Story: Half a Life
Written By: Peter Allan Fields
Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Year: 1991
Lwaxana Troi is on board and falls for a scientist from a planet that euthanizes its older folks. It isn’t really forced but it is a tradition. A celebration of ones life, everyone gathers and throws a party and feast…and at the end…they commit suicide. It is a way to end life before you become old and a burden, but it is also a way to go out happy and with a bang.
It's funny...I've always been annoyed with this episode because I felt it had a great subject and that it botched it because it seemed to hold Lwaxana's position as the true moral high ground. I felt it had lacked nuance and in the end showed her to be the correct point of view. It has this society which holds the end of life in a different light than ours, and instead of using that to explore our own ways and thoughts, I felt it just poo-pooed the idea.
But I just rewatched it, and I think I was wrong. I still think they didn't quite nail the topic, but I do think that in the end, it was far more nuanaced than I have long given it credit for. She has her views, and while she temporarily makes him question his own, in the end he chooses the way he has always known, he chooses to go back and end his life in the way he had always planned. And she accepts it. She may not agree completely with their ways, but she accepts that it IS their way, and that it may be acceptable in some small way.
I like that. I think for years I have thought this episode was a stinker because it failed to truly be accepting of other cultures...but rewatching it I found that it maybe wasn't as bad as I have always thought.
NEXT TIME: Odan
Written By: Peter Allan Fields
Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Year: 1991
Lwaxana Troi is on board and falls for a scientist from a planet that euthanizes its older folks. It isn’t really forced but it is a tradition. A celebration of ones life, everyone gathers and throws a party and feast…and at the end…they commit suicide. It is a way to end life before you become old and a burden, but it is also a way to go out happy and with a bang.
But I just rewatched it, and I think I was wrong. I still think they didn't quite nail the topic, but I do think that in the end, it was far more nuanaced than I have long given it credit for. She has her views, and while she temporarily makes him question his own, in the end he chooses the way he has always known, he chooses to go back and end his life in the way he had always planned. And she accepts it. She may not agree completely with their ways, but she accepts that it IS their way, and that it may be acceptable in some small way.
I like that. I think for years I have thought this episode was a stinker because it failed to truly be accepting of other cultures...but rewatching it I found that it maybe wasn't as bad as I have always thought.
NEXT TIME: Odan