Risa

I kind of like it. Like, he's spent his whole life preaching the Federation ideals, trying to be the best he can be, and after all that, it cost him his son. I know that means less for us who only heard about David in TWOK, but watching Strange New Worlds now and hearing him talk about being in a relationship with 'Carol', it actually kind of retroactively hurts, because we know how it ends.

And it wasn't death in battle in a dangerous job that David chose to do, he was murdered by a Klingon saving the life of someone Kirk hardly knows.

He didn't steal the Enterprise and go on a genocidal rampage of Kronos or anything either.

You can't expect the man to be a saint after all that. Sending him to be the ambassador to the Klingons was cruel on Starfleet's part, even if Spock did vouch for him. Totally on point, seeing how they did the same thing to M'Benga, Chapel, Ortegas etc. after the Klingon war. But still. Cruel.

And even after all of that, even after 'let them die', even after becoming the obvious suspect for the assassination of the Chancellor and being sent to Rura Penthe... he never actually DID become the monster. He was still the best of Starfleet.

Was it meant to stem from decades of Klingon encounters plus Kirk's "advancing" age? It always felt out of place since he's not shown to be xenophobic otherwise.

As for Picard, if it made you feel disgusted, then they did their job showcasing the facist extreme. But hey, at least we got to see Gul Dukat's skull!