Thirty Days of TV: Day Twenty-Six
Mar. 6th, 2013 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakDay 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Star Trek: Enterprise, season 4: These are the voyages... comes immediately to mind.
Some background first: I had watched the first few Enterprise episodes when they were broadcast and then decided the show wasn't really for me. Not that it was staggeringly incompetent or something like that, but it came at the tail end of the production team having more or less written Star Trek in various variations for sixteen years, and it showed. Especially since Enterprise had the bad luck to come at a time where there were several other good sci fi shows around. Give it a rest for a while, thought I, meaning both myself and anyone producing Star Trek. The fact that fannish rumour told me subsequent seasons reflect 9/11 happening and Star Trek suddenly going all gung ho (and not in a self critical way, unlike, say, the relevant DS9 episodes where Sisko & team are confronted what the Dominion threat has made of them and Starfleet at large) didn't encourage me to tune in again.
However, the show did have its champions. And I often have a soft spot for the fannish underdog. (By which I don't mean the in-story underdog, I mean those characters unpopular by fandom at large.) So when I began to hear, frombimo and others, that Enterprise offered some genuinenly good stuff, like fleshing out the Andorians the way TOS had done the Vulcans, TNG had done the Klingons and DS9 had done the Cardassians, Bajorans and Ferengi, that the fourth season in particular was eminently watchable, other than the finale, which everyone hated (including, as I heard at FedCon from Jolene Blaylock, the actors), I thought, come on, why not? So I watched the fourth season, which I was assured I could do without having watched the previous ones, and didn't regret it. But boy, could I ever see what the complaints about the finale (which wasn't just the season but the series finale) had been about. I didn't hate it, I just thought it was the most misguided idea ever for a series finale. If it had been a mid season inter-Trek crossover episode (which TNG, DS9 and Voy had all done), it would have been not stellar, but okay.
The best Trek/Trek crossover being Trials and Tribble-ations (DS9/TOS) and the worst being Q's later appearances on Voyager. Oddly enough, Voyager did some good TNG crossovers later on, using Reg Barclay and, wait for it, Deanna Troi and a holodeck. The difference to "These are the voyages...", aside from the entire finale problem, being that Barclay becoming fascinated by the Voyager crew did not only make sense given his backstory but resulted in him finding a way to enable them to keep permanent contact witht the Alpha Quadrant. I.e. his appearance had a point for the show in question, there was genuine give and take. These are the Voyages..., otoh, again leaving aside its status as a finale which I'll get to shorty, did not manage to establish a credible connection between ENT and TNG characters. It's hard to see why the events Riker has acted out for him would help him make up his mind on the Pegasus matter; there was no parallel. And Riker in turn did not do anything for the Enterprise characters, because he only interacted with holographic representations, not the genuine article, and playing the the Chef as a version of Guinan didn't fit either him nor the ENT crew. So, taken purely as a crossover episode, this failed. The only genuinenly poignant inter Star Trek history moment was the mixture of the credits speech in Picard's, Kirk's and Archer's voice which makes you realize this is actually Archer's speech from the ceremony.
As a series finale episode... oh dear. Where to begin? Firstly, it was a finale in which none of the characters of the show actually appear. Just holographic presentations of same. Bad idea. Secondly, the Enterprise section supposedly show us a future, ten years after the original launch... and nothing has changed. Poor Sato breaks Harry Kim's record as longest serving Ensign. Trip and T'Pol are still at an impasse. (Which feels wrong given where we left them an episode earlier.) Everyone else is where we left them off in season 4 as well, save for T'Pol, who all of a sudden declares her distrust of Andorians (a decade later?) and can't understand why Archer would help a father to get back his kidnapped child (this isn't the same woman I saw this season). She's more the caricature of a Vulcan, safe in her final two scenes with Archer.
You know, TNG gets regularly accused these days of being the embodiment of inconsequential, unchanging and bland Star Trek. (Unfairly and ignoring the production time, imo, but that's another rant.) But look at the TNG finale for comparison, which also has a section set in the future. But in this future, things have definitely changed for the crew, who isn't together anymore - Picard is back in France and ill to boot, he and Crusher got married and divorced, Data is in Oxford teaching, Troi is dead, Riker and Worf are at odds, and so on. Said TNG finale which plays with three time levels is very much about change; the section set in the past, at the point where the series started, showcases how the characters progressed in the course of seven years. Given that the TNG finale, All Good Things..., was co-written by Brannon Braga and Ron Moore, one would think Braga remembered what made it poignant. So okay, if you want to show us the future of our crew, do so, by all means, but let it be about change. Not necessarily change for the better, but change. Show us they've had lives.
Secondly, there are, roughly speaking, two ways you can wrap up your show if you know it's going to end ahead of time. (Meaning the Farscape writers, for example, couldn't do that, hence the necessity for The Peacekeeper Wars.) You can go for the characters saving the universe, or at least a world - the big epic thing. Which both TNG and DS9 did. Or you can go for the absolute contrast, the quiet character episode, which is what Babylon 5 did. Sleeping in Light doesn't offer Sheridan or the other regulars the chance to save the day one last time, it has nearly no outward action at all; twenty years into the future, the surviving regulars meet, have some quiet conversations, then one of them goes off to die, and finally the rest of them watches their space station "die" as well. No fighting, no action, and yet it's a perfect finale, because each of the characters, living and dead, and the station itself is present in their individuality and in their relationships with each other. And oh yes - it's set in the future, and things have changed.
Unfortunately, the ENT series finale went neither way. It's not epic - "Will Archer make it back to give his speech" is hardly a goal worth rooting for, and while "will Shran's daughter be saved" is more touching because we like Shran, it's still not something monumentous. And These Are the Voyages... isn't a quiet character drama, either. It tries to be, in the scenes where Riker-as-Chef talks with everyone about Tucker, but because Riker has no connection to these people (or the viewers unfamiliar with TNG), there is no resonance, as opposed to, say, Vir talking about Londo while sitting at dinner with Sheridan & Co. Or, to remain on the Trek side of things, Garak's bitter little speech to Bashir about Cardassia in the DS9 finale.
And lastly, there is the death. Basically not a bad idea as such for a finale. Killing of a beloved character, I mean. One of the reasons why B7 retains its cult status is that it killed off all of them, after all. As noted before, Sheridan dies in the B5 finale. (Now I'm not Sheridan's biggest fan as we all know, but I did find it poignant.) And wile I'm sure plenty of fans will disagree, I was okay with Damar dying in "What You Leave Behind". (No Jossverse examples here because I don't want to get into old wars.) But if you kill off a character, it's best to do that in a way that doesn't make said death look as the result of overwhelming stupidity. (Though Blake and Avon... okay, let's modify that to "extreme stress and constant paranoia make some none too bright actions understandable, plus two obsessives together make for an combustible mix anyway") Because really, we saw Trip deal with far more dangerous threats without choosing to commit suicide while going so. This has to be the most ill-executed Star Trek death since Kirk's.
(Sidenote: I was fine with killing Kirk. Drive stake into his heart and keep him in the ground while you're at it. But three middle-aged men indulging in fisticuffs as a grand movie finale was just ridiculous.)
In conclusion: it's one failed and bizarre finale on every level, and the show deserved better.
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 – Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death.
Star Trek: Enterprise, season 4: These are the voyages... comes immediately to mind.
Some background first: I had watched the first few Enterprise episodes when they were broadcast and then decided the show wasn't really for me. Not that it was staggeringly incompetent or something like that, but it came at the tail end of the production team having more or less written Star Trek in various variations for sixteen years, and it showed. Especially since Enterprise had the bad luck to come at a time where there were several other good sci fi shows around. Give it a rest for a while, thought I, meaning both myself and anyone producing Star Trek. The fact that fannish rumour told me subsequent seasons reflect 9/11 happening and Star Trek suddenly going all gung ho (and not in a self critical way, unlike, say, the relevant DS9 episodes where Sisko & team are confronted what the Dominion threat has made of them and Starfleet at large) didn't encourage me to tune in again.
However, the show did have its champions. And I often have a soft spot for the fannish underdog. (By which I don't mean the in-story underdog, I mean those characters unpopular by fandom at large.) So when I began to hear, from
bimo and others, that Enterprise offered some genuinenly good stuff, like fleshing out the Andorians the way TOS had done the Vulcans, TNG had done the Klingons and DS9 had done the Cardassians, Bajorans and Ferengi, that the fourth season in particular was eminently watchable, other than the finale, which everyone hated (including, as I heard at FedCon from Jolene Blaylock, the actors), I thought, come on, why not? So I watched the fourth season, which I was assured I could do without having watched the previous ones, and didn't regret it. But boy, could I ever see what the complaints about the finale (which wasn't just the season but the series finale) had been about. I didn't hate it, I just thought it was the most misguided idea ever for a series finale. If it had been a mid season inter-Trek crossover episode (which TNG, DS9 and Voy had all done), it would have been not stellar, but okay. The best Trek/Trek crossover being Trials and Tribble-ations (DS9/TOS) and the worst being Q's later appearances on Voyager. Oddly enough, Voyager did some good TNG crossovers later on, using Reg Barclay and, wait for it, Deanna Troi and a holodeck. The difference to "These are the voyages...", aside from the entire finale problem, being that Barclay becoming fascinated by the Voyager crew did not only make sense given his backstory but resulted in him finding a way to enable them to keep permanent contact witht the Alpha Quadrant. I.e. his appearance had a point for the show in question, there was genuine give and take. These are the Voyages..., otoh, again leaving aside its status as a finale which I'll get to shorty, did not manage to establish a credible connection between ENT and TNG characters. It's hard to see why the events Riker has acted out for him would help him make up his mind on the Pegasus matter; there was no parallel. And Riker in turn did not do anything for the Enterprise characters, because he only interacted with holographic representations, not the genuine article, and playing the the Chef as a version of Guinan didn't fit either him nor the ENT crew. So, taken purely as a crossover episode, this failed. The only genuinenly poignant inter Star Trek history moment was the mixture of the credits speech in Picard's, Kirk's and Archer's voice which makes you realize this is actually Archer's speech from the ceremony.
