Well...finally saw "Endgame" tonight (spoilers)

AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

As our British friends would say, "What a load of old bollocks!"

Where was the "payoff"?

I've always been something of a Voyager supporter (yeah...it's had its terrible times), but Endgame takes the cake.

Who in God's name thought: "Okay...let's spend 30 minutes screen-time with Capt. Janeway arguing with Adm. Janeway, and leave out things that might actually give an emotional payoff at the end!

Let's leave out things like:

Seven finally meeting her aunt.
Harry's reunion with Libby.
Chakotay's return to his tribe.
Barclay finally meeting the crew in person.
And heavens above, what better reunion than between the estranged Admiral and Lt Parises, with the Admiral holding his grand-daughter???

I'm not one for soppy tissue-soaker movies, but I'll admit, I was extremely moved at the end of both All Good Things and What You Leave Behind.

Endgame left me saying: "Yeah? And?"...and then the credits rolled!!!

Talk about a terrific premise badly pulled off!

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Originally posted by Aldaron
Talk about a terrific premise badly pulled off!

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Doesn't that pretty much describe all of Voyager? I thought the premise was a really good idea - take a Starfleet crew and a Maquis crew, strand them 70,000 lightyears from home, make them work together, and watch as they struggle to get home without the benefit of a Starfleet or a spacedock to help them out.

Even the pilot was a good start to the series. Then it went downhill. Very frustrating.

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Originally posted by Aldaron

Endgame left me saying: "Yeah? And?"...and then the credits rolled!!!

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It left me saying, "Well, at least it's over." How I felt about the episode, how I felt about Voyager.

But I liked it better than Enterprise. ;)

(I like Enterprise just fine, as a SciFi TV show. Just not as Star Trek.)

I didn't like it either, and it actually inspired me enough to write this...

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/starkllr/home.html

I took the basic premise of the episode as aired, and did something different with it.

If you do take a look at it, any comments/feedback would be appreciated...

Strklr...that was absolutely phenomenal!

God I wish that had been the finale instead of the one they used...let me tell you, I enjoyed reading your script about a million times more than I enjoyed watching Endgame, and had a great deal more emotional investment in it!

I'll be using it, if you don't mind, for my universe's canon!

StarKllr that was incredible. I laughed and I cried.

You hit all of the right emotional buttons. You gave Janeway a real reason to go back in time. You brought in guest stars galore. Barclay was perfect and his scenes were very funny. You even made Chakotay's and Seven's romance more plausible.

Wow! Again.

Can you rewrite The Phantom Menace, too? :D

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Originally posted by Greg Smith

Can you rewrite The Phantom Menace, too? :D

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Thanks for the kind words.

But Phantom Menace? I'm just an amateur writer, not a miracle worker!

Posted by starkllr:

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But Phantom Menace? I'm just an amateur writer, not a miracle worker!

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Ouch! That's rough....:)

Starkllr?

Impressive...

Very nicely written - it's definitely a more believable alternative to Endgame (and does not leave the Federation ridiculously over-teched), and does seem to push all the right buttons...

But (and I'll happily admit it's a personal issue)...

It unfortunately still has the one problem I really hated about the original. The ending relies on a trip into the past to change the results. After umpteen years of being told trying to change the past is a bad thing (and even being introduced to an organisation dedicated to preventing it), we get a final episode which relies on such a process to get a happy ending!

Apart from anything else, why haven't Timefleet stomped on them? (Original version or this one...)

Although maybe they did, and that's why I can ignore Voyager for my own campaigns ;)

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Originally posted by Imagus
Starkllr?

But (and I'll happily admit it's a personal issue)...

It unfortunately still has the one problem I really hated about the original. The ending relies on a trip into the past to change the results. After umpteen years of being told trying to change the past is a bad thing (and even being introduced to an organisation dedicated to preventing it), we get a final episode which relies on such a process to get a happy ending!

Apart from anything else, why haven't Timefleet stomped on them? (Original version or this one...)

Although maybe they did, and that's why I can ignore Voyager for my own campaigns ;)

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Oh, I agree...but I took their storyline, I wasn't trying to do something completely different, just...better than what was shown.

The problem is that, given the preceeding episodes, bringing Voyager home in the finale requires some kind of miracle pulled out of thin air, whether it's a random wormhole, or time travel, or whatever else.

Nothing at all was done to lead up to the ending (well, except for writing out Neelix in "Homestead", I guess), so it had to be a deus ex machina of some kind.

If it was completely up to me, I'm not sure how I'd have done it, but I do know that the first thing I'd do is throw out - or at least massively change - about half the existing seventh season. I'd replace it with a story arc over ten or twelve episodes that properly sets up their homecoming. I wouldn't make it quite as tight as the last ten episodes of DS9, but each episode would contribute towards the story and bring them a step closer to whatever means would be used in the finale to get them home.

I have to agree with Starkllr. If nothing else ther should have been some lead up to the Seven/Chakotay relationship, rather than just pull it out of the blue.

IMHO, they tried to copy All Good Things, and failed to capture the magic twice.

In terms of episode structure, the time travel aspect allowed them to show the 'what happens later' as well as making the arrival home the climax of the episode.

My thoughts exactly. It's a big enough event that you need to build up to it gradually (Trek's aversion to story arcs has always confused me - DS9 aside).

Like I say, other than that, it's a great job!

The other thing I didn't like about "Endgame" (and ok this is very much a personal opinion) was that it had no connection to the beginning of the series. "All Good Things" wrapped up the Q storyline begun in "Encounter at Farpoint", "What You Leave Behind" did the same job for "Emissary," but "Endgame" has no connection to "Caretaker" at all - there was no real sense of closure. I had the same problem with the final episode of Xena.

