But Andrew Robinson has been pretty open about the fact that he played Garak as being sexually attracted to Bashir, and DS9 writer, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, has said that he had that in mind when writing scenes between the two characters.
If I can offer a counter argument to what others who’ve replied to you have said, in my opinion, season three of PIC is the single worst season of Star Trek to date. Nothing but empty, cynical fanservice, and the introduction of the worst sort of Scrappy-Doo character in Picard’s adult son, Jack Crusher.
People like the season because it’s getting the TNG band back together, but the season embodies all the complaints that were levelled at season one, justified or unjustified, but simply has some familiar faces. Slop in a trough.
Mushrooms have significantly less mysticism associated with them
Ah yes, psychedelics are famously not associated with mysticism.
The closest comparison to the mycelial network is Yggdrasil, which is solidly in the high fantasy category rather than sci-fi.
The closest comparison is actual fungal networks that exist beneath forests supporting life through the transference of nutrients and biochemical communication, are some of the largest organisms on the planet, and are actual nonfiction science.
All that is to say, I think the mycelial network needed more time to set up than the show gave it.
I think I can agree with you to some extent there. Stamets, by virtue of being standoffish and prickly when the character is introduced, is not the best at explaining things, and the concept could have used a better explanation early on to mitigate the response I’m complaining about with this post.
The Sandman is such a hilarious example of something to get upset about being too woke, too. “This adaptation of a comic written that featured gender fluid characters in 1989 has been corrupted by the woke mob!”
I feel like there’s a difference between a worker robot deciding it doesn’t want to live or die at the command of its humanoid creators, or a collections of nanites establishing an emergent intelligence, and a Federation Starship locking out its crew of 1,014 people and seeking out a white dwarf star like a salmon swimming upstream so it could give birth to an entirely new lifeform.
Even setting aside the ethical implications of using a ship capable of such a thing as transport, and putting into dangerous combat situations, is Starfleet prepared for similar events to happen on all their ships? What happened to the emergent lifeform after it left the Enterprise? Is it still out there? Why did it look like a screen saver from 1992?
But the crew of the Enterprise are fundamentally uncurious about the wider implications of the event.
“Amazing, isn’t it captain? An entirely new lifeform brought into being by the very ship we sail through the stars.” “Quite so, Number One. Tell me, what’s our next stop?” “We’re going to rendezvous with the USS Hood to pick up lieutenant Ro; she just finished her advanced tactical training.” “Excellent! We’ll have to throw her a ‘Welcome Back’ party in Ten Forward.”