Terra Prime's final scene

[JadziaKathryn]

Oh, that was better. I like both of the revised scenes better. However, at least the TnT scene hinted at a happy future for them. This Archer scene is vasty superior to what we got.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Oh, that was better. I like both of the revised scenes better. However, at least the TnT scene hinted at a happy future for them. This Archer scene is vasty superior to what we got.

Agreed!

My guess is that they changed the last TnT scene when they learned about *the_abomination*, so that it would be more ambiguous regarding the future. Had the original version remained it would directly have clashed with *the_abomination*. The scene we got only indirectly did that.

[Zane Gray]

I like the final scene as it aired, but I also think that this makes it clear (as if it wasn't already) what the writers' intent was with regard to Trip and T'Pol when this series ended. Manny Coto and the Reeves-Stevens planned for there to be little ambiguity about where their relationship was headed... and it wasn't for a breakup. F---ing Beebes. Thank god for The Good That Men Do.

[justTripn]

!!!!!! Wow.

OK as to the first scene, I REALLY like it as to what it reveals about the intentions of the authors and the backstory. Trip proposes! "If WE want to have children"! I'm all about T'nT's having children (see my new avatar).

I'm torn because the scene as played was perfection. Trip being a little evasive. If a Human and a Vulcan (not mentioning any names) were to have children. It seems in character. And makes it even more poignant when she grabs his hand.

Second scene, the early version is just plain better.

[Rigil Kent]

Thank god for The Good That Men Do.

Which has a break-up. Can't really agree with you there, but ah well.

I wish we could get some sort of insight into why they changed that Archer scene. The way it aired was just lame, and this is much, much better.

[aeverett]

And it doesn't end with a character we've only just met (and don't actually know enough about to care about his fate) committing suicide because he's suddenly got a guilty conscious over what he did months ago...

I don't think it was conscience. I think it was fear of his prison sentence. If he kills himself with a phaser, he feels no pain. He never has to face the consequences of his actions. Considering Elizabeth was in the process of dieing, and he likely knew that (not that he knew beforehand that she was going to be created with a flaw, but that she was dieing), he also would know that he was looking at a manslaughter or murder conviction and life in a military prison. We're talking the next half century or so of hard labor (military prisons are not like regular prisons), no chance of parole. Death would have been easier, and he realized his life was as good as over anyway.

[Jedikatie]

^
Either way, it doesn't play nearly as well as it would have, had we actually known and met the character before Archer steps off the turbolift and sees him standing there with a phase pistol about to blow his brains out, blubbering like a baby. There was no reason for any of us to particularly care what his reasons might have been for doing it in the first place, why he had a crisis of conscience to such a point that he thought taking his own life was the better option, etc. We didn't know this guy. He was just the random red shirt of the week who dies, basically...

[CX]

I like the original script versions better. As nice as the original ending was, this is better, and the Archer/traitor script scene is WAY better.

[Dinah]

I definitely like the earlier Archer/traitor scene much better. That guy was Terra Prime. He was just some poor, misguided kid who got in over his head and took the easy way out. Maybe they saw the unconscious crewman as a loose end they wouldn't have to tie up if they changed the character and the scene.

I have rather mixed feelings about the earlier version of the scene between Trip and T'Pol. It left me feeling very frustrated. Trip makes his feelings known. The audience already knows he loves her. But once again, we never get any sort of commitment on T'Pol's part. That's hanging out in space somewhere followed by ....

Once and for all, does she care about this guy! Not just a smooch on the cheek. Not just a look or a touch of the hand. Does she care for him or not? Does she want to try and make a life with him? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Reanok]

I like this second scene with this ensgin Smith is portrayed in this earlier script with Archer being the one who started and finished that scene works better with Reed and Samuels as well.

[Jedikatie]

Dinah, I think if the series had gotten a fifth season (and that thing which followed this episode had not aired), maybe this, the earlier script version of TP's ending, would have been a good stepping stone sort of scene for TnT's future relationship--I mean in a small way (on the personal level), and ignoring the Storm Front episodes which were necessary to fix the ending from season 3, it's a good completion of the circle of the stories from the fourth season.

We saw Trip and T'Pol start out "together" in the first real episode (Home) of the season, and then were forced apart by T'Pol willingly sacrificing her own future (and happiness) to help her mother. Which led them on separate paths for awhile, and then this last scene (from the early draft of Terra Prime) essentially gives T'Pol back the future she thought lost if she says yes... one where they're together again, just as they were at the beginning of the season.

