RTR Blog: Andrew's Top 10 Trek Funerals!

 Happy Halloween Trek fans!! Last month in the height of wedding season, I looked at the Top Ten Trek Weddings in a Four Weddings style showdown.  This month, with Halloween just days away, it seems more than fitting to talk about death and give the Top Trek Funerals the same treatment. I'll be looking at multiple factors including, cause of death (and longevity of death), the ceremony/speeches and finally the impact of the characters death overall. Once analyzed, I'll rank them to end up with Andrew's Top 10 Trek Funerals!

10 - Grand Nagus Zek (DS9 - The Nagus)

Death/Length of Death/Character - 
    Zek slowly passes away in his sleep while talking with Quark to set up the premise of Quark

becoming the Grand Nagus in the episode of the same name. It is your run of the mill Yoda style death (he even kind of looks like Yoda), where he drifts off to death, but with none of the weight, depth or emotion we saw in Return of the Jedi. I like a lot of people have a hard time getting through the Nagus episodes, unless he's in very small doses, so him dying doesn't elicit much emotion from me,asides perhaps relief of not having to hear that voice anymore.  Throw in the fact that he was just faking it the whole time in an elaborate Ferengi rouse, makes the whole thing pretty weak.

Fuenral/Speeches - 

      Zeks funeral plays second fiddle to the story of Quark becoming the Nagus in this one; there aren't many in attendance and the only real distinguishing feature is a picture of Zek in a gaudy brass frame, in classic human ceremony fashion. One saving grace is that we are introduced to the Ferengi tradition of selling off the remains of the deceased in vacuum packed petri dishes as a collectible. We would see this again in future episodes done much better, but this was where the idea was born, and so deserves a tip of the cap!

Overall - 
    Considering that this wasn't actually a death, but more of a test that Zek was running to see what his son would do with the Grand Nagus power, it ranks at the bottom of the list. We do learn that nice piece of Ferengi tradition of selling off the deceased, but we also get no speeches, no real emotion and no real funeral proceedings, so for that, Zek finds himself in the tenth spot on our list.


9 - Dr. Ira Graves (TNG - The Schizoid Man)

Death/Length of Death/Character - 
  The Schizoid Man will always hold a special place in my heart as it was the very first episode we ever reviewed on Random Trek Review. Dr. Ira Graves is a one off character used here for one of the many Data not being Data story lines that we saw in TNG. A brilliant, but nefarious scientist, Ira Graves is able to transport his conscienceless into Mr. Data shortly before his inevitable death. Unfortunately this is not seen on screen, we just get a conversation between Graves and Data talking about the androids off switch (you shouldn't be making that public knowledge Data!). Getting around the whole "how did he overpower/outwit Data and transfer his mind into his body", we come back from a commercial break to find a not-so-Data-like Data announcing "Ira Graves is dead!"

   

Fuenral/Speeches - 
      Dr. Ira Graves gets a very traditional "buried at space" style funeral, with the added bonus of a tiny window on the torpedo so we can see his face setting up "Data's" speech later on. What makes this scene, and to some degree makes Schizoid Man a memorable episode is the eulogy that the delusional Dr. Graves gives to himself through Data's body. "Look at that face....", "To know him, was to love him, to love him was to know him...." there are so many great lines in this wonderfully acted scene by Brent Spiner, it's hard to do it justice in text; you really need to go back and watch this one to appreciate it, or better yet, go listen to Matt and I discuss it on RTR episode 1!!

Overall - 

     Despite being memorable, I don't think that this funeral packs a lot of emotional punch, as they played it more for laughs. We do get the classic torpedo coffin here, although Picard chooses to beam it into space rather than the typical shooting into space we've seen in prior funerals. Dr. Graves is a somewhat memorable character but is essentially a one off set up for the story the writers wanted to tell. For that reason, Dr. Ira Graves ends up number nine on the list.


8 - Lt. John Kelly (VOY - One Small Step)

Death/Length of Death/Character - 
     Star Trek at it's greatest right here! In the course of fortyish minutes the writers of ST:Voyager are able to introduce, develop and kill off a character, all while taking the audience along for the emotional ride. In the teaser, we get introduced to Lt. John Kelly, and with some banter between him and his team, we get a sense of his character and learn of his love for baseball. He gets sucked into an anomaly alone, only to be found by the Voyager crew many light-years and time-years away! As the crew learns more about John through his logs, the audience does as well, from his wife to his dad and his urge to explore in general, the crew grow to appreciate him and so do we. His death, which in all honesty could have been played for fear, lost in space, is played more emotional as he laments that he regrets nothing other than never finding out the winner of the World Series.

