@ussjellyfish

Tumblr is not kind to Batel

Whaaat? Why is tumblr not nice?

I rarely see anything as if it’s not on my dash when I look then 🤷‍♂️ I sometimes dig in tags but it’s a once blue moon type thing.

I guess maybe she is mostly perhaps written in as the “love interest” (I think she is capable of so much more) but ok she is connected to Pike, and as he is the MC her fate will probably be based on what material the writers want to give Pike to work with. Is it more drama to have her die? Or more drama to have her live but want then to get married or something and Pike know he has a time limit? Everything is about Pike probably from the writers POV.

But from fandom POV? Let her be free. Let her be the badass captain in her own right. Isn’t that what fandom is for, to give under appreciated women the adventures that screen time doesn’t have the time to show?

Although I guess maybe fandom sees her as an obstacle to a Pike/Una ship? I have never understood that mentality myself. Ship and let ship. Something existing doesn’t invalidate the alternative. And just because something is canon or not really well in my mind doesn’t matter. Are there ships I wish had been explicitly canon? Do I want my ship to kiss? I am human so yeah. But if the dice doesn’t fall that way, it’s the showrunners call. And being mean to a character/being negative in pro tags (anti tags exist) is just bad fandom etiquette IMO

Ok first Batel was in a bit of a shitty situation and if StarFleet had an ounce of compassion knowing her personal relationship with Pike (April refers to them as ‘close’) she should never have been put on Una’s case. The law was bad and prejudiced and unfair to Una – yes. But it was still the law. If Batel had refused she would have ruined her own career and Una would still have been charged/put on trial. Batel managed to avoid asking certain questions, she tried to get Una a good deal. It was a shitty caught in the middle job.

Second they know a lot more about the Gorn now than they did, and they have the resources of the Enterprise.

Hemmer was dying on a broken ship and the Enterprise might not have made it back in time. He knew his crew would push it to the wire and he didn’t want them to risk it. Also he didn’t want them probably to have to live with killing him to save themselves.

Batel wanted to make that choice and I expect if it comes down to it, then she would. But there is a chance to save her and arguably given that the resources of the Enterprise weren’t available to Hemmer, there was never a chance to save him.

@Pike

I mean, when the gorn got hemmer, they didn’t know jack shit about the gorn. with the current state of knowledge, they might be able to do something to fix the situation. Dunno how awful the whiplash about “disabled folks as lab guinea pigs” is gonna be if they pull that plot though

I hate hate hate that Hemmer died. I miss him. I don’t vibe with Pelia. She isn’t my cup of tea as a character so it’s an extra loss as Hemmer was such a good character.

The optics of the writers subconscious prejudices are always a potential issue. Merlin knows I have called out some patterns/lines etc. I have been uncomfortable with. I never ever want to suggest someone is wrong for how they feel. Personally I don’t see how they have narratively framed it, that it was a “bury the disabled, save the pretty white woman”. The written situations are different.

Again this is just IMO but I feel like if we went with that line of thought, it would be like saying because a disabled character was the first to be attacked by the gorn spray, nobody else can be unless they die horribly too and that’s not really workable in life or story.

Idk why they decided to write Hemmer out. Maybe the actor didn’t want to commit to multi-season, perhaps the full makeup was too much idk. It’s a shame.

@ussjellyfish

I really liked Hemmer. Excellent mentor, good relationships with Spock, Uhura, M’Benga… I think part of the problem might be plot armor?

The legacy characters, Pike, Spock, Chapel and Uhura all have to live. So they can be imperiled but only so much.

If you surround them with interesting, diverse characters, and someone dies, you’ll end up killing an interesting character.

I am very torn because when a gay or disabled or POC or any kind of rep character is killed, it can feel like “why them? Why not one of the many white chars?” especially as rep is usually thin on the ground and they are the only one.

But at the same time they can’t be totally immune all the time. That would be a disservice to them as characters. Maybe if there were more rep chars it would feel better. At the end of the day I loathe character death in a story (I am all about the happy endings) but also as a writer sometimes it just has to happen. It should be an equal thing and the character that dies, it happens to them as it was right for the narrative. It sucks and it hurts but then it’s meant to because character death is supposed to evoke emotions.

As I said all characters should be treated equally in the death stakes. SNW has a problem as half the chars have plot armour being on TOS. Also being from TOS (and the 60’s) that does make safe a lot of white chars.

Idk I am sorry I am rambling now and lost the thread of the point I was trying to make.

@ussjellyfish

I get that they have to put characters in danger, I don’t want them to feel disposable.

I didn’t really feel like Hemmer was written as disposable. That was just my feeling though and I respect if people felt otherwise.

I do like that they have never forgotten Hemmer and he still shows his mark on characters/is mentioned. I think that helps.

When Batel stepped in front of Pike and Scotty, and the gorn wasn’t interested in her because of the spray. It reminds me of the Librarians episode where Ezekiel can walk through the corridors “easy just another member of the Wolfpack”.

We don’t know how they are going to save their people. I don’t want Batel to die but if she went out by her own choice, perhaps infiltrating the gorn ship, using her “I am more them, than human” nature as a way through, and she saved everyone. Would that be any less fridging? It would be a hero moment for sure.

Maybe we can get that and they could still beam her back to save her. Best of both 😛 I don’t want her to die at all. But if she does I want it to be with agency.