I got around to watching The Puppet Episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and I had an epiphany. Seeing new episodes of Star Trek is like meeting, for the first time in many years, that one teacher from your early childhood, the one who instilled wonder and a thirst for knowledge and who you came to massively respect… and finding they’re now the village drunk. Still wearing the same clothes, now filthy, tattered and reeking of God knows what. Dancing like a broken clown to the derision of the townsfolk, hoping to get tossed a coin or bit of apple while babbling the most insane idiocy.
It’s the same person, now a ruined self-parody, no longer capable of contributing anything good but an object lesson. The good they once did is now stained by what they’ve become, your memories of them precious but now tainted.
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