Today, the penultimate episode of Lower Decks came out. It was pretty typical for the tail-end of the season, but it was amazing. As many have already mentioned, (alternate universe) Garashir was made turbo canon with beautifully obvious mentions of husbands and a quick kiss, and I am 100% for it. However, I woke up to seeing an influx of Garashir shippers on Tumblr, and it was Reunification all over again, albeit obviously textually canon this time.
I honestly don't care for most Star Trek ships besides thinking that some of them should just be canon to save everyone the trouble (Spirk and Garashir among them). As a result, I got a little sick of the Garashir hype after actually watching the episode. Nobody had mentioned the other cameos. Curzon Dax! Harry Kim! T'Pol, with confirmation that in another universe, she and Trip actually got their happy ending! By the time I went back to social media to check on stuff, the overabundance of Garashir talk started to really irk me.
I know that's just me being a wee hater – especially considering I did really enjoy the Garashir stuff – but I always feel like anything Enterprise or purely non-ship related kinda gets sidelined. I know that's rich coming from a young trekkie, but I always find shipping clouding other aspects of good shows really annoying in pretty much every fandom. On that note, it was kinda refreshing to see the Lower Decks shippers move on from Marinler a bit. I love the concept of Marinler, but I don't really care if it becomes canon or not, which makes looking at any content of either character involving wishes for Marinler canonization irritating.
Kind of sad my first Trek-related thing on my site is such a downer, so I will try to end on a good note: I'm so glad Lower Decks has really gone ham on the Star Trek references, especially since that means Enterprise stays in the franchise's consciousness. If you're reading this and that invalidates my opinions in your mind, too bad, so sad, I love T'Pol and (unfortunately...) that means dealing with the highs and lows of Enterprise. I can't wait to see what happens in the season finale next week.