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Commander Hutchinson: a raw deal?

Personally, I have very little other reason to enjoy coming here beyond analyzing to death this very kind of subject. I'm actually thankful this place is still here, for just that reason :lol:

That said, I've come to expect the weekly introduced expendable character in my Trek soup. I just didn't like that he was made the butt of a joke postmortem. That was a bit too far for them imho
 
You know, this death has always rubbed me the wrong way too! Something is off about the tone of it. I think it's the disconnect between our heroes bitching about him, then he actually seems like a nice amiable guy, and then the brutal abruptness of his death. The Trek characters do a lot of stepping over the bodies of random redshirts, but this one hits differently because of the context around it.

The fix would have been to just smooth it all out more... like if the setup didn't change, he shouldn't die. But if you keep the death, either make him more off-putting to justify the TNG characters attitudes, or soften their dialogue about him to match the existing performance. The elements just needed to be brought into line with each other, which they aren't in the completed episode.
 
I thought the dialogue about him was fine. I read the characters as poking fun of and perhaps being mildly exasperated by him, not bitching about him. I don't feel that there's any need to soften it. It reminds me a bit of how good friends will poke light fun of each other.
 
I think the problem was that Geordi was hurt, and they didn't want Crusher's attention divided between two patients. Hutch was the one they didn't need back next week.
 
Sakonna said:
You know, this death has always rubbed me the wrong way too! Something is off about the tone of it. I think it's the disconnect between our heroes bitching about him, then he actually seems like a nice amiable guy, and then the brutal abruptness of his death. The Trek characters do a lot of stepping over the bodies of random redshirts, but this one hits differently because of the context around it.

The fix would have been to just smooth it all out more... like if the setup didn't change, he shouldn't die. But if you keep the death, either make him more off-putting to justify the TNG characters attitudes, or soften their dialogue about him to match the existing performance. The elements just needed to be brought into line with each other, which they aren't in the completed episode.
Click to expand...
I feel like it was a little too much too. They aren't just poking fun at him. They legit don't even want to be around the guy. To the point Worf & Geordi are queuing to be excused, & Picard is cutting & running at the 1st oportunity.. It's not terrible behavior IMHO, but it's stuff like this that makes it hard to defend against the rather commonplace claims that the D senior staff were elitist, snooty D-bags to outsiders
 
Certainly, Hutch deserved better. I guess another reason why his death escapes my notice is that when I think about "Starship Mine's" weaknesses, I don't think about the death of a one-off character. I think about why the hell didn't they...
1. Exchange Picard for Worf
2. Triple the number of terrorists
3. Make it a two-parter.
 
Yeah, it's not episode-ruining or anything, but I do find it a false note every time. (And what else is TrekBBS for if not dissecting minor failures of otherwise successful episodes from 30 years ago? :bolian:)

There's a few Trek deaths like that, every rewatch I think "they did that one wrong." The random redshirt vaporized in Ops in "Civil Defense." Connolly in "Brother." A handful of others.

It's also interesting that this is one of the areas where Enterprise beats all it's Berman era counterparts. Those characters respond to their redshirt deaths like an actual person has died.
 
Sakonna said:
It's also interesting that this is one of the areas where Enterprise beats all it's Berman era counterparts. Those characters respond to their redshirt deaths like an actual person has died.
Click to expand...

To be fair, that was more Scott Bakula's doing than anything else. In "STRANGE NEW WORLD", Rostov was supposed to die originally. Bakula didn't want his crew redshirted like that. He felt that everyone on the ship mattered, and it's part of the reason why the first crewman who dies is during the Xindi arc in season 3.


But in-universe, it does seem to show that Starfleet seemed to care more about their lower decks crew in the early Starfleet years.
 
Oddish said:
Certainly, Hutch deserved better. I guess another reason why his death escapes my notice is that when I think about "Starship Mine's" weaknesses, I don't think about the death of a one-off character. I think about why the hell didn't they...
1. Exchange Picard for Worf
2. Triple the number of terrorists
3. Make it a two-parter.
Click to expand...
It wouldn't necessarily have to be Worf per say, but I see what you mean. Plus, they weren't even terrorists. As a raiders aboard ship exercise, it is admittedly pretty flat. Roga Danar is literally the only legit raid on that ship that kept me interested, short of Borg incursion, or a rogue Data. In fact, I've often been dismayed that even during emergency situations on the ship, no one is even really running thru corridors most of the time. I can't recount the number of times I've been like "Why are they trotting right now?" I guess it was just a different time kind of production.
 
Not saying it's reasonable, it just looks like it. I'm probably reading into more than what's there... I don't know, I've had some things happen this week that have likely altered my perceptions a bit.

Probably better that observation just gets ignored.
 
Farscape One said:
To be fair, that was more Scott Bakula's doing than anything else. In "STRANGE NEW WORLD", Rostov was supposed to die originally. Bakula didn't want his crew redshirted like that. He felt that everyone on the ship mattered, and it's part of the reason why the first crewman who dies is during the Xindi arc in season 3.
Click to expand...

We get a hint of that in TNG's "Lower Decks", too.
 
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