These Are the Voyages…

Right from the beginning this episode looked like two tired writers trying to finalise a series that they had been so brutal to – and who were suffering from some severe cases of writers block after over twenty years.

Why did we need to be ten years in the future? Why did it have to be about Riker trying to make a moral decision… a decision he made almost fifteen years earlier. Riker and Troi looked nothing like they did in the seventh season of Next Gen and it was really hard to suspend my disbelief for the forty minutes.

As with much of the series, I had only seen this episode once before… when it first went to air, and I still remember the hubub after people saw it. I didn’t remember how Trip died (a waste by the way…) and I didn’t remember that Shran was in the episode.

Surely the intruder alert that went off after the pirates boarded Enterprise would’ve alerted Security and they would’ve sent some red shirts to investigate? They probably would’ve been picked off one by one, but at least Trip wouldn’t have needed to commit suicide to stop the pirates… and at any rate, the whole action just seemed to be out of character.

The CGI of the Enterprise-D was stunning, and if this is the benchmark they used for TNG-bluray… then I cannot wait to sink some teeth into the series again!

Moving on, it was nice and poetic to return to Rigel X for one last mission. And that epilogue from Picard, Kirk and Archer… goosebumps.

All tolled though, I did not feel as much as I did when I watched What You Leave Behind. None-the-less …thanks Enterprise, you’ve been great.