Axanar plays BEFORE Garth went mad. He could be a completely different person. Mental illness can wreck havoc of a man. He must have been once a great man, otherwise they would not teach about him at the academy. Even today people are not necessarily are held accountable for actions they did while being mentally ill, so why should this be any different in the future. But it will be interesting if the Axanar script hints on his looming illness in some way.
Yeah. I get that. I'm all for the idea of redemption (and in this case- pre-demption?)
Keep in Mind that Season 3 Kirk was age 38/39 right? So he would have been at the Academy some ~ 18-22 years before. More than likely
before Garth turned on the good folks of Antos IV.
The issue to me is simply that Steve Inhat was
just so good at being the big bad- that's where he ("Lord Garth")is in my head- despite the last scene. You can see those bite marks in the scenery.
The point I was ham handedly attempting to make, was- What a tough job it would be for any prequel to pre-deem a character:
For example- "Better Call Saul" vis a vis "Breaking Bad" - Saul was never a "bad" guy per se. Just a fella that appeared to have fallen between the legal cracks and was sneaking by- We didn't see him go all blow-uppy and stuff.
In any case- it's a tall order, dramatically. Lucas tried it with the Vader character. Once Anakin went all sithy and mass murdered the younglings- then nothing was gonna get me on his side- past, present or future version(s). No redemption, no pre-demption.
Aha! But, could a better actor than Hayden Christensen possibly have pulled off such a feat?
Maybe.
To redeem (or pre- deem) you gotta care about the character.
Now we're back to the Alec Peters problem again.
Okay back to Pike- An idea which is slowly growing on me.