Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x07 - "What Is Starfleet?"

Laura Cynthia Chambers said:

If he hadn't been the only new character, would the audience all have picked him as the one who would die?

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The Salt Umpire said:

And all of this diminishes the impact of the story if most of the characters are 'safe' and forces life impacting events onto Una or La'An or someone else since TUS have to (mostly) adhere to TOS canon.

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Zombie Cheerleader said:

If the writers/actors/directors do their jobs right then we are willing to suspend disbelief and even the star of the show might not survive.

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The Salt Umpire said:

And all of this diminishes the impact of the story if most of the characters are 'safe' and forces life impacting events onto Una or La'An or someone else since TUS have to (mostly) adhere to TOS canon.

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The Gatekeeper said:

Yeah, no. A main character's departure is almost always known in advance these days simply because the news of the actor's departure is always reported on entertainment news sites. Even on shows which have a reputation for high morality rates amongst the main characters like The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, you'll note those deaths are almost always relegated to certain key episodes of the season, usually premieres, finales or midseason episodes. Indeed, the one time Walking Dead deviated from this pattern, it was advertised for two months in advance which episode the character would be departing in. There actually is a practical reason for this, as these episodes tend to be the ones that get higher viewership and therefore you want to make sure significant events like the death/departure of a main character happens in an episode everybody is watching. If for whatever reason that's not possible, get the information out there which episode a character is leaving to make sure everyone tunes in.

Bottom line, main characters getting killed is not something that happens by surprise in modern television. 99% of the time, you know damn well the main cast will survive the episode and that other one percent is when the character's death/departure has to happen due to publicly known information. The whole "there are no stakes in prequels because I know this character has to survive" is nonsense. We always know in every show the main characters survive because of how the entertainment news industry works.

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Eckauskas said:

I didn't know months in advance that Hemmer was going to die. Obviously he wasn't going to remain the Chief Engineer forever (neither is Pelia), but that doesn't mean his story had to end with him yeeting himself to his doom.

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Turtletrekker said:

Hemmer wasn't a regular. He was recurring and no different than Gamble.

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Eckauskas said:

This doesn't detract from my point though. Their story doesn't have to automatically end with death.

And again, for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying they SHOULD kill anyone off. Just that putting characters we know are alive many years later into life threatening situations feels pointless when you have other characters who's fate is unknown.

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Turtletrekker said:

Hemmer wasn't a regular. He was recurring and no different than Gamble.

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Eckauskas said:

I didn't know months in advance that Hemmer was going to die.

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Leo Walsh said:

Watching TOS when it aired, we all knew after a few weeks that all the regulars had impenetrable plot armor.

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Etbj SMY said:

After the end of SHORE LEAVE, anyway.

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