WARNING: SPOILERS
It is easy to be overly earnest, to feel the need to make a point, but life doesn’t make points; life just happens… and so does death. Anyone who has experienced death knows that there is no grand dramatic exit. Rarely is there any meaning to it, any sacrifice. Death is just what happens at the end of life and few of us are ever to make any sense of it, particularly when it happens to a loved one. So why should fiction be any different?
Joss Whedon is the master of senseless deaths but then, with long-running television shows such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the storylines would be utterly implausible without the demise of main characters (particularly those who live on a hell mouth). However many writers choose not to include deaths as part of an ongoing storyline, particularly not those that serve no obvious purpose to the main plot. The impact of such events, however probable though, can be immense and, particularly in fantasy and science fiction, grounds the characters in reality.
The episode The Body from Joss Whedon’s cult vampire show was one of the most shocking and moving of its time. Aided by the lack of any soundtrack, it elevated a geeky fantasy drama to a new level through its exploration of sudden death at a very human level. Similarly, the exit of Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation forced viewers of the classic sci-fi series to forget the futuristic spaceships and alien life forms and to re-examine how life and death and all the emotions mixed up with that transcend genres and touch all of us, whichever universe we are living in.
The BBC’s recent killing off of Clara Oswald in Doctor Who provided us with a new perspective on the Doctor and his companions, presenting a futile death brought on by mistake, ending an enduring partnership in the space of a few misspoken words.
And then of course there is Wash. Few even hardened sci-fi fans can suppress a lump in the throat as Wash deftly flies Serenity through Reavers, The Alliance and a tragically miscalculated cancelling of a television show, only to be impaled by a giant flying splinter, just minutes prior to the final climactic scenes. “I am a leaf on the wind…”
Senseless death is part of life and its inclusion within the realms of fantasy writing brings gravitas to the genre and elevates the stories beyond fairy tales, although of course that is perhaps from where some of the greatest fictional deaths originate. There is a limit of course, over which more recent sagas have deliberately stepped. Game of Thrones, for example presents us with a masterclass of fictional demise and, although we know that rarely is a beloved character likely to last beyond a single series, still we are shocked every time half the cast are massacred.
Martyrdom has had its day in fiction; we see though it and rail against the predictability of self-sacrifice. The meaningless death resonates with the ordinary, allows us to relate and even to make sense through fantasy of what we cannot even contemplate in reality.
…and besides, in science fiction and fantasy there is always an alternate reality to bring them back to life again…
It is easy to be overly earnest, to feel the need to make a point, but life doesn’t make points; life just happens… and so does death. Anyone who has experienced death knows that there is no grand dramatic exit. Rarely is there any meaning to it, any sacrifice. Death is just what happens at the end of life and few of us are ever to make any sense of it, particularly when it happens to a loved one. So why should fiction be any different?
Joss Whedon is the master of senseless deaths but then, with long-running television shows such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the storylines would be utterly implausible without the demise of main characters (particularly those who live on a hell mouth). However many writers choose not to include deaths as part of an ongoing storyline, particularly not those that serve no obvious purpose to the main plot. The impact of such events, however probable though, can be immense and, particularly in fantasy and science fiction, grounds the characters in reality.
The episode The Body from Joss Whedon’s cult vampire show was one of the most shocking and moving of its time. Aided by the lack of any soundtrack, it elevated a geeky fantasy drama to a new level through its exploration of sudden death at a very human level. Similarly, the exit of Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation forced viewers of the classic sci-fi series to forget the futuristic spaceships and alien life forms and to re-examine how life and death and all the emotions mixed up with that transcend genres and touch all of us, whichever universe we are living in.
The BBC’s recent killing off of Clara Oswald in Doctor Who provided us with a new perspective on the Doctor and his companions, presenting a futile death brought on by mistake, ending an enduring partnership in the space of a few misspoken words.
And then of course there is Wash. Few even hardened sci-fi fans can suppress a lump in the throat as Wash deftly flies Serenity through Reavers, The Alliance and a tragically miscalculated cancelling of a television show, only to be impaled by a giant flying splinter, just minutes prior to the final climactic scenes. “I am a leaf on the wind…”
Senseless death is part of life and its inclusion within the realms of fantasy writing brings gravitas to the genre and elevates the stories beyond fairy tales, although of course that is perhaps from where some of the greatest fictional deaths originate. There is a limit of course, over which more recent sagas have deliberately stepped. Game of Thrones, for example presents us with a masterclass of fictional demise and, although we know that rarely is a beloved character likely to last beyond a single series, still we are shocked every time half the cast are massacred.
Martyrdom has had its day in fiction; we see though it and rail against the predictability of self-sacrifice. The meaningless death resonates with the ordinary, allows us to relate and even to make sense through fantasy of what we cannot even contemplate in reality.
…and besides, in science fiction and fantasy there is always an alternate reality to bring them back to life again…
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