... and I want to see what they do with the rest of the series before passing judgement on them setting up the rest of the story - I think it would be weirder to just try and stop talking about Laconia / protomolecule given what happened at the end of ep3 ... I don't think the dogs are gonna make the ending any harder than it's going to be already ...
Its not stopping telling that story, its separating out the interesting stuff from the poor.
Laconia is pretty much them finding out what the 'dogs' can do, which could be done in a much more compact and less wasteful way in a short, rather than drag it out. But that, Filip, Roci crew angst is adding up and eating running time. Arguably you could have condensed Drummers story and the Roci down as well, allowing time for at least Belter politics (i.e. killing Dawes) and abandoning Ceres.
Maybe the writers know something we don't, and they have someone to tap for the conclusion- the sad part is 7 8 and 9 can be done without a time jump (bk 9 could be done now, essentially) and condense down Laconias threat to its first vessel.
But finishing bk 9 has made me much less inclined to care about future series, to me they've taken a smart, lean and sharp TV series and got bogged down. Its gone fat Elvis- you get the flashes of Greatness™ but its trapped in layers of blubber.