 
Fuenral/Speeches - 

      For a single episode character we get not one but two speeches from both Cpt. Janeway and 7 of 9. Janeway's speech is well written, linking the idea that without people like Kelly, people like her would never have been able to find a home in the emptiness of space. Seven of Nine takes a more personal approach as she has learned so much about Kelly while she herself was in the anomaly, capping the emotional speech by announcing the Yankees in six. Tuvok has the entire crew stand at attention while a random crew member plays the whistle and Voyager shoot Kelly off to space in the classic torpedo coffin!


Overall - 
      What a great Trekkie episode of Star Trek! It may be a little on the nose with some of the messages here, but it is beautifully told and packs the emotional punch that the writers were hoping for. John Kelly isn't a main character, so it's hard to rank him too far up the list, but he is memorable and a got a great funeral scene in Trek!


7 - Laforge/Ro (TNG - The Next Phase)
   
Death/Length of Death/Character - 
  The Next Phase (another episode Matt and I reviewed) lead to a lot of classic scenes and a great funeral/wake. Transporter mishaps are pretty much common place on star ships, but they're pretty rarely fatal. Unfortunately for LaForge and Ro, some new Romulan tech causes them to shift out of phase and be presumed dead. It leads to so many great scenes between both the characters out of phase but also the characters in phase as well. We get Geordi and En. Ro arguing about whether or not they are dead or not, they get to see their death certificates get written and say things to their senior officers that they never got to say in life; It's all great stuff. Of course they get brought back into phase at the end of the episode, which hurts the position on the ranking, but does give us a great insight as to how the Enterprise and it's crew deals with the death of friends and colleagues.

Fuenral/Speeches - 
       Data does a lot of deep thinking about what type of funeral services he wants to have for his best friend Geordi. He asks lots of people on the crew what their suggestions are before eventually landing on an Irish style wake. We get Riker playing the trombone, snacks and fond memories of the two deceased. This leads to more comedy as we live through the frustration of the out of phase characters trying to get the attention of the inphase characters capped off with the two coming back into the phase and asking "looks like a great party, mind if we join you"

Overall - 
          This is a fun and memorable episode that goes more for humour than emotional punch. That being said, it is a great look at how the crew reacts when somebody dies, especially someone as prominent as the main engineer. We get a little look at how difficult it must be to plan a funeral in the 24th century with so many different customs and traditions, only to settle on the classic human tradition of the wake. It all works wonderfully well, and sits in the seventh position on our list!


6 - Sim (ENT - Similtude)

Death/Length of Death/Character - 
 
Enterprise pulls a sneaky trick on the audience here, setting up a teaser that makes it appear that Trip Tucker has been killed only to reveal throughout the episode that it was in fact a replication. Oddly enough it works really well! When Tucker is severely injured in a routine engine test, Dr. Phlox gets the idea to clone him in order to get the organs necessary to heal him. This is all great in theory, until we realize that the clone, named Sim, becomes his own unique person and will essentially need to be sacrificed to save Trip. As the episode progresses you really get a sense of sadness about the clone, Sim, as he ages rapidly and while he goes through the process of aging and then learning his eventual fate it hangs heavy on the heart. There is some really deep stuff here when Sim has the urge to live and challenges Archer on whether he will go so far as to murder him, adding some good tension to the last act. Eventually Sim realizes his purpose in life is to prolong Trips and agrees to sacrifice himself. There is a great scene where he thanks his "father" Phlox and a cheesy "you owe me one" line for Trip, but it all plays very nicely.

Fuenral/Speeches - 
    This clone usage allows the viewers to get a preemptive look at a Trip funeral without having to actually kill him off, which I think works nicely. That being said, Sim becomes a character all his own and we are sad to see him go when it's revealed at the end of the episode that it is him and not Trip. Archer makes a speech, we get the typical torpedo coffin shot into space, but it is a nice funeral for a one episode character and it is nice to see a funeral during the Enterprise era.

Overall - 
    Sim isn't a main character but the fact he looked like Trip and sounds like Trip, his funeral had a main character feel. It isn't anything overly memorable, but that initial teaser shock and the fact that they were able to take this cheesy idea and give it some emotion is impressive enough to land it sixth on the list.



