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Date: Mon,  9 May 1994 19:12:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: Terri Palmer <tp25+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: geoff
Subject: Fwd: a trek eulogy
Cc:


Do YOU think this is a satire?  I wish it were, but I can't quite tell.

---------- Forwarded message begins here ----------
From: wizard@bga.com (John P Onorato)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.prose,alt.startrek.creative
Subject: a trek eulogy
Date: 8 May 1994 23:28:34 GMT
Lines: 187
Sender: wizard@zoom.bga.com
Message-ID: <2qjsj2$fvs@giga.bga.com>

A passing, a eulogy.
- -------  - ------


"They're not real," I say.  "They're not real," I keep telling myself,
"it doesn't matter.  They don't matter."  But it gets me nowhere. 
Despite my not having 'gotten into' the series until fairly recently,
these people mean more to me than...  well, they have lives, at least
on the show, so they mean more to me than my own life itself.  

When I heard about Paramount cancelling the immensely successful ST:
TNG series, I was crushed.  At first.  "Where would I get my fix of Dr
Crusher?" I thought.  Who, now, would I look up to?  Who would be the
ideal me, who would be the father figure I never had?  At one time it
was he who said in his distinctive brogue "Make it so!"  But now?  What
now?

As of late, though, I have been filled with...  well, apathy, for lack
of a better word.  I'm a textbook case.  I'm following the four stages
of dealing with death:  shock, denial, anger and acceptance.  Right now
I'm somewhere between shock and denial.  I don't suppose it will be
final until I see the aged Picard, tending his fields, off of the
bridge and yet in character for the longest time in the show's history.

And this leads me to wonder -- what brought me to this point?  Were
this happeneing to come, say, a year ago, I would not be quite so
emotional about it, let alone moved to actually write about it. 
Perhaps it was that episode -- I can't recall the name of it -- where
Picard and Crusher (both of whom, incidentally, I adore, though in
different ways) are kidnapped and fitted with devices that eventually
allow them to sense the other's thoughts.  As they grew closer and
closer, and finally couldn't deny the attraction that was there, I felt
it.  I felt it all, and in spades...  I don't usually watch tv.  Maybe
it was this episode that humanised the whole thing for me -- it never
was the old Trek, and Data makes a lousy Spock.  He makes a great Data,
though.

Or maybe it was that one two-part season finale...  "Reunification," I
believe it was called.  That was...  well, my words do not do it
justice.  Suffice it to say that I cried.  Oh, the pain, the torture,
the longing, the yearning...  when will I be free?  When will I find my
own?

The old Trek was meaningful, to be sure.  On a shoestring budget,
though, with hokey aliens (granted, the aliens in TNG are just regualr
people with funny things done to their heads.  Have you noticed?) and a
captain with raging hormones...  perhaps it was too adult for me at the
time.  The new series, though, that really struck home for me.  It
actually meant something to me.  Whereas the first was exciting and
interesting, the new series was actually meaningful.

And this, despite the fact that I loathed the design of the new
Enterprise.  Somehow it looked -- topheavy.  I don't suppose that
matters too much, in space -- but for aesthetic purpouses, I feel they
should have kept the design from the original-cast Trek movies.  Surely
Utopia Planitia can't have changed all that much in a measly hundred
years.  Ah, but I digress; I pick nits where I should spend my time
really writing...  an eulogy.  Is that what this is?  My own eulogy for
the Next Generation series?

Ah, captain, oh my captain.  Even when you didn't know what to do, you
made everyone else think you knew precisely what to do.  And the only
way through his facade was with a mindlink like the one you and Beverly
shared...  she eventually saw right through you, to the human that you
are, not the superhuman you carry yourself as.  Always dashing, never
pompous, sharing the same intolerance for stupidity as I...  

Riker, the first officer, the most worthy carrier of the title 'cowboy
diplomat...'  The swashbuckling hero of the ship.  Undaunted, with a
winning smile for all, you had more romance in your life than Picard
ever did.  I speculate that in the future, women shum older men without
any hair, and prefer the dashing diabolical good looks of a young first
officer.  Making do with whatever was at hand, king of improvisation, I
can just imagine you taking the place of Errol Flynn on the deck of a
pirate ship.  I imagine that in character, you may have wanted the
Enterprise to be that way...  ah, but no.  Sadly enough.  I shall miss
your wit, your charm, your good looks.

Yes.  I have decided.  This is indeed a eulogy.

