NOTES FROM THE DABBLEVERSE*

I want to share with you some thoughts on the 'Enterprise' finale from my cousin Paul, who came into the 'Star Trek' corner of the TV Universe via this show. I was curious as to whether the use of Riker and Troi in the finale, indeed, the references to lore and data (t'hee!) from earlier series throughout the final season limited his enjoyment and understanding of what transpired during the episodes.

I'm hoping that one day he'll immerse himself fully into the realm of the Great Bird of the Galaxy......

Well, I set up my VCR to record the second installment of “In a Mirror, Darkly,” the episode that hopefully explained how the ship got into and out of the mirror universe, and I went away for the weekend. I returned to find that my sister had “jammed the signal” of the timer record function, so I never got to meet the original crew of Enterprise (having never seen a single episode of the original series). I trust, however, that they wrote the episode to appeal to both the old timers and the youngin’s, like me, with a very limited knowledge of the original plotlines.
I have, on the other hand, seen quite a few episodes of TNG, so the final episode made almost total sense to me (my only problem was in trying to remember if Number One actually had the conflict of interest in the Federation’s use of cloaking technology – I seem to recall Enterprise implementing it at one point to escape some enemy that pursued them into an asteroid field or some such.). I was more than a little disappointed that they didn’t tie up the temporal cold war plotline that they began at the beginning of the series and even introduced newer, more cunning villains for at the start of this season, but I think they did the best they could with the limited time they were left with.
Jumping ten years into the future (the simulation program depicted a history ten years from the Terra Prime episode, that is) did two things, at least, for me: 1. It assured me that the crew of the original enterprise had enough balls to run a longer voyage than the present day American attention span would allow, and 2. It allowed me to accept that, perhaps, within that ten years the cold war and most other loose plotlines were resolved. After all, I do think it was more important to realize this series for what it was, a prequel to the original and more successful TNG.
Though I do think that Enterprise was the best of the Star Treks (at least the best of the ones I’ve seen, with TNG coming in a very close second) and it came first chronologically, it was absolutely necessary for it to pay homage to the “original” versions and remind the viewers that it is, in fact, part of that universe they love.

Thanks, Paul!

*Dabbleverse - Go ahead. Google it. Learn more.