Hugh's Death Is Star Trek: Picard's First Big Mistake
Star Trek: Picard has committed its first unforgivable mistake with the death of Hugh. The former Borg drone was introduced over 25 years ago in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "I, Borg" a TNG classic that went a long way toward humanizing the cybernetic zombies. Hugh's individuality essentially infected the Borg when he rejoined the collective; a group of newly sentient drones would fall under the influence of Lore, Lieutenant Commander Data's evil brother, before he was vanquished by the Enterprise crew. Picard suggested Hugh would be a fine leader for this new breed of Borg, and indeed, he spent the next two decades helping former Borg drones - called exBs - rediscover their humanity.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowHugh's life was cut short in brutal, jarring fashion in the series' seventh episode "Nepenthe", seemingly just as he was reaching his full potential as an individual. It's a violent, cynical misstep for Star Trek: Picard, a show that has already come in for criticisms of being too dark and graphically violent. Many of those complaints tend to ignore the rich, complicated history of Star Trek, where the Federation's moral superiority is tested and pushed to the limit, but Hugh's death is something different.
Hugh's death feels more like a plot machination than a conscious effort to give a much loved character a proper sendoff, and fans have been up in arms since the episode debuted, outraged that Hugh ended up such a small part of Picard's story. To understand the fury directed at Star Trek: Picard over Hugh's death, it's important to understand what Hugh represented as a character and a concept.
Hugh Was The Borg Of Hope
In "I, Borg," Hugh was originally called Third of Five, just another Borg drone the Enterprise accidentally rescued when it detected a distress signal. Captain Picard had every intention of using Hugh as a weapon against the collective with a virus, something akin to an involuntary suicide bomber. But Dr. Beverly Crusher and Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge began to notice Hugh's individuality resurface the longer he was away from the collective, and they became uncomfortable with Picard's plan. Picard - himself haunted by the trauma he endured when he was assimilated as Locutus - finally relented when he met Hugh face to face and became convinced he was an independent, sentient lifeform.
After shepherding the freed Borg after Lore's demise, Hugh became the director of the Borg Reclamation Project aboard the artifact. There he was under the thumb of Romulans who despised the Borg and harvested them for their advanced technology. Hugh was content to live in this compromised moral territory until Jean-Luc Picard showed up at his doorstep, looking for Dr. Soji Asha, who is secretly the daughter of Data. Hugh helped Picard and Soji escape the Romulans - who believe Soji to be a prophesied destroyer - left behind with Picard's young Romulan ally Elnor.
After Narissa executed a handful of exBs to punish Hugh for his role in helping Picard escape, Hugh and Elnor plotted to take the cube away from the Romulans using the power of the Queen Cell. But before Hugh can put his plan into effect, he and Elnor come under attack by Narissa, who kills Hugh by throwing a dagger into his neck. With his dying breaths, Hugh thanks Elnor for making him feel so alive again, and hands him a Fenris Ranger S.O.S. beacon, which presumably means Seven of Nine will be joining the party shortly.
It's a nice gesture - and very in character - for Hugh to still be thinking of the exBs as he lay dying, but it's a surprisingly bloody scene, and the death doesn't land with the emotional weight that a character of Hugh's popularity deserves. It's also, quite frankly, kind of a dumb death; Narissa is initially unable to kill Hugh because he has diplomatic immunity as a Federation citizen. But Hugh's loud, aggressive ranting about open insurrection sealed his fate, and made the character seem dumber than he usually is - even Narissa was a bit baffled that Hugh wouldn't think he was being monitored after helping Picard escape.
Star Trek: Picard Has a Death Problem
The reviews for Star Trek: Picard have largely been strong, and while the show has not been without its issues, it's received a fairly warm reception from Star Trek fandom as well, certainly warmer than what greeted Star Trek: Discovery or the J.J. Abrams reboot films. But the show is starting to develop a nasty habit that it needs to break in a hurry. Picard has brought in three well-known minor Star Trek characters - TNG's Bruce Maddox, Voyager'sIcheb, and TNG's Hugh - and proceeded to brutally murder all three. It feels like lazy, "anybody can die!"Game of Thrones knockoff storytelling, and the show is good enough that it can afford to keep its bloodlust in check. Minor characters are always going to end up cannon fodder in shows like Star Trek: Picard, but it's almost as if those three were picked to inflict the most emotional damage on its audience as possible, and they simply went a couple steps too far.
But with all due respect, there are no hardcore Bruce Maddox fans, and the Icheb fanbase is decidedly small, but Hugh is a very different story. Hugh was the vehicle through which the Borg became something more than just monsters bent on conquest; Hugh made the Borg real, and reminded the audience of what Picard himself recently noted on the Artifact: the Borg are victims, not monsters. Indeed, he served as something of a template character for Seven of Nine, the drone-turned-human who dominated the back half of Voyager and is the wild card in Picard. That Hugh was able to transcend his trauma and help so many others, and still die a violent, needless death, feels like a slap in the face to fans who felt Hugh represented something bigger than himself.
Star Trek: Picard is largely hitting the right notes. Its measured use of nostalgia, its great cast, and its themes of redemption and regret have all landed beautifully, making it the most successful Star Trek series in a generation. But the show has to be careful not to twist fan service into something decidedly darker for cynical reasons, as has happened with so much genre television of this era. Star Trek can go to dark places, but it has to be able to come back from the darkness. There's no coming back for Hugh, and that's a genuine shame.
Source: screenrant.com