Since I can't seem to make a new poll, I'll just open this as a thread now that we've had some time to reflect on "These Are the Voyages..."

Which is the worse finale for you?

TOS: Turnabout Intruder (Sexist)
TNG: All Good Things... (Time Travel Again)
DS9: What You Leave Behind (Where are the Jadzia flashbacks for Worf?)
VOY: Endgame (Chakotay/Seven, need I say more?)
ENT: These Are the Voyages... (Nothing changes over 6 tears and then Trip's dies)

Cast your vote now!




Users can't create polls; I'll make it for you now.

Well, I haven't seen "Turnabout Intruder," but my vote would definitely go to "These Are the Voyages...," especially since it didn't try to evolve the characters over the 6-year gap and since Trip acted so awkwardly during his death scene. Plus, the connection to the Pegasus was a fanwank at best.

If the worst one can say about "What You Leave Behind" is the old "Worf didn't have any Jadzia flashbacks" chestnut, I'd say that's one pretty darn successful finale. Besides...that ending shot. Gets me all misty-eyed every. Damn. Time.

No, the worst finale ever would really just have to be "Turnabout Intruder" (though I admit that, living in Australia, I've yet to see the increasingly infamous "These Are The Voyages". Though, since that at least has Jeffrey Combs in it, it already has at least one point in its favor, which is more than one can say about TI). God, it was awful. Awful. A totally reactionary response to the emergence of feminism, the ep actually has the gall to imply that any woman who wants to hold down a position of power (rather than just being content to sleep with men who do) is a self-loathing nutbar with sexual identity issues who would probably turn out to be inept at the job, anyway. It was the worst possible note TOS could've gone out on. Yes, even more so than the space hippies, that ep where Spock falls in love with a leggy blonde cavewoman, or Kirk being ridden around by a little person and neighing.

(Man, season three of TOS was bad, wasn't it?)

Shouldn't this be a poll item?

I can't vote Turnabout Intruder the worst of anything. The sight of Shatner acting as Janice Lester is so funny that I am giggling just thinking about it - it's the essence of everything that is TOS Shatner. Did Keckler ever recap TI?

I would rank them as follows, from worst to best:

Endgame: Symbolizes everything that was bad about Voyager. Flat characters pulling new character traits out of their rears, badly contrived plots, and an even further waste of the Borg. Uggh.

These Are the Voyages: Good concept wasted in bad execution. The idea could have been very gripping, but for Frakes and Quantum.

Turnabout Intruder: So awful that it's fun.

What You Leave Behind: Pretty darn good. The flashbacks didn't come off, but I liked the episode as a whole, and happily headed out to buy the relaunch books.

All Good Things: IMHO, affirmatively brilliant. Up there with Newhart and M*A*S*H as one of the best endings ever. Ending the show with another test by Q was a nice nod to Encounter at Farpoint, and the general idea - that Picard, by finally fully accepting his role the crew's surrogate father, has the chance to change their future for the better - was done very nicely.

It should, and I tried, but I think being in the PH section of the board prevents the forum from allowing new polls.

Although I like your idea about ranking the finales, Vercingetorix, since we can't poll them. If some kind moderator stops by and changes the title to "Rank the Finales," that works for me, too.

My rankings, from best to worst:

1. "What You Leave Behind" -- Ijoined DS9 in the Seventh Season and would tape repeats of the earlier seasons at 2:30 am just to catch up. So, having watched the entire series in that one year, I could definitely appreciate the great way this finale ties everything up.

2. "All Good Things" -- I placed this one second mostly since I saw the finale in its entirety sometime after the series had ended, so I didn't get as emotional as I did seeing WYLB live.

3. "Endgame" -- I actually was a Voyager fan (yes, I know), but this episode fell kinda flat for me. It was nice to finally see the ship in Federation space, but I would've liked to have seen more about their lives upon returning. And the premise in general was a bit like "Timeless" redeux. Finally, Seven/Chakotay was way too sudden a pairing that the writers only hinted at once and then dropped for half the season until the finale (even though the two had so much time together in "Natural Law" to actually spark a relationship, if that's where the writers wanted to go.)

4. "These Are the Voyages..." -- Yuck. Everyone acted even more out of character than I felt the Voyager crew did, and the Pegasus tie in was weak at best. Trip's death was just out of character and then there was no time to mourn. Yuck.

Never saw "Turnabout Intruder"... maybe I should consider myself fortunate?

I can't bring as much hate to "These Are the Voyages" or "Turnabout Intruder" as I do to "Endgame." Most of that has to do with one hour of suck being more tolerable than a two-hour suckfest. And I'm still bitter about Kes.

And as much as I love DS9, there were some flow and pacing issues in "What You Leave Behind" that just weren't there in "All Good Things..."

