One Star Trek Insult Doomed a Canceled Series — 21 Years Later, It’s Aged Into Sci-Fi Gold
Twenty-one years later, Star Trek’s prequel gamble Enterprise remains a textbook example of how not to end a series—a bridge to Kirk and Picard that collapsed at the finish line.
Enterprise was supposed to be the clean on-ramp to classic Trek. Instead, 21 years later, we still talk about how it face-planted at the finish line. The show itself has aged surprisingly well; that finale has not.
What Enterprise promised vs. what we got
Enterprise launched as a prequel to tee up the world of Kirk and Picard: how the Federation came together, where the tech we take for granted actually came from, and what first-contact exploration felt like when you could not just phone Starfleet or pull up a dossier on your enemies. The problem was timing. Trek had been on TV nonstop from 1987 through Enterprise ending in 2005. Fans were tired. The show did not get its due in the moment, only to pick up a healthier reputation later. But the finale? Still a sore spot.
The finale that belonged to a different show
Creators Rick Berman and Brannon Braga decided to close not just Enterprise, but the entire TV era they had been shepherding. Noble idea. Awkward execution. They framed the finale, These Are the Voyages..., as a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Literally. It is set during TNG season 7’s The Pegasus, with Will Riker reviewing a holodeck recreation of Archer and crew on a pivotal mission. Marina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes pop in as Troi and Riker because, by Berman and Braga’s own admission, it was convenient.
Why go this route? Enterprise got canceled abruptly, and the writers felt boxed in on how to jump from episode 97 to a big, franchise- capping episode 98. The holodeck gave them a way to flash back to Archer’s era and fast-forward to the formation of the United Federation of Planets without building a bridge the show no longer had time to construct.
'We wanted to send a valentine to the franchise.'
Berman later conceded fans would likely find that disappointing as an Enterprise finale. He was right. It plays like a random TNG hour that happens to feature the Enterprise NX-01.
The emotional shortcut that backfired
To juice the stakes, the episode kills Connor Trinneer’s Trip Tucker in a sudden, avoidable way. Berman and Braga have since called that a regret. Trinneer initially made peace with it, then soured over time. The cast, broadly, did not love how the finale went down, though some appreciated getting to work with Frakes.
The strangest choice: the speech we never see
The story builds to Captain Archer delivering a major address tied to the birth of the Federation... and then cuts away before he gives it. For a series finale, that is a baffling decision. It is the dramatic equivalent of teasing the fireworks and rolling credits during the countdown.
The head-scratchers at a glance
- The finale is literally set inside TNG’s The Pegasus, with Riker on the Enterprise-D watching Archer’s crew in a holodeck sim.
- Riker and Troi are there mostly because it was easy to slot them in.
- The main justification: cancellation left no clean path from episode 97 to a UFP-capping episode 98.
- Trip is killed off to force emotion into a story that otherwise did not have it.
- Even Berman acknowledged Enterprise fans would be disappointed; he and Braga saw it as a franchise farewell.
- Everything builds to Archer’s big speech... which the episode pointedly does not show.
So, did it work?
No. These Are the Voyages... is widely ranked among the most unsatisfying Trek episodes ever. Enterprise has only grown in stature with time; its finale has only curdled. When your last chapter looks and feels like an episode of a different show, it undercuts the series you are supposedly celebrating.
How do you remember that finale landing? Did it ever work for you, or is it still a miss?