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selenakWhat were your five favorite series finales? This could be a TV series finale, the end of a series of books or a comics run, or the finish of any other serial media.
In no particular order:
1.) All Good Things... (See icon), the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale, written by Ron Moore and Brannon Braga. My favourite Trek is actually DS9, but I have some issues with the DS9 finale. Whereas the one TNG got was perfect for the show, and imo is still the best finale any of the Trek shows got. The three time periods - current day, the past just after the series started and the future twenty years later - really worked, everyone in the ensemble got a chance to shine (though Patrick Stewart as he tends to be was outstanding), Data 'fessed up that he ships Q/Picard ("he loves you... like a pet"), and speaking of that, the Q-Picard interaction was as much charged fun as it always had been. And at the end, there was the promise of the adventure to continue. I still feel all mellow and gushy when I think of it.
2.) Sleeping in Light, the Babylon 5 finale, written by J.M. Strazcynski. This one, on the other hand, was a tearjerker, and in an understated, quiet way, too. There was no saving the day/last action mission or anything like this, no. Jut a quiet goodbye, twenty years later: The Grey Havens, very much so. It was Sheridan-centric (and while I got around to liking the good Captain, I never was a big fan, so when I say I didn't mind that, don't take it the wrong way), but all of the surviving ensemble members got their goodbyes and moments, too. And the dead? Vir's anecdote about Londo is one of the many things that make me cry when watching this episode, and it sums him up perfectly without being in any way a traditional memorial speech, and Centauri-phile that I am, I'm of course over the moon to see Vir as a happy and successful Emperor. Garibaldi taking the glass with him after the last look at the station is such a Garibaldi thing to do. The quiet conversation between Delenn and Susan Ivanova where Delenn offers Ivanova leadership of the Rangers is so perfectly them. And then the goodbye to the station itself, JMS switching off the lights (if there was ever a justified authorial cameo, it was this one) and Franke's score - it's still impossible to watch for me without sobbing, but they're not tears of tragedy. It's the end of an epic, and what an epic it was. The last of the Babylon stations. There never was another.
3.) TIE: Chosen (BTVS) and Not Fade Away (AtS), both by Joss Whedon. You may notice a common theme here - both finales are very apropos for the spirit of their shows AND give everyone in the ensemble a chance to shine. Chosen has quiet moments that are touching and amusing at the same time, like the Dungeons and Dragons game with Amanda, Andrew, Xander, Giles and Anya, or the Faith and Robin Wood conversation in the basement, it has the great epic moments like the big battle and the empowerment of the Slayers, and the flaming hands, and it has two vampires going schoolboy and Buffy having fantasies involving oil and westling. (Joss says on the commentary during Angel's "I started the having a soul" rant that he'll never get tired of Angel being petty, and I can see why. Spike's punching bag drawing never fails to crack me up, too.) And at the end, there is that image of the survivors, together. They made it, and there is hope for the future now, and I just love Buffy's tiny, quiet smile. For a show that despite its darker drama was essentially optimistic, this was the perfect way to go out. Meanwhile, AtS always was more skeptical, and that Butch and Sundance mid-battle freeze frame was so them, too. Again, much ensemble love, from Gunn being with Anne - who by her statement that if she knew this was her last day, she'd still continue as she did, working in the shelter, is basically embodying humanity at its best - via Wesley so broken that you really can tell he's heading for death and yet for the first time since eons oddly at peace spending his last day with Illyria and Spike finally reconciling William and his Spike persona by reciting that century-old poem in public to Angel and Connor having that conversation over coffee and handwriting, and then Connor coming back for Angel at Wolfram and Hart. And because this IS a dark show, the ensemble member who used to be the most harmless and joyful gets to do the one thing that makes him turn his back on Angel & Co. (no matter who among them survives) and brings him to where we've seen him in the framing narration of Spin the Bottle. Lorne's quiet "I've heard you sing" to Lindsey just about kills me. On Lorne's behalf, mind. I can't help it, Lindsey's indignant "you kill me? A flunky? But! Angel! Angel kills me!!!!" cracks me up each time after just feeling horrible on Lorne's behalf. Because you know that the worst thing for Lindsers is that he never made it to the arch nemesis category for Angel.
