Last week I posted a video about Hamilton and in that video I say that the thing that
really makes me love Hamilton is the fact that it breaks my heart.
Then, I go on to say how some of my favorite movies are ones that break my heart: City
Lights, Ikiru, All Quiet on the Western Front, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera — The King
and I is not on the list, by the way.
So, shortly after that video went up, I got a comment on it from Ken B., who asks the
obvious question: “Since you seem to love art that breaks your heart, what breaks your
heart about Star Trek?
If you already did a video on that, can I get the episode?”
You’re lookin’ at it right now, Ken!
Assuming you’re watching.
I hope so.
If not, enjoy this video, everybody else!
What about Star Trek breaks my heart?
It’s a tough question to answer, because at first glance, I wouldn’t say Star Trek
belongs on the list any more than The King and I does.
It’s definitely on the list of my favorite things — The King and I isn’t on that
one, either, by the way — and neither is The Sound of Music; it’s way too long and
repetitive, and did you ever notice how Maria kinda disappears into the background in the
last act?
What’s that about? — but I wouldn’t say my attachment to Star Trek is anchored
in its ability to break my heart.
Then again, when I zoom in a little closer and think about some of my favorite episodes
of Star Trek, I do love a lot of them for the same reason I love Hamilton and those
movies I mentioned: they get me right here.
For an example of such an episode, I need look no further than my favorite episode of
the entire Star Trek franchise, Deep Space Nine’s “The Visitor”.
An accident aboard the Defiant leaves Captain Sisko trapped in subspace, existing outside
of time as his son, Jake, grows older and ever more obsessed with finding his father
and bringing him home.
Ultimately, the drive to save his father takes over Jake’s entire life; he abandons his
career as a writer, he neglects his wife, who eventually leaves him, and after multiple
failed attempts to rescue his father from subspace, he winds up an old man living alone
in a little house in Louisiana.
That’s all plenty sad on its own, but the episode saves its stiffest gut-punch for the
end.
While trapped in subspace for the last eighty years, Ben Sisko has sporadically appeared
to Jake, materializing for a few minutes before vanishing again.
Jake learns to predict when his father will appear, and finally devises a way to free
him: Ben Sisko will be pulled out of subspace and back in time to the moment of the accident,
if Jake kills himself during his next visit.
Ben appears as predicted, learns of Jake’s suicide plan and tries desperately to talk
him out of it, but it’s too late — Jake has already injected himself with a time-released
poison to ensure his death will occur while he and his father are together.
“Jake,” Ben tells his son, who is now decades older than he is, “you didn’t
have to do this.
Not for me.”
And Jake replies, “For you, and for the boy I was.
He needs you more than you know.”
Jake dies, and an instant later Ben finds himself back on the Defiant, a moment before
the accident that trapped him in subspace.
Having been warned by the elder Jake, Ben leaps to safety just in time.
Young Jake asks his father if he’s okay, and Ben, who remembers everything that happened
the first time around — being trapped in subspace, Jake’s sacrifice to save him — pulls
his son into a tight embrace and says, “I am now, Jake.
I am now.”
I’ve watched that episode I don’t even know how many times, and every single time,
when it’s over I find myself having to just sit there for a minute.
It packs an emotional wallop like no other Star Trek episode.
Why is that?
For one thing, the performances are fantastic.
Jake as an older man is played by the great Tony Todd, who also plays Worf’s brother
Kurn among other memorable Star Trek guest roles.
Todd’s Jake is broken but determined, heavy with grief but still kind enough to open his
home and his heart to a young fan who shows up at the start of the episode to ask why
he gave up writing.
Unlike most of Todd’s other characters — in Star Trek and beyond — his Jake is gentle,
soft spoken, holding a lifetime of sadness and regret behind his eyes.
It’s an extraordinary performance, and the episode simply would not work without it.
Before Tony Todd takes over as Jake, Cirroc Lofton does some of his very best work of
the entire series, showing us a younger Jake who finds it difficult to move on from his
father’s apparent death even before Ben’s first ghostly reappearance.
I’ve always loved the scene where Kira finds Jake standing alone at the airlock of one
of the upper pylons — which we know was one of his father’s favorite spots from
a scene in the season two episode, “Second Sight” — isn’t it great when the writers
pay attention to their own show?
The civilian population of the station is being evacuated due to an escalating conflict
with the Klingons, but Jake doesn’t want to leave.
He pleads with Kira, “Please don’t make me leave.
This is my home.
Everywhere I look it’s like I see a part of my dad.
If I leave I won’t have anything left of him.”
Kira agrees to let him stay awhile longer, but makes him promise that when the time comes
and she tells him to go, he’ll go.
Nana Visitor is great in that scene, as well.
You believe that Kira truly cares about Jake.
That’s one of the things that makes Deep Space Nine my favorite Trek series overall,
really — we can praise it all day long for its character development, its use of multi-episode
story arcs, its ability to critique Star Trek while also being Star Trek, and those are
all reasons to admire it, but what makes me love it is that it makes me believe that its
heroes are real people and that they genuinely care about each other.
The friendship, the tenderness, the concern Kira shows for Jake in that scene; the bond
of love between Jake and Ben, a bond that can’t be broken by time or even, ultimately,
death — it all feels real.
