Back in 1979, it was a moment of joy to be able to walk into a movie theatre and, for the first time in ten years, see William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, and Walter Koenig again play the iconic roles they’d played on TV (and also voiced on the animated series). After ten years of watching the same episodes over and over again, we had our old friends back, and it was lovely, even though the movie was terrible.
Back in 1987, no one quite knew what to expect from this new version of Trek. There was a very vocal contingent of fandom that rejected the very notion, that you can’t possibly do Star Trek without Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the gang.
And yet, in 2020, I got the same moment of glee watching “Nepenthe” that I got from first seeing The Motion Picture 41 years ago.
Even more than any of the previous half-dozen episodes, even more than the appearances of Data, Seven of Nine, Icheb, and Hugh, “Nepenthe” has the same homecoming feel of that first movie. The cerebral captain, the confident first officer, the counselor who had all the feels, here they are more than three decades later getting together as old friends who’ve been through hell and back, and it’s glorious.
Reportedly, Jonathan Frakes was concerned about getting back in front of the camera as—ever since his first directorial effort thirty years ago, the TNG episode “The Offspring” (in which Data creates a daughter, amusingly enough)—he has slowly transitioned from actor to director, at this point becoming one of the best and most in-demand TV directors in the business. He hasn’t acted in ages, and to not only have to do so, but to be standing next to the likes of Sir Patrick Stewart, Marina Sirtis, Isa Briones, and Lulu Wilson while doing so was apparently intimidating.
He had nothing to worry about. The book on William T. Riker from jump was always relaxed confidence and competence, and Frakes perfectly embodies the older, wiser version of that guy who strode onto the Enterprise in “Encounter at Farpoint.”
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There’s a lot to like about “Nepenthe,” but the thing I like best as the seventh episode of the first season of Star Trek: Picard in particular is that finally we have people who will call Picard on his bullshit. Raffi Musiker is still his subordinate in many ways, Rios is just an employee who will do whatever the client needs, Elnor is pledged to help him and that’s it, and Jurati only just met him. His relationship with all of them is one of a superior officer or employer or mentor. However, Riker and Troi’s relationship goes back much farther, and there’s an ocean of water under a dozen bridges among the three of them. As a result, they are in a perfect position to tell Picard he’s being a complete jerk at different points in the episode. Riker’s is done in a friendly manner—the same way he’s done most things in his career—by gently pointing out that being an arrogant ass who must be in the thick of things is practically a requirement when you’re a starship captain, but is a bit more fraught when you’re dealing with, in essence, a teenager. Troi, meanwhile, goes into full counselor mode, whupping Picard upside the head for how he’s so focused on helping Soji in the abstract that he is completely not getting how much pain and suffering Soji is actually going through.
It’s wonderful to see this trio, who were originally envisioned as the “big three” of TNG before Brent Spiner and Michael Dorn forced Data and Worf into more of a spotlight, sharing drinks, sharing food, sharing truths, sharing the deep love they hold for one another, and sharing the years of experiences, both together and apart, that have brought them to this place.
The love is particularly strong. And it’s more poignant for those of us who saw the forging of these bonds over seven years of TV episodes and four movies (not to mention hundreds of novels, comics books, and short stories featuring these folks over the last 33 years), so the reunion in this episode feels organic and real and very important to everyone involved. And those of you who didn’t see it can easily go back and do so, since TNG can be viewed on either CBS All Access or Netflix…
It would have been very easy for Briones’s Soji to get lost in the nostalgia shuffle here, but she very much doesn’t. Her entire world was turned upside down and sideways last week, and she’s not dealing very well with it. She just found out her life was a lie, so she assumes that everything happening on Nepenthe is also a lie. She out-and-out tells Troi that the nicer and friendlier she is, the less she trusts her.
Which is completely understandable, and it’s fun to see Troi work with her and diagnose her with such ease—because that’s what she does. Even though, now that Soji’s activated, Troi can’t actually empathically “read” her.
We also get the unintended consequences of the synth ban, as Troi and Riker had two kids, Thad and Kestra. (The names are perfect, by the way. Riker was established in Voyager‘s “Death Wish” as having an ancestor who fought in the American Civil War named Thaddius Riker, a.k.a. “Old Iron Boots,” and TNG‘s “Dark Page” established that Troi had a sister named Kestra who died when Troi was an infant.) Thad, however, contracted a rare disease that was curable before the synth ban—it’s a silicon-based disease, the cure for which requires a positronic matrix, which is no longer available.
The circumstances under which that entire story is told, after being hinted at throughout the episode, is beautifully done. Nepenthe has regenerative soil—that is why Riker and Troi went on inactive duty and moved there (presumably from the U.S.S. Titan)—and they have a huge garden. Soji eats her first non-replicated food, a tomato right off the vine, and she loves it, and the realization that real is better is yet another kick in the ribs. But Troi tells her Thad’s full story by way of reminding her that real isn’t always better.
(By the way, the first mission of Titan with Riker as her captain was supposed to be to help rebuild Romulus after the events of Nemesis when Shinzon turned the senate to pixie dust and took over, and then got killed himself. I was hoping that would play a bit more of a role in things.)
Thad was apparently a brilliant child, having created several languages and stories before his death, as well as an entire culture of wild girls in the woods known as the Viveen. Kestra continues to dress up as a Viveen, often speaking Viverna, the language Thad created for the Viveen. Indeed, that’s how we’re introduced to her, as she’s out hunting bunnicorns (yes, Nepenthe has unicorn bunnies, because of course it does) when Picard and Soji show up.
For many years, I have always answered the question, “Who’s your favorite Star Trek character?” with “a tie between Worf and Kira.” (Before DS9, it was just Worf, and before TNG it was a tie between McCoy and Sulu.) As of “Nepenthe,” the answer to that question is “Kestra,” and it’s not even close. Lulu Wilson puts in an amazing performance here. Trek has had a hit-and-miss track record with kid characters, but in Kestra, they absolutely nail it. She’s charming, funny, inquisitive, sarcastic, smart, thoughtful, friendly, and still in several kinds of pain from losing her brother. She’s honestly the perfect child of these two characters, and I am totally invested in seeing lots and lots more of Kestra. In fact, that really needs to be the next show on CBS All Access. The hell with Section 31, The Lower Decks, the other animated series, or the Pike series we’ve all been jonesing for since Anson Mount showed up on Discovery—they can all go hang. I want Star Trek: Viveen, Wild Girls of the Woods, and I want it now, dagnabbit! Get on that, Secret Hideout!
I’ve been raving about this episode, but it’s not without its flaws, and the need to create a tragic midstory for Riker and Troi is one of them. Troi’s sister died when she was a girl, so to have so similar a set of circumstances for her own children is a bit repetitive and feels like writers piling on a character. It also feels like a constructed excuse to keep them out of the action. Troi’s weakest moment in the whole episode is when she briefly breaks down when she brings Picard to Thad’s old room and says she can’t bear to have Kestra in any kind of danger. (She makes up for it later with her talk with Soji and her smackdown of Picard.) So we have a built-in excuse for this guest appearance not to last beyond this week, but, again, it feels constructed to do that more than anything.
And it’s not the only tragedy that feels forced. Elnor fails in his duty to protect Hugh, as he falls for the “let’s fight without weapons because it’s more pure” trick from Rizzo, who then whips out a weapon and kills Hugh with it mid-fight. There was no need for that, and again it feels constructed. There’s also a scene missing, as the last time we saw Elnor, he was defending Hugh from the oncoming onslaught of Romulans, and the first time we see Hugh here, he’s being lined up by Rizzo and her Zhat Vash thugs with other XBs (whom she also slaughters), with no sign of Elnor. He doesn’t show up until later, and, um, where was he?
By the end of the episode, Elnor finds himself alone and hiding on the Cube—Rizzo beamed away before their fight could finish—and the last thing we see is him calling in Fenris for help. (This likely explains why Seven of Nine is back in the trailer for next week.)
The now-expected opening flashback in this episode is one that only goes back a few weeks, as we get some of the rest of the scene between Oh and Jurati when the former questioned the latter about her visits with Picard. We get more information here. For starters, it’s confirmed that, contrary to what Jurati told Picard (and as many of us assumed), Oh sent her to him specifically, complete with a tracker. In addition, it’s confirmed that Oh really is a Vulcan (as opposed to a disguised Romulan), as she forces a mind-meld upon Jurati.
Unfortunately, that’s all we get. We now know how Jurati received the information that led to her committing the cold-blooded murder of her former lover, but we don’t know what the information is. And we need to know what’s so fucking horrible that it would lead a moral scientist to cold-bloodedly murder a person she loves so brutally. (Yes, I’m harping on this a lot, but the lack of consequences and the lack of explanation for her utterly despicable act has cast a pall on the proceedings.) Now, the fact that Oh did force the mind-meld on her leaves open several possibilities, including that she was, in essence, brainwashed into killing Maddox by this mind-meld. Still, given that Jurati also appeared to be in complete control of her actions and the killing was premeditated, I don’t see how she gets redeemed.
Jurati is also now getting cold feet. She tries to convince Rios and Musiker to go back to Earth and abandon Picard and Soji. Rios shoots that down, as Picard’s a paying client, but Jurati doesn’t want to go back to Earth because she’s sick of this trip, she wants to go back so that Narek will track her to Earth instead of tracking her to Picard.
So she injects herself with noranium hydride, which neutralizes the tracker and also puts her in a coma.
That’s where we leave off this week, and I’m curious to see where this goes next week, because we’ve only got three episodes left, and Jurati’s actions rather desperately need explaining, especially since the action appears to be at least in part moving to Soji’s homeworld. That’s presumably where Rizzo is going, and La Sirena‘s headed there now as well.
“Nepenthe” was an absolute nostalgic delight, but it also moves the story forward without drowning in that nostalgia. Too often, when Trek revisits its past, it’s wrapped in a really dumb story (“Sarek,” the “Unification” two-parter, “Flashback,” “These are the Voyages…”). When they get it right, though (“Relics,” “Blood Oath,” “Trials and Tribble-ations,” “If Memory Serves,” and, now, “Nepenthe”) it can be a beautiful thing.
My hope for the final three episodes are that we finally get some answers regarding why Jurati felt the need to commit murder, and especially that Picard actually listens to what Riker and Troi told him and stops being a twit.
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges everyone to support the Bad Ass Moms Kickstarter. The next anthology from Crazy 8 Press. It’s a nifty anthology about, well, bad ass moms, and if it makes its first stretch goal, it’ll also include a story by Keith about a woman in New York City who is both a mother and a hunter of supernatural creatures. Other contributors include Mary Fan (who also edited the anthology), Star Trek fiction writers Derek Tyler Attico, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, Paul Kupperberg, and Aaron Rosenberg, as well as Danielle Ackley-McPhail, T. Erik Bakutis, Russ Colchamiro, Paige Daniels, Kathleen O. David, Heather Hutsell, Kris Katzen, Karissa Laurel, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, TJ Perkins, Jenifer Purcell Rosenberg, Joanna Schnurman, Hildy Silverman, and Denise Sutton. Click here and please consider supporting it!
This episode was a little longer than usual, but I still had absolutely no patience for the sequences without the Troi-Riker family. This calls for a fan-edit and a sequel series.
Also, that Borg trajector is pretty clever. You mention an obscure planet and it manages to set you down within walking distance of your friend’s house. (Unless I missed Picard giving specific coordinates to Hugh.)
All I can say is this was easily Jonathan Frakes’ best performance ever. He was absolutely fantastic and more than held his own with Stewart
There was something wrong with the episode for me. At times, the screen went all wet and blurry.