4) The Kindly Ones and The Wake: last but one and final volume of Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. The Wake is essentially a four-fold epilogue, which is why I'm including The Kindly Ones here - that point where all the storylines come together as a climax of a tragedy. And as with all good tragedies, as Aristotle demanded, this is both due to flaws and deeds of the tragic hero and due to external circumstances. But even within the big tragic climax of The Kindly Ones, you have these moments of grace - Paul McGuire talking to Rose Walker, and Paul, whom readers in Nocturnes and Preludes might have written off as only with Alex for the money is one quiet example of life-long love and devotion, as he still takes care of his Dream-cursed lover, and when at the end Alex wakes up it's a prelude to the forgiveness which is the general feeling of the final volume. On the other end of the scale, you have Lyta and the Furies, and it's so completely fitting Lyta becames their embodiment, because from the moment Morpheus told her she should be grateful she's alive at all Doll's House and casually told her he'd come for her child one day she became a symbol of the human casuality left in epic battles. The oddball couple to end all oddball couples, Matthew the Raven and the Corinthian, Mark II, trying to prevent the inevitable. And Morpheus, finally taking the hand of his sister Death. Yes, The Kindly Ones kills me each time, too. And then I must read The Wake, which is sheer genius. First you have the story of the wake itself, with Matthew being the stand-in for the reader going through all the stages of grief and ending with acceptance of the new Dream, Daniel; with all the people we've met during the saga showing up for goodbyes, and that feeling of forgiveness I mentioned before, both for Alex and Lyta, feels earned, because it extends to Dream himself as well. Next we get a look at Hob Gadling, still an immortal Everyman, and still, after all those centuries, determined to live. And then, in the final story of the final volume, we get something only Neil Gaiman could have pulled off. On one level, it's the story of that other play Shakespeare wrote for Dream, as comissioned early on in the second volume of the saga; we've already been shown the first play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. This one is The Tempest. The Tempest, traditionally regarded as Shakspeare's last play (he probably co-wrote some after that, but damm it, who cares!) and farewell from writing, with Prospero's words about giving up his magic as an authorial self-insert. In this story, you have Prospero=Shakespeare=Gaiman, and the uberawesome thing is, it doesn't feel pretentious or overreaching.
5) Blake, the Blake's 7 finale, written by Chris Boucher. Aka The One That Ruined Christmas For a Generation of Sci Fi Fans. It's one of those love it or hate it finales, and I love it to bits. Not just because some stories demand a tragic ending, but because it manages to restrospectively give an arc to the show where none had been planned. It's full of Boucher's usual immensely quotable lines, the special effect of the Scorpio crashing is actually good for a change (in fact, so good that the young guys who did then were asked to repeat it for the Enterprise twenty years later, in Generations), and did you betray me? became one of the more obsessive love declarations of the ages. Ah, Gauda Prime, planet of doom. I love denial fic in this fandom, but on screen? I wouldn't have wished the show to end anywhere else.
***
And a Heroes rec: . it's gen! It's post-Powerless! It stars the Petrelli brothers and Adam! If you've read just a little in this fandom, you'll know how rare a combination of these circumstances is. But really, Losing Your Way is an awesome story for lots of reasons. It tackles the sheer horror and gruesomeness of Adam being buried alive without making Mr. Let's Wipe Out Most Of Humanity suddenly into a misunderstood woobie. It has great Peter and Nathan characterisation, and utterly avoids a trap that many a fic falls into, i.e. letting Nathan sound all-understanding and gentle all the time. (Which, you know, isn't really Nathan Petrelli. He has his understanding and supportive moments, but immediate crisis declarations aside tends to be more on the stoic and terse side of things.) And there are no easy answers to what to do with Adam. Read it, now!
