These Are the Voyages…

This Story: Season 4 Episode 22 (production code 198)
ENT Overall: Episode 98
Trek Overall: Story 684, Episode 726
Airdates: 13 May 2005
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
Directed by Allan Kroeker

Notes

• The final episode of the series, and the final appearance in any incarnation of Star Trek of the Enterprise cast.  The lone exception is Jolene Blalock who reprised T’Pol in the Lower Decks animated episode “Fissure Quest” in 2024.
• The final episode of any incarnation of Star Trek to air on television for twelve years.  The series premiere of Discovery wouldn’t be until 24 Sep 2017 – 4,517 days.
• This episode aired the same night as the episode before this.
• This episode was directed by Allan Kroeker, his final episode in any incarnation of Star Trek.  All told he directed 13 of DS9, 13 of Voyager, and 12 of Enterprise.   He also directed the finales for both Deep Space Nine & Voyager as well.
• Features the return of Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, & Brent Spiner to their TNG roles of Riker, Troi, & Data.  Data only appears in a voiceover cameo, though (with newly recorded footage).
• The last appearance of Jeffrey Combs as Shran.  He will return to Star Trek for three episodes of Star Trek Lower Decks as Animus.
• The story has the controversial point of killing Trip, although this happened five years in the future past the events of the last episode, and was not going to be reversed had they done a Season 5.
• The first time we’ve seen a holodeck in a Star Trek episode (a Federation one anyway) since Voyager’s “Renaissance Man“.
• Apparently this story was conceived for the end of the third season as its finale if the show wasn’t renewed for Season 4 – but wasn’t written at that time.  Additionally, had there been a fifth season, this still would have been the fourth season finale, but Trip’s death wasn’t a problem due to the time jump in the future.
• The attendants in the audience in the final scene mirror one of the final scenes in Deep Space Nine’s finale – where the crowd was made up of multiple real life production people.
• It is established that Shran had a daughter with the Andorian woman he met in “The Aenar“.
• Riker & Troi talk about the fleet museum here.  They would actually visit that in the Picard episode “The Bounty“.
• The TNG part of this story is set inside the episode “The Pegasus“.  Riker’s decision here is in conflict with how the decision is addressed in the actual TNG episode.

Links

[ Wikipedia | Memory Alpha | IMDB | First Flight Podcast (not yet available) | Amazon US DVD | Amazon US Blu-Ray ]