Nice shoutout to the Kzinti as the reason Riker invested in a defense system for his home. I’m aware there have been a couple more subtle references onscreen in the past, but it’s good to see Larry Niven’s contribution to the TAS accepted as canon.
Narissa’s killing of the XBs- a little over the top, but on it’s own a far better way of cementing her as a villain than the flirtation with Narek. This would have been a better time to shift the moral ambiguity of the situation than earlier.
Commodore Oh’s mind meld cements a couple theories I’ve been forming:
The Zhat Vash is present on both Vulcan and Romulus. Whether it predates the schism, or whether the Vulcan chapter arose during the efforts at reunification remains to be seen.
The most convincing way to pass on the consequences of the existence of synthetics is a mind meld. I had thought this would be the way to thoroughly convince someone like Jurati to reverse her position on synthetics. Additionally, I wonder if deviating from Vulcan ethical boundaries allows a greater degree of brainwashing/reprogramming.
@1 – Picard has always retained an affinity for Borg technology. He certainly had the ability to remember the coordinates and pass them to the trajector through his limited Borg telepathy. Besides, in Star Trek, technology has always bent itself to meet the needs of the story.
I wonder if the dangers of synthetics are inherent to synthetic life, or whether there’s an external actor that is waiting to take control of an AI to pursue an agenda of galactic sterilization or somesuch. It would explain why AI so often goes bad ( Control, M5, etc. ), and also why some isolated examples, such as Data, do not.
A Henry Darger shout out… I would never have expected something like that from Star Trek. Very cool.
Pretty good return by Riker and Troi, and it was nice meeting their daughter, even if she’s a different daughter than the one I introduced in the novels (named Tasha). Although of course, with this show being this show, they had to have a tragedy in their past, the loss of their firstborn child. The idea that he died because he caught a disease that could only be treated by something created within a positronic matrix was incredibly contrived as a way to tie their tragedy into the series arc; why would a biological disease and an android neural architecture have any commonality? How could a “silicon-based” virus even survive in a human/Betazoid body, which would contain only a trace amount of silicon?
Oh dear, it looks like Commodore Oh is from the future, come back to prevent the robot apocalypse. I was hoping we could avoid time travel for once. Although it might provide a handwave for reconciling Picard with the novel continuity, if it turns out time travelers were responsible for the supernova.
But it looks like I was wrong about Jurati being a spy of some sort just putting on an innocent act. She really is an innocent, but she’s been charged with a mission based on the apocalyptic future Oh showed her in the meld. She’s convinced that if synth life is developed, it will lead to galactic cataclysm (could this be related to the future Control brought about in Discovery season 2?), so she believed she had no choice but to kill Maddox to prevent the A.I.-pocalypse. So basically Maddox is Miles Dyson and Jurati’s a very reluctant Sarah Connor.
And Keith, I think Jurati’s actions here went a long way toward redeeming her. She did something horrible that Oh convinced her was necessary for the future of the galaxy, but she’s utterly devastated with guilt over it and willing to risk her life to destroy the tracker Oh put in her. (The fact that she drowns her sorrows with milk and red velvet cake further underlines that she’s not the hardcore assassin I suspected.)
I really don’t care for the visual effects on Trek these days. Script: “Our sensors are picking up indications of someone pursuing us through warp.” FX shot: Romulan ship trailing La Sirena as closely as a car on the highway, easily in naked-eye view.
Also, was Rios’s medical replicator just a present-day 3D printer???
It occurs to me that Deanna being unable to read Soji is a continuity error. In “Descent, Part 2,” Deanna was able to sense the emotions being induced in Data by Lore. So she can sense emotion in androids.
“I want Star Trek: Viveen, Wild Girls of the Woods, and I want it now, dagnabbit! Get on that, Secret Hideout!”
With Worf as her sidekick. “Oh, very well, Kestra. For you, I will be a Merry Man.”
DAMMIT, I FORGOT TO MENTION THE KZINTI REFERENCE!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Also Marina Sirtis needs a better agent. I know these things are negotiated between actor and studio individually, but from the outside looking in, it’s absurd that Frakes gets a “special guest star” billing in the opening credits and Sirtis gets lumped in with the other closing-credits guest stars.
Also, Harry Treadaway doesn’t get credited for this episode, even though he’s in it. Oops.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@6/CLB:
Well, that’s what they did for the food replicator prop in Episode 2 at the Utopia Planatia “TriHy” facility. It’s a weird choice, IMHO, and smacks of “look at us! we’re cool! this is a reference to contemporary high tech!” It’s not like a traditional box-with-flat panel-and-VFX is tough to fabricate, and we don’t see anybody using self-balancing hoverboards or slab-phones or slap-bracelets or earbuds (*), so this one outlier means …?
(*) Uhura: I was using a wireless earset before it was cool.
@6 And Troi sensed emotion in Lal just before her systems failed.
@7 – I actually had to rewind a few seconds to be sure I’d heard what I thought I’d heard. Niven was fairly influential on my early reading patterns.
I really loved this episode, I smiled immediately when they said the Riker’s daughter was named Kestra, and loved the character herself deeply. I didn’t necessarily love the need to insert a tragic death for their son. I also liked the way Data was spoken of in this episode, you really get a sense of how incomplete the Enterprise family has felt since losing him.
@4/lerris: A species called Kzinti existing in the Trek universe doesn’t necessarily mean “The Slaver Weapon” happened as shown. The backstory Sulu describes of humans fighting 4 wars with the Kzinti more than 200 years earlier is totally incompatible with what later canon has established, given that Cochrane’s first warp flight and first contact with aliens occurred only 207 years before the episode, at most. And ENT treated the Xindi conflict as Earth’s first major military clash with aliens. At the very least, the timeline of the Man-Kzin Wars would have to be massively different than stated.
I find “The Slaver Weapon” a bizarre adaptation, because adaptations (like TNG: “Tin Man,” adapted from the original novel Tin Woodman) usually change their stories to fit the universe, but “Slaver Weapon” changes the Trek universe to fit the original story. Aside from the presence of Spock, Sulu, and Uhura and a couple of mentions of Starfleet, literally everything in the episode is taken directly from “The Soft Weapon” and the Known Space universe. It’s less of a Trek episode than a Known Space pilot with Trek characters subbed in for the “Soft Weapon” lead characters. It’s almost as if Sulu and Uhura convinced Spock to join them in acting out a “Soft Weapon” holonovel on the rec deck.
@9. The Romulans on the Cube seemed to have some kind of (suitably alien-looking) earbud, presumably as part of the facility’s internal comms network. I don’t recall seeing a good angle of Narek on the Snakehead to see if he’s still wearing it.
And after the massacre of the XBs, Hugh’s death, the Troi-Rikers’ dead son, and Jurati’s near-suicide, I fully expect the next episode to begin with Narek tracing La Sirena to Nepenthe and slaughtering the Troi-Rikers, which will get him the comm device Kestra used, which will put him back on Picard’s trail. Because modern Trek has to be so damned bleak.
When Soji looked at the pizza and did that head-tilt, I had to rewind it three or four times to watch it again. It was absolutely perfect.
@15/James: But did Soji ever do that head tilt before this episode?
CLB, I liked Natasha a lot :) Although if they had to go with another name, Kestra is pretty good. I thought the character really was amazing. Writing for kid/teen characters is famously uneven on Trek, as noted, but perfectly done here. I’m glad Soji as a character was able to hold her own, too, because there was a danger of her becoming one of the “kid” characters in this group, since she is younger and was only created a few years ago, but until now she has fully been a young professional adult, so I was glad she was able to be an adult in relation to Kestra (even lying in a bunkbed). I thought her attitude of suspicion toward Picard and Troi was warranted, but glad to see her development over the couple of days (?) they were there. Not sure how I feel about Kestra’s comment of “You can have Picard. He can have you!”, as the suggestion that they could be a new family is not earned yet IMO.
I *loved* this, and great description of how and why Riker and Troi stand in such different relation to Picard than the Sirena’s motley crew. But, and this applies to the whole show so far, why does no one involved seem to even remember Beverly Crusher? She consistently challenged Picard from the beginning of TNG (e.g., “Perfect Mate,” “I, Borg,” “Homeward”), had another 15 years of history with him even before Riker and Troi were there, and was Picard’s closest friend aside from Guinan. She also was the one who insisted on saving Hugh and argued against genocide, was very close with Riker and Troi in her own right, and taught Data to dance. (I’m guessing that detail of Kestra’s came from her.) She probably had more experience with XBs than any other Starfleet doctor before Voyager came back. Maybe there will be a role at some point for her in this timeline (I’m sure there is still a friendship with her and Riker, Troi, Geordi, and Worf). But “Last Best Hope” doesn’t seem to have left much room for that if Picard said goodbye to her over subspace 19 years ago and she was never mentioned again. So, as much as I loved so much about this episode, I am feeling the absence of Crusher is leaving a sour taste for me, and I am keeping the Litverse as my main timeline mentally and Picard as the alternate universe story.
Before this episode, she was Dr. Soji Asha, human being. She’s only been Soji the Android since the last five minutes of the previous episode.
So the lack of a prior head tilt isn’t really relevant.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@18/krad: Why would a head-tilt mannerism have anything to do with her knowledge of being an android? She had no idea Data did head tilts. And she wasn’t doing it consciously to show off or something; she just did it as a reflex and Riker and Troi recognized it. The clear intent was that it was an unconscious mannerism she inherited from Data, so that would be more credible if we’d seen her do it earlier (which we may very well have without my noticing, which is why I asked).
She did the head tilt back on the Artifact, while she was being told about “Borg mating rituals” or whatever it was.
This was such a good episode- one of the things that drives me a little bonkers about Discovery is the pacing- I feel like the season is almost frenetic in that each episode is just non-stop go go go go go. Picard by necessity is a slower paced show (your star is 79 years old after all) but I liked that we actually had time to process and see what the fallout was after last weeks episode. I would put it in the same orbit as Family (the post Best of Both Worlds) as far as characters having taken a HUGE emotional hit and having to process. Plus Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis both did excellent jobs of reprising their roles and being able to tell that time had changed them- Troi seemed a little more confident (calling Picard an idiot), Riker seemed a little more relaxed but still amazingly capable. The pacing of the Thad reveal was so well done and fit in so perfectly with the story they were telling. Nothing felt rushed, everything felt natural. This was the longest episode of the season by far, and it was a great choice. Sitting around that dinner table talking was worth it.
The true takeaway star though was Lulu Wilson, who’s work I had never come across before. I actually found it very hard to believe that she was only 14 because through a combination of her own talent and what seemed like excellent directing, she outshone everyone else she was on screen with, through no fault of their own. While I’m not sure I necessarily want Viveen Wild Girl of the Woods, if there’s a Star Trek: Academy series in 4 years or so, I hope she’s the lead.
As far as the B plots go, I cared for Dr. Jurati more than the Cube, though they did share a common thread- inexperienced characters being taken advantage of. While I’m not sure if Commodore Oh is from the future, or that the Zhat Vash is pre-schism, it’s obvious that she implanted the kill Maddox/track Picard thought during the course of the mindmeld and it’s only now that Jurati is realizing it. As things on the cube goes, I assume this is going somewhere now, but unless we’re going to get Ex-Borg cavalry in their busted ass cube during the season finale, I’m not really sure how avenging Hugh fits in here.
@21 – I’ve been banging on the table for a Star Trek: Academy series for years now! Please, someone make it happen!
@2:
All I can say is this was easily Jonathan Frakes’ best performance ever. He was absolutely fantastic and more than held his own with Stewart.
Yeah, if Frakes hadn’t said anything, I’d never have guessed he hasn’t acted much in the last decade.
And I really like their interactions too. It felt like the natural evolution of where Picard and Riker’s friendship left off in the penultimate scene of Nemesis 20 years earlier.
