In Starship Mine, much is made of how much everyone can't stand Commander Hutchinson. He's a fantastic comic relief for the first part of the episode, and pairing him with Data is comedy gold. Then he gets killed. Did anyone else feel sorry for him? It's not like he was that bad of a guy--just a little too talky. I always thought he kind of got the short shrift. Maybe they renamed the base "the Calvin Hutchinson Memorial Base," or at least rolled out a "Hutch" memorial color scheme.
He seemed like a decent enough guy,he was just a small-talking tool. And, yeah. it kind of sucks that he died. (Esp. since Geordi is fired with the same (or similar) weapon and didn't die. It just seemed like killing him for the sake of killing him/getting him out of the picture so our heroes could save the day unencumbered. It've been nice for him to be involved more in saving the day. Oh well. Seeing him and Data walk around talking about nothing. Although Data fucks up by saying that humans prefer a body temperature of around 68 degrees. Which only dead humans prefer.
Hutch was a decent enough fellow, & genuinely interested in being sociable. I don't think anyone specifically hated the guy. He was just considered to be a bit of a nuisance, as a host. I can see how the crew might be disinclined to make mention of him, as events progressed, being they were consumed with other problems, throughout the rest of the episode. I felt bad for the guy. He was obviously a noted Starfleet officer, & his loss is certainly tragic I think the major flaw of that episode is that in the final scene, the crew is quipping light-heartedly about Picard's saddle & perhaps hinting that he used horseback riding as an excuse to escape Hutch's reception. Pretty crude to be mocking the guy now that he has died tragically, as a result of the Enterprise being the stage for a hostile takeover & robbery. Thanks a lot Enterprise crew. Come and look down your noses at us again sometime. Maybe you can find another way to get someone else killed, for your amusement. Feel free to come to the memorial service, & regale us with your tales of how bloody annoying the guy was
I've seen that episode a dozen times, I'm sure, and I didn't even realize he got killed. I thought he was kinda lurking in the background as another hostage. Does this say more about his personality or mine? On a more serious note, he was mildly amusing as a TV character, but as a real person, he would have been annoying to the extreme.
I felt bad for him too. He was a bit annoying, but not in any overly negative way. He certainly didn't deserve to be lightly written off by the crew at the end of the episode.
A better way to keep the mood light: instead of Hutch being murdered and unmourned (onscreen, at least), his vocal cords are temporarily paralyzed by the phaser shot. At the end of the episode, a solicitous Mr. Data promises to keep Hutch company, and regales him, for several hours, with stories of re-aligning the phase inverters and performing level three diagnostics. Hutch finally gets a taste of his own medicine, and everyone laughs.
I thought the senior staff treated him in a somewhat mean fashion. Speaking of which, what ever happened to the rest of the Enterprise crew? I always thought that the reason Geordi survived is because Orton used a lower setting on his weapon to shoot Geordi than his accomplice did when he shot Hutch.
I didn't even realize he had died either. I figured he simply was in the background somewhere. I'm going to have to rewatch the episode.
When we go back to the starbase (either after the commercial or from a scene on the Enterprise I don't recall which) we see someone pulling a sheet over Hutch's body. Since only he and Geordi get shot when the attack goes sour it follows that "Hutch" is the body that was just covered. I wonder where that idea comes from? Did the terrorists think that everyone needed some "relief" from all of the stress and decided to cover up the body? I can't say that one of the first things that'd come to mind for me when someone just got killed is to cover the body. Unless, of course, that person was a wrap and its cheaper to cover a humanoid body-shaped prop than it is to pay an actor to lay there.
"I have to admit that it has a sort of strange fascination - how long can two people talk about nothing?" - Riker, to Troi about Data's and Cmdr. Hutchinson's non-stop small talk