For sure, Icheb's death was even meaner (and I feel like it was a middle finger to the actor, who's a nightmare, but they could have just kept the new actor). Hugh represents a lot of hope and kindness on the show, so it felt so cheap to use him as emotional cannon fodder.
Also, Jonathan Del Arco is hot and I want him on the show! And because he's gay, Hugh has always read as queer-coded to me, which just adds a Bury Your Gays trope to the whole mess.
Jonathan del Arco said long ago that the way he played Hugh in TNG was a tribute to his partner in the early 90s that died of AIDS. So ya, very troublesome.
Then that final confrontation between Seven and the incest Romulan where she says "This is for Hugh" in an ADR'd line despite them never being together on screen. And that's a shame. Seven and Hugh together would have been so interesting.
Ugh, agree. Picard s1 was odd. Also, I love that the fate of the evil Romulan siblings is hilariously unclear. Narek’s disappearance was classic daytime soap — he just walked out of a scene and never came back. Lmao. And honestly do we think Narissa fell to her death…? Also very soapy: no body!
I will never forgive the showrunners and writers on all three seasons for all of the great legacy characters they killed off and all of the new characters they ignored and isolated.
Comments
We need additional degrees of robot-ness to run some tests here.