Why Can't the Trek Franchise Simple Let A Major Character Stay Dead?

Not only that, but the stone cold reality, it seems to me, is even more harsh: the ENTIRE business of fiction writing for drama is a construct of unlikely scenarios, improbably coincidences, and unrealistic events.

The quality of writing only is measured by how well the writer camouflages this reality in that particular work.

I'll wager that one could pick virtually ANY script considered "well written" and the dedicated critic could pick out half a dozen or more such "weaknesses" if they are looking for them.

and you can square that when it comes to SF.

on the tangent RE TUC:

I recognize and admit the multitude of flaws which have been noted in the past (it always surprises me that it's seldome mentioned that Spock tags kirk with the tracking thingy which we the viewer can clearly see but apparently none of the Klingons ever noticed - just for one example)

But i flat out love that film. As an enjoyable way to spend 2 hours, i rate it even with TVH.

And, oh by the way, for a dux ex whatever - how is Spock being able to precisely calculate a slingshot time jump - TWICE, and the second time right down to the virtual minute they left - any more acceptable than "protomatter", exactly?

In regards to The Undiscovered Country and The Voyage Home, I've never claimed those movies were perfect or not riddled with problems either.

In my opinion, a television show should never kill off a regular character.

Characters are assets for a show, eliminating them completely diminishes the show.

Sometimes, an actor or actress may want to leave a show.
The producers may be unhappy about this.

They may decide to show the actor, by killing off the character.
This only makes the producers seem small.

A character can be removed from a show by simply giving them a new opportunity somewhere else.

On TNG, the producers showed good judgment in not killing Beverly Crusher.
The return of that character was a positive development for the show,
and helped to secure its successful run.

On the other hand, by killing Jadzia Dax, the producers of DS9
substantially reduced the value of that show, going forward.

All right, let's get on it, people! Preferably before my next transcontinental flight...

Hmm, does that mean someone could fake a retina scan? And maybe Kirk can ditch the glasses...

Well, stating the OBVIOUS, all of these things & stuff is & are FICTION. Sometimes I/we take all of this fiction WAY too seriously. But as to the thread topic specifically, TWO main/leading characters whose portrayers' names were in the opening credits characters were PERMAKEELED-OVER. The two already mentioned several times in this thread by several posters including me: Tasha Yar & Jadzia Dax.

I think it really depends on what kind of show you're talking about. For DS9, I think it was a good call -- it reinforced the suspense, the sense that these people were truly dealing with a dangerous situation and that there were no guarantees of a happy ending.

On the other hand, I wouldn't go for doing that when an actor or actress wants out of, say, a sitcom.

The problem, very often, is ratings. The more popular the character, the bigger the splash has to be made when the actor leaves the show.

Then there's the Killing off a Character Because We've Been Running for Too Long and We're Running out of Ideas syndrome, which is something NCIS, among others, has been guilty of lately.

Getting back to Trek, there are ways to move a character toward the exit without killing them off, q.v. Carol Marcus.

Had TNG's PTB decided NO MORE BEVERLY and decided to keep Diana Muldaur, or let DM leave after a year or so & be replaced in that fulltime character slot by Dr Selar or a new character even, having Beverly killed off-screen would've been completely unnecessary. IIRC Beverly was transferred to Starfleet Medical the season Dr. Pulaski was on there, so TNG's PTB could've just let Bev stay at SFM had they decided NOT to bring back Gates McFadden.

Speaking of Carol Marcus, she could've shown up on at least one of the 24th Century shows before her portrayer, Bibi Besch, passed away in 1996. No doubt most likely as an elderly Carol Marcus. Saavik showing up on one or more of the Century 24 shows would've been easy, & should've happened. I may be in the minority here, but I prefer Robin Curtis's Saavik to Kirstie Alley's. Even so, had Saavik shown up, it would've been cool for her, in her first appearance, to be played by Alley, & in her second by Curtis.

