At issue was the reality of death contrasted with the fictional variety.
Too Much Death in Star Trek?
- Thread starter ZapBrannigan
- Start date
This is all moot now anyway -- death is now simply a temporary inconvenience, thanks to the miracle power of Khan Blood!
Dead? Not any more!!! Thanks to the miracle healing power of Khan Blood, you no longer have to suffer the inconvenience of being dead! Annoyed you missed your child's wedding or that important business meeting because you were killed by a Gorn? Don't fret! One drop of our patented miracle Khan Blood, and you'll be as good as new in no time!!!
"I've been a Starfleet Red-shirt for 10 years now, and I've been killed seventeen times in the line of duty. Hostile energy clouds, shuttle crashes, phaser fire, you name it! Thanks to the healing power of Khan Blood, I might live long enough to collect my pension!"
We're so sure that our miracle Khan Blood cure can bring you back to life, that if you're not satisfied we'll give you double your money back!!! Khan Blood!! Try it today!!!! But wait, thats's not all!! If you act now etc etc etc
Thanks, Abrams, you idiot...
Dead? Not any more!!! Thanks to the miracle healing power of Khan Blood, you no longer have to suffer the inconvenience of being dead! Annoyed you missed your child's wedding or that important business meeting because you were killed by a Gorn? Don't fret! One drop of our patented miracle Khan Blood, and you'll be as good as new in no time!!!
"I've been a Starfleet Red-shirt for 10 years now, and I've been killed seventeen times in the line of duty. Hostile energy clouds, shuttle crashes, phaser fire, you name it! Thanks to the healing power of Khan Blood, I might live long enough to collect my pension!"
We're so sure that our miracle Khan Blood cure can bring you back to life, that if you're not satisfied we'll give you double your money back!!! Khan Blood!! Try it today!!!! But wait, thats's not all!! If you act now etc etc etc
Thanks, Abrams, you idiot...
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It never fails. When one has nothing to add they go to the fallback position of bashing Abrams.
You do realize that people have been killed and brought back before in Star Trek? Some guy with pointy ears died and was back the next movie! And that the transporter has been used to cure and de-age Dr. Pulaski in "Unnatural Selection"?
Seems Abrams was just upholding an age-old Star Trek standard.
It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Well, it does open a can of worms. Why should we worry about our heroes dying anymore after the introduction of Khan Blood?
The same way we deal with all the other game changing science/tech from the shows and movies. We either don't dwell on it or come up with a reason it doesn't work 100% of the time.
I don't like to be off topic, but I think you've summed up Man of Steel's creative team perfectly.
Well, in their defense, they were really crappy crewmen.
No, seriously, I hated that ending and the scene just before it as well, "we've recovered 5 people" and Jim is just too relieved, like he forgot how many he sent. 5 means 2 missing, what if the 2 were Spock and Bones, right? No reason to be upset. Or Scotty? He had 3 friends on that shuttle that could have been the 2 missing people but it's like he knew it wasn't them, that I find bad. Not that he didn't dwell on it, but that he was just too relieved. The joke about it was logical to have an emotional outburst wasn't so bad itself but that was the most forced laughter I can remember seeing in any show. It was really bad. Really hurts a good episode that they couldn't finish it better.
I thought a really good depiction of death in Star Trek was the loss of the security officer in The Devil in the Dark. They really didn't stop the whole show but Kirk had a few moments to look over what was left of his man and even though he didn't say anything he showed very clearly the loss he felt.
I really can't think of any deaths on Star Trek that seemed very "tacked on" to make it more than it was. Some stupid deaths, certainly, but if a character acts stupidly that doesn't make it artificial if it's part of the situation. I thought Ensign skippy in the begining of Friday's Child was about the worst one in that catagory.
How do I order?
I'll take two!
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As BillJ mentioned, how about transporters and all the other miracles that have been forgotten within one week of their deployment?
The complaint is really an indictment of all of fantasy and sci-fi. Are you ready to do that? Everyone knows and jokes about how death means nothing in sci-fi. It's not the sole dominion of JJ Abrams.
It takes extremely clever minds to understand all the societal implications of one invention. That's why people rarely anticipate the successes or failures of their own discoveries. If the investor of nylon for example had known what his discovery meant, he would have probably taken his precautions and gotten extremely rich as a result instead of getting screwed so badly that he killed himself as a result, I seem to remember. So you can imagine how bad people who don't no shit about science would be at this.
I think that's one of the things people relish about sci-fi, the fact the death is curable. Nothing is impossible in a sci-fi story.
That's true of all fictions but particularly so of sci. fi. Conan Doyle had killed Sherlock Holmes once and for all, mostly because he hated him because he thought that that kind of literature was beneath him. He needed money though so he found a way to bring him back from the dead. They never found the body, so it was easier to do but I am sure that even if in his story they had found the body, he would have found a way, like maybe he had a twin brother that no one knew about or something like that...
As others noted, we do not know what is out there, but even in your nod to psychological factors, some of the same shipboard threats seen on TOS could lead to death 300 years in our future, such as mass insanity caused by phenomena currently unknown to early 21st century science.
Who is to say the dangerous behavior seen in "The Naked Time" or "The Tholian Web" would not have real world parallels in the space-faring centuries to come?
...or, as explored in numerous sci-fi stories, perhaps they have watched us all along, but find us too uninteresting and/or inferior to contact right now. If you grant that the universe is teeming with life (at present), then imagine what humankind will face 2 to 3 centuries from now? There's no way to imagine a universe where some kind of external threat would not take its toll on space travelling humans. Technology (which will be common / standard in its age) will not provide 100% protection from risk, or death, unless man has moved to the point of becoming God-like (think Sargon).
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We'll become the masters of the universe, yet.
Not really, considering people can still die in the Traditional Trek Way.
That is:
-Getting eaten alive by a monster
-Getting vaporised
-Getting the ship blown out under you/blown out into space
I really fail to see how Khan's blood could help you with any of that. Though I am kind-of curious about how assimilation would go.
That is:
-Getting eaten alive by a monster
-Getting vaporised
-Getting the ship blown out under you/blown out into space
I really fail to see how Khan's blood could help you with any of that. Though I am kind-of curious about how assimilation would go.
That would be some serious shit if Khan's blood could put you back together after being vaporized!
That would be some serious shit if Khan's blood could put you back together after being vaporized!
It makes me think of those old Hammer movies where you could just put a drop of blood in some ashes and *poof* instant Cristopher Lee.
Currently known as the "Wolverine Effect"
That would be some serious shit if Khan's blood could put you back together after being vaporized!
It makes me think of those old Hammer movies where you could just put a drop of blood in some ashes and *poof* instant Cristopher Lee.
That would be some serious shit if Khan's blood could put you back together after being vaporized!
"There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead."
—Miracle Max
