It was May 2005. Star Trek: Enterprise was coming to a close after four rocky seasons. Fans expected a grand farewell to Captain Archer and his crew. Instead, they got a holodeck simulation. "These Are the Voyages..." didn't just end a show; it effectively put a bullet in the head of a continuous eighteen-year run of Star Trek on television. People were mad. Actually, "mad" is an understatement. Most fans felt betrayed.
Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, the architects of that era, called it a "love letter" to the fans. The fans called it an insult. By centering the finale of Enterprise on The Next Generation characters William Riker and Deanna Troi, the actual stars of the show—Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock, and Connor Trinneer—were relegated to background noise in their own story. It felt like watching your own graduation ceremony only to have your older, more successful cousin take the stage and talk about his life for an hour.
The Holodeck Mistake
The premise of "These Are the Voyages..." is basically a framing device. We find Commander Riker during the events of the TNG episode "The Pegasus," struggling with a moral dilemma involving a cover-up. To find clarity, he runs a historical simulation of the final mission of the NX-01 Enterprise.
This means every interaction we see between the Enterprise crew isn't "real" in the context of the show's timeline. It's a computer reconstruction. This choice stripped the emotional weight from the characters' final moments. When Trip Tucker—the heart of the show for many—sacrifices himself to save Archer, it feels hollow. Why? Because we aren't watching Trip. We are watching Riker watch a simulation of Trip.
It’s a bizarre narrative layers-of-the-onion situation that no one asked for. The pacing is weird, too. We jump forward six years from the previous episode, leaving a massive gap in character development that is never addressed. Suddenly, the crew is older, the ship is being decommissioned, and the Federation is being formed. It’s rushed. It’s clunky. It honestly feels like a rough draft that accidentally got filmed.
Why the Cast Hated It
You don't have to take the fans' word for it. The actors themselves have been vocal about how much they disliked the script. Jolene Blalock, who played T'Pol, was notoriously blunt, calling the finale "appalling." She wasn't wrong. After four years of grueling work trying to find their footing in a prequel setting, being told they were merely a footnote in a Riker-centric story was a slap in the face.
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Scott Bakula, ever the professional, was more diplomatic but the disappointment was visible. Even Jonathan Frakes, who played Riker, has since admitted that the episode "stunk" for the Enterprise cast. He felt like he was intruding. He was.
Imagine being Connor Trinneer. You’ve played Trip Tucker for 90-plus episodes. You’ve made him one of the most beloved characters in the franchise. Then, in the final hour, you're told your character dies in a somewhat meaningless explosion just to give Riker a "teaching moment." It’s brutal. The death felt forced, a cheap way to inject stakes into a story that was already struggling to find its soul.
The Context of 2005
To understand why "These Are the Voyages..." failed so spectacularly, you have to look at the state of Paramount at the time. UPN was dying. Star Trek fatigue was a very real thing. The ratings for Enterprise had been sliding since the pilot.
Berman and Braga were tired. They had been running the franchise since the early 90s. They wanted to go out with a bang that tied the whole "modern" era (TNG, DS9, Voyager) together. They thought that bringing back Riker and Troi would be the ultimate fanservice. They misread the room. They forgot that by Season 4, Enterprise had actually developed its own identity. Showrunner Manny Coto had spent the season crafting incredible multi-episode arcs that honored Trek history without being subservient to it. The finale threw all that progress away to return to the Berman-era tropes that fans had already started to reject.
Breaking Down the "Pegasus" Connection
The episode attempts to retcon the TNG episode "The Pegasus" by suggesting Riker was hiding in the holodeck the whole time. This creates a massive continuity headache. In "The Pegasus," Riker is under immense pressure. It’s a tense, high-stakes thriller.
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Inserting him into the Enterprise finale makes those TNG scenes feel slightly ridiculous in hindsight. Was he really taking breaks to play "historical cook" while Admiral Pressman was breathing down his neck? It’s a narrative stretch that didn't need to happen.
Key Issues With the Plot:
- The 6-year time jump: It ignores the Romulan War, which fans desperately wanted to see.
- Trip’s Death: It serves no thematic purpose other than "drama."
- The Archer Speech: We don't even get to hear the speech that founds the Federation. Riker just shuts the program off.
- The Cook: Watching Riker pretend to be a chef to eavesdrop on the crew is undeniably cringey.
The "True" Finale
Many fans consider the two-parter "Demons" and "Terra Prime" to be the actual finale of Enterprise. Those episodes dealt with the birth of the Federation, human xenophobia, and the core philosophy of Star Trek. They focused on the Enterprise characters. They had heart.
"These Are the Voyages..." feels more like an awkward post-script. It’s a TV movie that got edited down to 42 minutes and shoved into a slot where it didn't belong. Even the visual quality feels off. The lighting on the TNG sets (recreated for the episode) doesn't quite match the 90s aesthetic, and Frakes and Marina Sirtis had clearly aged significantly since "The Pegasus" was filmed in 1994, making the "interquel" aspect hard to swallow.
Re-evaluating the Legacy
Is it the worst episode of Star Trek ever? Some would say "Spock's Brain" or "Sub Rosa" take that title. But those episodes are just bad; "These Are the Voyages..." is disappointing. Disappointment hurts more than incompetence. It was the end of an era. After this aired, Star Trek went off the air for twelve years until Discovery premiered in 2017.
For over a decade, this was the last taste of Trek fans had. That’s a heavy burden for a mediocre episode to carry.
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However, in the years since, the "non-canon" status of the episode has become a popular talking point. Several Star Trek novels, most notably The Good That Men Do by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin, have effectively retconned the finale. They suggest that the holodeck program Riker watched was actually a piece of Section 31 propaganda designed to hide the fact that Trip Tucker didn't actually die, but instead went undercover. While the books aren't strictly "on-screen" canon, many fans adopt this version of events to keep their sanity.
Moving Forward: What to Watch Instead
If you’re revisiting Enterprise, do yourself a favor. Watch "Terra Prime." Let the story end there, with the hopeful vision of a multi-species future. Then, if you’re feeling masochistic or just curious about TV history, watch the finale as a standalone curiosity.
Practical Steps for the Disenchanted Fan:
- Read the relaunch novels: If you want a better ending for Trip and Archer, start with The Good That Men Do. It fixes almost every complaint about the finale.
- Watch "The Pegasus" first: If you are going to watch the finale, re-watch the original TNG episode "The Pegasus" right before it. It makes the Riker/Troi segments slightly more tolerable by giving them context.
- Focus on Season 4: Remember that Enterprise Season 4 is some of the best Star Trek ever made. Don't let 42 minutes of a Riker holodeck program ruin the hours of brilliance that preceded it.
- Acknowledge the effort: Even in a bad episode, the performances of the main cast are solid. They did the best they could with a script that ignored them.
The franchise eventually recovered. Star Trek: Picard Season 3 finally gave Riker and Troi the meaningful, modern send-off they deserved, which in a way, retroactively makes their appearance in Enterprise less of a stain on their legacy. We can finally look back at the 2005 finale not as a permanent ending, but as a weird, experimental mistake from a production team that just didn't know how to say goodbye.
The lesson here is simple: if you're going to end a show, focus on the people who spent four years making it. Don't look back to the "glory days" of a different series. Trust your current characters to carry the weight. If you don't, you end up with a holodeck program that everyone wants to delete.