I want to be able to write something where the good guys lose, and I don’t seem to be able to do it. I did try writing a novel about the end of the world in which the world ends. But then while I was typing away, some bastard character saved it at the last minute. I threw that novel in the bin.

But recently, I saw a musical that did this thing about good guys failing and I can’t tell you which one because it would ruin it for you. (I wrote a piece about the musical for the theatre’s programme and despite not having seen or read the play before, I managed to accidentally nearly spoil the ending. So now that I am fully aware of how it ends, I am shutting up.)

Except the good guys lose and it’s still a kind of triumphant finale. I am struggling to think when else that ever happens in stories. It does in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but then it would, that series did everything. Still, “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” by Ronald D. Moore (series 7, episode 4, here’s the script) is the only other example I’m certain of.

Wait. I was so careful not spoiling – buggersticks, I nearly named the musical – but I casually ruined DS9. That episode aired in October 1998, you’ve surely had enough time to catch it now, a quarter of a century ago. God in heaven: a quarter of a century. That was its original US air date, though, so it would’ve been sometime in 1999 when I saw it, which is merely 24 years ago. Phew.

I don’t remember seeing it then, but from the dates it would’ve been one I watched on a break at BBC News Online in the BBC’s White City building. Nostalgia, I haven’t got time for it, I’m too busy trying to create new nostaligiable moments.

Anyway.

That DS9 episode centres on a baseball match or something — it’s sport, I don’t know from sport — and the regular cast, the good guys, lose.

Maybe you can argue that Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement ends without victory for the good guys, but that’s a bleak ending. It’s a marvellous ending, but it’s bleak. DS9 and the Musical That Shalt Not Be Named are both upbeat.

It’s killing me. Upbeat failure.

I suppose the original film of Fame does it too, at least to an extent. That film is more about failure than fame and rather than characters bonding together they tend to become separated and alone. And then they do come together for a closing number that is so rousing it can bring a tea to my eye — I Sing the Body Electric by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford — but Christopher Gore’s script doesn’t aim to suggest they’re all happy again now.

It does occur to me that I am failing in my attempt to either find more examples or, more importantly, to write anything that has an ending which is failure yet triumphant.

Hang on, I’ve pulled off the failure, let me try this. I’m now going to go rewatch the Deep Space Nine episode and to track down the film the musical was based on.

It’s not a triumphant ending, and overall the stakes seem rather low, but I will enjoy that show and that film, so it’s up beat. A bit.

I’ll take the win.