What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

[FredH]

I never felt that “I’ve always known I’ll die alone” was any sort of precognition, or meant to be. It was just a nagging, irrational fear/expectation, of a sort I think many of us have. Plus, it was obviously a setup for him not dying at the end of The Final Frontier, when he thinks the Bird of Prey is about to kill him, only for him to be beamed up and helped instead.

And intentionally or not, Generations seems to make a point of disproving it, in accordance with its own themes: At first, Kirk appears to have died alone, in the fiery blowout on the Enterprise-B (cf. “Time is the fire in which we burn”). But later, when he does die, it’s in Picard’s company, no longer alone (“Time is a friend that sees us through”).

 

[cooleddie74]

^
Every bit of this.

 

[Christopher]

Edith Keeler has entered the chat...

What? First off, Keeler just offered a generally optimistic conjecture about humanity's future that fortunately managed to come true, which is very different from imagining one can predict the circumstances of one's own death. (She would have been much better off if she could have done so.) Second, Keeler never claimed to "know" this would happen, merely to hope and believe that it could. Expressing belief and asserting certain knowledge are two radically different things. In the absence of evidence, the former is aspirational, but the latter is delusional.

I don't know. I've always known/felt since middle/high school that I would be a bachelor/single for the rest of my life and here I am at 55 and I'm still single/bachelor with two cats to keep me company. Sometimes there are things you just "know".

That's not too different from my own experience, but that's not precognition, it's just pattern recognition, knowing one's own personality and situation and projecting how it might affect one's future. I certainly never assumed I "knew" it, just that I was aware of it as a possibility.

Everyone makes guesses and assumptions about the future. Most of them never come true and we forget about them, but the few that do coincidentally resemble what actually happens stand out in our memories, creating the illusion of future "knowledge." This is a very commonplace cognitive fallacy.

I never felt that “I’ve always known I’ll die alone” was any sort of precognition, or meant to be. It was just a nagging, irrational fear/expectation, of a sort I think many of us have.

That's just it -- I don't buy that Kirk would be so irrational. I could buy him fearing he'd die alone, but having him say he's "always known" it is just silly.

Plus, it was obviously a setup for him not dying at the end of The Final Frontier, when he thinks the Bird of Prey is about to kill him, only for him to be beamed up and helped instead.

The fact that something is obvious does not make it good writing. Generally you want to avoid being too obvious about that kind of contrivance.

 

[Jayson1]

I never felt that “I’ve always known I’ll die alone” was any sort of precognition, or meant to be. It was just a nagging, irrational fear/expectation, of a sort I think many of us have. Plus, it was obviously a setup for him not dying at the end of The Final Frontier, when he thinks the Bird of Prey is about to kill him, only for him to be beamed up and helped instead.

And intentionally or not, Generations seems to make a point of disproving it, in accordance with its own themes: At first, Kirk appears to have died alone, in the fiery blowout on the Enterprise-B (cf. “Time is the fire in which we burn”). But later, when he does die, it’s in Picard’s company, no longer alone (“Time is a friend that sees us through”).

I feel like Kirk did though still die alone. Picard was there but he just meet the guy. Spock and Bones weren't there though.

 

[FredH]

That's just it -- I don't buy that Kirk would be so irrational. I could buy him fearing he'd die alone, but having him say he's "always known" it is just silly.

This really does seem to be in the category “I know you’re going to be the death of me someday”, or “I know this isn’t going to end well” (or “I knew it’d be something stupid like this!”). No I don’t. It’s an emotion, and an expression. Kirk doesn’t literally know it, or even think he literally knows it. He’s expressing how he emotionally sees things going, not knowing in any literal way.* I daresay there’s not a human alive who doesn’t do this sort of thing — even should they say (or even should they believe) that they don’t.

*He’s also not going “OMG, I’m definitely going to die alone, I’m terrified!” He isn’t irrational. He’s just human.

The fact that something is obvious does not make it good writing. Generally you want to avoid being too obvious about that kind of contrivance.

No doubt, but I did not suggest that it was good writing, only what it was doing in the script. (I’m not a defender of TFF, generally.).

 

[camdudetenger2018]

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