I don’t think I’ve ever seen a final episode of a television series that is potentially as insulting to the admittedly small fan base of a show than the last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise.  It’s so badly received that most watchers of the show ignore it and consider the second last episode as the actual finale.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the powers that be felt like they were giving the fans a valentine (as they put it) but in reality they were just a bit out of touch with the audience which was a problem that had plagued them for years.

Now go back even further and during the dark days between Star Trek the original series being cancelled and the rebirth on the big screen in the form of Star Trek: The Motion Picture all that fans had to keep the Trek flaming burning were fanzines that would foster fan fiction and expand the story lines.  Then the novels came out and unfortunately they aren’t considered canon like the Star Wars universe but they also expanded the universe and filled in the holes.

So it is no surprise to me that with the novel The Good That Men Do the authors set out to reconcile the worst Star Trek finale (yes even worse than Voyager’s) by expanding upon and filling in the blanks (forcing a couple of blanks in along the way).  I can say that if you were a fan of the final season of Enterprise and hated that last episode then this is the book for you.

I know that this post now has an audience of about four people now

But the book is really good, it specifically sets out to deal with the worst aspect of the Enterprise finale which in my opinion was the particularly mishandled death of Commander Trip Tucker.  It’s also ironic in the book’s delivery of this story in that it uses the same story convention that they used in “These are the voyages” (the title of the last episode).  Replacing Troi and Riker with Nog and Jake from Deep Space Nine.

The book was a very satisfying read and it is the way I would like to remember the series end.  Like in the show most of the secondary crew characters don’t get anything to do which is a real shame as I enjoyed these characters and having them superseded by Shran or even the Romulans is a waste.  The writing is on par with any of the Star Trek or Star Wars paperbacks, it serves the story well but never really raises itself above good.

I don’t recall if I wrote about the final episode on version 1.0 of this blog but Screen Rant sums up the feelings pretty well if you are interested.

You can buy a copy of the book either at Amazon or at Fishpond (and help out QYDJ at the same time!)

Related posts:

1. The next Star Trek television series
2. No Khaaaaaaan! Thoughts on the Star Trek sequel.
3. It doesn’t matter how awesome science gets, the Star Trek transporter will never be
4. My Star Trek Christmas ornaments
5. Buying Star Trek 2 Wrath of Khan… again