Commander Hutchinson: a raw deal?
- Thread starter Ragitsu
- Start date
But it is definitely quantifiable.
Is it? If so, does it automatically indicate severity?
A rich man loses one million dollars and takes the loss on the chin.
A substantially poorer man loses ten-thousand dollars and is evicted.
Look, I thought Carey got shafted worse than Hutch did. I didn't come up with that position because of any numerical valuation system of who experienced more pain. I just thought Hutch's lot (a quiet and comfortable post on a starbase overseeing baryon sweeps and having receptions, followed by an relatively quick death from a disruptor blast) was better than Carey's (six and a half years trapped in the Delta Quadrant working under a person who should have been brigged for assaulting you, but instead was promoted for it, and being murdered only days from home). It's purely subjective, and I respect your right to disagree.
This is what bothers me most about it. The thing is, a lot was made beforehand of Hutch being an unbearably trite host (Whether you consider him genuine or not) to the lengths that Picard's crew were queuing to get out of the reception altogether. It's actually understandable that he'd be an overzealous guy. He's commanding some random Starfleet base.
It's probably actually pretty boring out there. To have the flagship come there would be a rare excitement, & so obviously his banter & behavior would be overblown. He's probably become like that just to stay sane out there, imho. I see a guy who's starved for company, & fumbling to make an impression to get it. It might be funny to joke about that at 1st, but not after he's dead.
But we get the clear & obvious gag of having even the socially distant Picard himself coming up with an excuse to ditch his people there, to go horseback riding, driving the plot device of him being back aboard ship. Troi & the rest all saw through it & even gave him looks about it. Picard took the captain's privilege to cut & run.
So the end joke, of having Worf find the saddle, is a schtick for someone to rib Picard about the lame excuse he'd come up with to get out of the reception... the DEAD guy's reception. It's a joke at Picard's expense about how he'd drummed up a lame excuse to get away from the unbearable man, who'd just been murdered. It's in uncharacteristically poor taste imho.
So not only don't we get any respects paid to Hutch. He get's mocked again, postmortem.
Tasha is abruptly snuffed out by malevolent ichor.
Hutch is suddenly cut down in an act of violence motivated by greed.
Who suffered more? Whose death is worse?
Tasha suffered years of hell before being rescued from that gang infested sewer of a planet she grew up on. She finally gets to a place where she can thrive, and Armus casually murders her. Yeah, I'd say she beats Hutch too.
And while Armus is beyond horrible, let's remember what his fate is: eternity in a self-created hell. Unless someone either foolishly liberates him or figures out how to destroy him.
And while Armus is beyond horrible, let's remember what his fate is: eternity in a self-created hell. Unless someone either foolishly liberates him or figures out how to destroy him.
All four of them experienced quick and senseless deaths. By your logic, Marla Aster's demise thanks to a long-forgotten antipersonnel mine wasn't so bad compared to Joe Carey's own because she resided comfortably on board the Enterprise with her son in the Alpha Quadrant.
From an in-universe standpoint, people dying is obviously a tragedy, and making it a 'competition' seems remarkably callous.
From an out-of-universe standpoint, which is how I think Oddish and earlier myself have approached this, certain characters' deaths do feel more as though the character got shafted than others.
It's hard for me to feel much of anything over the death of a one-shot character who was pretty obviously brought in with the express intention that they'd be dead by the end of the episode, and whose death will almost certainly be unremarked upon for the rest of the series.
If anything, I think DISCO may have proven that it's possible to go too far in the other direction on this, as Airiam almost got a larger role after her death than she had prior to it...but it was nice to see DISCO taking at least one recurring character death seriously.
I didn't expect Hutch or Marla Aster or Remmick or that person from "The Sound of Her Voice" or the numerous redshirts in TOS to be particularly remarked upon after their deaths, because that hasn't typically been the nature of Trek series and how they handle character deaths, and expecting anything different is optimistic but IMO also unrealistic.
I did expect Yar and Airiam and Culber and Jadzia Dax and Spock and Carey to get mentioned, because they were recurring or regular characters, and consequently for the average viewer their deaths were more significant events.
It's not fair, and it's not realistic in-universe (we hope), but it's the nature of television, especially television that's got runtimes to consider.
From an out-of-universe standpoint, which is how I think Oddish and earlier myself have approached this, certain characters' deaths do feel more as though the character got shafted than others.
It's hard for me to feel much of anything over the death of a one-shot character who was pretty obviously brought in with the express intention that they'd be dead by the end of the episode, and whose death will almost certainly be unremarked upon for the rest of the series.
If anything, I think DISCO may have proven that it's possible to go too far in the other direction on this, as Airiam almost got a larger role after her death than she had prior to it...but it was nice to see DISCO taking at least one recurring character death seriously.
I didn't expect Hutch or Marla Aster or Remmick or that person from "The Sound of Her Voice" or the numerous redshirts in TOS to be particularly remarked upon after their deaths, because that hasn't typically been the nature of Trek series and how they handle character deaths, and expecting anything different is optimistic but IMO also unrealistic.
I did expect Yar and Airiam and Culber and Jadzia Dax and Spock and Carey to get mentioned, because they were recurring or regular characters, and consequently for the average viewer their deaths were more significant events.
It's not fair, and it's not realistic in-universe (we hope), but it's the nature of television, especially television that's got runtimes to consider.
Reminds me of that terrible ending to Genesis, where also at least one person was killed and the episode ends with Troi and Crusher laughing about Barclay being neurotic.
Unchecked, it results in a grotesque exaggeration of the fallacy of relative privation.
Well, I guess I'll just have to grotesquely exaggerate, then.
I was being unbelievably and unashamedly sarcastic.
I mean that sounds like the thing the novelverse would come up with. Only that he'd also be a temporal agent who would work together with Jadzia Dax, Chekov and half a dozen one off characters from across the franchise.
I'd say for us as viewers, that's OK. We're just watching entertainment after all, these aren't real people.
I'd say it's more problematic when talking about (in-universe) crew members, especially the captain. When Janeway travels back in time for Seven, not Carey, this isn't conveying the right message.
(even though I realise this probably is just the result of sloppy writing / not crosschecking separate episodes, and probably wasn't intentional by the writers).
Deaths of characters affect everyone differently, both in universe and to the viewing audience. I don't think there's anything abnormal in saying who you think gets a worse deal out of the rest.
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.
Marla Aster got a raw deal, but her son obviously had it worse because he lost the last family member that was around him.
Tasha getting killed by Armus was tragic, but at least she died doing exactly what she wanted and was trained to do... protect her crew.
Carey was killed only weeks from Voyager getting home. That's definitely a raw deal.
Hutchinson was killed by greedy pirates while hosting a reception for the command crew of Starfleet's flagship. Not exactly a good way to go, either.
For me personally, I actually feel worse about the deaths of Carey and Aster than Hutchinson and Yar because children are involved. In the end, they will suffer the most because they are the survivors of sudden loss.
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".
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.
Marla Aster got a raw deal, but her son obviously had it worse because he lost the last family member that was around him.
Tasha getting killed by Armus was tragic, but at least she died doing exactly what she wanted and was trained to do... protect her crew.
Carey was killed only weeks from Voyager getting home. That's definitely a raw deal.
Hutchinson was killed by greedy pirates while hosting a reception for the command crew of Starfleet's flagship. Not exactly a good way to go, either.
For me personally, I actually feel worse about the deaths of Carey and Aster than Hutchinson and Yar because children are involved. In the end, they will suffer the most because they are the survivors of sudden loss.
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".
