So that’s it then. The last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise came and went, and the shows that I practically grew up on are all over. Oddly, I didn’t really care much.
I felt compelled to watch the last episode, of course, but couldn’t help rolling my eyes at the lame Troi/Riker frame story that was pasted onto an even lamer plot. It seems to me that in a final episode of the final series of Star Trek, they could have done something more interesting than sending them off to do a little favour for the Andorians. After it ended, I felt more than a little let down. After all, I wanted to see something significant, that acknowledged the end of a show that I’d watched faithfully, and at times, obsessively.
There is so much opportunity for a truly interesting storyline, especially with a timeline as well-defined as Star Trek‘s. They could have created a “historical documentary” that covered the time between Captain Tucker and Captain Kirk. When Babylon 5 wound down it’s fourth season, it had episodes that explored the future and the impact that the characters had on history. It provided closure to an immense four-year-long story arc. And Enterprise? Enterprise had Riker chopping vegetables on the holodeck.
Ow. My eyes just reflexively rolled almost backwards in reaction to the hopelessly stupid writing, worse directing, and actors who probably shouldn’t be on TV anymore (or in the first place).
The same thing happened at the end of Star Trek: Voyager. After several years of struggling to make it back to Earth alive, the final episode finally has Voyager emerge from a Borg subspace conduit almost in Earth’s orbit. And the triumphant return lasted about 15 seconds before they rolled the credits. That’s it. The reward for watching years of Voyager’s pathetically weak stories was 15 seconds of “Yay, we’re home!”
So now it’s all over for good. In the end, I don’t think fans care enough about Star Trek: Enterprise enough for the show to return in any form. Over the last years, it was sometimes interesting with rare bits that made people sit up and go “ooh” and maybe spill a bit of their beer at the same time. It failed, however, to reach out and firmly grasp the audience by the wobbly bits the way the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation occasionally did. Figuratively speaking.