10 Best Final Lines In Star Trek Episodes
With some of the finest conclusions ever put to screen, here are the lines that made them.
We’re always told to make a good first impression. Apparently, it takes as little as one-tenth of a second to do just that. No doubt that is why the hook of a cold open is so vital to any TV episode worth its salt.
What is equally, if not more, important, however, is making a lasting impression. One way to do this on the small screen is to go out on a line that is near guaranteed to make a mark, or to be quizzical enough as to have everyone pondering the ramifications years later.
Of course, not every final line has to be grandiose or pithy to be noteworthy. Sometimes, a good line is just a good line. And, on occasion, a final line is simply the best possible end to a bad situation for the character(s). As the comedian Lotus Weinstock once said: "I used to want to save the world. Now, I just want to leave the room with some dignity".
So, whether they have left us hanging off a cliff, deep in existential thought, feeling the feels, lost in retrospection, or laughing along and everything in between, let’s have a look at some of the best closing remarks in episodes of Star Trek.
If you’re quick enough, you can even play a game of 'guess the episode from the final line' before the title is revealed.
10. "Computer, End Program."
Who here amongst us hasn’t uttered the words "Computer, end program" whilst deep in some ontological crisis about the nature of reality? No? Well, that’s the whimsical little existential query that Lieutenant Barclay makes manifest at the very end of The Next Generation episode Ship in a Bottle. He, Picard, and Data have escaped Professor Moriarty’s clutches with some clever holographic mise en abyme, and the latter, accompanied by the Countess Barthalomew, is then set to live out the rest of his days inside a yellow cube of active memory, in theory none-the-wiser as to the true nature of the world around him.
Picard further speculates that we all might living a simulation in a device sitting on someone’s table. (Let’s hope they don’t spill whatever they have for coffee.) It is this that leads Barclay to speak the titular line that concludes the episode. That programme ends, but a program does not, and we are reminded that what we have been watching is, by its very nature, a simulation.
Barclay was first included in the plot as it was thought that the episode needed a character who was unaware of hologram Moriarty’s creation. When this turned out to be unnecessary to the story, it was nonetheless decided that there was no one better than Barclay to deliver the closing line.
It also looks like Moriarty, presumably looking for an expansion pack, is to return in season three of Star Trek: Picard (to be played by the same actor Daniel Davis), making that final line ever more prescient.