What are Star Trek's best and worst series finale?
By Chad Porto
![Silicon Valley Comic Con 2017 Silicon Valley Comic Con 2017](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,w_5238,h_2946,x_0,y_0/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/GettyImages/mmsport/370/01j0s97ypwq8w1wq7n9k.jpg)
When you have as many series as Star Trek does, you're bound to find some better than others. Some series start strong, featuring better pilot episodes than one another. The start of a series is important but the meat of them is the best episodes you see along the way. Those are the episodes that make up a bulk of the show's reputation. Still, the finish of a series is just as important.
While Star Trek has tended to avoid a major sweeping arch that needed to be resolved in the finale, it's become quite the recurring trend. We first really saw this with Star Trek: Voyager, with their series finale bringing a close to their seven-year journey in the Delta Quadrant. It wrapped everything up and paid off seven years of storytelling.
Other shows like Discovery or Deep Space Nine wrapped up the series by resolving major points brought up in the season or prior seasons but were far from an entire series-long plot point. Then you have your Next Generation types, which ended on a note that was very detached from the grander narrative of the series but still well received regardless.
With endings being so crucial to the close of a show, and with Star Trek having so many varied ones, it's hard to know which ones are the best. Screen Rant recently published their list of the best and worst endings in Star Trek. They named "Turnabout Intruder" from the Original Star Trek as the worst series finale ever, and "All Good Things..." from The Next Generation the best.
I don't agree. If we're talking about dud endings, I think you look at either Discovery's most recent finale, "Life, Itself" or a controversial pick, Picard's "The Last Generation". Both shows suffered from the same problem, poorly written stories that were driven across a season that had no real hope of paying off in a way that made sense. Discovery was always fighting from behind, in that regard, while Picard's finale made no sense.
Why would The Borg be able to infect anyone who used transporters but only decide to infect the youngest among the Federation? Wouldn't it make more sense if they just did it to anyone who's ever used a transporter since the fall of the Borg? It makes no logical sense.
Star Trek is about logical sense.
That's why my pick for the worst is Picard's finale. While my pick for the best is Voyager's "Endgame". It not only wrapped up the series perfectly, but it ended up tying together numerous threads, and still found a way to end the Borg threat, once and for all. It was coherent, it made sense and it felt earned. A great finale for a great show.
manual