Like Picard himself, it’s just nice to see them as longtime friends and retired officers rather than just redoing the old Captain-XO dynamic (or Captain-Captain dynamic of Nemsis).
Loved this episode – and away from the joy of Nepenthe itself, I did like the parallels between the Novel-verse’s method of spreading the Memory Omega message in the Mirror Universe and Oh’s mind meld with Jurati – don’t use words, just show the other person what you’ve seen of the future/other way of living – it seemed very…logical!
It was also great that it didn’t feel slow or rushed – but that the time span was about right – those extra minutes made all the difference!
@6 “Oh dear, it looks like Commodore Oh is from the future, come back to prevent the robot apocalypse.”
That’s why she was wearing sunglasses!!!
“Mind meld with me if you want to live!”
I also loved Kestra, and it really brought home to me how incredibly rare it is to see a realistically written normal little girl, not just in Star Trek but in sci fi as a whole. They’re all usually uptight precocious geniuses, feral psychic angel children, or flower bedecked ambiance fodder. A snarky, down to earth tween girl who’s just a person was such a breath of fresh air. I loved her, but I’m also mad at how uncommon that is.
@17: Based on the weird mismatched list of things the writers do and don’t seem to understand about TNG, it’s entirely possible they have no idea who Beverly Crusher is.
@13 – I’m fully aware that TAS was never considered official canon. That’s why this episode’s mention of the Kzinti ( beyond a couple prior map props showing their homeworld ) is what brings the Kzinti into canon. They were certainly a significant faction in one of the most well-known derivative works – the Starfleet Battles game.
As an aside, I really appreciate that we’re back to seeing time passing while at warp. There has been a tendency lately to treat FTL as instantaneous ( not just in Trek, but in Star Wars as well ), but since we got into space, we are getting cues that time is passing while the ship is at warp, including both seeing the crew engaged in background activity, and an explicit timestamp on ths episode’s flashback. Even though 3 weeks from Jurati’s meeting with Commander Oh on Earth is a fairly brief span of time, it is a reasonable amount of time to spend at TNG-era speeds to get to Romulan space, which was within range of Archer’s Enterprise.
@27:
Given their friendship, I admit it does seem strange that Beverley hasn’t even been acknowledged in some capacity (and as Kallie pointed out earlier, only briefly touched on in McCormack’s prelude novel).
I wonder if it’s a consequence of the story demands or if it’s a consequence of Gates McFadden being busy or uninterested in reprising her character.
The name “Kzinti” is now in live-action-trumps-toon canon, but the shape of the entities attached to that name is undefined. Are they a species/planetary union of cat-aliens? Did they fight wars with Earth? Maybe the name applies to a clan of raiders who are nondescript humanoids, as with “the Orion Syndicate” (boring), or to a clan of Naussicaans (less boring).
KRAD:
Thad was apparently a brilliant child, having created several languages and stories before his death, as well as an entire culture of wild girls in the woods known as the Viveen.
Given Thad’s storytelling, was I the only one who was half-expecting the Writers to throw in an obligatory Gargoyles in-joke / reference there or somewhere else in the episode?
@@@@@ 13 Christopher Bennett: Fascinating. I never thought of the relationship between “The Soft Weapon” and “The Slaver Weapon” in those terms before, but now that you point it out, it seems spot-on.
Wonder what Niven thinks about last night’s reference. Even if he’s not a watcher of “Picard,” you can bet he’s heard about it by now.
Great. Now in addition to Blake’s 7 and Firefly ‘Picard’ wants to be Terminator. And I’m announcing an angst overload here. Just. Too. Much.
@28/lerris: “I’m fully aware that TAS was never considered official canon.”
That’s a myth. It was created and produced by Gene Roddenberry his own damn self and story edited by D.C. Fontana, it had nearly the entire TOS cast, and half its episodes were written by TOS veterans. It was absolutely intended at the time to be a direct, authentic continuation. But by 1989, Roddenberry had gotten picky about what parts of Star Trek he counted as “true to his vision,” and he and his assistant Richard Arnold released a memo claiming that TAS no longer counted. But at that point, Roddenberry had been eased back to a ceremonial role with no actual control over the franchise, and TNG, DS9, and ST VI did reference things from TAS (elements of “Yesteryear,” Kirk’s middle name Tiberius, Kor’s ship being the Klothos) during the time the supposed “ban” was in effect. The only things the “ban” actually affected were the tie-ins that Arnold was in charge of approving and the perceptions of fandom that the memo was meant to influence. And Arnold was let go as soon as Roddenberry died, so the “ban” stopped having any real effect after just a couple of years, though it lingered through inertia for a few years thereafter.
These days, TAS is included on StarTrek.com, Memory Alpha, and other “canon-only” sources alongside everything else, and I and my fellow novelists routinely reference it in our books without getting any complaints from CBS licensing.
Anyway, whether something was canon before is irrelevant, because the people who create the canon are perfectly free to incorporate anything they want, or to ignore anything from past canon. Canons get rewritten all the time.
As for the “3 weeks” time stamp, that’s a continuity error. It puts the episode 3 weeks after the start of episode 3, but the past two episodes said they were 2 weeks after episode 1, and this episode picks up immediately after the last one ends. So the timing doesn’t add up.
Dang, does this show have a hit list for old minor characters or what? Farewell, Hugh, you deserved better. At least a reunion with Geordi before checking out.
00 / KRAD:
After ten years of watching the same episodes over and over again, we had our old friends back, and it was lovely, even though the movie was terrible.
Funny enough, when Picard was first announced, that was literally my initial thought: “Wow. This must be what it felt like when TMP hit theaters in ’79).
And I’d imagine it’s also a different experience for our two generations. For Millennial like me, we lived through the TNG-era expansion, the Berman-era collapse, and the Abrams reboot. We have the benefit of 50 years of Trek and knowing the franchise’s superpower of being reborn from the ashes like a phoenix.
By contrast, you guys only had TOS and TAS. Trek only had a decade of content and cultural impact at that point and I imagine your generation had no idea if TMP would be the last hurrah or if future projects might develop someday.
At the time it aired, there was nothing in The Slaver Weapon that contradicted what had come before. The Slaver Weapon was ret-conned, not the other way around. Just like Eath’s lack of a nuclear war in The Omega Glory was ret-conned by Encounter at Farpoint. Trek has always ignored parts of it’s history to tell a different and contradictory story.
I put it down to all the time travel shenanigans. After all, they may claim that tthe universe is as it was but as they are now part of that altered universe, of course they’d remember the altered history.
Either that or we’re actually following multiple parallel universes
That beautiful hug Hugh shared with Picard last week really moved me. So this week they have to kill him off. No bueno, Samantha/Michael, no bueno.
Killing Hugh is a choice I am not here for. I really enjoyed having him on screen and was hoping for more to come.
I can see the logic to killing off Hugh in terms of the cold calculus of storytelling. It opens the door for Seven of Nine to take over his cause of freeing the xB from Romulan captivity. Jeri Ryan is, after all, a more prominent actor both within Trek and in general, so it makes sense to give that story role to Seven over Hugh, so the path has to be cleared for her to do so.
Although if that’s the case, it would’ve worked better if Seven had been there to have the torch passed to her directly, instead of (presumably) indirectly through Elnor.
@40/ CLB:
Although if that’s the case, it would’ve worked better if Seven had been there to have the torch passed to her directly, instead of (presumably) indirectly through Elnor.
Yeah, it was definitely a missed opportunity to have two of the franchise’s ex-Drones interact on-screen.
@@@@@ 34 Christopher Bennett: My personal “head-canon” has no problem incorporating the events from “Yesteryear.” It’s a gem in any medium, and I was personally delighted when they reused the design for Spock’s home town of ShiKahr in the remastered version of “Amok Time” to more or less make its status as canon official. That said, I’m just not buying that there’s a twenty-foot version of Spock running around on a planet of sentient plant-people, even if Walter Koenig wrote that particular episode.
@@@@@ 36 Mr. Magic: Aside from “The Measure of a Man,” for the first two years it seemed likely that TNG would be remembered as a minor footnote to the original series — or, at worst, would bury the franchise for good altogether. The third season marked what had to be one of the most remarkable creative turnarounds in TV history.
Of course, in my continuation, Troi ended up married to my clone after Riker’s death and they had a daughter called Misha (another name with tragic connections, albeit adapted). I think Thad will have to exist only in an alternate timeline. This does remove some of the tragedy but hey, she’s an empath.
I can never remember if I’ve used the Kzinti or not, I keep meaning to and forgetting…
@42:
Yeah, but I think many of Millennials like me were too young to understand that at the time — or just how much of a disaster TFF was in ’89 and how much was riding on TUC at the box-office.
From our perspective, in hindsight…The point I was trying to get across is that we were born and grew up in that sweet spot of the 18-year production period after TVH when the cottage industry was firing on all cylinders. It seemed like Trek would forever continue with no stopping and that new shows and films would keep coming and Trek would always be there in our lives.
When Enterprise went off the air and there were no new movies on the horizon, I think I finally understood then what it must’ve been like for the original generation of Trekkies from 1969-1979.
@42/Michael Hall: “That said, I’m just not buying that there’s a twenty-foot version of Spock running around on a planet of sentient plant-people, even if Walter Koenig wrote that particular episode.”
I don’t buy that “The Alternative Factor” happened, or that Paris and Janeway went transwarp and turned into lizard people, or that the Enterprise got to Sha Ka Ree at the center of the galaxy in 20 minutes. You don’t have to accept every single episode of a series to accept the series as a whole. Canon is not about specific details; the word refers to a complete, inclusive body of works, whatever its inconsistencies and flaws.
Star Trek is just a bunch of made-up stories anyway. It’s silly to get nitpicky over which made-up stories are “real” or not, because not a single damn one of them is even slightly real. The point is simply that it’s a myth that TAS was “never considered official.” It absolutely was at the time, and Roddenberry’s attempt to erase it in ’89 was never really binding except on audience perception. Today, TAS is officially treated the same as every other series, and new shows are every bit as free to acknowledge it as they are to reference any other past series, as Riker’s Kzinti mention proves. They’re all just stories, and TAS’s stories are fair game to draw on just like any other Trek stories. Roddenberry and Arnold are the only ones who ever tried to “officially” say otherwise, and that policy only really affected the tie-ins and only held for a few years. By now, it’s been defunct nearly ten times as long as it was ever in effect, so it’s really frustrating that fans still believe it’s binding.
Anyway, if you can accept Apollo growing to giant size, or Sylvia turning into a giant cat, or Flint miniaturizing the Enterprise on his tabletop, is a giant Spock clone that much harder to accept? Are sentient plants harder to believe in than Discovery‘s cosmic FTL fungi, or a cloud of gas that sucks blood? There’s a ton of stuff in live-action Trek that’s as fanciful as anything in TAS. (And the giant clones actually make sense if you notice that the corpses of the Phylosians’ ancestors were also giant, and their ships were built on that scale. Either the Phylosians’ cloning tech automatically created its clones on a Phylosian scale, or Keniclius engineered the clones that way so they could work the Phylosian ships.)
@45 / CLB:
Anyway, if you can accept Apollo growing to giant size, or Sylvia turning into a giant cat, or Flint miniaturizing the Enterprise on his tabletop, is a giant Spock clone that much harder to accept? Are sentient plants harder to believe in than Discovery‘s cosmic FTL fungi, or a cloud of gas that sucks blood?
Yeah, CLB, incidentally, you reminded me…
It’s not unlike when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out back in 2008. I never understood the backlash against the ‘Nuke the Fridge’ scene or the aliens involvement, or at least in the context of “It’s ridiculous or it doesn’t fit”.
