Musings: When Killing Characters to Save the World, Do it in Pairs

Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb in the center of the planet and your best friend is dying. Save your friend and the bomb goes off. What do you do? What do you do?

My last post looked at episode 3 of Star Trek Picard's second season. In it the crew faced the challenge of having to disconnect a Borg queen that was draining the ship's power before one of the crewmen dies from a phaser wound. At one point one of the crew decides to shoot the queen only to be instructed not to by Picard because she is necessary to repairing the timeline from diverging into a dark, xenophobic horror show.

The episode generated discussion of how lazy writing didn't force Picard into a choice between fixing the future and saving the crewman, therefore letting him off the hook for the crewman's death. Except, as I pointed out, Picard made his choice by instructing his subordinate not to kill the queen when it looked like that was the best, most expedient way to stop the power drain and save the dying crewman. He decided that when it came down to it, the queen's value to the mission was more important than his friend's guaranteed survival. There was no need to stop the crew's frantic efforts just to ask Picard a question and wait for him to answer it, especially since Picard as a character had developed over eight seasons of television (and four movies) so his decision would never really be in doubt. But what if the character who was confronted by this decision was someone the audience didn't know?

First let's lower the threat level. Faced with the the guaranteed destruction of the world (or, in the case of Picard, all of time as they know it), is there really a decision to make? This was certainly part of my thinking with Picard's dilemma: if the choice is between one person and tens, perhaps hundreds of billions of people, is there even a choice?

So let's make the stakes somewhat lower--considerably fewer people at risk or an altered timeline that isn't an absolute dystopia. Imagining the exact same scenario applied to a brand new story with new characters, the kind of explicit choice people wanted Picard to be faced with would be the preferable option. Any kind of hesitation on the part of the group leader would contribute to character development. And obviously the choice itself would be informative. The response to the sacrifice afterward would also be ripe for exploration.

All of that being said, I don't think the one choice in the beginning of the story is worth much. Or a single choice at the end. It does make for shock value when it happens, and it builds up a little risk for the story if it happens in the beginning, but how much does that one choice on its own really contribute to the leader's character development?

Let's say the leader sacrifices his close friend in the interest of the mission in the beginning. After the leader's character journey throughout the story, would they make the same choice again--and with someone not as close to them as the first friend that was sacrificed in the beginning? Or we could consider the opposite outcome. The leader might save his friend with that choice in the beginning of the story, risking the negative consequences, only to face such a choice again at the end and make the opposite decision.

I personally prefer the latter option for the bittersweet ending. A leader being forced to grow more and more into their role over time only to finally be faced with the worst possible decision a leader can be is fascinating to me. But regardless of what that first decision is, I don't know if it's worth it if it doesn't contribute to some serious, fundamental character changing development by the end of the story. While guilt on its own is fascinating, and a little interpersonal drama between the leader and everyone else is fun, I don't know if it's worth it without the other side of the coin at the end.

All of this relates back to that episode of Picard. Obviously I don't know how the final six episodes will unfold, but my guess is that Picard will not face a reflection of that first sacrifice. And so we go back to my original conclusion that this moment ultimately doesn't tell us anything about Picard we don't know. It would tell us a great deal about a character we don't know. And...if I'm going to kill off an important character to get a rise out of the leader, I want to get the absolute most out of it. So I'll kill off two.