So, my rankings, best to worst:

1. All Good Things
2. What You Leave Behind
3. Turnabout Intruder
4. These Are the Voyages
5. Endgame

The Good:

All Good Things ... Great episode that nicely ties up TNG with the return of Q.

The Bad:

Turnabout Intruder - Not much to say about this one. It was a bad idea, but it was kinda fun seeing Shatner going nuts.

What You Leave Behind - I'll be honest, I had problems with it. I understand that there's no need to keep the crew together (since I know snowballs in hell have a better chance than a DS9 movie), but it just seemed bizarre and presumptuous that we'd have the Defiant's crew already planning post-war activities prior to the Battle of Cardassia. A lot of the split-ups just felt contrived, as did the story itself. The Fire Cave sequence was just weak, and there was a lack of resonance in the episode. The ending montage was nice, though.

The Ugly:

Endgame - What more needs to be said? Between C/7 and emasculated Borg, it was a mess.

These Are the Voyages - It's a bit of a toss-up whether this one or Endgame deserve the nod for most insulting finale, but Endgame is at least in line with what Voyager was, this was just a mess.

I've probably seen "Turnabout Intruder" before, but have long since forgotten it to rank it. But having heard the plot and the line about there being no female Captains in Starfleet, it's no surprise to see it ranked as the worst. It certainly wasn't written as a finale episode to begin with so it wasn't an appropriate goodbye to TOS anyway.

"Endgame" was an abomination. The C/7 relationship was revolting, especially if you've seen the chemistry between Seven and the Doctor before and the entire lack of everything between Seven and Chakotay. Rather than the crew getting home by hard work and determination, they get another shortcut. The Borg are (again) reduced to unformidable villians, and not even Alice Krige can save them. One torpedo can now destroy a Borg cube, whoopdi-do. Janeway's decision to alter time because she doesn't like the way things turned out is questionable to say the least. I understand the sentiment involved, but in all the death and destruction Sisko faced, I didn't see him going back in time to collapse the wormhole or to kill Dukat(hence that whole ethical dilemma in "Children of Time"). It would have been a real cheat for the fans of DS9. But once again, Voyager hits the reset button and all is well. 26 years is kaput. Whoever was born during those years either directly or indirectly because of Voyager, they ceased to exist, including Naomi Wildman's own daughter! How selfish IS that? The ending is also terrible...after seven years, we have about 30 seconds of Voyager in the Alpha Quadrant and all Janeway says to that is "We did it"? No, this all should have been done much earlier in the finale so some of the repercussions could have been dealt with competently.

"These are the Voyages" was an all right stand-alone episode, but an "appalling" finale, as Jolene Blalock aptly called it. Two dull TNG characters sucked up screen time meant for the Enterprise crew's last voyage...AND they kill Trip. Not only that, but only T'Pol and Archer seemed to notice. Their last mission isn't to save the galaxy or to do something worthy of a last episode, it's to deal with random forehead aliens. And this big speech Archer gave that Troi had to memorize going to school? We never heard it!!! We never even saw the *real* Enterprise crew in this episode, they were all holograms, so who knows if this is what really happened to them? And throughout the episode, which is supposed to be a "valentine" to Trek fans over the past 18 years, they never mention DS9 or Voyager. As insignificant to Bermaga as those two crews were, without them the Alpha Quadrant would have been conquered by the Dominion or teeming with Species 8472.

"All Good Things" wasn't perfect. First of all, of all the convoluted time travel stories I've ever heard, this makes the LEAST sense. This anomaly is created by Picard in the late 24th century, then disappears, then grows backward enough to kill life on Earth, which would have made it impossible for Picard to exist anyway yet he saves the unverse from himself despite the fact he doesn't exist. Worf and Troi have a ridiculous romance on part with the C/7 relationship...he was never right for her. Then 25 years later Riker is still acting like an asshat over it even though he wasn't in a relationship with her at the time. Worf responded in kind. And although the future will now play out differently, Picard has nothing to look forward to. He will be senile no matter what happens. That's sort of like killing Trip, although Picard's senility was handled a lot better. And how is our problem solved? Static warp bubbles. TNG's penchant for solving problems with technobabble continued to the very end. But at least it was consistant. The problem made no sense, and neither did the solution. I sort of liked this finale when I first saw it, but it didn't stand up to repeated viewings, IMO.

"What You Leave Behind"...the only things wrong with it was no Jadzia in the montage(big deal) and the fact that I didn't really care about Bashir and Ezri's relationship too much. But it seems like every modern Trek series had a couple like that to end the series with. Worf/Troi, Bashi/Ezri, Chakotay/Seven, and the Trip/T'Pol (non)relationship. But at least there was a little advance warning for the Bashir/Ezri relationship. He had the hots for Dax since the pilot episode and was fawning over Ezri since the beginning of Season Seven. I was really touched by many parts of this episode; the montage, the final scene with Garak, the final scene with Sisko, when the whole cast was in Vic's, Odo's goodbye to Kira, and the final sequence as Kira takes command of the station and stands by Jake. The pull-away shot there brought tears to my eye. The difference between this episode and the others was that this was a true goodbye. "Turnabout Intruder" and TATV weren't really goodbyes to their respective series, "Endgame" only spent literally seconds dealing with the aftermath of their return home and TNG returned again and again...and again...(:sigh:) in the movies and in the other spinoff series.

