Lack of follow-up on death of David Marcus

[sonak]

This has always bugged me about the original Trek movies.

To my knowledge, only "Undiscovered Country" mentioned David at all. Kirk never discusses David's death with Spock or McCoy. Or, with any of the senior crew that WITNESSED his collapse on the bridge of the Enterprise after David's death is reported. Dr. McCoy had often been shown to act as an "amateur psychiatrist" for Kirk, so it would have made sense to have discussed it with him. Furthermore, David died during a mission to save Spock. Remember Sarek questioning the cost of that quest as "your(Kirk's) ship, your son."

I'm not saying that Spock or Kirk are remotely responsible, indirectly or otherwise. But there's never an onscreen discussion between them where Spock expresses his sorrow or grief, or something. Maybe this is due to his being "out of it" during much of TVH, I don't know.

Finally, we never see Carol again! This is huge. Might she be resentful toward Kirk? Were they unable to get Bibi Besch for later movies? It seems that many Trek novel and comic book writers felt this was a loose end, since she does appear in many of those works.

I know Kirk only find out about his son late in his life, but since he never had any other children and apparently never got married, I'd have thought his pain over David's death would have been more frequently dealt with.

 

[DonIago]

David died in TSFS.
In TVH I'd argue the crew had their hands full most of the time.
I suppose in TFF there could have been some mention, perhaps during the campfire scenes.
As you said, David is mentioned in TUC.
GEN would have been a strange time to bring it up...though perhaps during the Nexus scenes...

Essentially, I'm not sure when exactly you think another mention of David should have occurred, without it seeming forced.

I do wish Carol had shown up again at least once. I know the actress passed away, though I'm not sure when that occurred.

 

[Sky]

Bibi Besch died in 1996, but she was battling cancer for years before that, if I remember correctly.

 

[FalTorPan]

Star Trek IV took place three months after Star Trek III. Although grieving for a lost child never "ends," three months is far longer than, say, three days. Kirk wouldn't lie around moping for very long. He has a universe to protect!

 

[DonIago]

And actually, he is mentioned in TVH, albeit briefly. Like I said though, the crew had their hands full.

 

[Greg Cox]

And his death is a major plot point in UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. "I'll never forgive the Klingons for killing my boy," etc.

 

[Christopher]

Which is kind of a continuity error, since TFF ended with Kirk making nice with the Klingons and the prospect of a new peace, and then in the very next movie he's expressing out-of-character genocidal thoughts about them. J. M. Dillard's novelization tried to rationalize this sudden bigotry by postulating that Carol had been injured in an unprovoked Klingon attack shortly before the events of the movie.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Which is kind of a continuity error, since TFF ended with Kirk making nice with the Klingons

Only if you consider TFF canon, which is apparently endlessly debatable, even within The Powers That Be.

 

[sbk1234]

Bibi Besch died in 1996, but she was battling cancer for years before that, if I remember correctly.

I chatted with Bibi Besch some years ago - I don't remember the year, but at the time there was no knowledge of her illness. She made some comments that seemed to indicate that Shatner didn't want her in any more Trek films. As for if that is the reason or not, I have no idea. But it might have had to do with some kind of personality clashes. But again, I don't know for sure, and I've never heard Shatner's side to it.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I do wish Carol had shown up again at least once.

The novelizations of ST III and IV feature Carol prominently. In ST III she (and Dr Chapel, IIRC?) visit with the families of deceased Genesis scientists, March and Madison. In ST IV, Carol goes to see the Deltan family and co-partners of Jedda and Zinaida.

Harve Bennett has said in interviews that he realised that introducing protomatter in ST III complicated any further use of Carol in that film. As head of Project Genesis, she either knew and (reluctantly?) approved of David's use of protomatter, or was totally unaware (and thus much weaker as the project leader). Bennett wanted the story to balance out: in order for Kirk to defeat the impossible odds and get Spock back, he had to lose David and the Enterprise. Implicating Carol and adding her to the ST III storyline meant slating her for death - or ignorant stupidity.

Bibi Besch was said to be disappointed not to have been included in ST III, but Bennett did explain his reasons and she understood.

