Yesterday I saw both The Last Jedi and the series finale for Star Trek: Enterprise
I was really happy with TLJ, and pretty sad over the ending of Enterprise.
The Terra Prime stuff with Peter Weller looked like it would be a new organization to pursue action against. The increased emotion between Tucker and T'pol was fantastic - actually teared up a bit, but anything about parents and kids does that to me. The two-parter made sense, had clear and appropriate levels of government focus, and actually started giving Mayweather a few things to do, like show off his piloting skills and interact with a woman-of-questionable-intent.
Then we get to "These Are the Voyages…"
It's meant to be a send-off for Enterprise, but it's a hook back into a TNG episode. Both Frakes and Sirtis look older and heavier than they did during the series, but Frakes is enjoyable to watch as the never-before-seen "Chef." Instead of focusing on what made Enterprise work, they retreated to what worked best for Trek most recently, which is Next Gen. Though, since ENT was canceled, obviously it didn't work enough.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Killing off Tucker that way was inconsistent bullshit with the tone of the rest of the show. There was NOTHING that hadn't been faced better, previously. Bringing back Shran for the show was cool, and at the same time the duplicity of why they needed that gem, why the privateers were able to catch up with a WARP FUCKING SEVEN NX-01, how they were able to transport directly onto the ship, in warp…
It was just a dumb way for things to unravel just so they could kill off the fan-favorite character. All that other stuff is left unaddressed, mainly as highlights between historical footnotes for the TNG crew to peruse and say, "Yeah, the ENT stuff is, like, still super-important even now. I had to memorize Archer's speech in grade school!" — and then yet leave that speech unheard by the audience.
It also is shot fairly poorly and cheaply - there's a battle in what clearly looks like a hastily set-dressed warehouse, because I guess most of the budget was blown by Union/Guild workers retrieving the TNG hallways and a portion of Ten-Forward.
Gah, I am annoyed. I think ENTERPRISE is as good as TNG overall, and its final season is now my favorite season of Trek, with the exception of that self-serving and petty series finale.