So I guess that is how I rank it in order from worst to best: "Endgame", TATV, AGT, and WYLB. TATV and Endgame are equally horrible. AGT was average and senseless at the same time. WYLB is head and shoulders above the rest.

That was Janeway, though: selfish to the point of sociopathy. Remember the ep wherein she blithely wiped the Doctor's memory because he was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress disorder after failing to save a patient, rationalising it away with "He's just a hologram, so I can do whatever I want to him" (despite the fact that this was in, what, season five, and she knew perfectly well that he was more than that)?

Or how about "Fury", wherein she forces the Doc to tell her whether or not Ensign Wildman is pregnant, thus violating both the doctor/patient confidentiality oath and Wildman's right to privacy?

Or wiping HoloInnkeeper's wife out of existence because she wanted him all to herself?

Or the questionable ethics, for that matter, of forcibly removing Seven from the collective and refusing to even consider returning her, despite Seven's initial demands that she do so?

Yep, I'd say her actions in "Endgame" were perfectly in character.

DaBorg83, I think only mods can start polls anywhere. But if you ask nicely over in Forum Traffic Court, you should be able to get a mod to change the thread title and maybe start a poll.

I saw "Turnabout Intruder" once a long time ago, so I don't remember it well enough to rank it. I vaguely remember it giving me an angry feeling. The other finales I rank as follows from best to worst.

"All Good Things": TNG was my favorite Trek so the farewell to the crew (minus Wesley, thank goodness!) with the full circle of bringing Q back into it makes me like this the best.

"What You Leave Behind": It was an appropriate and fitting end to the story. The Emissary's journey had closure, but not in a depressing Trip-died kind of way. Good conquered evil. The tale was done.

"Endgame": VOY was not that great, but I agree that this story at least fit what VOY was. The Chakotay/Seven stuff was awful, but at least we got what we're supposed to get in the finale: Voyager and its crew getting back to Earth.

"These Are the Voyages": Just no. No character development. No promotions. No movement of crew off the ship. No relationship progress. No satisfactory death for the one crewmember who did die. No good reason to have that character die. No proper sendoff of that dead character by his comrades. No sole focus on the characters of ENT. No all around.

I insist on having more time before I decide if I like "These Are the Voyages" less than "Endgame". Right now, my reaction is that "Endgame" is very close to being good. A tighter script and you've got a compelling story.

"These are the Voyages" is flawed as a concept, I think. A lot of the problems are ingrained in the concept, I think. The holodeck idea just cripples the episode.

But I always hate judging finales right away. Finales never make everyone happy, because we all want different things.

I don't even really include "Turnabout Intruder" because it wasn't a series finale as we know it today. I don't know how much lead time NBC gave on the cancellation, for all I know they announced the cancellation after "TI" had aired. But even if they gave a six-month heads-up, I'm not sure things would have been different because the concept of "series finales" didn't really spring up until years later.

The second to last episode of TOS aired March 14, while the finale aired June 3rd. There's a story there, but I don't know what it is.

ETA: I just checked TV Tome, which claims the episode was delayed because of Eisenhower's death. It's still a bit too long.

But I always hate judging finales right away. Finales never make everyone happy, because we all want different things.

I'd have to say that in my experience I've enjoyed some finales(the finales of DS9, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to name a few).

Usually my opinion of series finales do not change over time. The only instance I can think of when it did was TNG's finale. Some of it was simply because I was less jaded about time travel and technobabble nonsense in the plot and because I was not a huge fan of Star Trek back then, didn't see a lot of it prior to that point (aside from vague memories of TOS) and didn't know it could be better. But there were factors that were not the fault of the episode like how the movies seemed to ruin everything good about the episode. AGT left the TNG crew with a hopeful future. Nemesis left the TNG crew miserable with a dead Data and an annoying Rain Man Data to take his place. Picard and Crusher were about to get it on in AGT. By Nemesis Crusher was nothing but a glorified non-com to him and he already had potentially romantic relationships with Alfre Woodard(ok, ok, she rocked and I could have accepted her) and that dreary Anij. So there was just so much ruined by all of that....

I agree dbrugg and that's why I voted for Engame. Like has already been mentioned upthread, Turnabout Intruder wasn't *really* a series finale. So it comes down to, which do I find more offensive: a hasty C/7 pairing or a flimsy excuse to kill Trip and insert Troi and Riker? For me, an admitted Janeway/Chakotay shipper, the C/7 is just unbearable.

