[spoilers] Taking nominations for saddest/most tragic scenes in science fiction.

[Lord Jubjub]

Most people associate science fiction with explosions, actions and general mayhem. But there are scenes that can leave anyone in tears.

Guidelines:
1. Any medium is accepted. I may separate literature from movies/TV and even make three categories.
2. No restrictions on original language, though it would be preferable to mention the native language if it's other than English.
3. The tragic part of the equation doesn't need to be tear-inducing--but it needs to be moving.

I have no idea what kind of list I'll come up with, so I want to hear all suggestions.

My first suggestion is the Rutger Hauer death scene from Blade Runner.

[KaiYeves]

Would another requirement be that an account or description of something that happened in real life within a science fiction story not qualify?

[Ilya]

Death of Clavain in Alastair Reynolds "Absolution Gap".

And for a scene so moving it brings tears of joy (literally -- I cried when I read it, as did my daughter): last line of "The Prefect", also by Reynolds.

[Lord Jubjub]

Biographical accounts within the bounds of a science-based story would definitely be an interesting contribution.

[Gillianren]

Well, this is a poll laden with spoilers, isn't it?

I second Blade Runner and raise you Serenity. Honestly, either death of a major character, but the beautiful, stoic conversation between Mal and Zoe? I wanted to cry, and I didn't know the characters as well as a lot of other people.

[grant hutchison]

"Dr Chandra, will I dream?"

Grant Hutchison

[Fazor]

I second Blade Runner and raise you Serenity.

I was going to vote for Serenity, but not the death scene. The end credits; knowing the tv series was gone, and that you just watched the last remaining Firefly story . . . I cried like a baby! (Not really, but I wanted to.)

[mike alexander]

The last image from Isaac Asimov's "The Ugly Little Boy": An empty room

Same for Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations": An empty airlock

The moment in James Gunn's The Listeners when humans discover the first contact with an alien race is a recording made before its extinction.

The moment when Ruiz-Sanchez pronounces the exorcism on the planet Lithia in A Case of Conscience. This does also involve an explosion, though.

[Moose]

Well, this is a poll laden with spoilers, isn't it?

Indeed. Jubjub, when you get around to posting the poll, please keep that firmly in mind.

All others: for any movie, show, or book that might possibly be considered recent, please take extra care to avoid posting plot-killing spoilers. Put the text under a "color=white" "/color" tag, spaces, mark for spoilers (and for which movie), etc. Reasonable precautions will help prevent accidents and resentment.

It should also be noted that if there's a science fiction movie that you absolutely don't want spoiled under any circumstances, may I suggest this thread has the potential to be dangerous to your enjoyment of that movie.

[danscope]

In the film " Mysterious island " , Captain Nemo returned briefly to the imprisoned Nautilus , within a volcanic harbor , in an attempt to retrieve his scientific papers , when the volcano erupts explosively and he is killed by the falling ejecta .

Best regards,
Dan

[HenrikOlsen]

In the book Nemo dies of old age as the last crew of the Nautilus and is buried by the marooned protagonists after telling them what they need to know to survive the volcano's impending explosion, thus at least partially redeeming himself for his crimes.

[Solfe]

When Wall-e shuts down because Eve can't fix him on the ship.

[Swift]

At this point I'm not going to give any "me too"s for ones named so far (there have been good ones). A couple of new ones:

Large chunks of the novel "A Canticle for Leibowitz", I find it an extremely moving story.

Same for "Flowers for Algernon". I feel moved just thinking about the story.

Several Robert Heinlein short stories, in particular: "The Green Hills of Earth" and "The Long Watch". And from the novel "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" the scene (spoiler): where the professor dies.

From Star Trek: Next Generation, the episdoe "The Offspring" (Data's daughter), three scenes, the obvious ones (where Lal dies and when Data talks to the Bridge crew after, but also the one where Picard tells Admiral Haftel "Order a man to turn his child over to the state? Not while I'm his captain" - I find that scene very moving.

[Swift]

One other ST:NG episdoe I just thought of, in the episode "The Inner Light", the one with Picard and "the probe", the ending scene on the planet is touching, but the most touching is the very end in Picard's stateroom.

[Van Rijn]

Same for "Flowers for Algernon". I feel moved just thinking about the story.

I was quite young the first time I read Flowers for Algernon, and at that time I didn't realize it was fiction (it seemed like something that could have happened and, as far as I knew then, the procedure was plausible), so I found it especially moving and tragic. I only realized it was fiction later after I talked to my parents about it.

