, “appalling”. Perhaps that explains her performance. She just didn’t appear to be trying anymore.
And honestly, why should she? If Berman and Bragga, the two heads of the series, were so willing to show so little respect for the characters that these actors have embodied for four years, I can understand why she would feel disappointed. And that disappointment seemed to translate on screen.
The last, and I think great, insult of this episode was the final scene where Riker and Troi turn off the holodeck as Archer is stepping out to deliver his speech. In that moment, they could have given the characters of Enterprise a moment to themselves, but instead the scene is abruptly shut off. The last people we see are Riker and Troi, and Archer, Trip, Reed, T’Pol, Hoshi, Phlox, and Mayweather are simply dismissed.
What ultimately proves to be the one great moment in “These are the Voyages…” is the ending montage of ships, with the blended collection of voice overs from Picard to Kirk to Archer. It was a touching moment, and actually reveals what this episode was all about: Berman and Bragga saying goodbye to an era of Star Trek. “These are the Voyages…” had nothing to do with Enterprise, but serves as a closing chapter to a nearly twenty-year run of non-stop Trek shows. And while I can understand this, it betrays the very show it was meant to conclude.
While I wasn’t always the biggest fan of Enterprise, the show deserved much better than what it got in “These are the Voyages…”. I will miss having my weekly dose of new Trek, but I am looking forward to the future of the franchise and curious to see just how it will return.
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