In no particular order:
1.) All Good Things... (See icon), the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale, written by Ron Moore and Brannon Braga. My favourite Trek is actually DS9, but I have some issues with the DS9 finale. Whereas the one TNG got was perfect for the show, and imo is still the best finale any of the Trek shows got. The three time periods - current day, the past just after the series started and the future twenty years later - really worked, everyone in the ensemble got a chance to shine (though Patrick Stewart as he tends to be was outstanding), Data 'fessed up that he ships Q/Picard ("he loves you... like a pet"), and speaking of that, the Q-Picard interaction was as much charged fun as it always had been. And at the end, there was the promise of the adventure to continue. I still feel all mellow and gushy when I think of it.
2.) Sleeping in Light, the Babylon 5 finale, written by J.M. Strazcynski. This one, on the other hand, was a tearjerker, and in an understated, quiet way, too. There was no saving the day/last action mission or anything like this, no. Jut a quiet goodbye, twenty years later: The Grey Havens, very much so. It was Sheridan-centric (and while I got around to liking the good Captain, I never was a big fan, so when I say I didn't mind that, don't take it the wrong way), but all of the surviving ensemble members got their goodbyes and moments, too. And the dead? Vir's anecdote about Londo is one of the many things that make me cry when watching this episode, and it sums him up perfectly without being in any way a traditional memorial speech, and Centauri-phile that I am, I'm of course over the moon to see Vir as a happy and successful Emperor. Garibaldi taking the glass with him after the last look at the station is such a Garibaldi thing to do. The quiet conversation between Delenn and Susan Ivanova where Delenn offers Ivanova leadership of the Rangers is so perfectly them. And then the goodbye to the station itself, JMS switching off the lights (if there was ever a justified authorial cameo, it was this one) and Franke's score - it's still impossible to watch for me without sobbing, but they're not tears of tragedy. It's the end of an epic, and what an epic it was. The last of the Babylon stations. There never was another.
3.) TIE: Chosen (BTVS) and Not Fade Away (AtS), both by Joss Whedon. You may notice a common theme here - both finales are very apropos for the spirit of their shows AND give everyone in the ensemble a chance to shine. Chosen has quiet moments that are touching and amusing at the same time, like the Dungeons and Dragons game with Amanda, Andrew, Xander, Giles and Anya, or the Faith and Robin Wood conversation in the basement, it has the great epic moments like the big battle and the empowerment of the Slayers, and the flaming hands, and it has two vampires going schoolboy and Buffy having fantasies involving oil and westling. (Joss says on the commentary during Angel's "I started the having a soul" rant that he'll never get tired of Angel being petty, and I can see why. Spike's punching bag drawing never fails to crack me up, too.) And at the end, there is that image of the survivors, together. They made it, and there is hope for the future now, and I just love Buffy's tiny, quiet smile. For a show that despite its darker drama was essentially optimistic, this was the perfect way to go out. Meanwhile, AtS always was more skeptical, and that Butch and Sundance mid-battle freeze frame was so them, too. Again, much ensemble love, from Gunn being with Anne - who by her statement that if she knew this was her last day, she'd still continue as she did, working in the shelter, is basically embodying humanity at its best - via Wesley so broken that you really can tell he's heading for death and yet for the first time since eons oddly at peace spending his last day with Illyria and Spike finally reconciling William and his Spike persona by reciting that century-old poem in public to Angel and Connor having that conversation over coffee and handwriting, and then Connor coming back for Angel at Wolfram and Hart. And because this IS a dark show, the ensemble member who used to be the most harmless and joyful gets to do the one thing that makes him turn his back on Angel & Co. (no matter who among them survives) and brings him to where we've seen him in the framing narration of Spin the Bottle. Lorne's quiet "I've heard you sing" to Lindsey just about kills me. On Lorne's behalf, mind. I can't help it, Lindsey's indignant "you kill me? A flunky? But! Angel! Angel kills me!!!!" cracks me up each time after just feeling horrible on Lorne's behalf. Because you know that the worst thing for Lindsers is that he never made it to the arch nemesis category for Angel.