Sadly, I never saw What You Leave Behind, and if I saw Turnabout Intruder, I don't remember it and certainly didn't know it was the finale when I saw it anyway, so that leaves me with 3.

I really liked All Good Things. Yeah, there were weird time travel issues, but Q was there, and that always makes me happy, and it was a really nice ending. It's a shame they had to follow it with Generations, Insurrection, and Nemesis, but I have a feeling that the fact that they knew there would be movies was a big factor in making a good finale. They knew they had to leave an opening for everyone to come back, so they couldn't do anything drastic like killing someone off, which IMHO, Star Trek doesn't do well.

Endgame was just stupid. It showed laziness and poor planning on the part of the show runners and the writers. They had 7 years to plan the ending, and it seemed like they only used a week of that. It wasn't anything the previous episodes led up to. We pretty much always understood that the finale of Voyager would involve them coming home. But then it didn't give us the payoff of that. We never saw them home, and the way they go home was just too easy.

However, my dislike for Endgame doesn't even compare to my intense hate of These are the Voyages. "Valentine" to the fans my ass! More like a big "Fuck You!" Maybe it's because I never got nearly as invested in Voyager as I did in Enterprise. Maybe it's because I never got attached to any of the characters in Voyager, but found that I had become very attached to Trip. All I know is that it was badly planned, badly executed, and was insulting to the fans and the characters. I understand that they wanted to make it a kind of send off to Star Trek and not just to ENT. But they do it by bringing in 2 not so beloved TNG characters to chat and run holodeck programs during an episode that we know they wouldn't have had time to do? And by pointlessly killing off a much beloved ENT character? And then having the rest of the characters pretty much ignore his death? Not only do I think this was the worst Star Trek series finale I've ever seen. I also think it was actually the worst series finale I've ever seen. Maybe it's because it's still a little fresh in my mind, and I'm still bitter. I don't know.

"Turnabout Intruder" wasn't the worst abomination of Season 3 of TOS, but as the final episode, it embodied so much of what had gone wrong: the "boys club" atmosphere of the Enterprise (one of Roddenberry's greatest failings), Shatner's overacting, the relegation of supporting characters to mere exposition, and the general feeling of shoddiness about the whole production. The first four movies helped erase the bad taste to some degree, but never completely.

"All Good Things..." was one of the best finales ever, I liked "What You Leave Behind" and I can even tolerate "Endgame"--despite the further dilution of the Borg and the inexplicable C/7 romance. "These Are the Voyages" was a badly executed episode based on a decent enough premise. It seemed to sum up a dying franchise in 2005 as much as "Turnabout Intruder" did in 1968. I voted for "Turnabout Intruder" because frankly, I expected better from TOS. If I'm honest with myself, I never expected better from Enterprise.

I would be really torn between "Endgame" and "TATV" as to which one is the worst. Haven't seen "TI" or the DS9 finale. I liked "AGT"...it had just the right amount of closure...the convoluted timetravel storyline notwithstanding.



This is my main reason for disliking the VOY finale. I can go with convoluted timetravel things (see above), and will basically watch, going, "Oooo-kay, whatever you say!" But, oy, the C/7! I would have also liked more than 2 seconds in the Alpha Quadrant before the episode ended!

TATV...well the framing device might have unlame, if it had been executed properly. I might have even been able to ignore the Nemesis era Riker and Troi in a TNG episode. But killing Trip? Absolutely unforgivable.

In a way, I like finales to the extent that they're not final- that the series continues as before. TOS (unintentionally) and TNG had this, as did a number of the movies (I, IV, V, VIII, IX). VOY had to come to an end, I guess, but it still left plenty open. I liked the DS9 finale despite the fact that it had big changes. But ENT...sure, it was a prequel, and so was "over" before we even saw it. But they didn't have to be so abrupt (killing Trip) and so dismissive of the entire series (viewing it through Riker's eyes) as they were.

This also explains why I didn't like the last movie. They knew it would likely be the last, and they killed Data. Some shakeups are OK, but some are too final.

ITA. By Admirable Janeway picking some point to jump back in time makes it feel almost as separated from the series as the Holodeck story that is TATV.

One thing about "Endgame" that I just thought of today that is OOC for Janeway is that she has been faced before with the opportunity to change the past and said no. I believe even as early as "Eye of the Needle," she told the Romulan of the past that she wouldn't want their trip to the Delta Quadrant prevented since they had already affected several races. Yet apparently after their seventh year in the Delta Quadrant, they haven't affected any species for 20 years, so erasing the rest of that journey is okay for Admiral Janeway.

But TATV... still gets my vote! 6 years without promotions, relationships, anything besides a new monitor and names on their uniforms?! It was just annoying on so many levels. Oh yeah, and they killed Trip. Those bastards!

