Unbecoming Death: Captain Kirk v The Doctor (Tom Baker)

[The Master]

Two of the biggest icons in science fiction history, Captain Kirk and Tom Baker's iteration of The Doctor, have had two of the most unremarkable deaths. Kirk is crushed under a bridge, The Doctor falls of a radio telescope. While both characters did save many countless lives, their sacrifices were hardly fitting their characters. So, that said, which death was more unsatisfying?

[Dan]

Kirk. Easily. Tom's (essentially offscreen) fall was anticlimactic, but Kirk's "whoops, there's a bridge on me" felt hollow. And honestly, I'm barely joking when I say Kirk's death really should have involved flying scissor kicks and karate chops to the neck. Kirk was a very physical character and his death needed to have had more action.

[The Master]

Though I'm bothered by The Doctor's death, Kirk's is pure shit. If he had to die in Generations, I wish he went down with the Enterprise D, piloting it as everyone made their way to escape pods.

[Dan]

Also, Kirk's death always struck me more as "It's all yours now, Patrick Stewart!" While regeneration, by its very definition, is about passing the baton from the old guy to the new one, they don't share screen time and Davison wasn't there reassuring Tom that everyone would be all right.

[dc20willsave]

Easily Kirk. While true, The Doctor did die via falling off like ten feet, he did it at the end of two stories leading up to it and he also died at the hands of The Master, one of his oldest adversaries. Plus, the story that he dies in is one of the best of the old series.

Kirk dies from a bridge falling on him. He does at the hands of a villain he has encountered for like five minutes before this after being stuck in a energy ribbon for a hundred years or so. To make matters worse, this wasn't even how he originally died. They were going to have Malcom McDowell just shoot him. They decided that was unbecoming and reshot it so a bridge fell on him. This is an improvement in the same way that it's better to be kicked in the face than kicked in the balls. It's going to hurt regardless.

So yeah, Kirk had a shitty death but it could have been worse. He could have died anticlimatically due to contract disputes. Ehh, Terry Farrell?