#paramount+ gave me the snw trailer before picard

[squireofgeekdom]

well now having seen the full shape of season 3 and the explanation for the previously unhinged stuff I was cackling about ... this show is. it’s a rough draft with a skeleton for such a good three season show if they had gone into it knowing they were going to do three seasons and had the chance for a couple rounds of revisions. like, the better version might have pissed me off in the same way that the actual version did, but ... they could have done better execution of something that would rub me the wrong way, at the very least. and that’s ... gah, i was pacing through my living room as i watched the finale after that clicked in my head because the lost potential is. frustrating. don’t get me wrong, the ending (exempting the post credits, which, unsurprisingly, just made me go ‘i don’t caaaaaaare’) got me and I like it, I think they pulled that ending off quite well given everything. i was kind of worried i was going to outright hate this finale and i didnt so that’s nice. but the missed potentiaaaaaaaaal.  

i’m not saying their top failure was killing off hugh (unceremoniously and for no goddamn reason) in season 1 but like. given what they were doing with all three seasons. it’s gotta be fuckin up there as one of the most regret-worthy decisions. I’d call it shortsighted but that implies it achieved something in the short run and it didn’t even do that. honestly? emblematic of a lot of the critical errors they made. also del arco would have been onboard for three seasons and killed it, you monsters, you absolute idiots. 

and? you could have brought him back once you realized what you were going to do next. it wouldn’t even be scraping the ridiculous bar of star trek. it wouldn’t have been scraping the ridiculous bar of this show specifically. you could’ve and you didn’t. morons.

we got actual tuvok back, which i was so looking for and so happy we got, and I was pleased with the shape of how things worked out for seven, on the whole, though the fact that we didn’t get one kiss with her and raffi at the end here is. hey gang. hey i just wanna talk.

I should not have been holding out hope that we’d see Elnor at the end but I’m still cheesed about it. you’re telling me you’re going to give us worf ‘swords are fun’ and not have elnor meet him? you’re telling me you’re not going to let elnor meet data? you monsters. you idiots. you had such a good character and such a good relationship with picard and such a good foil to other characters and relationships and you fucking squandered it. you didn’t even mention it. what is Wrong with you. (also speaking of romulans. we’re just never even going to touch back on Laris, huh. huh.)

speaking of things (like hugh) from previous seasons that they just chucked out the window for no good reason despite them being directly relevant to the plot at hand... you built up to doing that whole thing with agnes as new borg queen letting become the borg become like seven at the end of season two and you did nothing with that in a season ending resolving around the borg and in which seven has been central? are you high? I didn’t even particularly like that plot point and i’m still like... how did you not bring that into this. (much in the way i was like ‘you’re going to do all this in s2 and you just threw hugh away in s1 despite the obvious relevance’ but at least then they had the excuse of him being dead they weren’t just ignoring his existence) like was the impulse just ‘we think a lot of people are going to come in and watch this season for the whole tng cast without watching the previous one so we can only keep like two things from previous seasons and one of them is raffi and the other is the status quo for seven? (and again. if you’re keeping those two. no kiss? no resolution? excuse me?) that like. has to be it but it’s still Dumb. 

(in fairness, they also didn’t have any specific romantic resolution to jean luc and beverly so like. im less mad than i would have been. like i think you can take the implications of resolution there as about equivalent so like. fair but i’m still mad because seven and raffi are specific to this! damn! show! the one you are making! and finishing! here! hey!)

and speaking of character deaths (like hugh) yes im still angry about them killing off ro laren. that was bad and much of what surrounded it was bad and they should feel bad, frankly. 

also while i’m being grumpy i still cant believe they said lal was a part of this new android and then literally never mentioned her again the entire season, even when they were listing off everyone else. genuinely what the actual fuck. mmm. yeah i’m going to ignore most of what was going on with data here with the exception of his interactions with geordi. rights for levar burton and levar burton Only. 

(i’m going to ignore most of this season. really just going through and having selective acceptance of very specific portions of this entire show. the only way to deal with new ‘canon’ lbr) 

the gang all sitting around playing poker though. that made me happy. that worked. a lot of the nostalgia didn’t (if i wanted to see this crew on the bridge of the enterprise d i could be rewatching next generation episodes. they are still there) but that felt satisfying. there was some cool shit! some fun character beats! some very sweet and satisfying things! like on the whole the finale was better than it had any right to be after that season! 

but just!! choices were made that i Do Not Vibe With! and massive amounts of potential were missed! 

<sighs deeply>

will this annoyance inspire me to put the hugh and elnor centric fixit/backstory fic back in the rotation of twentysomething wips? only time will tell. maybe i’ll finish that one data and geordi post-ep oneshot. who knows. not me. 

we have reached a tipping point where im just cackling about how unhinged this season is

picard spoilers under the cut

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