Exactly! So many shows seem to want to tell us why we're not going to be seeing them anymore after their finale. For ENT, the answer was: Because Trip's dead, and the Federation was founded, and Archer's a hero, and we didn't show you the intervening 6 years because obviously nothing important happened during them anyway. While I understand the need to end with the founding of the Federation, I think that actually showing it was unnecessary. The ending of "United" would have been sufficient.

I'm not saying that some shows don't do "final" finales well. I thought Buffy did that pretty well. "You're not going to be seeing this show anymore because Sunnydale and the hellmouth are gone and Buffy is moving on." I felt that was a satisfying ending. But for some shows, saying: "And they continue on doing what they've been doing," can also be satisfying.

I agree. I want my happy endings, dammit! TNG and VOY gave me that. ENT did not. For me, it's pretty much that simple.

Deep down I'm a total sap.

Cheers was awesome for just that reason. TNG also. But neither of them had an arc that they needed to payoff like DS9 and VOY.

ENT didn't have an arc either, since they'd abandoned the TCW, so putting an "epilogue" on the series like that just felt inorganic and contrived.

Putting Frakes and Sirtis back in S7 TNG felt contrived, as well. As did Trip's deaths.

Oh, and thank you, Jacob,for converting this into a poll, and thanks to Gilmel for suggesting it!

Not for me. I like shows to end. When I ask the question, "Why did that story end?" I want the answer to be "because the Hellmouth was destroyed" or "because Sisko went to live in the wormhole". I don't want the answer to be "because somebody decided to stop the show, but the characters' lives go on exactly the same as before, you just don't get to see it now." I want the concept to unravel, and the story to end.

I give "All Good Things" a pass because I knew they were jumping right into movies and it's a great episode on its own merits, anyway.

What concept or story was there for TNG, though? There was no throughline, really, nothing that needed to be wrapped up. I was glad that AGT went back to "Farpoint", but there was no compelling need for it. At the same time, we've seen what would have happened in Seasons 8 and beyond thanks to the movies. They would have (in my opinion) been tepid and unremarkable, sparked by moments of genius, descending into crap.

I'd rather shows I like leave while I still like them. The Simpsons should have "continued on doing what they've been doing" years ago. Just not on my TV.

Edited because I have no idea what "contined" means.

Or as it was known then. It is just a last episode aired. If you have read Solow and Justman's "Inside Star Trek" you know how they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for scripts. I prefer to think of TUC as the "series" ender. That's my story and I am sticking to it!

IMHO, thanks to the magic of science fiction, TNG had it both ways. We got to see a possible future for the crew, and then Picard set about changing that future. Of course, I liked DS9's graduation theme as well, but it's hard to beat All Good Things.

Exactly. TNG got to have it both ways by telling us what happened to the crew (although they didn't commit to it). Voyager tried to do the same thing, but fell apart in the execution.

As for the ending for TNG I would have preferred, I think Generations does it right: destroy the ship. It works because the start of the series was just the ship launching. So crash it and have the characters move on to the next phase of their lives.

I like that, too. My two favorite drama series finales were the end of Quantum Leap and "All Good Things." In both, the characters gain a new perspective on the experience, but you still feel like the heroics will continue. (That said, my favorite of all may be Newhart, which completely ended the series in a big way, but consistent with the mood of the show.)

Enterprise? Have these people never heard of syndication? I hate watching reruns of a show knowing a beloved character is going to die later.

I think if it's handled well, I can watch a show in reruns. Considering how many people died on DS9 and the fact that I watch that show on DVD all the time without getting sick of it, I'd say that death wasn't a factor there. But Enterprise was handled poorly concerning Trip(and just about everything else) so I can see why that would be a problem for Trip fans. Not that that's my reason I'm not going to be watching it in reruns. Enterprise has very little replay value compared to some of its predecessors. There isn't any sharp and witty dialogue to enjoy again and again, my thoughts were barely provoked...some shows are great at packing the episodes with enough material to enjoy again and again in reruns but Enterprise was so empty of that.

I haven't had the pleasure of watching These are the Voyages yet, but I have a feeling that my hate for the episode will be really high. Killing Trip? Bastards.

Anyway, Endgame is my pick for worst finale. It was just so unsatisfying. We all knew they were going to get home, but I didn't want them to get home like that. But after reading the rest of the posts in the thread I realise that the time travel aspect of it was a very Janeway thing to do.

And I'm still a bitter, pissed off J/C shipper. C/7 was just wrong.

Heh, let us know where TATV ranks in terms of "Endgame" once you see it! I still feel that TATV was worse, since at least "Endgame" still focused on the Voyager crew.