As a series finale episode... oh dear. Where to begin? Firstly, it was a finale in which none of the characters of the show actually appear. Just holographic presentations of same. Bad idea. Secondly, the Enterprise section supposedly show us a future, ten years after the original launch... and nothing has changed. Poor Sato breaks Harry Kim's record as longest serving Ensign. Trip and T'Pol are still at an impasse. (Which feels wrong given where we left them an episode earlier.) Everyone else is where we left them off in season 4 as well, save for T'Pol, who all of a sudden declares her distrust of Andorians (a decade later?) and can't understand why Archer would help a father to get back his kidnapped child (this isn't the same woman I saw this season). She's more the caricature of a Vulcan, safe in her final two scenes with Archer.
You know, TNG gets regularly accused these days of being the embodiment of inconsequential, unchanging and bland Star Trek. (Unfairly and ignoring the production time, imo, but that's another rant.) But look at the TNG finale for comparison, which also has a section set in the future. But in this future, things have definitely changed for the crew, who isn't together anymore - Picard is back in France and ill to boot, he and Crusher got married and divorced, Data is in Oxford teaching, Troi is dead, Riker and Worf are at odds, and so on. Said TNG finale which plays with three time levels is very much about change; the section set in the past, at the point where the series started, showcases how the characters progressed in the course of seven years. Given that the TNG finale, All Good Things..., was co-written by Brannon Braga and Ron Moore, one would think Braga remembered what made it poignant. So okay, if you want to show us the future of our crew, do so, by all means, but let it be about change. Not necessarily change for the better, but change. Show us they've had lives.
Secondly, there are, roughly speaking, two ways you can wrap up your show if you know it's going to end ahead of time. (Meaning the Farscape writers, for example, couldn't do that, hence the necessity for The Peacekeeper Wars.) You can go for the characters saving the universe, or at least a world - the big epic thing. Which both TNG and DS9 did. Or you can go for the absolute contrast, the quiet character episode, which is what Babylon 5 did. Sleeping in Light doesn't offer Sheridan or the other regulars the chance to save the day one last time, it has nearly no outward action at all; twenty years into the future, the surviving regulars meet, have some quiet conversations, then one of them goes off to die, and finally the rest of them watches their space station "die" as well. No fighting, no action, and yet it's a perfect finale, because each of the characters, living and dead, and the station itself is present in their individuality and in their relationships with each other. And oh yes - it's set in the future, and things have changed.
Unfortunately, the ENT series finale went neither way. It's not epic - "Will Archer make it back to give his speech" is hardly a goal worth rooting for, and while "will Shran's daughter be saved" is more touching because we like Shran, it's still not something monumentous. And These Are the Voyages... isn't a quiet character drama, either. It tries to be, in the scenes where Riker-as-Chef talks with everyone about Tucker, but because Riker has no connection to these people (or the viewers unfamiliar with TNG), there is no resonance, as opposed to, say, Vir talking about Londo while sitting at dinner with Sheridan & Co. Or, to remain on the Trek side of things, Garak's bitter little speech to Bashir about Cardassia in the DS9 finale.
And lastly, there is the death. Basically not a bad idea as such for a finale. Killing of a beloved character, I mean. One of the reasons why B7 retains its cult status is that it killed off all of them, after all. As noted before, Sheridan dies in the B5 finale. (Now I'm not Sheridan's biggest fan as we all know, but I did find it poignant.) And wile I'm sure plenty of fans will disagree, I was okay with Damar dying in "What You Leave Behind". (No Jossverse examples here because I don't want to get into old wars.) But if you kill off a character, it's best to do that in a way that doesn't make said death look as the result of overwhelming stupidity. (Though Blake and Avon... okay, let's modify that to "extreme stress and constant paranoia make some none too bright actions understandable, plus two obsessives together make for an combustible mix anyway") Because really, we saw Trip deal with far more dangerous threats without choosing to commit suicide while going so. This has to be the most ill-executed Star Trek death since Kirk's.
(Sidenote: I was fine with killing Kirk. Drive stake into his heart and keep him in the ground while you're at it. But three middle-aged men indulging in fisticuffs as a grand movie finale was just ridiculous.)
In conclusion: it's one failed and bizarre finale on every level, and the show deserved better.
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 – Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 08:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 08:56 pm (UTC)But yeah, at least the characters were themselves, if not all that much in character.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 08:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-07 07:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 05:40 pm (UTC)(Though Blake and Avon... okay, let's modify that to "extreme stress and constant paranoia make some none too bright actions understandable, plus two obsessives together make for an combustible mix anyway")
Because, yeah.