That actually was an important lesson for me about the issues of being overly credulous, one I still remember.

[IsaacKuo]

Since there are Futurama fans here, I'm surprised no one has yet nominated the ending of Jurassic Bark. It's so gratuitously emotionally manipulative, that it's making a point about emotional manipulation in fiction. It's like the writer's saying, "See? See what I did there, to you? I didn't have to do that. You know it, I know it, we all know it. And yet, I did that to you anyway. Chew on that!"

[Delvo]

Since there are Futurama fans here, I'm surprised no one has yet nominated the ending of Jurassic Bark. It's so gratuitously emotionally manipulative, that it's making a point about emotional manipulation in fiction. It's like the writer's saying, "See? See what I did there, to you? I didn't have to do that. You know it, I know it, we all know it. And yet, I did that to you anyway. Chew on that!"

When you said "ending of Jurassic Park", I thought of the survivors flying away from the island in a helicopter, with the kids sleeping on the shoulders of the protagonist who doesn't like kids, and the little white modern dinosaurs flying by outside the window, with the soundtrack's main theme playing in the form of a very simple-structured piano solo... a memorable ending to me, but not tragic, so I was confuzzled.

Rereading, I think you're saying that there was a Futurama episode called "Jurassic Park", right? If so, then I can only guess that it's the one in which Fry went back to his past, reunited with his dog, found out that the dog had found a new owner and lived a normal happy pet-dog life after Fry was gone, and decided to leave the dog behind instead of bringing him/her back to the future with him... so he never sees, as the audience does in a time-lapse montage, that the dog kept returning from then on to the spot where he'd last seen Fry.

I have two from Stargate SG1, although they were both sorto "ruined" by later scenes in the same episodes. For the background of one of them, you need to know that on this show, parasitic alien critters with the ability to take over human host bodies had been the inspiration for our ancient legends of gods, and/or had assumed the personas of our ancient gods, and that some of them were still alive today, preserved along with their hosts by their technology. In one episode, an especially nasty one named Apophis was dying, which would also kill the host, bu tin the process, Apophis lost control of the host, so the host started speaking for himself for the first time in centuries. Translated from ancient Egyptian by a main character who's an archeologist and linguist, he described the nightmare of being taken from his family and trapped like that, helplessly watching Apophis do the things he did through him. The man doing the translation reassured him that he was among friends now and they'd bury him as he would have expected it to be done in his own place and time, so he could rejoin his family.

How they ruined it: another member of Apophis's species, an enemy of his, was threatening them and demanding that Apophis be handed over to him so he could resurrect him and torture him to death repeatedly. For no imaginable reason, they seemed to be shown sending him not just Apophis (roughly like a small snake or large slug himself, extracted from the host) but the entire combo of parasite and host together... meaning the host would still go through whatever Apophis went through and not be buried as Daniel said after all. I simply choose to consider that not to be what really happened in my own personal canon. The bedside scene talking to the host was still a great scene by itself.

Another Stargate SG1 example was when a little girl was essentially being turned into a rather powerful bomb. They knew when she'd detonate but couldn't stop it, so she had to be sequestered deep underground in an abandoned bunker or mine or such to die alone. Samantha Carter took her down, left her there, and had to go back up the elevator alone, crying. (It was the only time I can think of that I saw any main character on the show do that, although I think it might have been even more effective if it had been Jack.)

How they ruined it: on the way up, she figured out how to prevent detonation, or the expected time passed and there was no detonation. They figured out that she'd be fine as long as she stayed far enough away from the stargate for the rest of her life. It's like the ending of... oh wait, that should be a new paragraph...

One that's not Stargate related but is similar to that last one: the Iron Giant, whose character is roughly like a child or a dog, not a soldier or anything like that, flying into a nuke so it doesn't reach the town. Having previously discovered (after losing his memories) that he'd originally been built as a war machine, and rejected that, he now heard a repeat of what a little human boy had told him about being a weapon or not being a weapon: "You can choose who to be". And he had learned of a hero to want to be like from the boy's comic books, so, on his way up to meet the nuclear missile, he closed his eyes and said out loud to himself, slowly and wistfully, the answer to the question of who he would choose to be: "Superman". Then he hits the missile and blows up.