4) The Kindly Ones and The Wake: last but one and final volume of Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. The Wake is essentially a four-fold epilogue, which is why I'm including The Kindly Ones here - that point where all the storylines come together as a climax of a tragedy. And as with all good tragedies, as Aristotle demanded, this is both due to flaws and deeds of the tragic hero and due to external circumstances. But even within the big tragic climax of The Kindly Ones, you have these moments of grace - Paul McGuire talking to Rose Walker, and Paul, whom readers in Nocturnes and Preludes might have written off as only with Alex for the money is one quiet example of life-long love and devotion, as he still takes care of his Dream-cursed lover, and when at the end Alex wakes up it's a prelude to the forgiveness which is the general feeling of the final volume. On the other end of the scale, you have Lyta and the Furies, and it's so completely fitting Lyta becames their embodiment, because from the moment Morpheus told her she should be grateful she's alive at all Doll's House and casually told her he'd come for her child one day she became a symbol of the human casuality left in epic battles. The oddball couple to end all oddball couples, Matthew the Raven and the Corinthian, Mark II, trying to prevent the inevitable. And Morpheus, finally taking the hand of his sister Death. Yes, The Kindly Ones kills me each time, too. And then I must read The Wake, which is sheer genius. First you have the story of the wake itself, with Matthew being the stand-in for the reader going through all the stages of grief and ending with acceptance of the new Dream, Daniel; with all the people we've met during the saga showing up for goodbyes, and that feeling of forgiveness I mentioned before, both for Alex and Lyta, feels earned, because it extends to Dream himself as well. Next we get a look at Hob Gadling, still an immortal Everyman, and still, after all those centuries, determined to live. And then, in the final story of the final volume, we get something only Neil Gaiman could have pulled off. On one level, it's the story of that other play Shakespeare wrote for Dream, as comissioned early on in the second volume of the saga; we've already been shown the first play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. This one is The Tempest. The Tempest, traditionally regarded as Shakspeare's last play (he probably co-wrote some after that, but damm it, who cares!) and farewell from writing, with Prospero's words about giving up his magic as an authorial self-insert. In this story, you have Prospero=Shakespeare=Gaiman, and the uberawesome thing is, it doesn't feel pretentious or overreaching.
5) Blake, the Blake's 7 finale, written by Chris Boucher. Aka The One That Ruined Christmas For a Generation of Sci Fi Fans. It's one of those love it or hate it finales, and I love it to bits. Not just because some stories demand a tragic ending, but because it manages to restrospectively give an arc to the show where none had been planned. It's full of Boucher's usual immensely quotable lines, the special effect of the Scorpio crashing is actually good for a change (in fact, so good that the young guys who did then were asked to repeat it for the Enterprise twenty years later, in Generations), and did you betray me? became one of the more obsessive love declarations of the ages. Ah, Gauda Prime, planet of doom. I love denial fic in this fandom, but on screen? I wouldn't have wished the show to end anywhere else.
***
And a Heroes rec: . it's gen! It's post-Powerless! It stars the Petrelli brothers and Adam! If you've read just a little in this fandom, you'll know how rare a combination of these circumstances is. But really, Losing Your Way is an awesome story for lots of reasons. It tackles the sheer horror and gruesomeness of Adam being buried alive without making Mr. Let's Wipe Out Most Of Humanity suddenly into a misunderstood woobie. It has great Peter and Nathan characterisation, and utterly avoids a trap that many a fic falls into, i.e. letting Nathan sound all-understanding and gentle all the time. (Which, you know, isn't really Nathan Petrelli. He has his understanding and supportive moments, but immediate crisis declarations aside tends to be more on the stoic and terse side of things.) And there are no easy answers to what to do with Adam. Read it, now!