Had we gotten the fifth season, then we might have learned what her answer was and then their relationship could have developed further from there.

---

I was also struck by the thought this morning that another saying of Surak's -- "May we together be more than the sum of our parts" -- is also fitting for describing the ending scene which did air (besides the whole IDIC message). I mean, if you think about it, neither Trip and T'Pol cared all that much for the other at the start of the series, and yet over the four years, they learned to work together and proved that humans and Vulcans could do so in spite of our radically different approaches to things, and as Trip himself noted back in Bound, "We make one hell of a team" in reference to the two of them. Essentially, the two parts (ie, Trip and T'Pol) became "more" once they started working together and relying on each other's strengths, rather than being at odds with each other...

That message works well for both them personally and for humans and Vulcans in general as well, which I think was part of the idea the producers were trying to get across with the series, how humans and Vulcans ended up being the best of friends, something which if you just looked at the whole 'humans are emotional, Vulcans are logical' bit, you might wonder about. And Trip's line from Bound that I mentioned above is also a fitting reference to humans and Vulcans in general, as well...

I just wish we could've seen the rest of the journey (for both TnT and humans and Vulcans)...

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

I just wish we could've seen the rest of the journey (for both TnT and humans and Vulcans)...

That's how I viewed it. Trip and T'Pol were the symbols of how humans and Vulcans come together on the micro level. Archer and the founding of the Federation were the symbols at the macro level. It would've worked great story-wise in the seasons to come, had we seen them.

[Asso]

Dinah, I think if the series had gotten a fifth season (and that thing which followed this episode had not aired), maybe this, the earlier script version of TP's ending, would have been a good stepping stone sort of scene for TnT's future relationship--I mean in a small way (on the personal level), and ignoring the Storm Front episodes which were necessary to fix the ending from season 3, it's a good completion of the circle of the stories from the fourth season.

We saw Trip and T'Pol start out "together" in the first real episode (Home) of the season, and then were forced apart by T'Pol willingly sacrificing her own future (and happiness) to help her mother. Which led them on separate paths for awhile, and then this last scene (from the early draft of Terra Prime) essentially gives T'Pol back the future she thought lost if she says yes... one where they're together again, just as they were at the beginning of the season.

Had we gotten the fifth season, then we might have learned what her answer was and then their relationship could have developed further from there.

Okay!
So, Why We do not use that? We now have a real point of start: the final scene, not given on the screen how had been written, can be considered the true final of the fourth season and the prelude to the fifth.
I do an appeal.
Why we do not open a “forum”, in which, leaving from that scene, we all we build the “true canon”, not the "canon" of the abomination, from which unfortunately TGTMD leaves? (I say "unfortunately" because, in my opinion, the remedy, like I elsewhere already said, is worse of the damage: the story is able also to be attractive, but the premise is horrible and, of result, the structure is damaged "in toto").
I read in “Trip/T'Polers: A Trip and T'Pol Shipper's Site” and in “Triaxian silk site” many beautiful stories, written from authors of secure hand.
Will They want to accept the challenge? I believe yes.
Maybe not all of the writers, but, I believe and hope, some or maybe many of them.
After we will have traced in the "forum" the guides-lines of the story, the writers that will want will write the story (we will see the times and the manners) and finally something of beautiful will be able to spring, more pleasant and more logic of the abomination or of so-called remedy.
It is an ambitious project and perhaps ingenuous. And perhaps I am a little crazy (or stupid).
Nevertheless I want to try to know the opinion of other people.

[Reanok]

Terra Prime was continued in the book with the funeral of elizabeth and was a really well written scene.I like what they did with Trip & T'Pol in the Book The Good That Men do I think they did a good job with the characters.They admitted they loved each other and that was a big part of the story through out the book.Also I enjoy what other fanfiction writers have decided to with Trip & T'Pol and put them in different situations I think people can enjoy more than way of having a story told or how someone interprets these characters we all see different things that we like about Trip & T'Pol.Your idea sounds interesting about moving away from the so called finale and moving the story forward in a new direction for Trip & T'Pol to see what others could come up with in a a story contest would be nice.

[CX]

I'd do my own Virtual Enterprise, but I find that Foundations has more of an appeal for me because I can fix more than just the finale.