If Hugh is killed off, he wasn't a main character.
Mate, there is no if. He's already dead. All of the people who've seen the leaked version, including those in this thread, have said as much. That's consistent.
I'll give 'em props for at least bringing back the original actor for Hugh before killing him off, but yeah, murder Trek continues. Now, I'm all about human frailties in Star Trek, and murder and death have been constant companions of this franchise since a contingent of Captain Pike's crew were slaughtered prior to the 1964 pilot episode. No one is claiming this universe is puppy dogs and rainbows. I'm just saying that it wears thin if that's week in, week out. From the 6 episodes released so far you could make a drinking game out of Picard. 1 shot every time someone says fuck. 1 shot every time a character is brutally slain. 1 shot for every character who belittles Picard and he sits there taking it like a chump. 1 shot for every time Romulan Legolas uses his sword to remove someone's head from someone's body.
In isolation these things are perfectly valid. Week after week, it's indicative of a problem on a writing level, and also, because even serial plots need 'relief episodes' to punctuate the drama and give us breather, and the Space Vegas episode could've been, maybe should've been, that. But it was. Can we have an episode without people being killed off? It's not ridiculous to expect in a season of 10 episodes for there to be
some secondary characters who survive,
some victories along the way. But no. Let's murder Hugh, because, I don't know, it wouldn't have been great to have maybe had him stay around until the end of the season to stand by Picard's side or something. Why not keep Maddox alive for a while too? Why so fast to kill them off?
And there's no relief. When Classic Trek got dark, it did so either while using it to push a message of optimism within the same episode, or it had episodes either side of it that did so. Even in the 'red shirts dying every week' of TOS, it wasn't
all red shirts dying every week.
It's just too bleak, man. It's not about wanting a show with no gore, no murder. I think those are story telling tools. But every week? Because, ooh, aren't we so dark and edgy on our streaming service behind our paywall.