For ST VI, Carol was originally in the "last roundup" scenes that were going to be the prologue of that movie, written by Denny Martin Flinn: eg. Kirk was to hear of the Praxis incident while in bed with Carol Marcus, and then he goes off to collect the others (Chekov is playing cards with a cheating Betazoid; Scotty is lecturing about the raising of a Klingon bird of prey from San Francisco Bay, etc). Flinn reused this concept at the beginning of his ST novel, "The Fearful Summons", while the ST VI novelization went with the Carol-gets-injured-by-Klingons concept.

In Kirk's Nexus fantasies in the "Generations" novelization, Carol is the sometimes-bride in a wedding scene. Other times Kirk imagines Antonia, Edith and others.

 

[sonak]

oops, yeah I did forget about Saavik's "David died most bravely," comment in TVH. But Kirk doesn't even react much to it.

 

[sbk1234]

I actually prefer Thern's explaination to what I understood. I hope that's the acurate account.

 

[Christopher]

oops, yeah I did forget about Saavik's "David died most bravely," comment in TVH. But Kirk doesn't even react much to it.

My problem with that line is, why did Saavik wait three months to tell him that?

 

[Brutal Strudel]

David gets a lot more on-screen mourning than Kirk's brother Sam, never mentioned again after "Operation: Annihilate!" and sloppily retconned out of existence in TFF and consciously retconned out of existence in Abrams's movie.* He gets more on-screen mourning than Edith, who should've been Kirk's Nexus bride in GEN and wasn't (Joan Collins too busy?).

*Yeah, I know, neither film explicitly says Sam never existed but they go a long way toward implying it. In literature--even disposable literature--the implicit is often more important than the explicit.

 

[spaceballone]

Which is kind of a continuity error, since TFF ended with Kirk making nice with the Klingons and the prospect of a new peace, and then in the very next movie he's expressing out-of-character genocidal thoughts about them. J. M. Dillard's novelization tried to rationalize this sudden bigotry by postulating that Carol had been injured in an unprovoked Klingon attack shortly before the events of the movie.

There's a big difference between just having a drink with some klingons as opposed to getting rid of the neutral zone and living with them in TUC.

 

[Greg Cox]

Which is kind of a continuity error, since TFF ended with Kirk making nice with the Klingons and the prospect of a new peace, and then in the very next movie he's expressing out-of-character genocidal thoughts about them. J. M. Dillard's novelization tried to rationalize this sudden bigotry by postulating that Carol had been injured in an unprovoked Klingon attack shortly before the events of the movie.

There's a big difference between just having a drink with some klingons as opposed to getting rid of the neutral zone and living with them in TUC.

Good point. I'm sure that, back during the Cold War, James Bond occasionally shared a vodka with a Russian operative on the other side (and more if she was female), but he'd be keeping one eye out for a knife in the back or some poison in the drink. And he certainly wouldn't trust their superiors for a minute . . . .

 

[Christopher]

There's a big difference between just having a drink with some klingons as opposed to getting rid of the neutral zone and living with them in TUC.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about "Let them die." Kirk wouldn't advocate the extinction of an entire species just because one military commander belonging to that species ordered the death of his son. He's not the type to blame a race for the actions of an individual or a government, certainly not to the extent of advocating that race's extinction. That extreme bigotry was tacked onto Kirk's character out of nowhere in the movie, and it's completely out of character for him.

 

[DonIago]

^To be fair, I'm pretty sure Kirk was smarting from Spock's volunteering him for the mission at the time....the fact that it involved the species of the man who killed his son was just salt in the wound.

He wouldn't be the first person to make an overly broad statement out of anger which he regretted once he had time to think about it. His words about never trusting Klingons aside, he seemed to get along reasonably well with Gorkon...hard to say whether that's diplomacy in action, or a genuine appreciation for the man.

 

[EJA]

And in the original cut of TUC, immediately after Kirk says "Let them die!" he expresses regret at what he's just said, but this was edited out of the released film.

 

[DonIago]

^I'd be curious to read that.