![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Thirty Days of Star Trek: Saddest Event
Aug. 24th, 2019 10:42 amDay 5 - Saddest Event
Tricky. Now, when I was a wee fangirl and in school, I sobbed my heart out over Spock‘s death in Wrath of Khan and „I am, and always shall be your friend“... but he got better. The Enterprise, the original, did not when it was detroyed in the next movie, and teenage me certainly was in mourning for a while, but hey - the Klingon bird of prey as a vessel to save the whales with was pretty cool.
Older me was in different degrees affected by the various deaths and destructions in various incarnations of the franchise. I would say one of the most heartbreaking (in a good, well-written way) episodes was certainly The Visitor (DS9, Season 4). Watching Jake Sisko literally give his life chasing after his father, and not just in a one time sacrifice way but in a „devotes entire existence, thereby destroying relationships and chance to have a life of his own“ way, was sad and immensely moving, very well played by the actors, too, and considering the way the show ends, which visually echoes The Visitor in our last glimpse at Jake, there‘s even additional ambigous poignancy - is Jake at the end of the series better equipped to deal with what happens to his father than he is in The Visitor, or will history repeat itself?
(Note, re: DS9: the actual deaths of the show of recurring and regular characters don‘t have this effect on me, probably because they tend to be either blatantly outside imposed - actor leaves show - or blatantly in service of another characters development, which is more infuriating than anything else. Something that‘s also sad but mostly frustrating is the (almost) complete lack of Garak/Bashir interaction post Our Man Bashir till the show finale, and the reason for that is notorious.)
But would I call it the saddest event in Trek for me? That‘s a bit too much, surely. For the Rebootverse, it‘s easier to answer - the destruction of Vulcan. Blowing up a planet in which the audience has been invested for decades will do the trick, to be sure. Fortunately, the Reboot movies have their continuity separately from the Primeverse.
Regarding our new kids on the block: I‘m certainly not happy about the characters Discovery killed off, but except for one case, it works as part of the narrative for me. The situation our crew is in at the end of s2 certainly also qualifies as heartbreaking, but in a h/c fanfiction way - they still have each other, and the situation itself Might Get Better, plus it certainly offers fantastic narrative possibilities.
Which brings me to my eventual choice. Which is a meta one. As I wrote in this post, one key difference between TNG and DS9 on the one hand, and all subsequent series in the Star Trek franchise so far on the other hand, is that both TNG and DS9 went out of their way to be their own thing in relation to their predecessor, and only started to use stuff from the previous show(s) when they were already well established. To me, the turning point was Voyager using a lot of Alpha Quadrant races and some TNG characters instead of relying on its Delta Quadrant setting, but as has been pointed out to me in the comments to the earlier entry, it could also be seen as DS9 deciding to get Worf from TNG to boost the ratings. Regardless; post Voyager, every incarnation of Star Trek, both on tv and on the big screen, was set in the past, and the franchise explicitly became about fannish nostalgia instead of trying to build something new. Even the new Picard show, which I‘m very much looking forward to, and which is finally set in the 24th century, post-Nemesis again, is a blatant play at nostalgia by its very premise. (Just because it plays into TNG nostalgia instead of TOS nostalgia doesn‘t mean it‘s different in this regard.)
Now, none of this means all the shows don‘t do their own thing as well. I would argue that Discovery, while anything but perfect, is the most innovative incarnation of Star Trek since the Voyager pilot was broadcast, for example. But as I mentioned in the other post, there isn‘t any real reason why it couldn‘t have been set post-Nemesis (with a new alien race taking the place of the Klingons, thereby also making everyone‘s continuity-loving life easier), other than the wish to tie Michael to the most prominent dysfunctional family in the rich-in-dysfunctional families ST franchise. Again, it‘s not that I begrudge the Vulcan family plot per se, au contraire, I loved it. Disco is the first Trek which really did something with Amanda, this Spock is the first non-Nimoy Spock which really does it for me, and I love Michael‘s relationships to all three of her adopted family. But still. all in all, I would say the saddest event in Star Trek history is the point, whenever it was, when the ST franchise stopped about looking forward and instead became, not exclusively but mostly, about looking back. About nostalgia for its own past, and the longing to bring it back. In short, when ST became Jake Sisko in The Visitor.
