Dehner's Last Words

[MAGolding]

I saw "Where No Man Has Gone Before" last night and once again I wondered exactly what Elizabeth Dehner meant by her last words.

DEHNER: I'm sorry. You can't know what it's like to be almost a god.

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/2.htm

I can see two different possible interpretations.

She might have said "I'm sorry." for going with Mitchel and abandoning her previous loyalties, and then have added "You can't know what is like to be almost a god." as an explanation of her mental state when she let Mitchel convince her to join him.

Another possibility was that, even though she was about to die, and Kirk might live for many more decades, she was overcome with sorrow for him never being able to experience what she had recently experienced. And so she said: "I 'm sorry you can't know what it's like to be almost a god."

Or possibly by "you" she meant "all you normal humans who can never be turned into almost gods and never know what it's like".

So what do you think?

 

[DonIago]

I've generally gone by the first interpretation. But then, maybe it's supposed to be ambiguous. We can't know the mind of an almost-god.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

She might have said "I'm sorry." for going with Mitchel and abandoning her previous loyalties, and then have added "You can't know what is like to be almost a god." as an explanation of her mental state when she let Mitchel convince her to join him.

That first interpretation is the only one that ever occurred to me. But the second one would be more interesting from a character standpoint. It would be better writing, a deeper dive into Barrier God psychology. Good post, MA.

 

[J.T.B.]

Another possibility was that, even though she was about to die, and Kirk might live for many more decades, she was overcome with sorrow for him never being able to experience what she had recently experienced. And so she said: "I 'm sorry you can't know what it's like to be almost a god."

That doesn't seem very likely to me, seeing that the almost-god experience had just been shown to turn out very badly indeed. She meant "don't judge us too harshly; you would understand if you had been through it."

 

[Methuselah Flint]

Yes I concur with the others - the first interpretation. But nice thinking though!

 

[Kor]

The first one. She made things more difficult at first by going along with Mitchell.

Kor