[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “do not stand at my grave and weep” after the poem by mary elizabeth frye. the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]
a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”
personally, i think one of the reasons i enjoyed enterprise so much, despite the minutiae of how they went about it, is that it’s ending was rather… definitive. it wrapped itself up completely. (in many ways i think it ran a course parallel to voyager where there was really this grasp of a long, winding mission being at the heart of the show–and then the goal of that changing due to some unforeseen circumstance and challenging the crew/ship/their resources and leaving them alone, at the forefront of this new territory that was unfamiliar to them, but the ending of enterprise just felt so much more… hard set. it was believable. maybe part of that impression is that i always thought it would be a better story if voyager didn’t quite make it home, and they didn’t contact the people from their previous lives again, and i held that against the conclusion of the series, but i digress). i think the reason ent ended so well/conclusively was that it, unlike voyager, kind of.. had to. by nature. there would be no more adventures, because they had to be left for kirk’s enterprise. what was left for jonathan archer was admiralty. the crew takes different assignments, falls away from each other. the end of their mission–and the commencement ceremony they attend in tatv sets the stage for the rest of their lives. from here on it’s calmer. teaching at the academy. maybe joining another crew, but not one like before. you get the impression they’re never going to do anything again which approaches the years they had on enterprise. and how could anything? what else could so much as attempt to touch that newness? the fear? the togetherness? … enterprise ends and so too do the best, and hardest days of the crews lives: shut behind them like a closed book. part of the beauty of the series is that–though its abrupt, the ending is suited to the tone and purpose of the show.