And that’s what allows “The Visitor” to be such a moving, emotionally devastating
episode: when the elder Jake decides to sacrifice himself to set his father free and give them
both a second chance, it’s not just a character doing something because the plot says that’s
what comes next — it’s a person making a meaningful choice based on feelings and
motivations we can understand.
Actors often talk about being in the moment, not merely reciting their lines and following
stage directions but living their characters during a performance.
Great acting, great drama, pulls us into the moment with the performers, allows us to live
it right alongside them.
That’s what “The Visitor” does, that’s why it moves me so profoundly, that’s why
it absolutely wrecks me no matter how many times I watch it.
Besides “The Visitor,” some of my other favorite Trek episodes are rooted in moments
of tragedy or heartbreak.
There’s “The City on the Edge of Forever,” with that incredible ending where Kirk stops
McCoy from saving the life of Edith Keeler in order to preserve the future, then returns
to the planet and orders the landing party to return to the Enterprise with a choked
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
There’s Spock’s death in Star Trek II, a devastating scene, followed immediately
by the memorial service and Kirk’s tearful eulogy for his friend.
There’s Tasha’s memorial service at the end of “Skin of Evil,” with Picard’s
mournful whisper of “Au revoir, Natasha,” followed by Data confessing that his thoughts
during the service weren’t about Tasha, but about himself and how much he would miss
her, and asking if he missed the point, and Picard reassuring him that no, he got the
point.
There’s Picard’s breakdown in “Family,” where he finally opens up to his brother,
and to us, about his lingering feelings of powerlessness and shame following his assimilation
by the Borg.
Returning to Deep Space Nine, how can I neglect “Far Beyond the Stars,” which features
one of the most powerful scenes in the entire franchise when Ben, during a vision where
he lives as 1950s sci-fi writer Benny Russell, breaks down after learning he’s been fired
for writing a story with a Black man as the hero, overcome first by rage and then by inconsolable
sorrow as he demands to have his basic humanity recognized.
Or what about the prologue of the 2009 Star Trek film, where Kirk’s father remains aboard
the Kelvin to fight off Nero’s ship while the rest of the crew evacuates in shuttles
and escape pods.
George Kirk hears his newborn son cry for the first time, has a brief final conversation
with Winona, his wife, where they decide to name the baby Jim, tells his wife he loves
her, and dies as the Kelvin smashes into the Narada.
That scene wrecks me every time I watch it, too, though in that case it’s not just the
action onscreen but the woeful, churning, ascending strings of Michael Giacchino’s
score that really get to me.
Come on, not only does the movie open with the heroic death of Captain Kirk’s dad,
the soundtrack for that scene is basically a pastiche of “Adagio for Strings” — are
you trying to make me cry?
Not that I’m complaining.
When Star Trek breaks my heart, just as when Hamilton breaks my heart, or Ikiru, or City
Lights, or any other work that has the same effect on me, it does it in a way that isn’t
depressing.
I feel sad, but at the same time I’m also thinking, “Holy shit, this is so good!”
Because if a movie or a show, or a book, or a song, is trying to break my heart and succeeding,
that means it works, the artists have accomplished what they set out to do, they have reached
out and made a connection.
And there’s nothing depressing about that.
But, you know, now that I’ve thought about it for a bit, maybe it’s not just individual
episodes or particular scenes.
Maybe there is something about Star Trek on the whole that breaks my heart.
It’s not Star Trek’s fault.
It’s our fault — sort of.
It’s more the fault of some of us than others, but I think we’ve all contributed to it
from time to time.
I know I have.
I’m talking about the gap between the world we live in, and the world Star Trek tells
us we could have.
And I’m not referring to the impossible, or highly improbable stuff that’s a part
of Star Trek, like transporters, or holodecks, or the ability to travel to other worlds at
thousands of times the speed of light.
I’m talking about its depiction of human civilization right here on Earth as a global
community where people of all kinds live in peace, where there’s no poverty, no hunger,
where people are no longer denied opportunities or deprived of their basic human dignity because
of their skin color, or gender identity, or sexual orientation, or national origin, or
religion, or disability, or any of the other factors so many of us still use as excuses
to mistreat one another.
We don’t need to wait for the invention of the warp drive or the matter/antimatter
reactor to build that world.
We could start building right now.
All that’s necessary is for us to recognize the problems that hold us back, and get serious
about solving them.
Star Trek has been trying — imperfectly, but earnestly — to tell us what those problems
are for over fifty years, but many of us still haven’t gotten the message, and some of
us who have are prone to forget from time to time.
And I think that’s the saddest part.
We don’t need to break through any technological barriers.
The only obstacle we need to overcome is ourselves, our own selfishness and prejudice and short-sightedness.
And because of that, a world like the Earth we glimpse in Star Trek seems simultaneously
unattainable and almost within our grasp.
The only thing stopping us from taking hold of it is that enough of us aren’t willing
to reach for it.
And that breaks my heart.
Anyway, that’s it.
Sorry for the bummer of an ending.
Hey, I don’t like closing a video on a down note, either, but it ain’t my fault.
Blame Ken.
Ken asked the question that prompted this.
Fucking Ken.