Hey-ho, so I'm a nitpicker... :D

I thought they did try and add a liitle bit of a connection to 'Caretaker'. At the end of 'Endgame' after Voyager has exited the wormhole Janeway says "Mr Paris lay in a course for Earth" just as she had done at the end of 'Caretaker'.

I have to agree their was little feeling of closure from the end. I would have liked to see the crew reach Earth at the end and meet their respective families. Or even if they had just replayed the Voyager flies over San Francisco sequence during the credits, it would have provided better closure. Starkllr's version did a far better job of that, IMHO.

One thing which annoyed me about Endgame was that Janeway went back in time to change things because Seven of Nine died! Erm....right...so risk the lives of the whole crew for an ex-borg?

Why didn't she go back in time to the Caretaker episode and prevent them from getting trapped in the Delta quadrant at all? That way she would have saved the lives of the crew members who died over the course of the series.

Obviously she prizes the life of a borg over a crew member.

The rest of the episode was as awful as every other episode from season 4 onwards. The Borg were as weak and pathetic as we have come to expect, the time travel plot which has been used every 3 weeks on Voyager was put through the mill again. The whole anticipation of them ever getting home was once again ignored.

This summed up the whole Voyager experience for me.....A huge let-down!

Actually, I just rewatched Endgame the other day, and I actually enjoyed it more than the first time I saw it. Probably because I wasn't going in with any expectations.

For me, the major letdown was the virtual lack of any sort of resolution of any of the character relationships, and the abrupt ending. I really wanted to see them reunited with friends and family, but no. That was the big letdown for me.

Let's face it, What You Leave Behind wasn't a heck of a lot better (but it did have that beautiful final scene, unlike Voyager).

'What you leave behind' was kind of disjointed IMHO. First there was the resolution to the War, which was fairly predictable, although the stuff on Cardassia with Kira etc was good. Then there was the Sisko/Dukat/Pah'wraiths bit which was kind of abrubt given the huge build up. And then the flash-backs etc, which was kind of nice (except for leaving out Jadzia).

If there had been a little more tension in the war story and spent a little more time on the Pah'wraith plot, it could have been great IMHO.

And let's not forget the unforgivable (IMHO) use of stock footage in the battle scenes. That was pretty weak.

And I still dislike seeing Sisko, the family man, abandon his family like that. It was so contrary to what Sisko stood for. His family was probably the thing he held most dear.

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Let's face it, What You Leave Behind wasn't a heck of a lot better (but it did have that beautiful final scene, unlike Voyager).

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But as annoying as it was, you at least got a sense of closure with the characters.

Even a return to a 30-year reunion with all of the characters would have a better ending...

Now, I propose an alternate question. Given only "Endgame" as it appeared on screen, give me your take on the main characters' fates:

Janeway -- Starfleet promotes her to rear admiral, and dumps her in the deepest corner of Starfleet command. I believe they would be understandably worried that she would too easily give into the temptations that her alternate-future self did and tamper with the timeline. End result, promote her, then keep her away from the toys... ;)

Chakotay -- I think that he is formally brought up on charges of being a Maquis terrorist, so that Starfleet can immediately drop the charges in light of his contributions to the Voyager. He and Seven eventually get married and he becomes a house husband.

Paris -- Tom reconciles with his father, leaves Starfleet and embarks on a string of moderately-successful business ventures.

Tuvok -- I see Tuvok receiving serious commendations for his undercover work prior to the series (as well as on Voyager) and is promoted to Commander before immediately transferring his commission to VDF security and returning home.

Torres -- Like Chakotay, she's officially charged, then released as the charges are dropped. She's the only reason Tom's ventures are even moderately-successful.

Kim -- Immediately promoted to lieutenant and becomes chief operations officer of a smaller ship, eventually going on to a long, if unspectacular, career and commanding a ship of his own.

Doctor -- He "leaves" Starfleet and thrives on his newfound celebrity. He finally chooses a name..."Dr. Louis Zimmerman II" ...and follows various pursuits as he practices medicine on the side and helps with research on unlocking the secrets of his mobile emitter.

Seven -- Seven is debriefed, poked and prodded until Starfleet gets all of the information they can out of her about the Borg. She becomes a researcher for a private firm, happy to live a long and boring life with her husband and family.

Sea Tyger --

What's scary is that all of your predictions ... actually make a lot of sense! I could actually believe that everybody turned out the way you say they did!

Bravo!

JANEWAY - Sent to Rura Penthe for gross violation of just about every rule in the book (I don't care if Rura Penthe is a Klingon prison, Starfleet ones are to nicey-nice for Janeway).

B'ELLANNA TORRES PARIS - Cleared of all crimes commited while with the Maquis. Retires to a quiet home life with...

THOMAS EUGENE PARIS - Who gets a job flying shuttles on Earth so that he can be near his wife and...

MIRA PARIS - Grows up joins Starfleet as a Engineer.

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER HARRY KIM - Finally given the promotion he deserves (after seven years of being jipped by Janeway).

THE DOCTOR - Becomes head of Starfleet Medical and a famous opera singer.

SEVEN OF NINE - Is debriefed by Starfleet and given the position of Science Officer on the refitted USS Voyager together with her husband...

CAPTAIN CHAKOTAY - Who is absolved of all crimes committed while he was with the Maquis and given command of the Voyager. His command staff includes Harry Kim as Tactical Officer and Mira Paris as one of the engineering crew.

All in all a happy ending for most of the crew and Janeway gets sent to Rura Penthe which is a happy ending for all Star Trek fans.

So Silverthorn, you want Chakotay to wait 22 years or so to become a captain whilst Mira Paris grows up and goes through the Academy?