Voyager: Coda

Remember how, when you were a kid, you fantasized about your own funeral? (If you didn't do this, then I half-apologize for the morbid image I just put in your head.) If you did, you're in good company. Tom Sawyer and Janeway both attend their own funerals. I just imagined mine when I felt unappreciated. (I did it all the time.) I knew the music that would play. I watched my relatives wail and flail over my corpse. They all bemoaned how they had treated me. It was a pretty harrowing experience for all involved, I can tell you.

As an adult, this whole thing seems way more morose and awful than it did as a child. The idea of death and leaving behind the people I love is sickening. Seeing someone attend their own funeral, then, is also a lot more powerful than it was when I was a way-into-Mark-Twain ten-year-old.

In Coda, Janeway and Chakotay are be-bopping around in a shuttle craft when they're sucked into some electrical interference and crash land on an empty planet. At first (because I'm guessing this episode was running a little short?) they're stuck in a time loop but Janeway soon realizes that her consciousness has been displaced. She attempts all the tried and true Star Trek methods for rejoining spirit and body but to no avail. That's when her dad shows up.

This guy is pretty suspicious from the get-go and tries to convince Janeway that she's actually a ghost and she's just haunting the ship because she can't let go. He won't leave her alone and they even go to her funeral together where B'Elanna and Harry Kim make excellent speeches about how wonderful she was. This is a legitimately wonderful scene. Kate Mulgrew's performance here is beautiful and, really, the whole episode is worth watching just to see Janeway fight to stay with her crew who, she declares, is a part of her. They are a family. It's really nice.

Why no screen grabs of the episode, you're wondering? Well, here's why:

Five years ago, I took a picture of myself with Janeway. 

This was shortly after re-watching Macrocosm and my Janeway infatuation was pretty intense. 

I wanted a picture of me watching Voyager so badly that I took a selfie with an actual camera and then uploaded it to my computer because I didn't even have a crappy cell phone back then, let alone one that would take pictures: 

Of course, I (and every funeral-picturing ten-year-old on the planet) have one of those now. So, here's an updated version. Me and Janeway today:

My love for her is obviously undying.