Season 1, Episode 6: ‘Nepenthe’
This week’s “Star Trek: Picard” is less about the central story arc and more about taking stock of who Picard is at this point in his life, as well as his android friend. The series creators have said that the show should be viewed more as a character study than anything else. And who better to assess the captain than his former “Number One,” William Riker? And his former ship’s counselor, Deanna Troi, the Betazoid who can sense emotions?
Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis are the last actors from past iterations of “Trek” expected to appear this season. And of course, it was wonderful to see them interact onscreen again. It was nice a touch to have Troi immediately realize — without words — that Picard is in trouble because of her empathic abilities and for Riker to quickly deduce, without Picard telling him much, exactly what his quandary is.
Riker and Troi are semiretired, seemingly away from the U.S.S. Titan, and now on a planet called Nepenthe, where soil has regenerative properties. They have a daughter, Kestra — who loves language and is a pacifist, and they had a son, Thad, who died of a mandaxic neurosclerosis. (Say that three times fast.) And our favorite Trek couple does not hesitate to help Picard hide for a bit. But that was just a plot device to get Riker and Troi into an episode.
“Nepenthe” captures the feel of “The Next Generation” more so than any other episode of “Picard.” Its best moments are conversation-heavy scenes dedicated to character building. Soji slowly but surely comes to terms with her discovery that she is an android. Kestra helps her get there.
Where I thought the episode fell short was in the conversations Riker and Troi each individually have with Picard. They gently chide him, in their own ways, for being who he is. Riker accuses his old boss of “classic Picard arrogance” for not being more revealing about his situation.
“You get to make the decisions about who gets to take the chances and who doesn’t,” Riker says. “And who is in the loop and who is out of the loop.”
Unless something has changed in the last 20 years, this assessment is inaccurate. There are dozens of examples in “The Next Generation” of Picard relying on the counsel of others. Heck, he made timeline altering decisions based solely on the intuition of Guinan, the ship’s bartender. This notion that Picard is arrogant and close-minded goes against much of what we know about him. It’s a description that more befits Picard’s predecessor: Captain Kirk.
Troi nods at this and tells Picard that he “had it coming,” when Soji shoves him aside. Troi thinks that Picard is being dismissive of Soji’s concerns, but there isn’t much evidence for that either. Picard’s former ship’s counselor tells him that he needs to be “compassionate” and “patient” like the Old Picard — which thus far, from my eyes, he has been? It felt like Riker and Troi were diagnosing problems that don’t exist.
The action in this episode, written by Samantha Humphrey and Michael Chabon, mostly involves the Borg cube and the La Sirena. I must admit that my eyebrows were raised for much of these scenes. I’ve been willing to give the “Picard” writers a lot of leeway for crafting an ambitious story but there are several incongruous plot points in “Nepenthe.” This is the first episode in which these seeming holes distracted me from the story.
For example, during an early scene of this chapter, we see Hugh captured along with several former Borg drones by Rizzo. At the end of the last episode, “The Impossible Box,” Hugh and Elnor are about to face off with the Romulans pursuing them. How did Hugh get captured? Elnor is an incredible fighter. And how does Elnor avoid capture? He pops out seconds later after Hugh watches all his former Borg compatriots die.
Elnor tells Rios, “Go without me. This will not happen again.” How did it happen the first time? It’s literally why he stayed behind! (I expect some reader emails to tell me something obvious I missed.)
When Rios is headed toward Nepenthe, he is being tailed by Narek’s ship. Rios, the amazing pilot, pulls off an expert maneuver — which is that he … stops so Narek’s ship can fly right over his? (I half expected Rios to eject banana peels into space to throw Narek as well.) At some point, Rios also realizes that the ship has a tracker on board. Instead of suspecting Jurati, whom he barely knows and is behaving erratically, he points the finger at Raffi — which seemed baffling to me, given that they’ve known each other for much longer and had multiple bonding scenes in “The Impossible Box.”
It’s possible, of course, that Rios actually suspects Jurati and was trying to gauge her reaction — but that doesn’t explain his comment on the bridge, where he tells Raffi that he hopes he doesn’t have to shoot her out of an airlock. (On second thought, I’m going with Rios and Raffi truly suspecting Jurati and trying to cover for it in a bit of a clumsy way.)
Odds and Ends
We get a bit more context on why Jurati murdered Maddox through a flashback. Commodore Oh mind melds with her to show what will happen if synthetic life is allowed to exist. Mind melds have typically shown the past, yet, Oh is able to implant the future into Jurati. Either we have historically misunderstood how mind melds work in “Trek” or … wait for it … Oh Oh, it’s magic, you know … I am so sorry.
A farewell to Hugh, our naïve, hopefully optimistic former Borg drone. I would have liked to see him factor into the main plot a bit more, but it seems that none of these former “Trek” mainstays are going to.
And a possible farewell to Jurati? She seems to be feeling guilty about her true motivations. The question is whether Picard and company will ever discover what really happened here.
Next week, I imagine we’ll find out about this Captain Crandall character, who immediately cracked the code of where Soji’s home planet is, which was very convenient for the plot.
There were some lovely “Trek” callbacks in this episode. A smattering:
When Picard first arrives to Nepenthe and Kestra is pointing a bow and arrow at him, Picard mentions his heart is made of duritanium. We found out in the sixth season of “The Next Generation” that Picard, as a result of a bar fight with Nausicaans, was stabbed in the chest and had an artificial heart.
Kestra recalls that Data wanted to learn how to ballroom dance, a reference to a fourth season episode called “Data’s Day,” where Data indeed learns how to dance — a bit clumsily for Dr. Crusher’s liking. Riker refers to Troi as “imzadi” — a Betazed term for “beloved.”
And credit to Reddit for this one: Kestra was the name of Troi’s older sister, who died in the “Next Generation” episode “Dark Page.”
Source: Television - nytimes.com