PrettyButterfly, it's not just that they killed Trip (you bastards!). It's that Trip died stupidly, with less point than Tasha Yar. And even if they felt he had to die, the death scene was written to make Trip look as stupid as possible.

<self-promotion>I was so perturbed by the scene, I felt forced to rewrite it, to give Trip's death some meaning and context. I even published it in my pitiful excuse for a blog, here. (fourth entry down). </self-promotion>

Wow, Irish Wolf...That Rocked!

That would have been a much better way to wrap up Enterprise.
If you must kill a main character. Please make that death count for something.
Which is why Bermaga wouldn't have written anything that good.
Somehow it sort of cheered me up a bit. Thanks.

Why is TATV rated a B in the recap? That's just wrong. More of you should give it a F just to get it down to a C.

The entire crew was just OOC. And the story itself was so lazy that it insulted our intelligence. Shouldn't Shran lock up the house if he's being followed around by some thugs? Vulcans don't miss people? The chef as the go-to man? I thought everyone went to Phlox. Trip didn't finish college? I thought Starfleet training counted as higher education. The only way I could picture him dropping out of college is if he had a crisis as bad as Rory's. For those who don't watch Gilmore Girls, Rory quits Yale b/c she is emotionally wrecked from the many things that go wrong for her. And seeing Trip Houdini has way out of the Terra Prime prison just makes the way he died more stupid. I could stomach his death more if it counted for something more than killing some random criminal. And if they didn't break Trip and T'Pol up for no reason after implying that they want another kid in Terra Prime.

Okay I've finally watched the shite that was These are the Voyages. What. The. Fuck. I was so bored I stopped halfway through to have my supper and managed to watch 2 episodes of DS9 with my Mum.

I have to agree with celera and pretty much everyone else about the way Trip died. We all know he's not useless and look at the death Bermaga (Bastards!) gave him.

Why Riker and Troi? Did they really need to be there? Why couldn't it have been set on the Titan rather than the Enterprise if Bermaga were so intent on having Riker and Troi?

And I'm now a pissed off Tri'Pol shipper as well.

These are the Voyages just narrowly pips Endgame as my worst finale. I still hate Endgame but Trip's death is still fresh in my mind right now.

I finally saw TATV as well. I stopped watching Enterprise about 4 minutes after it started, so I was watching this show from the standpoint of an interested Trekkie and not an Enterprise fan. And? Even *I* was insulted. That episode was a travesty. It was disrespectful to fans of both TNG and Enterprise, and it convinced me that Star Trek DOES need a break.. from the people in charge of the franchise. All Good Things and What You Leave Behind were deeply flawed, but at least they focused on, you know, the shows they were ending. This framing device just made me feel removed from the crew.. this stuff wasn't happening to "real" people.

And now I'll never be able to watch The Pegasus without recalling that "behind the scenes" Riker is looking for a resolution to his problems in a freaking holodeck and spilling his guts to Troi. Urg. Just horrible. Excuse me while I reformat the part of my brain that remembers this finale.

I am the Captain of the Starship Hate Voyager, but I actually think "Endgame" worked well as a finale to that series because it really did encapsulate what Voyager was. In other words, the show ended on its own terms and in a style perfectly befitting of all the episodes that came before it. It's not how we, reasonable, creative people would have decided to end the series, but it really is how Voyager should have ended.

"These Are the Voyages..." on the other hand was... well, Enterprise didn't end on its own terms (premature cancellation from UPN) and it wasn't perfectly befitting of all the episodes that came before it. It was, in fact, written a year before the final season of the show. Enterprise never had a style all its own, and season four only partially developed any sense of one. But there was no Enterprise formula. It was four seasons of grasping at straws, re-heating main courses from previous incarnations and packing it in letterbox with better special effects.

It's the worst because it shits on the shit that preceeds it. But we all knew that. I just wanted to the internet to know that as much as I hated Voyager, I liked its finale.

Well said, MurphMan. I totally agree. Back when "Endgame" aired, I remember hearing tons of people saying, "they should have done a ten-episode arc to conclude the series, like DS9", or "they should have gotten to Earth in episode 20 and then spent 6 episodes dealing with the consequences". Maybe those would have been more creatively satisfying, but they wouldn't have been Voyager.

For better or for worse, Voyager was an extremely episodic show. The idea that they would get home any sooner than the last 10 minutes of the last episode was, I think, conceived by people that hadn't been watching the show and didn't know what it was.

"Endgame" is flawed in a variety of ways: Janeway's violation of the temporal Prime Directive; the Chakotay/Seven relationship; and the further dilution of the Borg menace. But all these pale before Bermaga's two major miscalculations:

1. They thought we'd be satisfied with Voyager approaching Earth in the last 10 seconds. "I know!" said Berman to Braga, "We'll start the episode in the future, show the Voyager crew on Earth, how their lives turned out, so we won't have to do it all over at the end." You're kidding--right, guys? Thanks to Admiral Janeway, Chakotay and Seven live! Tuvok is cured! The crew gets home YEARS earlier! Janeway's actions ensure that the future of the Voyager crew--and of Janeway herself--will be radically different from the one we'd witnessed at the start of the episode. Therefore, the Homecoming +10 opening tells us squat about what happened to the crew!

