selenak

Day 22 - Favorite series finale

Even these many years and many other beloved shows and some excellent finales later: All Good Things..., the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It managed to accomplish so many things: clever use of the "three different time lines" macguffin, allowing the audience which had followed the show both a look back to the start (oh, and for departed crew members to come back, not just Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar, but also Colm Meany as O'Brien, who at this point already had clocked two seasons of DS9 as a regular but made the time for an appearance on his old ship, the Enterprise), at the present and at a possible future. It used Q and the Q/Picard relationship well. (Much later I discovered it also managed to upset a certain branch of Republicans, because of the short scene where Q takes Picard back to prehistoric earth, shows him various amino acids in the primordial soup and casually remarks this is the origin of life on earth. Apparantly creationists took expection to that. Here's to an additional bonus!) It allowed the entire ensemble to shine, playing two, sometimes three different versions of themselves. It wrapped up the show yet also reassured us there were many more adventures for our heroes to come. In short, it was TNG and Star Trek optimism at its best, without coming across as preaching or blind.

And here is the very last scene, which still reduces me to fangirl mush no matter how often I watch. The sky is the limit!