Beverly, the doctor.  Ah, angel of mercy, come to me, even if only in
my sleep; tend to me, salve my wounds, heal me, make me whole again, if
ever I was whole.  The lovely doctor, a vision in blue and black, with
a confident stride, captain's companion, token single mother; I admire
you, your strength, your tenacity.  Alwaysd trying to do the best thing
for the people, tending to needs, giving succour to the ill.  But you
were so much more than that to me...  I am not sure I can ever explain.
 Surely I shall never get the chance to speak this in person, but know
that my thoughts are with you.  

Geordi, you lack the flair of Scotty; you are about as ethnic as a
recent midwestern college graduate.  Nevertheless, you have special
qualities to set you apart from the others; your eyes, of course, being
the most obvious.  It makes my eyes tear to think of the pain you must
go through, the stigma you must bear -- perhaps in the future they are
more tolerant of these things, but here and now would certainly not be
your time or place.  Your compassion sets you off as well -- second
only to the good doctor in this regard, you value machinery, but not to
the exclusion of other humans.  The engines were Scotty's children, but
they are your friends.

And Data, always on his quest for humanness, always having it dangled
just in front of your nose, amid the mystery of your creation, only to
have it snatched away in the last quarter of the episode.  Still, you
do not falter; you learn, you pick yourself up, you move on in your
inexorable robotic way.  The cat was a nice touch -- did you ever learn
that cats are inherently untrainable?  That they have no masters but
themselves?  Like you and yet unlike you.  You can be turned of with a
switch, when the script requires, yet the crew would never think of
doing such a thing, because that would be like killing a fellow being. 
You will never attain humanness, of tis I feel certain.  But you have
achieved... personhood.

Worf.  The token Klingon, child of an uneasy alliance, the origins of
which were, and still are, rather shady and obscure for me. 
Nevertheless, in the days represented by the series, the Federation and
the Klingons have an alliance, however uneasy, and you, orphan of a
Romulan massacre, take up the badge of Starfleet, but not in
renunciation of your Klingon heritage.  You provide the show with an
interesting slant on race relations, as they exist in the 23rd century.
 Funny, but they are remarkably similar to the concerns we have now,
and have had in the recent past.  I shall miss your brusqueness, your
irritability which so often mirrors my own.  You can get away with it,
for it is your character -- I have to remain nice to people.

Finally, I reach the end of the line.  Councillor Deanna Troi, my hat
(were I to wear a hat) goes off to you for dealing with an extremely
strange mother (one wonders if you are really her daughter), for making
emotional sense of matters that have no logical base, for being
Starfleet's answer to things that they couldn't answer before, for
giving the captain an edge up on his many communications, simply
because of your talent for sensing emotion.  Imperfect though it is, it
is certainly more talent than most mundane human beings possess.  All
this, and beauty in the bargain -- you were the only officer allowed
such a variety in wardrobe.  Why was this?  Ah, no matter.  A Vulcan
you are not, mind-melds you do not do, nor do you have a nerve pinch
that comes in handy nine times out of ten, but you, like the rest of
the cast, are your own person, your own character.  You sense things
that most of us are blind to, and I shall miss you rooting about in
other people's minds, if not my own.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the (major) crew of the starship
Enterprise.  You have seen their coming, you have witnessed their
actions ... now prepare for their passing.  To the silver screen they
go, so live on they will be, but forever changed, I fear.  Nothing is
the same on the screen, it will certainly not be what we are used to. 
The mechanics are different, the dynamics change.  Movies are not tv,
and whereas I realise that this is but a passing of yet another tv
show, this is one that meant something to me, for reasons unknown.

Ah, to have you all, to keep you all...  to see you all, for all time,
in the eyes of my mind.  Alas, I cannot afford to maintain a library of
episodes.  I can but keep you in my head, and there you will live
immortal.  Inimitable, all of you, unforgettable, each one.  Merry
meet, merry part (though it doesn't feel that way now), and may we meet
merry again.


(c) 1994 John Onorato.  All Rights Reserved.

Sun, 08 May, 1994
03.38 AM


Comments and criticism always welcome.




--
John P Onorato  | " ... men's private experience of sex is vastly dif-
wizard@bga.com  |   ferent from the usual stereotypes, is as complex
voicemail:      I   as women's, and is as filled with longing for in-
  512.706.4386  |   timacy and spiritual meaning."         -- Sam Keen



--
John P Onorato  | " ... men's private experience of sex is vastly dif-
wizard@bga.com  |   ferent from the usual stereotypes, is as complex
voicemail:      I   as women's, and is as filled with longing for in-
  512.706.4386  |   timacy and spiritual meaning."         -- Sam Keen