WiC Watches: Star Trek: Picard
Image: Star Trek: Picard/CBS All Access
Episode 107: “Nepenthe”
Thanks, Dan, I’ll take it from here…
This episode takes place in three different places: Picard and Soji on Nepenthe, Elnor and Hugh on the Borg Cube, and Rios, Raffi and Agnes Jurati aboard the La Sirena fleeing from Narek.
Picard and Soji travel to the planet Nepenthe, and just like that, we have an episode title! The pair are here to take safe harbor with Picard’s dearest friends, William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis). The couple have a daughter who is feisty and inquisitive, the perfect combination of her parents.
There are plenty of great moments when Picard reunites with his former officers from the Enterprise, with loads of emotion from everyone involved. That includes Soji, who has just been told she’s an android and that her sister was killed by the very same Romulans who tried to kill her.
Image: Star Trek: Picard/CBS All Access
The real payoff for this reunion is the chemistry between Picard and Riker. Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes slip right back into their easy familiarity from The Next Generation, continually riffing off each other. It was a masterclass in acting and I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it.
This was a strong episode for Soji, too. She interacted well with Riker and Troi’s daughter; I think I liked the chemistry between those two almost as much as I enjoyed Picard and Riker back together.
Both Troi and Riker can tell that Soji is an android, Troi because she can sense it and Riker because he notices that Soji has the same telltale head tilt that Data had. In a superb moment, he reveals he’d figured out Soji’s secret by listing everything he’d noticed about her since her arrival on the planet.
Image: Star Trek: Picard/CBS All Access
“Nepenthe” actually starts with a flashback to three weeks before the current events on the show. We see Agnes enjoying a lunch on Earth when she’s approached by Commodore Oh, the security chief for Starfleet Command. She tells Agnes that she’ll need her to go off-world with Picard to find Soji, and then has her chew and swallow a tracker.
Oh convinces Agnes to betray her new friends when she pulls a Vulcan Mind Meld and shows Agnes that Earth will be destroyed should synthetics be allowed to survive. And now we know why she killed her former lover Bruce Maddox.
This is probably Alison Pill’s best episode of the season. She displays raw emotion upon realizing what she has to do to stop Picard from saving Soji. For the first time, I felt like I could connect with this character.
Image: Star Trek: Picard/CBS All Access
In fact, this was a strong episode for just about every character. Raffi and Rios really shine during their attempts to escape the Romulans. Raffi plays the concerned mother to Agnes when she realizes the doctor is hiding something, and Rios’ skills are on display as he tries to out-maneuver Narek.
Aboard the Borg Cube, Narek’s sister is trying to get Hugh to reveal where Picard and Soji escaped to, but the former Borg won’t give up the information even when she threatens to kill him, so she begins killing former Borg drones, making Hugh cry out in desperation.
But still he won’t tell her what she wants to know, and she has a whole bunch of former Borg drones executed. She leaves him to sit among the bodies of his friends when Elnor drops in and tells Hugh he’ll stay and help him free the Borg ship from Romulan control.
However, it’s a trap, and Narek’s sister kills Hugh, leaving Elnor to fend for himself. Narek’s sister has a shot to kill Elnor, but he’s much quicker than she is, and almost kills her before she teleports away.
Finally, when Agnes realizes she’s the reason Rios and Raffi can’t escape Narek — and therefore can’t go rescue Picard on Nepenthe — she takes a toxin to flush her system of the tracker she was convinced to eat. Rios loses Narek and makes his way to Nepenthe, with Agnes in a coma from the toxic shot.
Star Trek: Picard has improved as it’s gone along, and I think “Nepenthe” is my favorite of the season so far. As a Next Generation fan, the nostalgia of Picard reuniting with Riker and Troi was really nice, but those sweet moments were balanced with intense action aboard the Borg Ship, as well as intrigue on the La Sirena.
Next week’s episode looks bonkers, with Seven of Nine seeming like she might become the new Borg Queen. I can’t wait to see how it all shakes out.