Kirk did pay... but I'm not sure it was his responsibility to keep tabs on Khan and Ceti Alpha V. Kirk lost his best friend, his son, the Enterprise and his Admiral's rank.
Why did David have to die?
- Thread starter EJA
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Kirk did pay... but I'm not sure it was his responsibility to keep tabs on Khan and Ceti Alpha V. Kirk lost his best friend, his son, the Enterprise and his Admiral's rank.
The way I interpret it, the Genesis effect didn't actual work, the scientists couldn't make it work according the Carol's theory.
So instead of the Genesis taking regular matter and reorganizing it into different regular matter, it reorganized it into proto-matter. This was done behind Carol's back by her supporters/graduate students under the leadership of David. Just as David had to die for his "crimes," the others who assisted him also died, killed by Khan and his people or Captain Terrell).
All they would have had to do is conceal from Carol the changing of a few thousand lines of code, buried in the greater program.
An interesting interpretation. But David and Saavik make protomatter sound like a tangible substance...
The Search for Spock said:
I felt like protomatter was the catalyst that allowed Genesis to reorganize matter at the sub-atomic level.
I'm pretty sure he had to die so that Kirk got to say one of the coolest lines in film history over and over again, and Christopher Lloyd could look unimpressed.
Saavik also says in the film that people have died because of David's lack of patience, but I don't see how anyone died that would not have died otherwise. If Genesis had been built without protomatter, wouldn't Kahn have still wiped out the people on Regula I, and wouldn't Kruge have still fought to obtain Genesis? I don't believe any deaths should be on David's conscience.
But how can we be sure Carol didn't have anything to do with it? She was the project leader, after all, constantly working on it with her son.
Yes, but Kirk doesn't really pay, does he? His best friend was resurrected, he got a brand new Enterprise, and he was glad to loose his admiral rank.
We just get *STAB*, "He's dead", and that's it. It could've been a bit more tender than that, like it is in the ST III novelisation.
^ The fact that you don't like it should indicate the tragedy intended behind the death worked. It has affected you on an emotional level enough to ask why he had to die in the first place. I think the death accomplished something then if it moved you enough to the point of asking that question. David was the perfect person to die because as has been mentioned before give Kirk consequences for his actions. He managed to save his best friend but lost his son in the process. Talk about a blow. David was killed to give emotional context to the film. We as an audience either liked him or not, if we liked him as a character as I did then his death was poignant and served a purpose. He died saving Saavik as well, someone whom he had feelings for if not a great deal of respect and considered a friend. If you wanna look at it another way...both Jim and David died on a planet under extreme circumstances.
^ Yep. The novelization too was probably based on an earlier version of the script. That version wasn't filmed.
I like that someone died, that there was no happy reset button at the end.
*unless you're Spock
*unless you're Spock
Actually, BillJ addresses this below:
Quite so. Kirk paid with the death of his son.
David admits to Saavik on the surface of Genesis:
Sounds to me like someone was hiding something not only from his mother but the other scientists in the program as well.
I don't recall him getting his son back, a fact that comes through in TUC as an underlying motivation for the JTK character.
Wait..... wha? Kirk "paid" through the death of his son, but David "paid" through HIS OWN DEATH? How is that at all the same?
The Star Trek universe wants to teach KIRK a lesson so his kid dies? What is he, Job?
Since Kirk is a central character, the only way we can have him pay is by having others he holds dear suffer. Let's be honest... no one gives a shit about David Marcus the character. David Marcus isn't central to the Star Trek mythos.
He was there to simply add another layer to the Kirk character.
She may have been referring to the crew of the Grissom, who wouldn't have died if there wasn't a Genesis planet, proof that the Genesis project worked, to draw Kruge out to the place. Admittedly, pointing the finger at David for that is a stretch, but it's the best I've got.
As for David's death, I have to say, I consider it more narrative convenience over genuinely being a karmic retribution for his actions, especially since I'm inclined to blame the destabilization of Genesis on the fact that it was required to make a planet (or even a planetary system) wholesale, as opposed to altering an existing environment like it was designed to. So killing David was more about going back to the status quo - kill the bastard son so that we don't have to deal with his relationship with Kirk. The fact that it worked for Kirk's backstory in TUC is incidental.
I give a shit about David Marcus. He's right up there in my personal list of top 5,000 favorite Star Trek characters.