My reaction was kinda the same sentiment: You’re willing to accept a magic gold chest that melts Nazis, Magic, a Cultist extracting a still-beating heart, and a magic cup that ages people to death…but it’s the nuke-proof Fridge and the aliens that you find ridlicious Are you kidding me?
@46
The main problem I had with aliens turning up in Indiana Jones was actually showing us the aliens (one even looks right into the camera!) rather than limiting it to their mysterious powers, which the previous three movies did. The gods didn’t make personal appearances, and I found that much more satisfying in the ancient, spooky, campfire story world of Indiana Jones.
Apart from that, the pyramids and other ancient ruins of South America being built or influenced by aliens and not the natives of those places is a dumb old racist idea that needs to die. Even Temple of Doom allowed the temple to be built by its natives, dumb stereotypes though they were.
TNG and Voyager are also available on Prime Video if you already have a subscription.
The regenerative soil bit wasn’t really explained. I almost expected for a second that they would go the Genesis route and say Thad was regenerating somewhere and return like Spock did.
This episode continued the recovery of Picard’s character that we used to know, making it clear that Picard isn’t really Picard without his support system. The one sour note was his continued underserving of Raffi. He doesn’t even mention (unless I missed it) to his old Number One that his current “motley” crew includes his very last Number One, who’s getting shit done for him. He’s not very appreciative of her. It doesn’t seem like the writers are even aware that it’s a problem.
The scenes on Nepenthe were heartwarming. As a sidenote, these updates make more sense than the tie-in continuity where La Forge, Worf, and Dr. Crusher are all still on the Enterprise, with Picard a captain for 50 years.
The scenes on the cube are less successful. It’s still unclear why Elnor is there, as he failed to protect Hugh. And him discovering that Fenris calling card was convenient.
The mind meld is problematic. What exactly was she shown? I didn’t watch it frame by frame (has anyone?), but I got a whiff of the Discovery stuff about a future Cyber War. If they bring back Control into this… blah. Maybe Oh transmitted the secret knowledge of “which we will never speak again, on penalty of treason.” In any case, why did she need to kill Maddox? “If only you could see what I’ve seen…” Well, frickin’ tell him, lady! Maybe he would’ve reconsidered whatever he was up to without you taking his life.
As an extension of that, I wasn’t sure if Rios is just dumb at this point, telling Jurati he suspects Raffi of being a mole, or if he was setting up Jurati. His EMH manifests without being called as she’s falling unconscious. Where the hell was he when Maddox was dying? “Emergency” is right there in the name.
This episode continued the recovery of Picard’s character that we used to know, making it clear that Picard isn’t really Picard without his support system
Yeah, that was also the idea that Una McCormack ran with in The Last Best Hope — that a key part of why Picard broke was self-isolation and not having his old support system.
@47/JFWheeler: Well, if we’re going there, the portrayal of Kali worship and the Thuggees in Temple of Doom was based on some very racist historical attitudes and propaganda as well. The problem is that Lucas and Spielberg were building on the tropes of early 20th-century adventure fiction (with Crystal Skull updating it to the B-movie alien tropes of the ’50s and the UFO lore of the ’60s and ’70s), and many of those tropes are rooted in racist beliefs.
@48/Sunspear: “The scenes on the cube are less successful. It’s still unclear why Elnor is there, as he failed to protect Hugh.”
Hugh was still alive when La Sirena left, so once Hugh died, Elnor had no way to leave the cube.
“His EMH manifests without being called as she’s falling unconscious. Where the hell was he when Maddox was dying?”
Did you forget? The EMH was there, but Jurati deactivated him. (And I saw it pointed out on another board that the tie-in novel establishes that she was an M.D. before she became a cyberneticist, which could mean she has the authority to override an EMH.)
Besides the things already pointed out (both wonderful and not), I want to add a couple more. First, is there a previous reference to Captain Rupert Crandall in Trek lore? For some reason, the way the characters spoke about him and what they told about him made me think of Harry Mudd; who would indeed be much, much older than Picard, were he alive.
And second: in this episode the PA at the Artifact announces that some sections of the cube have been sealed off due to “chronometric activity”. Given the history of chronometric particles and the Borg it seems things are heading to a closed time-loop involving the reactivated Borg cube.
@50
Yeah, I did point out they’re dumb stereotypes as well. But at least they built their own house! Humans are clever creatures. We can build our own pyramids, thank you very much.
Except for the one in Las Vegas. That’s totally aliens.
@51/adapar: “First, is there a previous reference to Captain Rupert Crandall in Trek lore?”
No, a totally new character. Even with three previous 24th-century series, there was still a great deal of the Federation and Starfleet that we never saw.
@CLB: I was referring to why Elnor stayed behind in the first place. As Keith said, where was he while Hugh was being captured? His effectiveness so far is nil.
One detail: how did Narissa recognize him as Qowat Milat when she proposed a Zhat Vash v. QM duel, since she’d be expecting a female? Was it the sword?
I also don’t buy the authority of a guest to deactivate the EMH. Makes Rios’ operation look even more shoddy, maybe intentionally? No one should be authorized to dismiss an EMH while a patient is in crisis. Even with the deactivation, wouldn’t the ship have passive sensors to show Rios what really happened in that sickbay? They skipped over the part of what should have been an informal inquest at least, before disposing of the body and just taking her word for it.
I was in a Facebook discussion about this episode this morning and learned something interesting: “The Slaver Weapon” meant that Trek (originally Paramount, now CBS) owns the media rights to Kzin. Which means that if CBS All Access wanted to create some other big-budget shows that don’t carry 54 years of baggage among non-fans, they could work something out with Larry Niven to adapt the Ringworld novels and the Man-Kzin Wars.
The death of Hugh was a huge disappointment.
I loved the use of the name Kestra. “Dark Page” was such a tragic episode, it was nice to see Troi’s sister being honored.
To clarify, I know that Known-space is a few years older than Trek, but, thanks to “The Slaver Weapon” is basically unknown to people who love sci-fi tv but don’t read classic science fiction novels.
@52, Heh, was that a Third Rock from the Sun reference?
“Did you build the Pyramids?”
“Only the one in Las Vegas.”
“What about Easter Island?”
“Easter Island was a practical joke that got out of hand.
“
So, are Bunnicorns a thing or are the writers fans of the Dragonquest JRPGs where they are a recurring monster?
@57
Ha, not consciously, but I did watch a lot of 3rd Rock back in the day. So it probably has been rattling around in my brain ever since. Around in my Big Giant Head. :)
I was told that if you don’t have anything nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all, so I won’t say anything about this episode, but I will enshrine a new bit of advice it presented – on first contact, don’t accept glowing Tums® from Vulcans – you’ll get a really persistent stomach ache. Live long and prosper, tor-ies.
@krad:
Uhm…weren’t you paying attention to that part of the episode? She received the information that synths were going to lead to the destruction of all sentient life in the galaxy if they went unchecked. That seems to be more than ample reason to murder even her dearest friend if she could be convinced that his continued existence poses that existential threat. (For another example of that same kind of thinking, see Terminator II.) And by the nature of TV, we don’t really get to experience the mind-meld as she did, having the images inserted directly into her brain. Who knows how convincing such a thing could be if it happened to you?
@6:
No, no, no, no, no. Those memories didn’t come from the future. At least, not directly.
They came from the past.
Think about it. Surely part of the measures taken at the end of Discovery season 2, right up there with “I do not now, nor have I ever had, a sister” was Spock mind-melding some other Vulcan intelligence officer to pass on the memories of his visions of the future, in the interest of preventing those visions from ever coming to pass.
And they could have mind-melded another, and that one another, and so on, all the way down the line, literally keeping the memories alive long after Spock himself passed on.
And, you know, suddenly Oh’s actions make perfect sense if you think about them for even half a second. They don’t even require that she be actively “evil” or otherwise malfeasant. She believes the future of all sentient life is at stake.
Could there be anyone more ruthless than a full-blooded Vulcan who fully believes that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one?
I was paying attention, and I saw a lot of random images of destruction. The context was missing for the viewers (it’s obviously there for Jurati and Oh). Yes, it could be that, but what we got wasn’t enough for a valid conclusion.
And it still doesn’t justify murdering a helpless injured person you profess to love.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
They were the exact same images of destruction as featured in Discovery, from a future in which a rampant AI decided to destroy all sentient life, with the context of Oh telling Jurati that all this death and destruction was what synths like Dahj and Soji would lead to. Granted, someone who hadn’t seen Discovery so as to recognize the reused footage might not catch the full significance, but the idea that “rampant synths = galaxy full of explodey planets” seems clear enough to me.
Good episode. Loved the Troi-Riker-Picard reunion. I shed a tear when Troi first sees then embraces Picard. Kestra is a wonderfully conceived character and very well acted. The kinship she felt with Soji as both wounded “kids” was very believable. Felt bad for Troi and Riker having lost their first child. R.I.P. Hugh. I was so hoping that he and Seven would share at least a scene together. But it looks like the torch will be passed on from Hugh to Seven (indirectly) and she will activate the Queen Cell and liberate the Ex-B’s. I enjoyed the little team up of Elnor and Hugh for as long as it lasted. And they seemed very tender with each other which was very sweet especially for having just met. Rizzo is definitely the villain you love to hate. And I feel like Jurati is on the slow path to redemption after disabling the tracker in her. But yes, she still did murder her mentor/lover in cold blood. Maybe we can just blame that on a forced mind meld that made her go crazy? Can we even believe those images that Oh put in her mind as being real? Finally, it’s nice that Picard, with the help of Troi and Riker, is rediscovering his empathy and becoming like the Picard we all knew and loved.
@63. Robotech: if indeed it was reused footage (which contained some bad effects that didn’t match Spock’s narration), then it makes Discovery going to the future even less necessary. Set aside that Control was contained/destroyed (?) and they didn’t need to leave anyway. Now Picard seems to be doubling down on that future timeline and, very likely, Discovery in its next season will explore the aftermath of the AI Wars.
I’m not exactly sure why this bugs me. Other authors I like, or at least used to read, have used the trope of machines wiping out organic life when it arises in the galaxy, like Gregory Benford, or Alastair Reynolds in his Revelation Space novels. But something seems off here if this is Trek’s future history gelling under this new regime.
@42 ” That said, I’m just not buying that there’s a twenty-foot version of Spock running around on a planet of sentient plant-people, even if Walter Koenig wrote that particular episode.”
I am Groot!
@54/Sunspear: “One detail: how did Narissa recognize him as Qowat Milat when she proposed a Zhat Vash v. QM duel, since she’d be expecting a female? Was it the sword?”
That and the attire probably helped, but he introduced himself with the “Please choose to live” line (in Romulan), which was presumably the giveaway.
@55/Jamie Bisson: ““The Slaver Weapon” meant that Trek (originally Paramount, now CBS) owns the media rights to Kzin.”
I doubt that. I’m pretty sure whatever license Niven granted Filmation and Paramount for their use was limited and expired long ago, since Niven still owns the kzin (it’s uncapitalized in Known Space) and has used and licensed them elsewhere over the decades. The producers of Enterprise were hoping to do a Kzinti story in season 5, and I think they were in talks with Niven to try to secure the rights.
@62/krad: “And it still doesn’t justify murdering a helpless injured person you profess to love.”
And Agnes clearly agrees with you about that, because she’s literally sick with guilt over what she did. As others have suggested, it may not even have been her choice; Oh could’ve implanted a compulsion to do it during the meld.
@63/Robotech Master: Reuse of stock images don’t necessarily prove they were meant to be the same images in-story; it could’ve just been a budgetary move to save money. Voyager: “Unity” did a montage representing the experiences of the Borg Cooperative but used stock footage from a number of episodes they couldn’t possibly have been witnesses for. Later, IIRC, another VGR episode even used stock footage from the movie Event Horizon.
