Well . . . as the man says . . . it is done . . . Lorraine and I finally got to see the final episode of Star Trek Enterprise . . . actually, we watched the final three episodes back to back into the wee hours of the morning.

If only . . . if only, Paramount had left it at the Demons two-parter and let that episode end the series. The story line was strong, the acting right at it, and it had some nice twists and turns.

But . . . no . . . they had to end it with Where No Man Has Gone Before an apt title that harkens to the legacy of the series but the actual story was weak.

I understand now why certain cast members referred to the episode as a “great disappointment” or a “betrayal” or an “abomination” or “the less said about that piece of crap, the better” . . . wow, for a series that had so much potential and fire going into the series ender, instead of going out with the bang it deserves, it went out with a whimper.

Instead of a show that gives us closure for the characters of Enterprise, the producers elected to go with one that made the series finale, and thus the series, all about Riker. That’s right, the final episode didn’t showcase the cast of the show, it was one giant callback to a minor episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and showcased not Archer and his crew but Riker pussy footing around trying to make up his mind about stuff that has been dismissed from our minds as minor plot twists years ago.

Really . . . a Riker and Troi episode might have been interesting if the story was moved forward to say Riker and his own ship the Titan or Riker and Troi’s marriage but instead we are to pretend that it’s fifteen years earlier and Riker is younger and less fat and somehow physically able to stand on scaffolding with the military crewmembers running and shooting and not getting his ass shot off. At least Troi doesn’t appear in any combat scenes.

The premise of going six or seven years into the future for the formal beginning of the Federation wasn’t even useful . . . everything that needed to be done on that end was done with the end of the previous episode where Archer also had his nice speech (cutting the final episode before Archer’s speech was really creepy as it then made the whole thing less than important and the meat of the story was about Riker and not Archer and his shipmates . . . I cry “foul” on that). If Archer is going to be working on the speech which is supposed to be so damned important all episode at least have the decency to let us hear it . . . of course, we already heard the jist in the previous episode so the entire story element was just wasted space. Grrrrr.

Even Tripp’s sacrifice that was supposed to teach Riker how sometimes you have to disobey orders for the greater good was dumb dumb dumb . . . the number of boarders was NOT high enough that the crew of the Enterprise couldn’t have taken them out in short order . . . there was no superior force or superior fire power . . . Tripp’s suicide was neither warranted or even helpful as it had nothing to do with Riker’s own personal issues it was supposedly there to help with.

What the hell was the point of setting up T’Pol and Tripp with the whole “someday if a human and a Vulcan wanted to have a baby, they could” tearjerker in the previous episode if we’re going to arbitrarily say that they never got back together and no longer have any real feelings for one another in Riker’s storyline? Sheesh.

In my personal opinion, Enterprise has been the strongest Star Trek series since the original series. Really. I am just so disappointed that they killed it with such a lousy episode, especially as most of the episodes this season have been so very kick butt.

Double sheesh.