Star Trek tear jerkers

My fiance, Kevin LaRose, will be joining me for the upcoming series on Star Trek tear jerker moments. We have both become quite fond of Trek over the years, though I have not quite convinced him to embrace all five series yet. I am a hopeless Trekkie, while he has his preferred series.

I ran across an article this morning by Jordan Hoffman listing his top ten Star Trek tear-jerker moments. They are pretty good, and he invited comments at the end. I decided, instead, to do a series about my own favorite tear-jerkers. It is not So, to get us started...

Belle's death (Voyager, season 3, episode 22

In this episode, the doctor decides to create a holographic family so that he can experience the trials and joys that some of the Voyager crew experience. His program needs a little tweaking, and B'Elana offers to assist him. I rarely cry over movies or TV shows. I did over this one. Robert Picardo is a wonderful actor anyway. Everything he does in this series is extremely natural and shows a wide range of emotion, from jubilation to grumpiness. In this show, he does parenthood supremely and grieves so well that I am there at his daughter's bedside. The child actress is phenomenal as well. Where did they find her???

I read in another article once that people liked Deep Space Nine because it came back from space and explored the inner self. I always found that Voyager did a great job with explorations of the self and deep subjects. This episode is a good example. The doctor faces death daily; but he avoids it by shutting down the holofamily program when his daughter is near death until his crewmates confront him. (Would that we all had that luxury!) Watching him rise to the challenge and comfort her in her death is probably the most poignant part of the episode for me. It is a sign that he is moving past his "programming," a much better sign than his encounter with a flu virus in season 2.