So for Oh, the future’s so bright, she’s gotta wear shades?
Picard is being produced by the same creative team as Discovery, and shares themes in common with Discovery, and it stands to reason they’d want to connect it to Discovery so as to maybe entice fans of one show to watch the other. And the footage is only months old, so it would still be fresh in the minds of viewers who watched both shows. It makes much more sense they’d intentionally connect the two events than that they’d invent some completely different rampant-AI-related apocalypse scenario using the same footage from that recent one.
I gotta new drinking game; pick the similarities to other SF properties in Picard. So far we have Firefly, a magic girl and rag tag band in a small freighter, A Blake’s 7 villain and evil Federation, and now a good imitation of Skynet. What next?
The angst level is really turning me off. Everybody is miserable and damaged because that is so cool! And of course the universe is at stake, because nothing smaller could possibly matter to anybody! I can see the Discovery fingerprints all over this one. At least everything doesn’t hinge on Michael, or does it?
Even though I never watched beyond the original Trek until DISC, I am depressed and disappointed to see so many characters reintroduced and then discarded. I expected Nepenthe to be obliterated just after Picard and Soji were beamed up. The acting quality (mostly folks who have become seasoned veterans by now) has been marvelous, but I’m really getting tired of watching characters die.
Is anyone else out there hoping that Soji’s origin/world and the Romulan historic fear of the synths is connected to the Ancient Ones from TOS “What are Little Girls Made Of?” Would be an awesome tie in, and seems to fit. Data/Maddox could have done some sort of mash up with that technology.
It seems like such a good fit that if they don’t do it, I will see it as a bit of a miss.
@54/Sunspear: “One detail: how did Narissa recognize him as Qowat Milat when she proposed a Zhat Vash v. QM duel, since she’d be expecting a female? Was it the sword?”
That and the attire probably helped, but he introduced himself with the “Please choose to live” line (in Romulan), which was presumably the giveaway.
It’s possible his fighting technique was also a clue.
A little bit late to this. Liked the ep in general. One thing seemed weird, not sure if i missed something. In this ep narek is tailing the la serena and his sis in on the cube. In the previous ep they got the info about the synth nest and they were going to deal with it. Why aren’t they heading to the nest? That was their plan apparently. Picard thinks they are and it makes sense they should be doing that. So what happened to getting the nest? Why tail the la serena if they have the info about the nest?
As far as I’m concerned, any “canon” without a 20-foot Spock is not a canon worth preserving in the first place. :-)
@74/greginak: They have info to help them identify the planet, but I’m not sure they’ve actually identified it yet. They just know what characteristics to look for. Really, I thought they jumped the gun on trying to kill Soji before they’d gained anything more solid than “two red moons and thunderstorms.”
@74 greginak
Yeah, the Tums® tracker Oh gave Jurati seemed pretty pointless. They already knew exactly where Soji was for the first 6 episodes, and they didn’t need to beam commandos in to kill Maddox – now the tracker is disabled and it never did the Zhat Vash any good. The La Sirena just took sightly longer to get to Nepenthe by having to evade Narek, and that had zero effect on events on Nepenthe. Seemed like the tracker was really only there to justify the B plot of this specific episode, in which the La Sirena jumped around like the rebels trying to escape the New Order in The Last Jedi. The tension was supposed to be heightened by the feelings we were supposed to have about Jurati’s situation, and about the Captain’s growing feelings for her, but that situation had all the gravity of a tennis ball. Narek was just strung along for the ride by weak plotting – the writers decided that someone, or something had to be chasing them, and it was easy enough to put him there. Elnor as well has only remained on the cube to serve a plotting purpose in the future, and his ride has thus far been similarly entirely pointless.
At 70% of the way through, and with all of the assumed details of the telegraphed generic sci-fi plot points turning out to be accurate, it’s safe to say that this show barely feels like it takes place in the Star Trek universe, and also, that it’s just not very good or surprising when viewed as a whole. Some decent ideas, performances and scenes peppered throughout to be sure, but mostly just generic and often predictable filler and an awful lot of stiff exposition. It’s as if they started with a hat full of generic scifi ideas instead of trying to write meaningful stories about actual issues. Picard: The Un-Trek.
La Sirena, how did I miss that? Of course it’s a reference to sirens/mermaids but the similarity to the name of a certain other tramp freighter just struck me.
A lovely episode, overall. I liked some of the little grace notes, like Picard taking a moment to study the label of Riker’s wine bottle, or Riker getting to say, “Shields up!” (and “Cancel red alert! Burnt tomato.”)
@76 I thought they jumped to fast also. It’s a big galaxy. That description was thin and could cover a lot of planets even assuming it was a known planet.
Transceiver @77
They already knew exactly where Soji was for the first 6 episodes, and they didn’t need to beam commandos in to kill Maddox – now the tracker is disabled and it never did the Zhat Vash any good. The La Sirena just took sightly longer to get to Nepenthe by having to evade Narek, and that had zero effect on events on Nepenthe.
The plan (well, Narek and his sister’s) was to kill Soji after they learned what they wanted to know — hence, the radioactive gas from the cube. Soji spoiled the plan by escaping. So from the Zhat Vash point of view, the tracker worked beautifully as a backup to enable Narek to track Soji after she escaped, so he could kill her properly — up until the point that Dr. Jurati disabled the tracker, but that wasn’t something the Zhat Vash were expecting. (Soji is “the Destroyer”, remember — they want to kill her, and were holding off in the hopes Narek could get the synth homeworld location from her.)
By evading Narek, the La Sirena ensured (well, we hope) that no Zhat Vash would make it to Nepenthe to possibly locate, interrogate, and kill Riker, Troi, and Kestra. (Or, if they got there fast enough, they could kill Picard and Soji, and they’d probably kill the Riker-Troi family, too, just to tidy things up.)
The tracker, of course, was given to Dr. Jurati back on Earth by Commodore Oh, who presumably was not perfectly up to date, from moment to moment, about how well Narek was doing. Oh didn’t necessarily know where Picard would go, or what he might learn from Maddox if he found him — maybe Maddox would tell Picard about the synth homeworld, and Picard might go there directly, in which case it wouldn’t matter if Narek succeeded in getting useful information out of Soji.
@74 Presumably, because they didn’t have any actual idea what planet it was yet, not having the depth of knowledge of any old spacer salts to draw upon. Plus, they needed to find out where Soji went so they could finish the job of terminating her.
In the back of mind, with how grim things could be on this show, I was halfway expecting Riker or Troi or their daughter, or some combination of the three would be offed by the Zhat Vash. So relieved that didn’t happen. If it did, I’m sure the fandom would be in an uproar. I think as long as you’re a former series regular you’re safe, but you’re supporting characters like your Icheb’s or your Hugh’s are fair game.
@17, 27, 29: I don’t think the writers have forgotten about Beverly nor can we assume Gates McFadden is too busy or uninterested. Rather, I would presume she would be especially interested to reprise the role because she would no doubt be given something more interesting and different to do than her general story lines on TNG. Also, the TNG cast are all super close to each other so I think they also relish the opportunity just to hang out together on-screen and off. So I think Beverly, like Worf and Geordi, are coming in future seasons to dangle in front of the audience and also to fit into the arc when it feels organically correct, just as Guinan will undoubtedly be used for her appearance in Season 2.
@78
Hey, don’t feel bad. Half the time I accidentally refer to the ship as My Sharona.
@81 PeterIrwin
Except it didn’t work beautifully – it couldn’t possibly work unless the La Sirena crew was stupid enough to go to Nepenthe while knowing they were being tracked. Further, the Zhat Vash are going to the synth homeworld to destroy any and all other synths that exist – which suggests that as far as they know, Soji isn’t even the Synth that sparks the apocalypse (why else aim for finding the rest?) – tactical sense would dictate that they find that planet, as easily as a teenage girl could, and wipe them out. The only reason they didn’t do that in this episode, is because the plot needed more time to bake before that encounter could happen, and that’s a failing of the writing. For an intelligence agency that could likely figure out where La Sirena was even without a tracker, they’re not very intelligent. They’ve infiltrated the highest level of the Federation, with that level of access, they could find any ship anywhere in the quadrant. That tracker was a placeholder mcguffin.
@83: So I think Beverly, like Worf and Geordi, are coming in future seasons to dangle in front of the audience and also to fit into the arc when it feels organically correct, just as Guinan will undoubtedly be used for her appearance in Season 2.
If they do bring in Worf down the road, it’ll be interesting to see where they might pick up his character.
In The Last Best Hope, Una McCormack re-canonized part of the TNG Relaunch with Worf succeeding Riker as Picard’s XO. She then had command of the Enterprise pass to Worf after Picard’ promotion to the Admiralty — and I can’t imagine McCormack not running that by Kirsten Beyer for approval before writing that exposition.
So if Worf shows up in Season Two or later, I’m curious if he’d still be in Starfleet, or if another element of the possible future of “All Good Things” has come to pass, i.e. Worf leaving Starfleet and becoming Governor of H’atoria.
Incidentally, I’m kinda surprised the Klingons haven’t been addressed (either in-show or in the prelude novel). I say that because their reaction to the collapse, or at least fragmentation, of their longtime rival (i.e. the Romulans) is kinda a pretty big f***ing deal.
Star Trek kills characters. Red shirts, semi-regulars, and on occasion, a major player. It happens. If Hugh had been killed in Decent no one would have used it to comment on the quality of the show.
But when Star Trek: Picard is killing them… OH MY GOD THE SHOW IS SO DARK!!!! It’s ridiculous.
This show is fantastic. I’m sorry people don’t like it, but 75% of the criticism is in bad faith
@87/M: Heck, I killed off Hugh in a novel a dozen years ago, before the cool kids started doing it, and nobody’s ever accused my writing of being too dark.
@87 M
100% of the criticism revolves around the show’s failure to adhere to either an external or internal sense of logic. Pass that basic test and your narrative feels organic and tightly woven, fail it and it feels like a contrived exercise of connect the plot dots with thin connective tissue.
I can definitely wait to see what kind of misery the writers have planned for Beverly Crusher, as if being Wesley’s mother wasn’t bad enough. And Worf has always been a bit of an angst magnet anyway.
Lovely to see Will Riker and Deanna Troi and Frakes and Sirtis played their parts beautifully probably as well, if not better, than any of their work in TNG and the NG movies. So for nostalgia alone it scores full marks but I agree with the comments that the episode also marked a turning point in the development of the characters of Picard and Soji. Picard is visibly restored back on the path towards the ‘old’ Picard and Soji starts to come to terms with who she really is and starts to learn about her true heritage aided by the fantastic performance from Kestra (who at times stole the show). One small point. Will Riker was quite specific that he was still on active reserve but it would take something special for him to be recalled to service. I don’t agree with the ‘doom-merchants’ that Nepenthe will be attacked and the Rikers killed. The fact that over dinner Riker again mentioned that it might be time to contact Starfleet I think suggests that Starfleet will be contacted and will be involved. For the story to work through in the last three episodes it must emerge the ‘synth’ attack, which Raffi was convinced of when she carried her original investigations (and Picard warned Clancy that there was a Romulan intellignece threat), was the work of some form of ‘conspiracy’ involving Romulan intelligence and the Zhat Vash (not entirely one and the same) and some infiltrators in Starfleet and when it does the invariable balloon must go up. Fourteen years of Federation policy would have been based on an intelligence coup by the Zhat Vash. Inevitably once the implications of that become apparent heads would have to roll and it would certain that many of the current leadership in Starfllet would have to resign including Clancy as CinC. I just wonder if the extraordinary event that Riker said would be needed for him to accept recall would be the call from the Federation to come back and help lead Starfleet even as CinC. He clearly played the role in this episode as someone who had matured greatly and just had that commanding presence. A role like that would fit well for Frakes not only for what he would bring to such a role but it wouldn’t require regular appearances in future series allowing him to focus on his directing responsibilities. But he’d always be there in the background. Just a thought.
