What’s the gnarlier cliffhanger: Empire Strikes Back or Trek: TNG’s Best of Both Worlds Part I?
Empire: Hero mutilated, hero kidnapped, future of rebellion in question, and crushing, and we’re left to ponder questionable, earth-shaking revelations. Followed by a wait of years.
Trek: Hero mutilated, hero kidnapped, hero assimilated, future of Federation in question, Riker has given the command to fire… and Commander Shelby is still aboard. Then a wait of several months.
Empire by a hair…more questions there
Wow! Interesting. Let’s see.
I don’t remember seeing Empire in the theatre but I remember talking about it with my friends. No one believed Vader was Luke’s father. It was a lie and a ploy Vader was using to get Luke to the Dark Side. Since I don’t remember seeing the film, the initial shock isn’t reminiscent, unfortunately.
OTOH, I saw BoBWs late one evening after night school. As much as this may shock, I did not watching TNG religiously during its first run. I would catch snip-its at night since it was in syndication. Anyway, I just got home. I warmed up my dinner and sat down to relax. I flipped through the channels and noticed TNG was on. I said, “Huh. Let’s see what they’re up to.” I was really impressed.
As I mentioned, it was in syndication and I watched BoBWs Part 1 the week before BoBWs Part 2 aired. I didn’t have to wait months to find out. But this isn’t about me…
IMO, the Empire cliffhanger wins because you really don’t know what it all means. Is Vader lying or not? With Picard and the Borg, you know they are going to save him. It’s Star Trek for frak’s sake!! Both moments are very powerful for the audience and the characters. Luke’s whole world has crumbled. He is the prodigy of evil incarnate. Everything that Picard has worked and strive for is used by the Borg against his own people. For both characters their talents and whole being are molested. Both stakes are very high. Picard is a celebrated captain of the flagship for the Federation. Luke is the last of the Jedi.
So, it’s Empire. A cliffhanger leaves you on the edge of your seat. Empire drops you with “I am your father.” You can’t believe. “I am Locutus of Borg.” Leaves you with, “Yeah, Yeah. Until next episode.”
After much consideration, I voted Empire. It was a two-year mindfrak.
your nemesis tells you that your father isnt dead after all, he is alive and he is darth vader, your mentor has got some explaining to do, you just got a robot hand to replace the old one your new found evil father chopped off, and your buddy is frozen in ice and in the trunk of a bounty hunter en route to drop him off at crime boss HQ.
roll credits.
lucas doesnt make jedi until THREE YEARS later!
I can’t agree. At the time, I didn’t have access to a source of behind-the-scenes info, online or otherwise, so I had no inside information of actors’ comings and goings. TNG was, without doubt, different from TOS in respect to the inviolability of its main cast. After all, it had only been two years since Tasha died. Redshirts were routinely elevated to minor cast members, only to turn out to be just redshirts in the end anyway. So, IMO at the time, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that Picard could have remained Borg — or even died — in the upcoming episode(s). Sure, we may have assumed that he’d be OK in the long run, but really, that was far from certain at that point.
Plus, of course, the Borg were a new and terrifying menace, unprecedented in Trek. Someone on the podcast (let’s see how they like it :p) mentioned that they were zombies; for all intents and purposed, that’s exactly right. Like zombies, they’re hard to kill, there are always more of them, and they turn your friends and family against you. You can’t win against zombies. You can only survive until they finally manage to get you. That’s a pretty dark storyline, especially for Trek. At the time, at least, it seemed just as much of a game changer as the events of Empire were, IMO.
Arguably, as monumental as the ending of TESB was, did any of us really believe that Han wasn’t going to be OK? Of course he was. It was the '80s — heroes didn’t die, no matter how great their jeopardy. And even before the end of the movie, Luke already had a replacement hand. As for Vader’s revelation, it was huge, but without context, could we really believe anything a planet-killing villain said in the heat of battle? And judging by how off-handedly Obi-Wan explained the truth in RotJ, it sort of fizzled as a cliffhanger.
It’s funny, Best of Both Worlds was on the tube today and I was burning a copy of Empire for my son. He asked me: Why did 4,5, and 6 come out before 1,2, and 3 and I said “You know when Darth Vader tells Luke that He’s his father?”…yeah…“It would wouldn’t have been so shocking if you already new that”. The whole saga hinges on that moment when you think about it. For me, Empire is the archetype of the cliff-hanger, the act ending in conflict before the resolution. The Best of Both World’s is amazing, but I gotta go with Empire.
I don’t really see Empire as a clifhanger. A cliff maybe, but not a clifhanger. Best of Both Worlds has a lot more of that “WFT they stopped it right in the middle!” feeling to it.