Only to die again. Permanently, this time.
Spoilers Should Mariner have been happy for Boimler?
- Thread starter Charles Phipps
- Start date
Mariner is the sort of character who can be popular as the protagonist in a parody fanfiction type story: consider that she has mutilated Boimler with a bat'leth, pummeled him almost to death with an ambojitsu club, and threatened to kill him because he got promoted... and that's just what I remember offhand. If she were in a serious story, she would be a vicious, hateful sociopath.
Only because no one chose to bring her back. One scenario: someone (an old friend from Starfleet, a S31 agent who needs to know something Tasha knew, or a guilt-ridden Sela) goes back in time and gives Tasha a hypospray with enough harmless sedative to keep little Sela out cold for a few hours. Tasha and Sela make their escape. Tasha, aware of the Temporal Prime Directive, stays out of sight until events of a modern Trek show or STO requires her to show herself.
On Star Trek, dead is not necessarily dead.
Thank goodness she's not, though.
Sounds like we're in complete agreement.
Shitty person=deeply flawed person?
My argument is that she's poorly conceived or badly written. She's exactly who the writers want her to be.
You mean,, "My argument is that she's not poorly conceived or badly written," right?
In any case. she could still be poorly conceived/badly written even if she is exactly what the writers want her to be.
Lots of characters in live-action Trek are (presumably) exactly what the writers wanted them to be, but were poorly conceived or badly written or both. I would include among them in TNG Yar, Troi for the most part, Crusher, Pulaski, Wesley; in VOY Chakotay, Neelix amd Kim, and in Enterprise, Mayweather.
Or to go outside of Trek, the characters in Hogan's Heroes and The Dukes of Hazzard may be the best possibly written versions of those characters, but from my perspective of someone in 2021, I find the concept of "people having lighthearted fun in a Nazi POW camp" and "people tooling around in a car celebrating a famous racist traitor" to be too inherently flawed for me to watch either.
Getting back to Mariner, they could still have had her be a deeply flawed character, and indeed, have many of the same flaws that she has displayed, while making her more palatable. At the same time, some of the issue stems from fans' expectations, which may or may not be realistic, and their politics, which may read into the character different things because of her race/gender or their take on "liberal/woke Hollywood."
I admit, my take on the subject is that I expect this to be an utterly wacky comedy and prefer my Star Trek to be about Apollo, gangster planets, Great Birds of the Galaxy (ST: New Frontier), and Red Matter. Mariner is meant to be someone who is perfectly competent at being a movie action hero but utterly garbage at personal relationships as well as realizing rebelling against STARFLEET is inherently silly. Much of Mariner's character is the fact she's a rebellious teenager acting out against her mom for no real reason.
It makes absolutely NO SENSE in a serious organization and I have no issues with it because I make no attempt to treat this show seriously. It's awesome fun because it is something I don't need to take serious on any level.
As for race and gender, I think fans who are worried about that are about three decades behind the setting. It should have been resolved with Sisko and Janeway and doesn't double because she's black and a woman.
As for the original topic, I think that whatever happiness Mariner had about Boimler's promotion reasonably got overshadowed by anger and frustration.
It is apparently accurate that Boimler left without saying goodbye to Mariner and that Boimler did not bother to respond to numerous subspace messages she sent. At least, he does not deny having done so and we are never given any other reason to think that Mariner is lying or mistaken on these points.
That's an unquestionably scummy thing to do, even if one doesn't factor in Mariner's abandonment issues.
I have seen many people call Mariner out for her flaws/shitty behavior on many occasions. But I don't think I've seen people call out Boimler for his. Maybe that is just because there are more examples of the former, or they are so in your face, or because the average Star Trek fan is going to for various reasons identify more with Boimler than with Mariner.
It is apparently accurate that Boimler left without saying goodbye to Mariner and that Boimler did not bother to respond to numerous subspace messages she sent. At least, he does not deny having done so and we are never given any other reason to think that Mariner is lying or mistaken on these points.
That's an unquestionably scummy thing to do, even if one doesn't factor in Mariner's abandonment issues.
I have seen many people call Mariner out for her flaws/shitty behavior on many occasions. But I don't think I've seen people call out Boimler for his. Maybe that is just because there are more examples of the former, or they are so in your face, or because the average Star Trek fan is going to for various reasons identify more with Boimler than with Mariner.
Good points. Boimler certainly has his own character flaws, and he should have said a proper goodbye to his friends. On the other hand, it doesn't justify violent threats. A far better response by Mariner would have been to give him a friendly goodbye, wish him the best, and make him feel bad about sneaking out the way he did. But she wouldn't be Mariner if she did that.
And yes, you're right about who we identify with. Remember the old country song: "sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug"... I feel like the bug (Boimler) a lot more than I do like the windshield (Mariner).
Mind you, there's a lot to be said that what Boimler did in the last episode of Season One was motivated by revenge. Mariner had been hazing Boimler (read: bullying) for much of the previous season out of what we can construe as a misguided desire to help Boimler toughen up. When Boimler had the opportunity to promote himself, he took it and there's a certain level of "giving her a sarcastic vulcan salute on the way out."
I think there's a certain level of schadenfreude there that Boimler was engaging in.
I think there's a certain level of schadenfreude there that Boimler was engaging in.
I respectfully don't see that Mariner was hazing/bullying Boimler in S1 or that Boimler's reaction to the promotion was revenge-minded. In the clip you attached, it seemed he was just waiting for her to cool off. I don't think there's text that one can show to illustrate Mariner bullying Boimler, or Boimler resenting how Mariner treated him on a level that it motivated him to ditch her on purpose.
I think the very beginning and end of the argument is the stress that Mariner's actions put on Boimler and the fact he wants her to stop but she doesn't.
I think Mariner thinks she's helping Boimler but I don't think that makes it better. I just see it as a believable character flaw who thinks she's in TOS versus TNG.
I wouldn't call intentionally beating people begging for mercy clueless...
This is a meaningless comment. She could be "exactly what the writers" want and still be bad if the writers' ideas are bad. What's your point (again)?
Agree 1000% with all your points.
That the writers wanted to write a flawed character with issues regarding being too hot blooded and gung ho as well as too quick to violence as a source of comedy. That this is a good idea. That this is very funny. That I disagree with your point.
But hey, you do you.
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