5 - Airiam (DIS - The Red Angel)

Death/Length of Death/Character - 
       A lot of Discovery fans after the first season were clamoring for the producers to give us more
depth to the supporting characters on Disco. In the second season we did get more depth, but it did feel somewhat ham-fisted. None more blatant than the treatment of the background character Airiam; the cyborg looking, mysterious, half-robot-half human we've been seen lingering in the background for a season now. In the episode "Project Daedalus" we learn a whole lot about Airiam, she was married, she has a long term memory impairment and she had an accident that left her in the suit she currently wears. I think the idea was a good one, but by the time she sacrifices herself at the end of the episode, the whole thing just felt rushed and lacked the emotional heart I think that everyone was hoping for. If they had done what fans had wanted and built the character up over time, this would have made me feel something, but because it was done at such a break neck speed, it just didn't.

Fuenral/Speeches - 
       Despite being a lackluster character and a rushed death scene, the modern day aesthetics and technology made her funeral something to behold. Done in what I think is supposed to be the cargo bay or torpedo assembly area, it looks absolutely amazing! Burham makes a long speech (surprise, surprise), which although was predictable, was also quite nice, you get Saru singing some weird Kelpian song and the whole thing feels very Trek. It was just another torpedo coffin funeral, but this one felt very epic which is why it ranks so high on the list.

Overall -  
       As we hit the halfway mark of the list, I realize that so many of these funerals are very human in tradition. As Discovery heads off to the distant future, I really hope we see a different race's funeral traditions or perhaps how ours have changed over that long a period of time. As for this funeral, it has the big budget, the lengthy speech, the over the top singing, and just enough emotion to break the top five.


4 - Cpt. Lisa Cusak (DS9 - The Sound of her Voice)

 
Death/Length of Death/Character - 
   

  Leave it to Deep Space Nine to weave a story that makes you care so much about a character you can't see and even worse is already dead! In such a brilliant use of sci-fi story telling, the crew of the Defiant spend six days talking with a lone survivor of a crashed ship of whom they picked up a distress call from. As each of the main cast get to know Lisa, we do to, instantly making us root for Sisco and co to make it to her in time. Of course the tension is dialed up as she is fading fast and we are given only the slimmest of hopes that she'll be alive when they get there.  As only DS9 can do, they get to the cave just in time, only to find that Cusak is dead, not only that, she has been dead for three years. There is some technobabble about how the planets atmosphere time shifted the communications, and she spent her last days talking with people from the future that had no chance of saving her. It is a very sad moment, and packs the emotional punch that I'm looking for on this list!

Fuenral/Speeches - 
      They end up taking her body back to DS9 and giving her a proper funeral in the common area of the station. This isn't anything special in terms of the decorations or ceremony, but really hits hard are the speeches. Each of the characters gets a moment to speak of how those conversations created a friendship that will be remembered for a long time, and there was none better than O'Brien's speech where he says "The war changed us - pulled us apart....I want my friend in my life, because someday we're gonna wake up and we're gonna find out that someone is missing from this circle. On that day we're going to mourn, and we shouldn't have to mourn alone"....absolute legend!

Overall -  
     I may have ranked this disproportionately high because of my love of this episode,the amazing O'Brien speech or both, regardless it's warranted. In forty-forty five minutes, the writers were able to get us to care about a character that we don't actually see, then deliver speeches at the funeral that bring a tear to our eye. This is how it's done!


3 - Jadzia Dax (DS9 - Tears of the Prophets)

Death/Length of Death/Character - 

     

If i told you that a main character gets killed by the main villain of any television series, not to mention a Star Trek series, you would assume that it would be pretty epic. Sadly this falls just short for me, We all know the story at this point, Terry Farrell got another job and the writers hastily wrote her out. That being said, issues with the actress shouldn't have rolled over onto the character, and in this situation, it does somewhat feel like it. Evil PaWrathe Dukat shoots her in the belly with a fireball and she dies; that's what we got. All of the emotional punch here comes from our love of the character and the reactions of her fellow crew members as they react to the news. Her last lines to Worf about their unborn child would have being beautiful, is pretty heart breaking stuff.

