Death & Dying, Tribe-style

Our game has finally calmed down a bit. Honestly there were whole seasons when every time we turned around somebody was dying. Mostly from bloody battles. And it didn't matter if they were insignificant crowd-NPCs or primary characters. Some players were hit pretty hard when characters they knew so well suddenly had their final grave-side scenes.

That got me thinking about "The Tribe." (Yeah, yeah, I know. What else is new, right?)

My overall impression about the show since it ended a few years back was that death wasn't a very big theme. Sure lots of people died but my memory insisted it was pretty sterile & clean, befitting a tv-show meant for kids.

So I strolled back through the dvd's & the season summaries ... boy, was I wrong.

First of all a lot of people died. A lot more than I remembered. Start with the obvious--"Zandra" in season two (blowed up), "Dal" in season three (fell off a building), "Ned" in season four (the "Guardian" got him), and "Pride" in season five (killed by Technos). So how many of just those few had you forgot about? And that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Kids were dying or being killed all over the place. And some of it was actually pretty gross.

Remember one of the early scenes where The Chosen first took over the city & the "Guardian" was threatening "Dani" trying to get her to bow down to him? Yeeeaahhh. I'll never forget when he ordered some of his men to drag somebody upstairs & throw 'em off the roof. Or season one where they found "Spike" floating dead in "Ebony's" pool. (It never did pay to piss that lady off.)

There were a lot more, mostly nameless people dying in fights or electrocuted when the power unexpectedly cut back on & other stuff like that. It was certainly more than I remembered.

But there was one thing worse ... when people disappeared. I really really hate that little tv-technique. If an actor gives you any trouble like wanting a pesky pay raise or a new lightbulb in his dressing room--WHAM! All of a sudden his character disappears in the script. You never ever know what that means! Is he dead? Will he be back? Well that depends...and it really sucks. They teased us with a few scenes of Techno-"Taisan" at the beginning of season 5. And later that season we glimpsed a very grown-up-looking "KC" and a caged "Alice" & the "Guardian." But what about the others? Dammit, what happened to "Bray" 'n "Patsy" 'n "Cloe" 'n "Ved"? Where did "Ryan" wind up? Or "Luke"?

I know, they're all somewhere out there in mythical Tribe-land & we can only speculate.

Hehe...that's ok. Speculating's kinda fun.

-Chyna

Photo source: copyright Cloud-9 "The Tribe"