I think the core concept could have worked. Look at Babylon season 4’s finale, which was at the time expected to wrap up the series: they hop through future time periods to see the enduring legacy these characters leave behind. It worked well, and there’s no reason it couldn’t have worked even better if we already had an emotional attachment to the future era we jumped to.
What failed was that the “enduring legacy” was to be consumed like a daytime soap in between shifts. Frakes and Sirtis playing themselves a decade younger sure didn’t help. Maybe if they put them together on the Titan at the appropriate age and crafted a new story that somehow called back to the founding of the Federation in a way that tied both periods together meaningfully they could have had something.
iirc the series finale was originally filmed to be the S4 finale, which is how they get ivanova even though she left the show in S5. the S4 finale we got was a rush job when they found out they were getting a final season and wanted to keep the finale they filmed as the series finale
i agree with your sentiment though, if it was the series finale i think it would’ve worked well
Ah, that sounds right. It’s been too many years since I revisited B5, but I do remember that we were lucky enough to have Ivanova make one last appearance in the actual finale.
I think the core concept could have worked. Look at Babylon season 4’s finale, which was at the time expected to wrap up the series: they hop through future time periods to see the enduring legacy these characters leave behind. It worked well, and there’s no reason it couldn’t have worked even better if we already had an emotional attachment to the future era we jumped to.
What failed was that the “enduring legacy” was to be consumed like a daytime soap in between shifts. Frakes and Sirtis playing themselves a decade younger sure didn’t help. Maybe if they put them together on the Titan at the appropriate age and crafted a new story that somehow called back to the founding of the Federation in a way that tied both periods together meaningfully they could have had something.
iirc the series finale was originally filmed to be the S4 finale, which is how they get ivanova even though she left the show in S5. the S4 finale we got was a rush job when they found out they were getting a final season and wanted to keep the finale they filmed as the series finale
i agree with your sentiment though, if it was the series finale i think it would’ve worked well
Ah, that sounds right. It’s been too many years since I revisited B5, but I do remember that we were lucky enough to have Ivanova make one last appearance in the actual finale.