YMMV / Star Trek: The Next Generation S4E22 "Half a Life"

• Applicability: The Resolution ceremony and attendant ritual suicide has been interpreted in terms of euthanasia, ageism, and destructive cultural traditions too deeply ingrained to simply uproot or reject without trauma.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The episode gained greater subtext after David Ogden Stiers came out as gay in 2009. Given that Lwaxana is pushing Timicin to ignore the cultural standards of his people and continue to live, and the subject of lost time, it easily plays into many real life experiences of gay people, especially those like Stiers who come out later in life.
  • Majel Barrett's tearful monologue about Timicin's impending suicide and "dying before they die" is so much more heartbreaking after learning of the nature of Gene Roddenberry's ouster from the franchise he created and how that caused his health to decline sharply, leading to his own death later that year.
  • Similarly, Lwaxana's objections against Timicin wondering whether he should commit suicide prove more painful when season 7's "Dark Page" reveals that she was deeply traumatized by the death of her daughter Kestra to the point where she tried to purge all memories of her.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Kaelons are portrayed as rightfully offended when Lwaxana interferes in their traditions, but their inflexibility to save their people by not allowing Timicin more time to revive their sun (even acknowledging that anyone else trying to learn his method might take too long for another attempt let alone refinement) or even evacuating their planet in the time they have makes it difficult to sympathize with their plight when they reject solutions in the name of tradition.

---