Again, my guess is it's about the ratings. "Let's wind up the Crusher fans by killing off the character and get a bump in the Nielsens."

They certainly could have done that. At the UCLA seminar, Bennett explained their decision not to bring Carol back in TSFS (the studio didn't want them creating an extended family of relatives-of-the-regulars; David was all right, since he'd die in the film, but no more), a particularly tough one for him since he and Besch were old friends.

But a brief guest star appearance - a la McCoy in the TNG pilot - would have been a nice homage. Maybe it was considered at some point, but lost in the rewrites.

Ditto Saavik (though Robin was in an episode of DS9 as a different character), though I'm of two minds about the substitution of Valeris. On the one hand, I'm always glad to see a working actor get a chance to reprise the role and, quite honestly, Kim Catrall's great for Sex & the City and The Ghost Writer, but as a Vulcan, not so much. On the other hand, Saavik's turning traitor would not have been something I'd have been happy with.

And, yes, as you might have noticed, I prefer Robin's Saavik to Kirstie's.

Sidebar: Possibly the nicest sendoff for a show I've ever seen is the final episode of In Plain Sight.

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Nobody got killed off. Nobody got shot. Nobody got fired or excessed or transferred to another office out of state. There were no silly last-minute 'shipper pairings (even though the promos had been hinting at one for weeks). The team closed out the problematic case they'd been working on, and they all got together for a celebratory dinner. Mary's characteristically whimsical philosophical voice over tied up all the loose ends for the characters who weren't there, and the camera panned back to show the group around the table toasting each other with a nice wine, giving us a sense of "Yeah, this was great, see you back at the office first thing tomorrow!"

IOW, there was a sense that we as the viewer had been allowed into this slice of these people's lives, and now it was time for us to go. They'd been here before we got here, and they'd continue on after we left. Thanks for stopping by, get home safe, fade out.

Good novels and good movies end that way. More TV shows might take a lesson from it.

In terms of "let them leave but don't kill them off" - it's a valid point but you also leave the door open for TPTB to fuck it up to. See for reference, Kes.

The weird thing about Savvik, for me, is that while I loved the character in conception - particularly the "non-canon" idea that she was a half Romulan foundling - i didn't really care for the portrayal of ANY of the actresses (counting all three as a "Savvik") in terms of what the role really could have been.

I do, however, agree with the sentiment that if Savvik had been done to her potential, it would have been a major negative to have her be the traitor.

IIRC, Stan was promoted to a higher WitSec job in Washington D.C. and Marshall was promoted into his position.

You're right. I'd forgotten that (haven't seen the episode again since first-run). I should have remembered, because I laughed at the time, thinking Oboy, as if Mary doesn't give him enough grief already - just wait until he's the boss!

What I'm really, really, really happy about is that they didn't go where they kept hinting in the promo (Marshall's line about "I love you..."). Talk about the Odd Couple...they'd have killed each other.

Two fabulous actors, BTW. I've been impressed with Mary McCormack since The West Wing, and I'd really like to see Weller in something else, but his first love is theater, so he may venture between media.

Weller had a couple of guest shots in "Blue Bloods" as an international art thief interested in Bridget Moynihan's character.

He was basically a "thief with a heart" as he was hired by people who originally owned artwork (like Jewish families from the Holocaust) to recover their art which had been stolen by someone else.

Deus Ex Machina is introduction of some as-yet-unmentioned miraculous element to a story because the writers have written themselves into a corner that they can't get out of. That's not really what happened with Spocks calculation in TVH. And it certainly is not something that is present in all writing as you said upthread.

Well, I always considered the "prophets" (wormhole aliens) in Deep Space Nine to be a Deux Ex Machina because even though they had been mentioned in the premier episode, they basically were used ONLY in Deep Space Nine to either move the plot along or solve some writers problem such as the monstrous Dominion fleet.