2. The Borg Hub had an "exit ramp" inside of Earth's solar system! It kind of makes you wonder why the Borg went through all the trouble of traveling at multiwarp speed from deep space in BoBW, when they could've just popped out of the Hub in Earth's backyard. I've seen Endgame twice and I still can't believe this blunder.

But I still give Endgame a higher grade than TATV and Turnabout Intruder. At least with Endgame, the creators were still trying.

Endgame bugs me a lot. the C/7 ship that appeard out of nowhere was terrible writing. The super kick ass Voyager should have given the UFP a huge boost in weapons later but of course it was ignored in the next 2 movies.
However Endgame is Year of Hell, DS9's season 5, Parallels, and Yesterday's Enterprise combined compared to TATV. Seriously WTF? Ryker? Holodeck? In 6 years the crew hasn't been promoted or transferred? Trip's moronic death?

In reverse order :

I voted for 'These are the Voyages' - there's the core of an idea, which could have worked very nicely with the previous story 'Terra Prime' and the arc of the later part of the 4th season about Earth drawing itself more deeply into the rest of the cosmos. If they had to do flashbacks they could have done some look back on how they got there from the perspective of the establishment of the Federation of a form. Why was it necessary to link it so clearly with TNG.

I never really watched Enterprise, just deeply disappointed me very quickly, but I watched this because it was a moment of Trek history. I wish I hadn't given it the time of day now.

'Turnabout Intruder' was the second choice, its just icky although Shatner's OTT performance is so laughable that its impossible to find it anything other than embarrassing rather than profoundly offensive as it ought to be.

'Endgame' had its moments, it was basically a repeat of quite a few time-travel stories and the Seven and Chakotay thing was gratutious, but you know Mulgrew just about pulls it out of the hat, just about, two Janeways is truly frightening. I am annoyed that this was another Borg episode as well, but then again, the Borg were destroyed by Voyager so what can you do? I liked the scene in the Briefing Room when they were talking about "the journey" it seemed a really apt way to sum up the show, that gives it points too. Why couldn't they have done a Voyager gets to Earth story instead?

'All Good Things' is really fun, Q isn't half bad and its wonderfully nostalgic, a great example of that is the costuming, Marina Sirtis in the dress-version of the uniform from the Pilot for example. I quite like how they got back Denise Crosby to do a cameo even though it was out of continuity. It was tough to follow the technobabble so that was a definite weakness, as is the fact that we never believe for one moment that Picard will be unsuccessful in his mission to save the universe. It was fun and had a wonderful last moment with the command crew sitting around the poker table, Picard finally joining them for poker, wondering why he hadn't done so before hand and the last words, "the skies the limit," just great. Its really optimistic, which is wonderful.

May absolute favourite Trek finale however is 'What You Leave Behind.' I can re-watch this quite a few times and everytime I do I spot something I didn't the last time or something else makes more sense.

It was going to have to be great to finish up this show and it was. I liked the stuff about the resistance guerrillas hiding out and Damar and Garak are talking about the irony of a Bajoran, Kira being the "saviour of Cardassia," their would-be arrest and then last-stand battle at the Dominion HQ. Quark's loneliness and worrying about his friends going off to war with the chat in Vic's bar. Miles trying to tell Julian he was leaving to teach at the Academy, the heroic soldiers leaving for battle and the family life with Kasidy that Sisko was going to have to leave to battle Dukat and destroy him, Odo's final decisions, curing the Female Changeling and going back to his people which was like sooo sad (Kira has terrible luck with men.) The Dukat and Winn stuff was the weakest part, but they were still absolutely in-character and Winn even got a mini-redemption in helping Sisko at the last minute. I didn't much like the religious stuff with Dukat, but the final battle between Sisko and Dukat makes an odd amount of sense and it was a righteously final end, death to such an infamous and unrepentently evil man. He had to die, I am glad that they did it. On the other-hand, I hated them killing Damar but we can't have everything although Garak killing Weyoun with the comment "I hoped you were going to say that" after the Female Changeling told him that this was the last Weyoun clone, just perfect!

I love it because everybody is always in-character, it has nice touches of going out to battle and worrying about whether they'll make it home - the pact made between Bashir and Ezri about coming home, Odo worrying about Kira, the battles itself, both in space and on Cardassia itself with the civilian revolt and the levelling of Cardassian cities and how the Cardassians change sides right at the end. I LOVE the scene in the bar when Sisko toasts "the best crew a Captain ever had" and how Vic customises the lyrics of 'The Way You Look Tonight' to the moment, directing "the wrinkles on your nose" at Kira for example.

