“I have little to say about it, Captain, except that for the first time in my life I was happy.”
This brings up an interesting question: What’s Starfleet’s policy on crew deaths in space?
In “The Galileo Seven,” they buried the crewmen who died on the planet where they were stranded (granted, they didn’t really expect to be rescued). In another episode (“The Apple”?), Scotty says “Aye, Captain, we’ll bring him [the dead Redshirt] home.” Once they did, what did they do with him? Put him in cold storage? And what about all those guys killed by the Vampire Cloud? Surely they didn’t leave the bodies behind?
Is there such a thing as burial in open space (ignoring the two Redshirts in “And the Children Shall Lead,” who weren’t even dead yet), like burial at sea? Or do they wait until they reach a Star Base and inter them there, like whacko Dr Lester wanted to do with Kirk et al. on Berenicia?
They shoot 'em out of the torpedo tubes.
Inside torpedos, like with Spock? Seems … costly, given how many people die while on active duty.
I thought about including a line about “only if they’re high-ranking enough to warrant it, like Spock,” but decided not to.
Why should officers only be treated to such a ceremony? I can see (in today’s terms) burying the President in Arlington Cemetery, but that doesn’t mean that “ordinary soldiers” are dumped in a pit with quicklime. Instead, they’re often buried in other national cemeteries, with full military honors. Redshirts should be treated with dignity of some sort. Maybe they don’t use the top-of-the-line photon torpedo tube like they did with Spock, but c’mon, they have to be somewhat enlightened when it comes to the good mooks (are “mooks” inherently the evil henchmen? Can there be mooks on the good guys side?)
It seems inhumane for Kirk, et al to say, “Well, he’s a worthless Redshirt. Scotty, just beam his remains into space. Chekov, Warp Factor 11!”
Being serious, my guess would be that the bodies would be transported into deep space on wide dispersion. Even with warp tech, sending a body halfway across the galaxy to be buried in the hometown cemetery seems…excessive.
Aside from Spock’s, has any episode of any Trek iteration ever shown a real funeral? Wasn’t there one in TNG where the coffin was just allowed to float out into open space? Or am I hallucinating again?
There was a sequence like that on Babylon 5.
I may actually have seen that episode. Wasn’t the corpse laid out on a bier with candles burning all around him?
The cold open of the Enterprise episode Sim was a funeral, apparently for Trip. The episode ended on the same funeral, after it revealed it was actually for Trip’s sort-of-clone, Sim.
The crew of Deep Space Nine had a Klingon memorial, if not a proper funeral, for Jadzia.
Am I the only one who remembers this?
[quote=“terentii, post:31, topic:777604”]
Am I the only one who remembers this?
[/QUOTE]Not only do I remember it, I had a strong hunch that was going to be the link before I opened it.
Inger Stevens. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
Yes, but can you sing the theme song? 
There was an episode of Voyager (I know, I know, I’m probably the only person who liked it) where an ensign died and she was shot into space in a torpedo tube. Another race retrieved her body and re-animated her in their own image.
Geez, I’m not remembering this at all. Too much Trek must be interfering with my B5 memory.
No, the sequence I was thinking of is from “Severed Dreams,” I think. After the big battle, as they clean up the mess and regroup, they have a funeral service for the fallen. The image I remember is a stream of coffins leaving the cargo bay in a line, headed for deep space.
IIRC it started with “Katy, the Farmer’s Daughter.” After that I got nothin’.
There was a young man from Venus
Who had such a spectacular
My memory is vague, but I think the conflict was over the right to ritual suicide. In the end, the guy who wanted to die succeeded in doing himself in, to the horror of some other guy (a relative or close friend).
I’m not confusing this with the ***TNG ***episode with David Ogden Stiers. I remember thinking the B5 uniforms were really funky.
My memory needed a little jogging, but it all came back to me in a rush: