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Commander Hutchinson: a raw deal?

^I agree that knowing that someone was alive but (probably) lost to you and that you might never see them alive again (at least in person) would be a special kind of hell, and that it might be better to just go on believing they were dead. See also "The Visitor".
 
One of my favorite conversations in TNG was Riker and Data in "The Bonding" talking about loss and how close you are with the person seems to dictate how bad you feel. It's true to real life, because we are likely not going to feel the death of a stranger as much as someone we know well.

Though he does lament that human history would have turned out better if that weren't the case. A difference in psychology is likely why certain species experienced far less (or no!) intraspecies warfare; Denobulans - with their huge families and willingness to engage in new bonds - probably had fewer conflicts of note residing in their historical records. There may even be species that expressed their closeness equally with other civilizations!
 
And despite never even knowing the names of Carey's boys, I feel even worse for them than Jeremy Aster because they lost their father three times... first, when Voyager was declared lost, again when they (presumably) get the news of him being so far away that he might as well be dead (this is a matter of perspective, but it can easily be seen by someone, especially a kid, that a 60 year journey trying to get back is the same thing as being killed), and finally his death in "FRIENDSHIP ONE".
Well said. Janeway might say that Voyager is a family... but some members clearly matter more to her than others. :mad:
 
Though he does lament that human history would have turned out better if that weren't the case. A difference in psychology is likely why certain species experienced far less (or no!) intraspecies warfare; Denobulans - with their huge families and willingness to engage in new bonds - probably had fewer conflicts of note residing in their historical records. There may even be species that expressed their closeness equally with other civilizations!

Riker did say that, and he has a point. It's one of the reasons why that convetsation always stuck with me.
 
Favoritism in families doesn't automatically mean parental. Some people are closer to certain siblings than others, some cousins are closer to other cousins than their own siblings, uncles are closer to some nephews/nieces than others, etc.

And reasons vary wildly. Shared childhood experiences, shared loss, shared interests... sometimes even just being around when every other family member is anywhere else but around you can lead to being closer to that person than with others.

And sometimes family is simply friends who you've shared so much with that you are bonded like a blood relative. I have no siblings, but my best friend is my brother in every way but actual blood.

"Family don't end in blood."
Bobby Singer, "NO REST FOR THE WICKED"
SUPERNATURAL
 
Well said. Janeway might say that Voyager is a family... but some members clearly matter more to her than others. :mad:

It's not that I mind Janeway as a private person having her favorites. It' s only natural that someone like Tuvok, or in this case, 7, would be closer to her than, say Mortimer Harren or Carey. The problem I have with it is that she acts on it as a captain (ok, ex-captain in this case, she's an admiral in that future) deciding who she will save and who she won't even though she had the capability to save both of them. If only the writers had added a single technobabble line about how she could only travel back to this particular point in time and not earlier, the entire issue wouldn't have existed.
 
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If only the writers had added a single technobabble line about how she could only travel back to this particular point in time and not earlier, the entire issue wouldn't have existed.
Very true. Yet another example of the showrunners' sloppiness.
 
^^Yep. They just didn't think through (or worse, didn't care to think through) the Carey implications when they scripted "Endgame"...not that the handling of his death was much better before that, but "Endgame" really rubbed salt in the wound.
 
It sure seems like the writers forgot he existed past "STATE OF FLUX" in season 1, because all his other appearances before "FRIENDSHIP ONE" were flashbacks or time travel into the past.

They carried a few other characters along, but they didn't Carey him along.
 
Ironically, the decision to discard Carey early on really hurt B'Elanna's growth as a character. Here was a character who was in a position to spend seven years slowly evolving and developing from "violent renegade" to "valued member of the Voyager family". But by having her elevated to chief engineer the way she was, half that development was already over in one episode. Not as bad as Harry and Chakotay, who didn't develop at all, but still a waste.

Carey was never meant to be a main character... if he'd survived to the end of the series, we wouldn't really think much about him. He just happened to have been shafted at the start and end of the series, and ignored through the middle of it.
 
It sure seems like the writers forgot he existed past "STATE OF FLUX" in season 1, because all his other appearances before "FRIENDSHIP ONE" were flashbacks or time travel into the past.

They carried a few other characters along, but they didn't Carey him along.

I really wonder sometimes whether the writers thought he'd died in S2 along with so many recurring characters they'd set up to that point.
 
Hell, Carey was killed offscreen in "BEFORE AND AFTER", when Tom is telling Kes about the 'year of hell'.

The guy never got a break.
 
I really wonder sometimes whether the writers thought he'd died in S2 along with so many recurring characters they'd set up to that point.
I still maintain that they should have had him and the problem Maquis jump ship on Planet 37's. Right or wrong, B'Elanna was chief engineer at that point, and they weren't going to go anywhere with the Maquis. So just do there what they did in Basics Part 2: eliminate the characters who you feel have nothing more to contribute.
 
...though the whole idea that anyone on Voyager could have "nothing more to contribute", given their circumstances, sounds more like a failure of imagination on the part of the writers than like the in-universe reality of the situation.
 
...though the whole idea that anyone on Voyager could have "nothing more to contribute", given their circumstances, sounds more like a failure of imagination on the part of the writers than like the in-universe reality of the situation.
That goes without saying. If the VOY showrunners didn't do anything with Harry, a character they could literally have done nearly anything with, they could muck up anything!
 
Carey was never meant to be a main character... if he'd survived to the end of the series, we wouldn't really think much about him. He just happened to have been shafted at the start and end of the series, and ignored through the middle of it.

That sounds pretty bad, yeah. But some even get a worse deal ...

Take Nick Locarno, whose intended redemption in Voyager got shafted before the series even started.
 
Take Nick Locarno, whose intended redemption in Voyager got shafted before the series even started.
I'll go along with that. After being expelled, he probably wound up drinking himself to death in some crappy dive in a grimy interstellar outpost. That or he pissed off a two meter tall Nausican and wound up on the wrong end of a dagger. And as he lay on the dirty floor drowning in his own blood, the last thing that passed through his mind was the inspiring Picard speech that had doomed him years before: "The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth!"
 
^ I would have really liked it, had they rehabilitated him in Voyager according to the original idea, but I can understand they didn't want to pay those royalties for every episode.

I wonder, suppose that in the very last episode (Endgame) the crew would have discovered that Tom Paris and Nick Locarno really were the same person all along, would that have meant paying those royalties only for that last episode ? :)
 
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