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Date: 2008-03-14 04:41 pm (UTC)*snif*
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Date: 2008-03-14 07:35 pm (UTC)(BTW, you're probably already familiar with this, but just in case you're not, Gareth Thomas, who appears to have a wicked sense of humour, whispered "kiss me, Hardy" as he clutched Paul Darrow and slithered down to the floor. Somehow PD still kept a straight and appropriately Avonish face.)
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Date: 2008-03-14 04:51 pm (UTC)And I love The Corinthian and Matthew together.
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Date: 2008-03-14 07:57 pm (UTC)Then I had the idea for a Sandman/Angel crossover and felt very intimidated because I wanted to address some finale-specific things in both series, but it wouldn't let go, and it resulted in Ouroborous (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1962559/1/Ouroboros), which is a post-Wake, post-Not Fade Away crossover...
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Date: 2008-03-14 05:36 pm (UTC)Agreed on the perfectness of AGT. This is the true finale of TNG for me; Nemesis is just someone's bad 'splosiony Wrath of Khan-ripoff fanfic. ;) (I can't truthfully compare it to the other Treks' finales, the only one of which I've seen - and it was long ago - is DS9's, though I remember vastly preferring AGT to WYLB.) Sure, there's the teensy plothole of the time rift supposedly being Picard's fault even though it was really Q who started the whole time-jumping-romp-o'fun ;), but that's easy enough to ignore. I love the episode enough on its own - especially the always fantastic Stewart - but it's truly the final Farpoint-bookending courtroom scene with Q and the "You were always welcome" poker scene that make the episode for me. There was absolutely no more perfect a note for the series to end on. I'm getting sniffly just thinking about it - I may have to dig out my season 7 box set when I get home. ;)
"Chosen" I would love a lot more if it didn't feel to me like an episode that was chopped to fit a 42-minute slot, though I agree on all your positive points about it. (The Angel punching-bag nearly killed me. :D) On the whole, between Jossverse finales I give the slight edge to "Not Fade Away" because it flows more smoothly to me. But like AGT, I think both episodes ended their series exactly the way they needed to -- Buffy and co. together, bruised, but quietly triumphant and hopeful; Team Angel fighting the nasty lopsided fight not because they need to win, but because the fight needs to be fought.
Good meme. :) I'd consider doing this myself, but I'd repeat so much of what you've said here already, and less eloquently.
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Date: 2008-03-14 07:46 pm (UTC)Quite. Mind you, the pilot makes me cringe because the show got so much better later, but it established quite a lot, especially Q (and the way he relates to Picard), so to go back there and make it important was a terrific idea. Also, I loved they brought Colm Meaney back from DS9 for this because he IS in the TNG pilot, and O'Brien was on the Enterprise first, damm it. And the poker scene. Awwww, the poker scene.
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Date: 2008-03-14 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-14 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-14 09:18 pm (UTC)Sob. Great write-up of Sleeping in Light. JMS never lost sight of the fact that the family is what was important about the show, and so there was not a bad moment in the whole 44 minutes.
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Date: 2008-03-15 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-14 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-15 06:36 am (UTC)I'm sure that if I'd been watching (if I'd been born??) when it was on, I would've HOWLED at that finale, though.
My pal
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Date: 2008-03-15 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-15 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-15 10:57 am (UTC)I was never that emotionally involved with Buffy or B5, although I remember liking SiL a lot. And Not Fade Away is the perfect fit for a show of very varying quality.
The Kindly Ones is quite an emotional subject for me - I agree about tragic endings, and inevitability and fate, but I still can't help thinking that Desire's remark, that Dream just doesn't know to come in out of the rain, characterizes him rather too well, and it makes me angry at him. Which is a good thing, mind you. I'm all for characters being able to piss me off through their behaviour even though I love them. But yeah, The Kindly Ones without The Wake would be a pretty depressing ending. (And yet. I don't think I quite got over Gilbert not wanting to be recreated.)