@87: I for one am very pleased with this show. I was just simply noting its obvious darker tone than TNG and it’s already killed off “good guys” Icheb and Hugh, nothing more.
@90: I think we’ll find that Beverly is quite happy teaching tap dancing to senior citizens and kids on that planet of Scots people and married to an emotionally available man. ;o)
@91:
Lovely to see Will Riker and Deanna Troi and Frakes and Sirtis played their parts beautifully probably as well, if not better, than any of their work in TNG and the NG movies.
When Frakes and Sirtis signed on to TNG in 1987, I wonder if they ever imagined that they’d still be playing their characters over 30 years later.
I think they must’ve at least considered the possibility since their show was coming on the heels of TOS’ 20th anniversary and how Team 1701 was still at it.
Then again, considering how most of the TNG cast thought they’d get axed after only a Season, maybe they didn’t.
Either way, as I said, yeah, it’s great to see them again and in a different context rather than just Starfleet officers.
Mr. Magic: In 1987, I think they were all just happy to be working. True, it could’ve been a success the way the original series was. Just as easily, it could’ve been axed after a season and been forgotten the same way nobody remembers the 1988 Mission: Impossible TV series.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@87
If “Descent” had been a ten episode long arc and had killed off Hugh and a couple other old guest stars, and included a massacre on Mars, the wide scale failure of the Federation to hold up to its principles; family drama, substance abuse drama, murder at bedside drama; depressed old man funk, revenge funk, and dead child funk – oh, and don’t forget screaming eyeball torture funk! – then yeah, it might be remembered as being just a smidge too dark.
It’s tragedy overload, to the point of being almost comical now, like when ED-209 keeps shooting that guy and shooting that guy and shooting that guy…
I’m happy for all the people genuinely loving this series. I have tried really hard to share that feeling, and with so many splendid actors working with and around the magnificent Patrick Stewart, I’ve been able to get this far. But I think this episode may be where I jump ship. Michael Chabon’s version of the hero’s journey is to put someone in the wrong, repeatedly, expressed here — as so often in his work — through the recurring moments where Picard has to stand shame-faced as someone explains to him how he let them down. Thus he earns moral stature, growth, dramatic seriousness — or I think that’s the idea. My problem with this is the way Picard’s emotional intelligence is randomly scaled down to enable the gaffs that he’s then corrected on. The way he allows Soji — clearly traumatised and off balance already — to learn an appallingly hard truth about herself in this episode bears no connection with his character strengths in the past. Nor does his response to her perfectly understandable suspicions later in the episode. Nor does the supposed arrogance on which Will Riker corrects him — in this case even Picard’s behaviour in this series, never mind the adventures Will shared with him, speaks against the judgement.
It would be difficult to write Will and Deanna as so perceptive and wise that they could give Picard real, resonant insights. Presumably that’s why Chabon and his co-writer here take the alternate path of dumbing him down — to the point where basic parenting-teens truisms can register as needed corrections to a man who used to stand in loco parentis to the entire crew of a galaxy class starship. This is such a long way from what I hoped for in this series.
@94, Yeah, if TNG had premiered nowadays, Season One would’ve killed it before it, heh, hit Warp Speed.
@96 David Larsen
Well said! Thanks for the insight into Chabon’s style – I haven’t read any of his work myself, and I was curious if I’d find similar patterns.
@96. David: the puzzling thing is that Stewart himself participated in the creative rebirth of his character. The production made much of the fact that he was drawn back by what Chabon and the other writers proposed to him. So far, their enchantment hasn’t quite crossed over with what we’ve seen on screen.
I like the show… mostly. But it almost comes across as a journeyman effort. It isn’t finished yet, of course, and they may stick the landing, but I have doubts. As I said before, this level of decompressed storytelling works better if it was released all at once, Netflix style. Then we could binge or watch at our own pace. Waiting a week in between is exposing the cracks.
@95: Yeah, it’s dark not to illuminate some greater truth or establish any meaningful stakes, but because the writers assume that being cynical and being profound are the same thing. It’s no different than the angstcore indie films that crop up every year on the Sundance circuit, you know, the kind filled with utterly miserable, unlikable people who spend the entire runtime sitting around moping on the assumption that it’s somehow meaningful storytelling. At least with the likes of 40K or Battletech, dark as those settings are, you’re getting some interesting characters and engaging action at the heart of it. This… it’s just misery porn, and both Picard and Discovery wallow in it far too often for my tastes.
@96: Agreed, it’s out of character for Picard, and in their efforts to deconstruct the character, the writers have completely forgotten or even deliberately disregarded what made him a fan favourite in the first place. So no different from most deconstructive storytelling these days, really…
@99:
TNG was born in an era when characters had to be a lot more perfect. Part of it was due to Roddenberry insisting there should be no conflict between core cast members because in the future, everyone just magically gets along—which is a pretty serious impediment to storytelling, given that conflict is the engine that drives plots along. (Roddenberry also objected to “The Measure of a Man” because he didn’t think there would be any lawyers in the future!)
But if I’m Patrick Stewart, I want my character to be more flawed, and to get in more conflicts with other characters, because a flawed character with lots of conflicts provides a lot more material on which to hang a performance. Just look at how many of Shakespeare’s protagonists had fatal flaws, most notably Macbeth. Small wonder Stewart originally didn’t want to reprise Picard again! Who wants to be stuck as a too-perfect goodie-two-shoes again? It would be like going back to clear soup after dining on steak.
Giving Picard these “new” flaws may seem out of character to those of us used to Picard-the-perfect from the TNG days, but to Stewart they would have made the character into someone that he really wanted to play again. So I am not at all surprised that the character turned out this way with Stewart’s involvement in the writing room.
@100
I liked the singular idea at the beginning of Picard being depressed and “waiting to die” and then finding a cause. But then they piled all this other dark stuff on top of it, and it’s a little too much for me. Who knows, maybe the remaining episodes will pull back on the misery. Fingers crossed.
I do hope we’ll get some classic Picard speechifying in the end – darkness passed, lessons learned, the future can be made better, etc.
@101. Robotech: it’s clear that Stewart was drawn back by more “meaty” character work, as he saw it. But I don’t think he or the writers seem aware of how much of a disservice they are doing to Picard. The crux of it is in how he treats others. I never ever thought of Picard the character as “too perfect” or even just “perfect.” To me that’s framing it wrong. But he was notable for being thoughtful and considerate.
This version is not. Think of the scene where Raffi is burning a friendship to get what he wants, while swigging from a bottle and puffing on her drug pipe. What do Stewart/Picard do? They applaud. That is problematic both on a performance and character levels.
This isn’t just a flawed version. It’s a different version that we don’t know. That’s why it worked so well going to visit the Trois (Picard did call Riker “Mr. Troi” at their wedding). We got to see bits of him that seemed lost. The scene on the bench by the water with Riker putting his arm around him was wonderful. Yes, Picard went thru some stuff, but his subsequent self-involvement isn’t admirable. And the most evident victim of that, trailing in his wake, remains Raffi.
If all that is addressed, and there’s a dawning awareness on Picard’s part (in other words, that it was planned and the writers were aware all along), I’ll be happier. Not expecting that though. I think the action takes over at this point.
@101/RobotechMaster: “But if I’m Patrick Stewart, I want my character to be more flawed, and to get in more conflicts with other characters, because a flawed character with lots of conflicts provides a lot more material on which to hang a performance.”
Yes, exactly. As Chabon told Newsweek, Stewart asked to be challenged as an actor. It’s a greater challenge to play a flawed, damaged character facing the consequences of his mistakes than it is to play a noble hero who does everything right. He hasn’t just played Macbeth and Claudius and the like, he’s played Ebenezer Scrooge for decades and was Captain Ahab in a TV movie or miniseries once. He likes playing damaged, hubristic characters because they’re interesting to play.
@103/Sunspear: It is not a disservice to give a character flaws and have him make mistakes. It is a disservice not to. Stories aren’t about people doing everything right and being beloved by everyone. They’re about people in crisis, people dealing with problems, often of their own making. The way writers celebrate characters is not by putting them on a pedestal for an hour, it’s by putting them through hell and letting them show who they are by how they deal with it.
@CLB: well, uh, yeah. That’s a given, I think. That writers create drama, that is… Also, depends on the height of the pedestal. (See the “not perfect” part.)
What I’m talking about is that it isn’t acknowledged in the story in specific ways. He’s still treated as The Hero, Picard the Great. The Trois see that something is off when they meet Soji. The rest… not sure it will be addressed at all. Which seems to make the writers unaware of what they’ve wrought.
It’s not so much Picard going thru hell as blundering around partly (sometimes wholly) oblivious. Again, if this is done with full awareness by the writers, their Don Quixote, then it’s one thing. But they also don’t seem to see the full implications of the character changes.
@105/Sunspear: “Which seems to make the writers unaware of what they’ve wrought.”
It’s very arrogant to assume that your own lack of knowledge of how the story will turn out equals the writers’ ignorance of their own writing.
@103
I wonder, when Picard applauded, were they trying to create a memorable character moment or a meme-orable character moment? Because there are a lot of Picard memes on the internet.
Any thinkpieces out there on this? How memes have, if at all, affected TV writing? I seem to recall this being pondered about with baby Yoda.
@6 / @76 Christopher, your comments are always insightful and fascinating, even if I disagree with you from time to time (I.e. Star Trek VI). I’m in total agreement with two points you raised:
First, giving Riker and Troi a firstborn son who died from a silicon-based virus that could have been fought if only we had some positronic brains around, but we don’t because of the synth ban the entire show has been telling us was a gravely wrong mistake, is WAY over the top. I’m surprised no one else has chimed in on this, because I see it as really the only major false note in an otherwise wonderful episode.
Second, the bad guys are confident enough that they can find the synth homeworld based only on “two red moons and lots of lightning” that they try to execute her. Based on the billions of stars in the Milky Way, and then tens of billions of planets that must orbit them, there have to be more than a few out there with two red moon and bad weather. This plot point seems more akin to TOS (or even TNG) when nobody had any idea about how many planets there were everywhere, and the universe was presented as a few hundred planets that most of the characters had been to at one point or another.
I very much love this show, but these issues, and especially the positronic brain would have saved Thad nonsense, really bother me.
@104 / CLB:
It is not a disservice to give a character flaws and have him make mistakes. It is a disservice not to. Stories aren’t about people doing everything right and being beloved by everyone. They’re about people in crisis, people dealing with problems, often of their own making. The way writers celebrate characters is not by putting them on a pedestal for an hour, it’s by putting them through hell and letting them show who they are by how they deal with it.
I think I said this in a past episode discussion, but I think that’s part of the audience backlash.
Our perceptions of Picard are shaped by the 176 episodes of TNG, the four movies, and his guest appearance in “Emissary”. But this isn’t the Picard we left behind in Nemesis. 20 years have elapsed in-story and he’s now in his twilight years. Of course he’s not going to be the exact same, unchanged character from 2002 (and even the Picard of Nemesis wasn’t the same character he’d been in “Encounter at Farpoint” in 1987).
But because so many people grew up with TNG and have lionized Picard, I think they’re having trouble accepting the beloved character is older, at a different place in his life.
(It’s, ironically, not unlike the same situation that the, heh, comeptition over at Disney faced with Luke Skywalker’s characterization in The Last Jedi).