At one time, I might have agreed with you. Since then, NuBSG and The Walking Dead have managed to pull it off quite well. I thought Cheers was doomed when Coach died, but they managed to replace him with a much better and funnier character.

NuBSG and TWD did quite well at killing off characters and taking the shows in new and interesting directions, particularly TWD. It broke my heart when T-Dawg, Dale, and particularly Lori got killed, but it opens the door for new characters and situations.

As much as I like The Walking Dead, I'm not invested enough in any of the characters to care if they die or not.

Except for Dale.


I was glad that annoying old fucker died.

Rick's correct: Deus ex machina (Latin for "God from the machine") is a plot resolution that depends on an element that has not been established from the internal logic of the plot. It comes from the ancient days of Greek drama when an actor playing a god would be lowered by a crane onto the stage to resolve a conflict between the characters. Not very satisfying. The audience is left wondering "Where did that come from?" and feeling cheated.

I went looking for some modern examples in movies and there are very few to be found, mainly because everyone knows it's a cheat. The closest one I can think of that sorta works--and it only works because of the fantastic nature of the plot--is in Superman: The Movie, where Superman reverses time in order to resolve the death of Lois Lane. If you'd known at the start that Superman could do this, there would be very little dramatic tension in what comes before.

Galaxy Quest does something similar with the Omega-13 (using it sends Tim Allen's character back in time a few seconds and allows him to prevent Saris from killing his crew), but since the device was already established as having some unknown capability that should be used only in an emergency, it isn't a true deus ex machina.

I would argue that Trek was guilty of this, where one character would come up with the solution to that week's problem, completely out of the blue, and in a field totally unrelated to their specialty.

Yes, indeed. Voyager and its seemingly limitless number of particle rays provide many good examples...er, bad examples.

If you're trapped in Spatial Anamoly X and you can use a reverse-polarized inverted coherent graviton pulse to get you out, you need to establish that very early on and then provide a dramatic reason why you CAN'T make such a pulse. Such as: Ensign Disphit was cleaning the graviton emitter and he lost it (so the plot is a search) or Ensign Dipshit left it on the holo-deck, which is stuck running the Maltese Falcon program and so someone must enter to retrieve it (so the plot is a mystery/quest) or Ensign Dipshit inadvertantly flushed it out the space toilet, so someone's got to venture outside and retrieve it (so the plot is an adventure).

But if you try particle ray 1, then particle ray 2, and finally particle ray 3 gets you out? No dramatic value at all.

It's even better after all of Voyager, since it can also be seen as poking fun at the whole "reset button" thing.

You forgot about it because the promotions "fit" like they would in real life. Careers progress. People move upward and onward. And they didn't go hogwild sending everyone everywhere for new careers.

I forgot about it because I only saw the episode once when it first aired almost nine months ago, I've watched numerous other shows/films since, and it's not on my list of Most Important Things to Remember.

Not sure why you posted the rest of that. Maybe it was meant for someone else.

Some people have real difficulty experiencing the moment. Think of all the people disillusioned by the Star Wars prequels for no reason other than that they already know Anakin becomes Darth Vader. It's a ridiculous gripe, because it's possible to suspend that awareness and enjoy seeing it happen. Same issue with Enterprise. Some people refused to give it a chance because they had their own preformed ideas about that time period and rather than noticing how fucking cool Shran was, they instead complained that his antlers were wrong or said who cares about this conflict with the Vulcans because Babel will happen. Hell, half of Shakespeare regards historically familiar events. Maybe we should write him off too.

Some people are just fuckin' stupid.

See, I love backstory. I love writing it, I love reading and watching it. It makes it possible to understand fictional characters in ways we seldom get to understand the people we know. But you're right...some people just want linear narrative. First this happened, then that happened, then something else happened, A to B to C. Ho-hum.

Am I the only person that liked Dr. Pulaski?

I liked her. She was a lot more interesting than Crusher. Not that it was an especially high bar or anything...