4. Star Trek: The Next Generation - 'All Good Things'
While Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had seven years of loose friends to sum up in its finale, the swan song for Star Trek: The Next Generation was a different beast altogether. With a film on the way, the TV series could have delivered an exciting but ultimately self-contained adventure, leaving the crew continuing on their travels without any ending. (And in a sense, the show ends with the voyages of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D still happening). Alternatively, knowing the audiences Star Trek: Generations would pull in, the show could have left us with an open-ended story. I'm glad that didn't happen. Doing that ruined the end of 24 for me. The set up for a film that didn't come (I think Jack should have died, brining closure). At least the upcoming 24: Live Another Day might deliver us the ending 24 deserves. But I digress. Back to the finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation 'All Good Things'. It is a series finale that sums up going full circle like no other. Because it bookends the pilot episode 'Encounter At Farpoint', by returning to that very first storyline - Q putting humanity on trial for existence - and revealing that the events of the last seven years have been the continuation of that test; with the final verdict decided. Over the course of this finale we get to relieve the early days with Tasha Yar at tactical and Deanna Troi in her bizarre Starfleet cheerleader outfit and a distant future where the majority of the cast get to have great fun playing future versions of themselves...versions that the movies / Star Trek: Deep Space Nine have showed are very different to what actually occurred. And it's all centred on the investigation of a spatial anomaly in the Neutral zone growing wider through time to the point that it destroys Earth at the point of its creation. It's a brilliant mystery for Jean Luc Picard to get his teeth into and Patrick Stewart gives some magnificent performances here, both as a Captain of a new vessel trying to gain the trust of his crew seven years earlier and a 25-year older Admiral who is losing his mind to dementia but must still convince his former colleague (and ex-wife Beverly Crusher/Picard) to help him. His interplay with John DeLancie's Q is magnificent; Q is back to his villainous self after a number of comic, softer moments over the course of the seven years, ready to dispense justice. The past Enterprise D is brilliantly reconstructed, with a welcome return of the aforementioned Tasha Yar, but it is the future where the action and drama excels. Worf and Riker are at odds over the (we assume) death of Deanna Troi (Worf never has much luck with the ladies!) and Crusher gets some meaty action as a divorced 'Captain Picard' of the medical star ship USS Pasteur. Data, rather brilliantly, is a Cambridge Professor. And a tragic future where the Klingons are once again the enemy give us some great action moments, most notably the triple-nacelled Enterprise D, commanded by Riker, blasting into the action. At the final solution, the sacrifice of all three versions of the Enterprise D across time is tragic and has to be earned by Picard. But it is a solution that convinces Q once and for all that humanity has a right to exist; bringing closure to a seven-year story line we didn't quite realise was still going on. But it was in 'the present' season seven where we get one final great scene - Picard finally joining his command staff for a game of poker. It was a lovely moment that capped off seven years of action and exploration. Relive it again here...