Friday, October 4, 2013

Voyager: Coda

Remember how, when you were a kid, you fantasized about your own funeral? (If you didn't do this, then I half-apologize for the morbid image I just put in your head.) If you did, you're in good company. Tom Sawyer and Janeway both attend their own funerals. I just imagined mine when I felt unappreciated. (I did it all the time.) I knew the music that would play. I watched my relatives wail and flail over my corpse. They all bemoaned how they had treated me. It was a pretty harrowing experience for all involved, I can tell you.

As an adult, this whole thing seems way more morose and awful than it did as a child. The idea of death and leaving behind the people I love is sickening. Seeing someone attend their own funeral, then, is also a lot more powerful than it was when I was a way-into-Mark-Twain ten-year-old.

In Coda, Janeway and Chakotay are be-bopping around in a shuttle craft when they're sucked into some electrical interference and crash land on an empty planet. At first (because I'm guessing this episode was running a little short?) they're stuck in a time loop but Janeway soon realizes that her consciousness has been displaced. She attempts all the tried and true Star Trek methods for rejoining spirit and body but to no avail. That's when her dad shows up.

This guy is pretty suspicious from the get-go and tries to convince Janeway that she's actually a ghost and she's just haunting the ship because she can't let go. He won't leave her alone and they even go to her funeral together where B'Elanna and Harry Kim make excellent speeches about how wonderful she was. This is a legitimately wonderful scene. Kate Mulgrew's performance here is beautiful and, really, the whole episode is worth watching just to see Janeway fight to stay with her crew who, she declares, is a part of her. They are a family. It's really nice.

Why no screen grabs of the episode, you're wondering? Well, here's why:

Five years ago, I took a picture of myself with Janeway. 

This was shortly after re-watching Macrocosm and my Janeway infatuation was pretty intense. 
I wanted a picture of me watching Voyager so badly that I took a selfie with an actual camera and then uploaded it to my computer because I didn't even have a crappy cell phone back then, let alone one that would take pictures: 

Of course, I (and every funeral-picturing ten-year-old on the planet) have one of those now. So, here's an updated version. Me and Janeway today:

My love for her is obviously undying. 

10 comments:

  1. Now do your hair like Janeways! I want to see you with a giant bun!

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    1. I've been trying to figure out HOW. My hair is way more Kes or B'Elanna length these days; I'm not sure I can do the foofy bun.

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  2. you are hilarious.

    also, here's an embarrassing story: when i was around 13 (i.e. WAY TOO OLD FOR THAT SHIT), i used to turn on the hidden instrumental track from the end of natalie merchant's "ophelia" (oh my god, this is already terrible) and then lie down on my bed with an empty perfume bottle and pretend i was going to my death a la "romeo and juliet" (you know, the claire danes movie, not the shakespeare play, as if), and then imagine the terrible suffering and grief i would leave in my wake.

    cut to 2013: yesterday i decided that when i die i will have no funeral, but will donate my body to science; specifically forensic science, where they throw your body in a cordoned off forest and study the way your body decomposes.

    and there's your imagery for the day.

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    1. Ha! That is one of the best things I've ever heard in my whole life. I did a lot of lying in bed listening to Sarah Macla-can't-spell-her-name-but-now-she's-on-animal-ads-that-make-me-feel-bad imagining how devastated the world would be if I left it prematurely.
      Side note: When I was about eight, I was (not literally) dying to go to the beach but my mom wouldn't (couldn't afford) to take me. In a Dickensian (I hoped) attempt to change her mind, I put a huge doll in my bed, dressed up as a ghost and told my mom that her daughter had died of the kind of grief that can only come from being denied a trip to the ocean.

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  3. You were just rockin' the red hair! Beautiful!!

    I hope to hear your take on the upcoming season three episode "Distant Origin". It's one of my favourites of the entire series. : )

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    1. Thank you! I rocked various shades of red since I was about twelve but now I'm trying to let my natural color grow out. We'll see how long it lasts!
      Thanks for the suggestion about "Distant Origin" I'm not super looking forward to it and I'll try to do a post about it for sure!

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    2. Oh, if you're not looking forward to it, don't feel pressured to write about it on my account. : ) It's a really nerdy episode. (and one of the rare instances I'm not bored-to-tears watching Chakotay.) I just like the idea behind it that dinosaurs didn't quite exit our earth the way we always thought they had. : )

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    3. Oh no! Johnny, I'm sorry! That "not" isn't supposed to be there. I'd originally written that I wasn't super familiar with it but that I was looking forward to it--because I couldn't remember off-hand that episode. I watched it the other night though and as soon as it started, I remembered it. And I LOVE it! It's going going to be either today or tomorrow's post!

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    4. Oh good! I did wonder why you wouldn't be looking forward to it in particular. 'Can't wait to read your thoughts on it. : )

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  4. I definitely did the whole melodramatic "You'll all be sorry when I'm dead" daydreaming in my misspent youth. In mine everyone who had ever wronged me was overcome with grief and guilt, and there were at least half a dozen young men who discovered, tragically too late, just how awesome I was.

    Ah , good times.

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