Review

In interviews before this episode was aired, Rick Berman said, "One of the reasons we did it is we wanted to say kind of a 'thank you' to people who watched not only Enterprise but some of the other shows." Brannon Braga was also interviewed about the episode and referred to it as a "valentine to all of Star Trek." This is not a valentine, it's an insult. Even Jolene Blalock (T'Pol) referred to the episode as "appalling" before it aired; I couldn't agree more. First of all, this episode spends about one third of its time focusing directly on Riker and/or Troi in an episode that's supposed to send off Enterprise. As if that weren't bad enough, the whole justification for the TNG cameo was shoddy. TNG: The Pegasus wasn't the most spectacular episode ever written, but it was solid, and didn't need a coda. Aside from that, even the Enterprise-specific writing was annoying. Take Trip and T'Pol's relationship for example. In Ent: Terra Prime, there was hinting that their relationship would finally go somewhere. But here we are 6 years later. Did it? Nope! Sorry! And if that weren't bad enough, proverbially they kick a man when he's down by abruptly killing Trip for absolutely no reason. He gets a shamefully unceremonious death all so Riker can learn some half assed lesson about not keeping secrets from Picard, which annoyingly stole the focus from the show so much so that we don't even get to hear Archer's speech during the signing of the Federation charter. Now, I don't know about you, but I found the whole idea of Enterprise being decommissioned and the Federation being founded a lot more interesting than Riker's edutainment. Troi even says Federation citizens must memorize the speech. But it's not important enough for us to hear it here? Then there's that space the final frontier line... why exclude Sisko and Janeway? Because their ships weren't named Enterprise? Why not just let Archer do the line himself? The line tried to be touching, but came off as just as offensive as the rest of the episode. And there you have it... the worst finale a Star Trek series has ever had. Now, don't get me wrong. The basic idea of the episode wasn't too bad. I think the idea of bringing the TNG crew into a holographic NX-01 was a pretty damn good idea. It would have made a really great stand alone episode, perhaps even set on Riker's new ship the Titan! But not as the finale. And I dare say, my biggest disappointment with Enterprise's cancellation and rushed finale is that we never, ever got a sufficient prequel regarding the Earth-Romulan war and the start of the war with the Klingons, which, I dare say, was the whole goddamn point of this show. The Earth-Romulan war did supposedly occur in the interim 6 years, but there's not even a single mention of it in this episode. A glaring omission. In the end, Enterprise was a great series with a great deal of potential (especially after Manny Coto took over as showrunner) that was killed off prematurely. And the sad thing is, thanks to this episode, it'll never be revived and ended properly like TOS was. It's an enormous shame that the last episode of Star Trek after an amazing 18 year uninterrupted run closes the incredible series on such a lackluster note.