How they ruined it: they showed the robot's parts coming back together again, as they had done once before when he'd been damaged by impact with a train. So, like with the little girl in Stargate, the death scene got treated subsequently as not really a death scene.

[Swift]

Another SF novel that is sad from start to finish (but a great book) "On the Beach".

By the way Lord Jubjub, I'd be just fine if you never made this into an actual poll (or polls). The discussion is much more interesting then to pick one from a narrow list of five. The poll really doesn't matter to me. Just a thought....

[Lord Jubjub]

Asking for specific poll-worthy nominations often yield better discussions than simply tossing out an idea.

Having said that, I am still looking to see if I can make this into a poll.

[IsaacKuo]

Rereading, I think you're saying that there was a Futurama episode called "Jurassic Park", right?

There was no Futurama episode called "Jurassic Park". There was a Futurama episode called "Jurassic Bark". It was the episode you recall, the one with a fossil of Fry's dog.

[SkepticJ]

The death of Fraa Orolo in Anathem.

[Tog]

Basically, the entire premise of The Cold Equations. A young girls stows away on a cargo shuttle with the exact amount of fuel needed to land with supplies for the mining camp where her brother lives. Because of her extra weight, the ship is too heavy and will be destroyed on impact. The Pilot has the choice of shooting the girl out the airlock or having everyone in the camp die too. On paper, it's a no-brainer.

[grant hutchison]

Basically, the entire premise of The Cold Equations. A young girls stows away on a cargo shuttle with the exact amount of fuel needed to land with supplies for the mining camp where her brother lives. Because of her extra weight, the ship is too heavy and will be destroyed on impact. The Pilot has the choice of shooting the girl out the airlock or having everyone in the camp die too. On paper, it's a no-brainer.

Ah, Tom Godwin.
Thanks: I thought of the story immediately but could't get the title right, and didn't recall anything about the author apart from the fact he was really only known nowadays for that single story.
Yeah, it's a killer story from the moment we see the pilot's horror when the stowaway presents herself. The engineering's utterly implausible, but it's only there as a set-up for the human drama. Without wishing to spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't read it, I'll just remark that the editor John Campbell allegedly sent the story back to Godwin several times until Godwin wrote the ending that Campbell wanted. I don't know how true that is, but it's certainly plausible to anyone who knows anything about Campbell.

Grant Hutchison

[Ara Pacis]

I remember reading "The Cold Equations" in middle school. I wondered why no one had checked out the storage compartments and why no loadmaster had weighed the craft to determine the proper mass. Seeing as it was not too realistic, I decided it was pure fiction and was not bothered by it.

[Buttercup]

The death of Mr. Spock in The Wrath of Khan.

[peter eldergill]

Buttercup I can't believe it took someone so long to bring that one up! I especially like it when Kirk has difficulty saying the word "human" when referring to Spock

Pete

[Buttercup]

Buttercup I can't believe it took someone so long to bring that one up! I especially like it when Kirk has difficulty saying the word "human" when referring to Spock

Pete

Yeah! After I posted it I scrolled back through the thread to see who else might have mentioned it. No one. I nearly wept the first time I saw that scene, and I don't cry easily.

Today was my first time reading in this thread, and the Spock death scene instantly came to mind.

[RGClark]

Indeed. Jubjub, when you get around to posting the poll, please keep that firmly in mind.
All others: for any movie, show, or book that might possibly be considered recent, please take extra care to avoid posting plot-killing spoilers. Put the text under a "color=white" "/color" tag, spaces, mark for spoilers (and for which movie), etc. Reasonable precautions will help prevent accidents and resentment.
It should also be noted that if there's a science fiction movie that you absolutely don't want spoiled under any circumstances, may I suggest this thread has the potential to be dangerous to your enjoyment of that movie.

Thanks for that reminder. To see the text below you'll have to drag over the text to highlight it to make it visible.


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The ending of the movie Knowing with Nicholas Cage.





Bob Clark

[RGClark]

The death of Mr. Spock in The Wrath of Khan.

Thanks for reminding me of the Trek universe.
There is of course the Emmy-winning episode in the old series City on the Edge of Forever.
In the Next Generation there was the episode The Inner Light where an alien probe incapacitates Picard and causes him to see an entire lifetime in the eyes of a member of an alien race.


Bob Clark

[Lord Jubjub]

Is the ending of I have no mouth and I must scream more tragic or horrifying? Or is horrifying a subcategory of tragic?