Picard’s also not an invincible, invulnerable character, either. We’ve seen Picard doesn’t handle failure or loss well. We’ve seen it before with his emotional meltdowns in “Family” and First Contact (or even his silent fury at Ro Laren’s betrayal in “Preemptive Strike”). Is it really so hard to belive that the scope and scale of the Romulan Evaucation failure broke him? (And kudos to Una McCormack for further developing that in her prelude).
Is it also frustrating to see a different Picard? Yes…but it’s also exicting because we’re getting to see a new take on the character and Stewart flex dramatic muscles that weren’t possible on TNG or in the Berman-era. I’d be bored out of my mind if it was Picard and Number One back on the Enterprise bridge.
@CLB: I qualified every statement I made. It’s how it looks now, which is all we can know. No self-righteous chiding needed.
If you want a bald statement of it, it looks like this: the writers created drama by making a character’s flaws based on how he treats a woman. (I almost thought about adding unconscious white entitlement to this, but I won’t.) This is not honorable. Whether the writers intended it or not, it’s insensitive and it makes me respect Picard less. No amount of generalities about writing process seems able to correct for it.
Seems. At this time.
@108
The galaxy is huge, but there is only so far that they can go. For example, I seriously doubt that the planet they are looking for is in either the Gamma Quadrant or the Delta Quadrant. They are probably searching within perhaps a 500-1000 light-year radius. Still a lot of stars, but it does narrow things a bit.
For those complaining about certain elements of Picard, I would recommend meditating on this bit of wisdom:
“The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: ‘So what’s the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?’ And then do it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold,
@112
If only the ‘worst’ was limited to a single central character. A story that focused would be welcome, in my opinion. Maybe novel isn’t the example to shoot for. What if Star Trek Picard was more akin to something in the medium of film and television, like the biopic? Which would, ideally, not include cutting away to Borg and Romulan intrigue/spy plots and instead keep the focus on Picard and his issues.
Transceiver @@@@@ 85:
The primary purpose of the tracker was to allow the tracking of Picard (in the second episode, Commander Oh informs Lt. Rizzo [Narissa], “And if the need arises, I will take care of Picard.”). Narek had no absolute knowledge of how perceptive or competent whoever might be operating La Sirena was, so it was a reasonable gamble to try using the tracker to follow them.
as far as they know, Soji isn’t even the Synth that sparks the apocalypse (why else aim for finding the rest?)
Except that in the fourth episode, Narissa ask her brother (while choking him), “Who is she?” and he responds with “the Destroyer”, to which she replies, “Don’t you forget that.” So, yes, both Narek and Narissa believe she is that synth.
And it’s been established that the Zhat Vash fear and loathe all synthetic life; their trigger-happy eagerness to destroy any and all artificial life forms is why they killed Dahj on Earth without properly interrogating her first (which is why Commodore Oh chews out Narissa). So once they’ve got the information they think they need from Soji, they’re not about to let her escape (and, who knows, maybe get to the synthetic homeworld first and warn them that murderous Romulans are coming for them). They want to kill all the synths, including Soji and whatever synths might be on her homeworld.
They’ve infiltrated the highest level of the Federation, with that level of access, they could find any ship anywhere in the quadrant. That tracker was a placeholder mcguffin.
Well, sure, if you assume magical powers not in evidence, then obviously everything is unnecessary. The Federation is not some perfect, all-knowing police state — it’s not supposed to be. I don’t think it’s ever been the case in any Star Trek episode or movie that “the Federation … could find any ship anywhere in the quadrant.”
Nor is the Zhat Vash the omniscient, omnicompetent organization you seem to think it is; the fact that they screwed up on Earth — as Commodore Oh caustically points out — is clear evidence of that. Nor have they “infiltrated the highest level of the Federation”: they have an ally (not an agent) in Commodore Oh, but as far as we’ve seen, that’s as high as it goes. (Oh is clearly hiding the Zhat Vash’s existence and operations from Admiral Clancy, for example.)
I’m sad to hear that they killed Hugh. “I, Borg” is one of the sweetest, most heartwarming TNG episodes, and he was a character I quite cared about. I was actually curious about this show when I heard that he would be in it. To see Seven interact with him and his little group of ex-Borg on a regular basis would have been interesting, too. Oh well, too late.
@108, I couldn’t agree more. Thad’s death is over the top and doesn’t make a lot of sense biologically.
@112, over on the Vorkosigan reread we were honored to have Bujold herself comment and she says that ‘do the worst thing’ is an inaccurate version of what she said.
A broken and unhappy Picard is not a bad thing but making everybody around him also broken and miserable the federation itself, is a bit of overkill.
”Thad’s death is over the top.”
There is a difference between “I feel bad he died, I wish he hadn’t” and “OMG this show is so dark since he died.”
Off the top of my head:
Picard’s family died in a fire. Troi’s sister died. Worf’s parents were killed. And Alexander’s mom died. Sisko’s wife died. (Jake’s Mom). Burnam’s father died. Kira’s upbringing under the occupation. Kevin-Kirk’s father died. Kirk’s son died. Bones had to euthanize his father. Crusher lost her husband. Wesley lost his dad.
Jesus, Star Trek is depressing.
112, 116
Did you know that back while she was simply Lois McMaster, she was actually involved in Trek fandom? I used to have a complete run of Spockanalia (of everything I have ever lost, at least in material terms, those old fanzines hurt bad) and she had a story in one issue.
@104 CLB / 112 wlewisiii
There’s a fundamental difference between “putting a character through hell” by subjecting them to narrative events, and changing the personality traits of an established character before putting them through a single page of your narrative.
Let’s look at Picard’s accomplishments in the series thus far, by pretending for a moment, that he wasn’t even in the series:
The Zhat Vash were able to locate both Synths independently, in San Francisco and on the Cube. They could do it again if needed. If a rusty drug addled ex Federation hacker could find Maddox, a current officer in Commodore Oh’s command could do the same and have him eliminated. Hell, Bjazl had already almost killed him and was prepared to give him to the Zhat Vash before Picard showed up. Maddox was just a foil to make Jurati darker and push her to suicide. Really the only thing Picard has accomplished, is Bjayzl’s murder by yet another character who he led to darkness. Hugh could’ve got Soji off the Cube himself, were it written sightly differently, or she could’ve stolen a shuttle.
In fact, Picard’s proximity to everyone is shown to drive them into crisis, an effect which he has shown no concern or remorse over. Instead he is dead set on inserting himself into the greater equation, no matter the consequence, because, as the show has established, he believes he is a a great hero, and that only he can save the Galaxy. He’ll offer hollow applause as you push yourself to your mental limits in service of his nebulous goal.
The writers chose the “galaxy in crisis” stakes, and that led them to reshape Picard into a version who is stripped of all the gained humility, compassion, tact and perspective of his established character. A character who championed morality no matter the odds, who defeated threats to the universe so great in scope that they spanned millenia and challenged the human mind’s understanding of reality, and did so when the only tool he often had was his own mind – that same character simply rolled over and gave up when faced with the comparably insignificant adversity of being called on his ultimatum and granted retirement? And that setback turned him into a simpleton who has abandoned all of his convictions, and who misses almost every social cue? Is that such a great service to the character? Before you attribute those changes to his illness mcguffin, remember that he rolled over 14 years earlier, when he was at the height of his career.
Look, the show is called Picard, which suggests it will revolve around the character. Instead, it revolves around a contrived scifi plot to such a great degree that Picard’s traits were reshaped to serve the narrative, and hardly anything would change if he wasn’t even there. In fact, all we’d miss out on would be a series of fan service reunions between him and his old crew, which is presumably a good portion of why CBS greenlit the show. He’s a passenger of nostalgia. Those nostalgic diversions from the thin main plot are exactly what’s stretching this story out over 10 episodes, and giving it such a languishing cadence. I call all of that a great disappointment.
@118/Jamie Bisson: Couldn’t you buy them anew? People sell them on Ebay these days.
@119/Transceiver: People change. Sometimes they’re broken by trauma. We saw Picard on the verge of giving up in “Family.” It was only thanks to his brother that he was set straight and able to recover himself. This time, when he was broken by his failure to save the Romulans, he didn’t have his family anymore — either his biological family (most of whom died) or his Enterprise family (which he walked away from for the sake of the evacuation mission). So he wasn’t able to recover this time and he retreated into depression. As someone who’s been wrestling with depression myself, I find that entirely believable, and entirely in character for the Picard we saw in “Family.”
It’s always been Picard’s tendency to isolate himself, since the start of TNG. Even though he grew close to the rest of the Enterprise crew, he was still slow to open up to them fully; it took seven years before he joined Riker’s poker game for the first time. He eventually did grow closer to them, but then he lost Riker, Troi, and Data — the three people he was closest to in the galaxy at that point — at virtually the same time. It’s no surprise he drew back into his habitual isolation, and that was only exacerbated after his failure with the Romulans.
So no, I’m not invoking illness. Where did you get that idea? I just don’t agree that he’s out of character. This is an entirely plausible version of Jean-Luc Picard, one that makes perfect sense given what we know of his past, including the parts we already knew before this show.
@121/Christopher: “The captain is a very private man.”
@121 CLB
If we had been shown your summary, yes, that would be rad! That makes sense for the character. However, we were shown that, after his separation from the Enterprise, Picard had thrown himself into his work and was championing a moral cause (same as ever) in overseeing the Romulan relocation. He had a support group, including his first officer Raffi, who he allowed to call him JL. He was shown to be becoming more open, more comfortable, not more closed. When he resigned, he simply dropped the cause. He didn’t try to lobby for continued support of the Romulan relocation, or even try to assist as a civilian, and there’s simply no precedent for that behavior. Picard is tenacious. Yet, as the show has repeatedly shown us, his ego is what is clouding his judgement. It was the blow to his ego 14 years ago that made him walk away, and that’s not Picard. Go back and watch that scene between Picard and Raffi and tell me the subtext wasn’t all about his ego.
@123/Transceiver: All I can say is, read The Last Best Hope. Yes, he had a support group on the mission, but that wasn’t the same as a family. On the contrary — he threw himself so completely into his work that he had no room for anything else, which was why it was so devastating to him when the mission failed due to circumstances he had no power to change.
“When he resigned, he simply dropped the cause.”
Who says he had a choice? After Picard’s fleet let the Romulans down, after they felt he’d betrayed them, do you really think they would still have allowed him to participate in any way? Their consent was grudging enough to begin with. All he would’ve done was undermine whatever remaining efforts the Federation could make, such as Spock’s effort with red matter.
“It was the blow to his ego 14 years ago that made him walk away, and that’s not Picard.”
It was Picard in “Family.” This is the nature of trauma — it makes us not ourselves, at least not the ideal selves we want to be. It’s nonsensical to expect a person to behave exactly the same unchanging way in every conceivable situation, even after enduring great trauma or crushing failure.
The mind is like any other part of the body — it can be injured and impaired and need help and time to heal. Failure to act as a result of trauma-induced depression is not a moral failing you get to judge someone for any more than failure to run a race because of a broken leg. Looking at an injured person and saying “It’s wrong for you to be less physically active than normal” is not only ignorant, it’s cruel.
@124 CLB
I watched Family recently – great episode! The core aspects of Picard explored in that episode are his jack of all trades curiosity, his optimism, and his compassion. He’s considering other work he’s interested in, and he’s devastated by the damage he wrought as part of the Borg collective. Were he an egotist, neither of those reactions to trauma would have been possible. He would’ve never have broken down, and he would never have admitted his guilt or doubts to himself. What this new show implies, on the other hand, is that after his illustrious career, becoming an admiral made Picard an oblivious egotist, whose loss of face made him into a recluse. That’s in the material, your head cannon reconciliation of his presentation in the material is not. I don’t begrudge you that – I absolutely prefer your take, and I wish it is what had been presented.
