Date: 02 Jun 2013 02:47 Title: Chapter 23 (Part 2)
Ah, more pictures! My, people age well in the future, but I suppose superior medical care and access to better food helps that. Everyone is so happy in these pictures (well, minus that one with Melisa as she’s staring out into the sunset … she looks very contemplative there and obviously has a great weight on her, as Norri mentioned). Norri speaks about them with a lot of love and a lot of compassion, and she seems to be holding up pretty well during the slideshow. Were I her, I wouldn’t be holding up so well … seeing all those that I lost would wreck me, I think. I’m not much a person for pictures (I have a pretty damn good memory for that, too damn good if you ask me) so I don’t take a lot of them.
But these pictures each express what was so good about the person in them. The most striking picture to me, out of all of these, was Malcolm smiling so broadly, the one where he had spent his two years of leave time with Declan. I found that picture to be the best because it speaks to me about how much Malcolm loved the boy. It bugs me to sit here and think that he’s going back into space at the end of all this … I just don’t get it. Starfleet is a lot of things, sometimes it’s even family for people, but when you have your own flesh and blood there, waiting for you Malcolm and you leave?
It wouldn’t be what I would have done. But I’m not him.
The final point Lili makes here, about how the history may not be right but the meaning of it was, the essence of their tale was, is poignant. Q is over analyzing again, trying to find some way not to commit to a course of action he isn’t sure about (dude, been there, still doing that, it sucks, just get it over with it’s much better that way!) but Lili will have none of it. It’s not like history gets anything right anyway all the time … history probably gets more wrong than right, honestly. Again, it’s about the perspective of those living it and the perspective of those who are seeing it in retrospect.
Q doesn’t want his decision in either case to be seen in a bad light but he has to take that chance. As he gets more desperate, he’s going to be forced to make that choice I feel.
Author's Response:
This is close to him being forced. And he will be.
As for the images - Doug is from the mirror and so a part of his fitness (he's got major evolutionary advantages) is for him to be more youthful even as he ages. Culp is in his forties in I think all of these shots. Lili doesn't have those advantages, and she does have laugh lines and the like. Naomi Watts is in her forties in I think all of those pictures. Melissa (Catherine Bell) is younger, but she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. As for Norri, there are no middle-aged images of Allison Hannigan as she kind of isn't middle-aged yet. The pic of Doug and Melissa is Culp and Bell from an episode of JAG.
And then there's Malcolm. He is honor-bound and duty-driven. And this is the choice he makes. And it's not necessarily the best one, but he's needed, and he doesn't really know any other way to be.