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

[Aldaron]

AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

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

Where was the "payoff"?

I've always been something of a <i>Voyager</i> supporter (yeah...it's had its terrible times), but <i>Endgame</i> 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 <i>actually</i> 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 <i>All Good Things</i> and <i>What You Leave Behind</i>.

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

Talk about a terrific premise <i>badly</i> pulled off!

[Ineti]

Originally posted by Aldaron
Talk about a terrific premise <i>badly</i> pulled off!

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.

[spyone]

Originally posted by Aldaron

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

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.)

[starkllr]

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...

[Aldaron]

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 <i>Endgame</i>, and had a great deal more emotional investment in it!

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

[Greg Smith]

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?

[starkllr]

Originally posted by Greg Smith

Can you rewrite The Phantom Menace, too?

Thanks for the kind words.

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

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

Posted by starkllr:

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

Ouch! That's rough....

[Imagus]

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

[starkllr]

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

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.

[Greg Smith]

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.

[Imagus]

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...

[Greg Smith]

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.

[Marcus D Samson]

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!

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

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).