As for forgiveness: I nonetheless felt that it wasn't really all good for Lyta in the end, because she still lost Daniel, and I didn't get the feeling that being forgiven by him/Dream meant all that much too her.
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Date: 2008-03-15 02:33 pm (UTC)Hm, it didn't work that way for me. I mean, I also preferred DS9 as a show, and I suppose by the time it ended loved the characters more, but I could never and still can't get over the annoyance that is the Pagh Wraith/Prophet storyline and its culmination in Sisko's big heroic moment - punching. (The only reason why I don't consider the entire storyline worthless is Kai Winn, because I do love her breakdown of faith from Reckoning onwards.) Also, the timeline is a headache - at the start of the finale, Dukat and Winn arrive at the cave, Winn poisons Dukat. Then we have the whole Cardassia action, which presumably needs at least a day or two. Then we're back on Bajor where the Pagh Wraiths resurrect Dukat and humiliate Winn just as the Prophets have done. (What did she do during the day or two when Dukat was dead, just stand around in the Fire Cave?) Then we're back on Cardassia for the peace treaty and the Female Founder. Then we're back on the station for the final celebration, and bear in mind the distance between Cardassia and Bajor has been established as taking three days at avarage travelling speed earlier in the series. And then Sisko suddenly gets a clue from the Prophets he's supposed to be on Bajor to brawl with Dukat. This makes Nathan travelling to Vegas from New York in the time it takes Hiro to get kicked out by Linderman's guards and sit around in the lobby look like brilliant time coordination.
(I suppose if I hadn't such issues with the Prophets being presented as unquestioningly good gods, or with the turning of Dukat into a cardboard villain I would be able to handwave that far more easily, but there it is.)
As for forgiveness: I nonetheless felt that it wasn't really all good for Lyta in the end, because she still lost Daniel, and I didn't get the feeling that being forgiven by him/Dream meant all that much too her.
Which is why Mike Carey had room to write The Furies (if you haven't read it, you should), which is about Lyta continuing to deal with the loss of Daniel along with the fact she was the vessel of those Kind Ladies and what this means, and lets her encounter Dream again, and I do love her final words to him. In terms of the Sandman saga only, the scene between Daniel/Dream and Lyta in The Wake worked for me because it was an obvious contrast to the scene between Morpheus/Dream and Lyta in The Dollhouse, and it offered the hope that Lyta would, eventually, find her life again. Also, as the Alex scene it showed that the Daniel addition enabled Dream to do what Morpheus could not - live with the fact that yes, he does and did change. Meaning: The Wake highlighs this encounter and what it means from Dream's side, as is appropriate since he's the main character, The Furies deals with Lyta's side.
How Lyta would deal was a question I asked myself, too, which is why I wrote my post-series a Sandman/Angel crossover (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1962559/1/Ouroboros) that had her encounter another character with unresolved issues and unresolved guilt, in four chapters...
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Date: 2008-03-15 03:08 pm (UTC)In terms of the Sandman saga only, the scene between Daniel/Dream and Lyta in The Wake worked for me because it was an obvious contrast to the scene between Morpheus/Dream and Lyta in The Dollhouse, and it offered the hope that Lyta would, eventually, find her life again.
I see your interpretation, it just looked a little more desperate for Lyta to me, as if it was more important to her that this was no longer Daniel. Thus it didn't seem a happy ending for her, because she didn't want forgiveness from Dream, she wanted her son back. I think the situation is different from Alex's. (I have not read The Furies, so I can't comment on that. Thanks for the recommendation, though. As for the rec for your story, which I think I have read, actually. *g*)
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Date: 2008-03-15 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-16 08:40 am (UTC)