Bold for emphasis.
Stargate SG-1’s “Unending”.
Excellent episode.
Great choice. I loved this finale. Especially the part when Derek took John to the park.
My mistake! If we’re doing season finales too…I have to go with TNG’s Picard as Locutus at the end of Best of Both Worlds part 1. I can still remember the absolute utter shock that went through me to see that red laser attached to his head searing right into my brain as it hit the camera. I had never seen anything like it before.
-Not SF related, but The Wire - S2, S1, heck, every season - though probably more of a show with the best penultimate episodes ever. (Not that the finales aren’t spectacular, but more that all the shit goes down in the penultimate, and your minds get blown - and the final is more of a “hey, you’re going to get even more depressed, but in a most satisfying way” wrapup.)
I’m going through The Wire on DVD right now and was going to comment on this as well: the penultimate episodes seem to be the big ones (season 3’s–with the Stringer Bell, Bro. Mouzon and Omar Little showdown is my favorite so far). Weird.
I will echo Lay Down Your Burdens pt. 2. I screamed at the TV when it aired. Drove me nuts for 10 months.
And to echo Ferris’ mention of the Seinfeld finale (which maybe wasn’t so much underrated as not as bad as everyone says), the finale to last season on Curb Your Enthusiasm, with the Seinfeld reunion (and Michael Richards owning up to his racist rant and humiliating himself for it–for two episodes) was a recent high point in finales for me.
EDIT: I have to give a shout out to “Who Shot Mr. Burns part one.” It has a great closing line…“who will solve this mystery? CAN YOU?” And instead of leaving us with that, we get Chief Wiggum answering, “yeah, sure, I’ll give it a shot. I mean, it’s my job, right?” heh heh
Best Series Finale ever: Six Feet Under. Hands down.
That was pretty good.
Yeah, that was pretty much written for your enjoyment.
As a season finale it was pretty good, but it was weak for a series finale. Same with “Enemy at the Gate”. Of course, even Unending falls a bit short in comparison to Full Circle (Season 6) and Lost City (Season 7).
On the Atlantis side, the best finale has to be The Siege Part 2. Every one of the main characters is a different “Oh god, oh god, we’re all going to die” situation.
^ absolutely. that’s top 3, no doubt.
I agree that most penultimate episodes of the Wire are the best “finales”. 'Specially in the third season which is my favorite episode of television ever. But seeing as the Wire is more like a novel on TV the finales are more Epilogues than finales.
Almost any season finale of LOST is amazing. But the First, Third and Fifth were truly amazing.
Also the most recent finales of Sons of Anarchy and Dexter were great.
I was also a big fan of the Season 4 TNG finale Redemption Pt 1. The surprise return of Denise Crosby sent me in to a tizzy.
The annoying thing about it though was right before watching Redemption Pt2 in a common TV room at college some chump (and apparently a very early purveyor of bulletin boards) spoiled to the whole room who she was and how she got there. A whole summer of wondering and speculated ruined 5 minutes before the episode aired.
How can we have got this far and no-one has mentioned Blakes 7?
The end of that is famous in the UK as one of the best series finales ever, never mind just in Sci fi.
Series Finales - in no particular order
The Shield (hell of a show…amazing ending)
NYPD Blue (after all Sipowicz went htrough…well deserved)
Babylon 5 (also known as…The Episode Where You Need Kleenex)
Magnum PI (yes, I watched it as a kid…great finale)
And of course…
Star Trek - The Next Generation (frakkin awesome)
Even though this was 4 weeks ago, LOL!
Yeah, TNG’s All Good Things was a memorable finale. And now that I think of it, Ron Moore (and someone else) wrote that one?
BSG Finale was epic, amazing, and surprising enough to be satisfying.
I’m very frustrated with great shows like Deadwood that never really had a finale cuz they ended before their time.
Even though the Serenity movie wasn’t a TV finale, to me it served as a perfect “series finale for the series that never had a finale”.
Dollhouse finale. I have mixed feelings about. An average Dollhouse ep was better than the finale.
DS9 and ST ENT finales weren’t good enough to be memorable to me.
ST Voyager was better than those finale-wise.
Doctor Who “David Tennant” finale was awesome. It treated David Tennat like he was more special than other Dr. Whos and that was totally fine with me cuz he was!!
Ah! You’ve just reminded me that I should get back to my personal rewatch of Blakes 7. I think I’m on Season 2 near the end.
It’s not really a rewatch cuz there’s many I haven’t seen and I never saw the finale. But DON’T tell me what happens —I don’t want spoilers.
It’s a great show and holds up amazingly.
DS9’s finale was really 10 episodes long, soooo…
We do not speak of the Enterprise (TNG addendum) finale.
Hmmm, Admiral Janeway gives the Borg Queen the finger. Yeah I see what you’re saying.
Star Trek Voyager was kinda a show that was engineered and predistined to lead up to a satisfying finale because the show was all about getting home to Earth. I thot Voyager toward the end of its run was really firing on all cylinders too… Janeway, Seven and the Doctor in particular were all great characters with fanscinating arcs.
agreed–the Voyager series finale was pretty damn good.