Its basically the most complete finale they've ever mounted. It finishes the stories set-up in the show and features real character moments as well. Its the end of the war and the end of an era as well as the show, which is a lovely touch. If there's any flaw it didn't end with Bajor's admittance to the Federation, but we can't have everything and we got a hell of a lot in that finale.

It also has the best last scene ever. Kira and Jake standing there looking out into space as Kira's now the guardian of the gateway to Bajor and the Wormhole with the Gamma Quadrant and the Dominion beyond and Jake wondering where his father is is just perfect. It says a lot about both of them, that Jake's become a man in this place and now has to be the grown-up and protect his unborn sibling much as his father did him when he was younger and Kira that she is completely not the same person she was when she first arrived there, calmer, wiser, more mature, knows herself and her limits better, a trusted pair of hands with a vital outpost. It suggests in a wider-sense that there is hope and possibility, that in a broader sense Sisko's still out there and shall return and that no matter that the war is over, its also an end of an era, but that life goes on on-board DS9, which is oddly reassuring.

What You Leave Behind was my favorite, but I'm not sure how much of that is because I loved DS9 so much. In any case, it was really well done and wrapped up all of the stories pretty well without having to resort to killing off characters for cheap drama. Some endings were happy, some were bittersweet.

All Good Things was just cool. I loved how the remembered to wrap up the plot they began in EAF. This was the perfect type of ending - it wrapped up the story, but left it open for the adventure to continue. It would have been bad if they did something like destroyed the Enterprise and dispersed the crew only to have them all, by shear coincidence/plot device, rejoined for the movies.

Endgame, I liked if you just look at it by itself and judge it on entertainment value alone. I can ignore C/7 because it wasn't a major part of the story (thank God). Obviously, Voyager was going to return home and I didn't even think they should have spent much time in the Alpha Q. The show was about Voyager in the Delta, so I think that focusing on them being home would have hurt the episode. They got home and the story was over, that was perfectly fine with me. Besides, if they did show any of Voyager back home it would have just be some kind of celebration and we would have watched a couple of speeches. That's it. It didn't rank higher because they resorted to time travel again instead of finding something that hadn't been used so much before and didn't open up so many plot holes.

Turnabout Intruder was just a crappy episode. I tend to think of Undiscovered Country as the true TOS finale since it was after all the actual end of the Enterprise crew's adventures (especially since TAS is now canon). Granted, by that logic I should consider Nemesis to be TNG's finale, but I don't. Wanna make something of it? Regardless of what is the finale, TOS is fourth on this list. The different is that if UC is the finale then the separation between good and bad finales is with TOS and ENT, while if TI is the finale the separation is between VOY and TOS.

TATV just sucked in so many ways.

As I said earlier, I like it when shows end but don't kill off any chance of there being more stories afterwards. Exception for Voyager, since it kind of had to end with Voyager leaving the Delta Quadrant. Imagine how much it would have sucked if they pulled a Quantum Leap and ended with text on screen saying Voyager never returned home. To a certain extent DS9 ended for good since everyone parted ways, but it wasn't that extreme since the station is there and nobody died. It isn't inconcivable for the cast to be reunited for a DS9 movie.

I hate it when they need to destroy things just to make it obvious that the series is over. That's why I didn't like Serenity that much. They just killed off characters for no other reason than because the show was over. It didn't need to be a "they lived happily ever after" ending, but it was too far the other extreme..

Now, Babylon 5 managed to do both types of endings. They blow up the station, but that episode takes place 20 years in the future so there is still room for more stories.

I don't know. I think that sounds kinda right to me. Very unTrek, but good.

(Or maybe I watch too much BSG and I've forgotten how to appreciate happiness)

With you ShoppingGirl, would have been a damn sight braver then 99.9% of Voyager episodes, and bitter sweet is always better then triteness.
Of course, all those freebie 10,000+LY jumps they got in the last few seasons always indicated it was never going to end other then it did.

I don't know. I don't like endings like QL's ending. I want a resolution to the story. It is a story, so it should have an ending like it has a beginning and a middle. I always feel like the writers copped out when they give non-resolution endings like QL did.

I don't see how giving Voyager a non-ending would have been braver. It was the series finale so it's not like they were risking the future of the show. All it would have done is say "fuck you" to the remaining viewers.

I agree, Gilmel. Thinking of poor Sam stuck out there, not being able to get home, makes me sad every time I think of it (plus the thought of Beth waiting for Al means tears every time). If they didn't want to send him back to himself, they should have at least left open the possibility. As much as I didn't like the way Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant, I'm glad they made it home. I just wish they'd found a better way.

Can everyone else see the results of the poll? It's not showing up for me.

Nope, not for me, either.