With Stamets talking about legacy and Saru and Tilly leaving or talking about leaving, it really does feel like a final season. If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d think they knew it going in. I hope it can maintain that to the end.

Obviously people can say whatever they want, but I personally don’t see any value in dragging something down when instead I could be lifting the thing I do like up.

I can understand that. It’s no fun to rain on someone else’s parade. But I don’t think there is no value, for example, in you expressing why you dislike Picard Season 3. You’d be dragging it down, but I don’t think that’s so wrong to do. It’s okay to dislike things, and it’s okay to say you dislike things. I think you agree with that.

Like, imagine going in to the job at the end of the week and saying, “Hell yeah, I love Fridays!” and some sad sack co-worker is all, “Yeah, but don’t you just hate Mondays?” Buddy, why? What would be the point in being so negative, when instead you could be positive?

The co-worker sounds like no fun to be around. But what if the conversation was this:

“Hell yeah, I love Fridays!”

“I’m with you on that, this week’s been rough.”

The co-worker isn’t trying to bring you down by reminding you of next Monday, they are trying to relate to you over your shared experience of the last week. You may dislike it, but I don’t think it’s the same as them going “but don’t you just hate Mondays?”, and I think that’s more like what is happening when people talk about their dislike of some show.

Now, imagine if every time someone made a post praising, some other series or new episode, I jumped in with, “Yeah, at least this one was better than season three of PIC.” What am I actually contributing to the conversation?

Not much at all. But if you did it once, it wouldn’t be fair for me to treat it the same as you doing it every time you reply to someone. I’m not suggesting you bring up your dislike of Picard in every conversation – I agree that would be annoying – but, if you have a point to make, I think it would be fine for you to on occasion bring up Picard’s flaws to highlight the strengths of another show. I think it can even make your point stronger; instead of contextless praise, you can point to something specific to show how one thing is an improvement over another.

People do this with Voyager and Battlestar Galactica, where they praise BSG for commiting to the premise in a way Voyager didn’t. I haven’t seen Voyager and I haven’t finished BSG, so I can’t comment on whether I agree with that, but if someone agrees with that criticism and prefers BSG to VOY for that reason, I think they should feel free to criticize Voyager, to praise BSG, or to do both at the same time. Perhaps the contrast can be illuminating.

Furthermore, I don’t consider, “This doesn’t feel like [X],” to actually be criticism.

Sure, I agree with that. But if the criticism is bad, it’s bad regardless of whether or not something else is being praised at the same time. It seems that you think it’s worse to praise and to whine than to just whine.

I don’t understand this view. Sure, they don’t need to criticize one aspect of a franchise when they praise another, but why shouldn’t they? Must praise and criticism remain always separate? If you feel DS9 is better in some respect to ENT, I don’t see any issue with you contrasting the two.

Steve Shives, for example, dislikes the second season of Picard, and in his review of a recent episode of Strange New Worlds, that was brought up. He praised the episode of SNW while criticizing the season of Picard. Is that so bad?

You may not be comfortable addressing that specific example, but in general, what is the issue with contrasting things one likes with things one doesn’t like within a single episode, a season, a series, a franchise, or pop culture at large?

It (will have) lasted four seasons without him. I liked his character and wish they hadn’t killed him off, but five seasons is a decent run for a show, and I don’t think it’s obvious that it would have lasted longer if he had remained.