( The Other Days )
Tricky. Now, when I was a wee fangirl and in school, I sobbed my heart out over Spock‘s death in Wrath of Khan and „I am, and always shall be your friend“... but he got better. The Enterprise, the original, did not when it was detroyed in the next movie, and teenage me certainly was in mourning for a while, but hey - the Klingon bird of prey as a vessel to save the whales with was pretty cool.
Older me was in different degrees affected by the various deaths and destructions in various incarnations of the franchise. I would say one of the most heartbreaking (in a good, well-written way) episodes was certainly The Visitor (DS9, Season 4). Watching Jake Sisko literally give his life chasing after his father, and not just in a one time sacrifice way but in a „devotes entire existence, thereby destroying relationships and chance to have a life of his own“ way, was sad and immensely moving, very well played by the actors, too, and considering the way the show ends, which visually echoes The Visitor in our last glimpse at Jake, there‘s even additional ambigous poignancy - is Jake at the end of the series better equipped to deal with what happens to his father than he is in The Visitor, or will history repeat itself?
(Note, re: DS9: the actual deaths of the show of recurring and regular characters don‘t have this effect on me, probably because they tend to be either blatantly outside imposed - actor leaves show - or blatantly in service of another characters development, which is more infuriating than anything else. Something that‘s also sad but mostly frustrating is the (almost) complete lack of Garak/Bashir interaction post Our Man Bashir till the show finale, and the reason for that is notorious.)
But would I call it the saddest event in Trek for me? That‘s a bit too much, surely. For the Rebootverse, it‘s easier to answer - the destruction of Vulcan. Blowing up a planet in which the audience has been invested for decades will do the trick, to be sure. Fortunately, the Reboot movies have their continuity separately from the Primeverse.
Regarding our new kids on the block: I‘m certainly not happy about the characters Discovery killed off, but except for one case, it works as part of the narrative for me. The situation our crew is in at the end of s2 certainly also qualifies as heartbreaking, but in a h/c fanfiction way - they still have each other, and the situation itself Might Get Better, plus it certainly offers fantastic narrative possibilities.
Which brings me to my eventual choice. Which is a meta one. As I wrote in this post, one key difference between TNG and DS9 on the one hand, and all subsequent series in the Star Trek franchise so far on the other hand, is that both TNG and DS9 went out of their way to be their own thing in relation to their predecessor, and only started to use stuff from the previous show(s) when they were already well established. To me, the turning point was Voyager using a lot of Alpha Quadrant races and some TNG characters instead of relying on its Delta Quadrant setting, but as has been pointed out to me in the comments to the earlier entry, it could also be seen as DS9 deciding to get Worf from TNG to boost the ratings. Regardless; post Voyager, every incarnation of Star Trek, both on tv and on the big screen, was set in the past, and the franchise explicitly became about fannish nostalgia instead of trying to build something new. Even the new Picard show, which I‘m very much looking forward to, and which is finally set in the 24th century, post-Nemesis again, is a blatant play at nostalgia by its very premise. (Just because it plays into TNG nostalgia instead of TOS nostalgia doesn‘t mean it‘s different in this regard.)
Now, none of this means all the shows don‘t do their own thing as well. I would argue that Discovery, while anything but perfect, is the most innovative incarnation of Star Trek since the Voyager pilot was broadcast, for example. But as I mentioned in the other post, there isn‘t any real reason why it couldn‘t have been set post-Nemesis (with a new alien race taking the place of the Klingons, thereby also making everyone‘s continuity-loving life easier), other than the wish to tie Michael to the most prominent dysfunctional family in the rich-in-dysfunctional families ST franchise. Again, it‘s not that I begrudge the Vulcan family plot per se, au contraire, I loved it. Disco is the first Trek which really did something with Amanda, this Spock is the first non-Nimoy Spock which really does it for me, and I love Michael‘s relationships to all three of her adopted family. But still. all in all, I would say the saddest event in Star Trek history is the point, whenever it was, when the ST franchise stopped about looking forward and instead became, not exclusively but mostly, about looking back. About nostalgia for its own past, and the longing to bring it back. In short, when ST became Jake Sisko in The Visitor.
( The Other Days )