Fuenral/Speeches - 
      We don't get a funeral for Jadzia sadly, we get Sisko talking to his old friend through the cliched torpedo coffin. It is a pretty big scene with regards to DS9 lore, during a pivotal section of the overarching Dominion storyline which adds a lot of depth to the moment. I really would have loved to see what the others would have said at Dax's funeral, especially Quark, since they had a close relationship, but alas it will be left to our imagination!

Overall -  
      I may get some flak for rating this one as high as I have, but at the end of the day it is very rare to see a main cast character killed off and stay dead. For that reason, I had to put her in the top three, and because by the end of season six we had grown to love the character so much, when she died it really did hit home. I actually am a fan of Ezri Dax too, and think that it opened up a lot of great ideas for season seven, it really is just too bad we had to lose Jadzia to get her.

2 - Tasha Yar (TNG - Skin of Evil)

Death/Length of Death/Character - 
        In perhaps the biggest career "whoopsie" since George Lazenby turning down a seven picture

contract to play James Bond, we have Denise Crosby. After having a miserable time on the set of TNG, she decided to step away from the role of Tasha Yar, and so the character was killed off. I don't think that Skin of Evil is a great episode by any stretch of the imagination, but I do love the way Yar gets killed in the death scene. Armus kills her for "no meaning" with a green shock wave, which causes her to fly across the screen with a huge flip that always makes me gasp; it looks like the stunt woman tucks her head at the absolute last second. I think the way that Data, Riker, Troi and Crusher all deal with the loss is great and really makes us feel the weight of the situation as well.

Fuenral/Speeches - 

  Utilizing the holodeck for a funeral is such a brilliant idea, and makes perfect sense for the new and improved Enterprise-D. I like the idea that the deceased can choose the perfect setting, a rainy gloomy day, an early morning sunrise or as Tasha picked a beautiful sunny day. I also liked that they took a 24 century approach to the funeral and chose to have Yar herself speak via a hologram. I know that nowadays people take video of themselves and have the family watch it after/before the funeral, but still, this felt futuristic and perfectly put over the remaining cast in her leaving. Which watching now years later, perfectly summarized everyone on the main cast. Data gets the final word and so perfectly caps the second best Trek funeral we've seen thus far.

Overall - 
      In  hindsight, I think we all agree that killing Tasha Yar was not the right call. They could have kept her alive and then as the series progressed, potentially brought her back as Yar rather than Sela. That being said, she holds a very rare distinction of a Star Trek character dying for real and staying dead. Yar got a wonderful little funeral on an episode that would be forgettable if she hadn't died in it. Her death is a great piece of stunt work and has just enough weight to make us feel bad that she died, even if we've only known her for 22 episodes.
   

1 - Spock (Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn)

 Death/Length of Death/Character - 

            Get your Kleenex out folks, we are at the number one Star Trek death, and there is absolutely no surprises here with Spock in Wrath of Kahn. This is not just one of the best Star Trek deaths of all time, this may be the best sci-fi death of all time; hurt only by the fact that he was resurrected in the very next movie two years later. Everything works with this death, it starts with the great interaction between McCoy and Spock, when the doctor is trying to stop Spock from entering the radiation. As great as the interaction with the doctor is, the true main event comes when Kirk runs down to talk with his best friend one last time before he dies. Its all here, live long and prosper, the needs of the many, it is all amazing and you really feel this death even years later, knowing he comes back.


Fuenral/Speeches - 
         I know I've talked about the overuse of the torpedo coffin funeral, but this is the one that started it all. It is absolutely perfect in every way!! Kirks speech about Spock being human, Scotty playing the bag pipes, the camera work, the lighting, literally everything is perfect! What are you doing reading this, you should be Youtubing it right now!

Overall - 
            I doubt that we will ever get another Trek funeral as good as this one, you could watch it after all these years and it will still illicit the same emotion as back in eight two. All of the actors are at their absolute best here, especially Shatner in both the death scene and the funeral scene. It was a very bold move to kill off one of the most beloved scifi characters of all time, but boy it ever pay dividends. I don't know that I could add much more that others haven't been saying for years, its just amazing in every sense of the word and my top Star Trek funeral of all time!

And that's my list, I know that I missed the many time Harry Kim died and Kirk getting buried in rocks at the end of Generations, but they didn't make the grade. Thanks for so much for reading and if you are looking for more great Star Trek content, come listen to Matt and I review the second half of the Deep Space Nine series premier Emissary here:
http://randomtrekreview.blogspot.com/2019/10/rtr-31-picard-loves-tea-kirk-loves-women.html