@125/Transceiver: Don’t be insulting. Just because I see different things in the material than you do doesn’t mean I’m making it up while you’re the one seeing it clearly. Saying that makes you the egotist.
@126 CLB
Ah, if you say so on a Trek thread, it must be true. In that case, I’ll go take stock of my life and nurse my colossal ego. It’ll probably take me all week! See you space cowboy.
@124 / CLB:
On the contrary — he threw himself so completely into his work that he had no room for anything else, which was why it was so devastating to him when the mission failed due to circumstances he had no power to change.
Actually, I think that’s another aspect of the backstory people are overlooking, even with only the on-screen Canon and exposition.
This wasn’t the evacuation of a standard TNG-esque Planet of the Week we’re talking about. This was the freaking Romulan Star Empire, i.e. one of the great powers of the Beta Quadrant and the UFP’s oldest enemy.
Coordinating a multi-world evacuation on this scale while dealing with a culture we know is built on paranoia, pride, and insularity is a task that would’ve made even a younger flag officer buckle under the pressure, strain, and stress. And as you and McCormack pointed out, Picard at this point was already in his Seventies and very much alone (though, I wish McCormack and/or the show would address what happened to Marie after Robert’s death).
Combine that with Picard’s already-documented character flaws (like his inexperience with failure and workaholic tendencies) and it’s no wonder that fateful meeting with the CinC and his resignation bluff backfiring broke him.
Inexperience with failure, ha. All he ever did was fail upward only to come out on top thanks to his pluck and the talents of those he inspired and cultivated. He’s a master of failure. He performs best when on the ropes. Just not here. Not now.
It always amazes me that people who hate a property spend so much time in those threads complaining about the property. It happened a lot during the LMB reread too.
Shrug.
Best Trek to me since TNG ended. Others are welcome to feel differently.
I don’t hate the show. I’m disappointed in it, sure, and increasingly so as we near the conclusion, but moreover, I’m drawn to the opportunity to discuss it with intelligent, and deeply knowledgeable people, such as those who frequent Tor. I wouldn’t claim to be as knowledgeable about Trek as CLB, for example. I respect that he’s thinking as deeply about it as I am, albeit from a different perspective. I’m really just trying to get to the root of my issues with the show, and discussion helps me get there. I can tend to be devil’s advocate, and that certainly rubs people the wrong way.
I don’t want to beat a dead horse, so please ignore me if this doesn’t spur any thought in you – if this presentation is such a service to Picard, and if it follows as a logical continuation of his character, why is it so hard to identify any core trait of his that is recognizably similar to what we knew? Why is it far easier to identify things that are fundamentally out of character for him, in relation to one of his established core traits, than it is to see, well anything that makes you say “that’s Picard!” I can count those instances on one hand.
1. He spoke his mind during the TV interview.
2. He showed compassion and remorse for abandoning Elnor as a child, but half points for that as doing so convinced Elnor to serve Picard’s purpose.
3. He advised 7 against killing Bjayzl.
@74– I had the same thought. There seems to be no reason for the bad guys to care about tracking Soji down any longer- I mean, she gave Narek the information and he was ready to off her anyway. Why do they care where she is, at least for now?
Agree that the Kestra character is an absolute delight. She is what Trek is all about, and this show needs more of that spirit.
I was bored with the Soji character until this episode, and I realized that the problem was Narek. She was always with him, usually canoodling in bed. Yawn. Narek, the emo Romulan.. Seems fitting that he spent this entire episode sitting at the helm of a ship, doing next to nothing except twiddling that stupid little thing with his fingers. As far as I’m concerned he can continue to do that for the rest of the season.
I think the review and the comments have said all that needs to needs to be said about the reunion with Troi and Riker. Made my heart feel good to see that.
But possibly the best thing about this episode was Picard and his little speech about finding a purpose to bring him out of the doldrums. Obviously it’s been a rocky start and I’ve been frankly disgusted with some of the things he’s done and his flippant attitude toward those who are loyal to him. But he seems to have turned a corner, at least in terms of his ‘tude. In the last few episodes he has looked very old, doddering, and un-selfaware. There’s a hint of a gleam in his eye now, his voice doesn’t quaver, and his head is steady. Like a boss. :)
@131/Transceiver: “if it follows as a logical continuation of his character, why is it so hard to identify any core trait of his that is recognizably similar to what we knew?”
As I’ve already said, I see plenty that’s recognizable. But the whole point is that he has been changed by what he’s been through. That’s what trauma and depression do to us. They can change us, amplify our weaknesses and fears and suppress our virtues and strengths. This is Picard at his lowest ebb. This is what he might have become if he’d resigned from Starfleet in “Family,” if he hadn’t found his way back to himself then. He is different than he was at his best in TNG, but he’s different in a way that’s logical given what we know of him, and presumably the point of the narrative is to show him rediscovering the man he was. The place where a character starts a story is not usually the place where they’re supposed to end up. This is supposed to be a 3-year story and we’re only halfway through the first act. Picard is only just beginning his journey back.
@132/fullyfunctional: “There seems to be no reason for the bad guys to care about tracking Soji down any longer- I mean, she gave Narek the information and he was ready to off her anyway. Why do they care where she is, at least for now?”
Because she’s an android and the Zhat Vash’s entire mission is to destroy all AIs before they bring about the apocalypse.
This general assumption of inexperience with failure is puzzling. Didn’t he get stabbed thru the heart by a Nausicaan? Didn’t he get Borgified? The deaths among family and friends? He’s had many setbacks already, many life challenges. (And yes, becoming Locutus, leading to the destruction and loss of life at Wolf 359, counts as a professional failure, lest anyone say he only experienced personal traumas.)
Failing to aid an evacuation being the thing that breaks him only makes sense if he assumes the troubles of the galaxy, or at least the quadrant, are his to bear. What’s that sound like? Also consistently overlooked is that Picard’s mission is on the fringes of the evacuation. “Millions’ are mentioned. Surely the Star Empire consisted of many billions and they weren’t his alone to save. Why not blame the Tal Shiar for not doing enough? The in-show resentment by the refugee Romulans looks overblown in this regard.
Disillusionment with Starfleet is one thing as a running theme. That’ll be a thruline with the next couple seasons of the show. But that this is what broke him…
STO btw, does a much better job laying out the aftermath of the Hobus event. What happens? The former Empire splinters into factions, with one still dominated by the Tal Shiar and the Empress and another returning to a Republic state on a new colony world. It may not be possible to include such exposition in Picard’s current story, but what’s there is nebulous at best. At least it’s consistent with the stingy Romulan worldbuilding onscreen in prior decades.
@117
Now take all those deaths you collected from the history of Star Trek and place them within ten consecutive episodes. There you have something like the tone of Star Trek Picard, I think.
@130
I believe these comment boards are intended to provide discussions of the episodes, and naturally discussions involve criticisms, praise, and other analyses.
@wlewisiii: critiquing and discussing a show’s less stellar aspects is a far cry from hating it. It’s not an either/or, love it or hate it proposition. Nowhere near that simple. At least Picard elicits a complex response. If it engages you, you want it to be good.
Wouldn’t it be boring if all we did was praise and talk about how great the shows are?
@133 CLB- True, but you think there’d be at least some mention of an effort to be the first to get to Soji’s new homeworld while Narek is trying to chase her down. Or maybe there was and I was in the kitchen making a sandwich during that part? – not being funny, that actually could have happened :) I suppose what I perceive as a weakness in the plot would be solved if when Picard and Soji get to her homeworld, the Zhat Vash are there waiting for them.
@134/Sunspear: “This general assumption of inexperience with failure is puzzling. Didn’t he get stabbed thru the heart by a Nausicaan? Didn’t he get Borgified? The deaths among family and friends?”
Aside from the first (which was very, very long ago), those were losses, not failures. They were cases where he was hurt by others’ actions or outside events, not cases where he tried and failed to help others. Usually, when Picard has taken action to save others, even on a vast scale, he’s succeeded. This time, he had to experience not only his own suffering or setbacks, but the suffering or death of millions of others because he failed to save them. To paraphrase Kirk at the end of TWOK, he hasn’t faced failure like this before.
“Also consistently overlooked is that Picard’s mission is on the fringes of the evacuation. “Millions’ are mentioned. Surely the Star Empire consisted of many billions and they weren’t his alone to save.”
“I refuse to let arithmetic decide questions like that!” — Jean-Luc Picard, “Justice”
The deaths of the hundreds of millions of people Picard failed to save are not less important just because you can pull a larger number out of a hat. The value of a sentient life is not so situational. No, he wasn’t responsible for the whole empire, but he was responsible for the 900 million people his fleet was tasked with saving, and he failed to save them all.
Regarding why Narek was chasing Soji when there was a homeworld to find — I assumed in the episode that that was where Narissa was buggering off to after she killed Hugh. She’s got a whole mess of Zhat Vash with her, and I figured they were off to Soji’s homeworld while Narek was going after Soji herself.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This may sound like a silly question (I’m full of them), but just what is the Romulan Star Empire? I mean, what is it beyond Romulus and Remus? Have they ever said how many star systems it occupies?
@140/JFWheeler: Well, we know from the “Balance of Terror” map that it also includes the Romii system. For others, see:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Romulan_space
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Romulan_planets
@141
Thanks, much appreciated.
@CLB: ” he was responsible for the 900 million people his fleet was tasked with saving”
Is that from the tie-in novel (which as you often say aren’t canon)? Even that number being mentioned in the show would have helped. But you’re skipping over the messianic aspect I was alluding to. Why him more than anyone else? Is he really the last best hope? The only hope?
@143/Sunspear: The difference between canon and tie-ins only matters in cases where canon tells something differently than the tie-ins did. Here, that doesn’t apply. The Last Best Hope is the one and only version of this backstory we currently have, possibly the only one we’re ever likely to get. And it was written in close consultation with Picard producer and co-creator Kirsten Beyer, so there’s no reason to doubt it accurately reflects the backstory developed for the show.
“But you’re skipping over the messianic aspect I was alluding to. Why him more than anyone else?”
It’s not messianic. You’re missing the point. It’s not about all Romulans. He was assigned by Starfleet to save a specific set of 900 million Romulans (and subject species). That was his explicit mission as a Starfleet captain: save those people. That is not an imagined or delusional sense of responsibility — he was literally, formally, actually responsible for saving those specific people. And when the synth attack wrecked the relocation fleet and Starfleet refused to rebuild it, that made Picard unable to complete the evacuation of those 900 million he’d been assigned to save. So it’s not about the rest of the Romulans. It’s about the fact that he was unable to complete the specific mission he was, in fact, responsible for.
@CLB: ok, I can accept that as far as it goes (it’s canon except when it’s not). The aftermath… still doesn’t track. You seem to have personal reasons to accept the redefining of his traits and personality, seeing a continuity. At the same time, we are referring to him as broken.
For me, still, he’s too much changed. That he’s able to take advantage of other vulnerable people, apparently thoughtlessly, is more than a flaw. It makes him fundamentally different. This is again, why I wish they would release the entire season at once (never going to happen), because this method of delivery makes these issues more glaring.
@145/Sunspear: “You seem to have personal reasons to accept the redefining of his traits and personality, seeing a continuity.”
Not at all. Rather, I don’t agree that his personality has been redefined, because my personal experience as a fellow introvert lets me understand who he’s always been and why this is in character for him. It’s his circumstances that have been redefined, and of course the way someone’s personality manifests can change if their circumstances change radically enough.
@104 – “It’s a greater challenge to play a flawed, damaged character facing the consequences of his mistakes “
What consequences would those be, exactly? Sure, he’s travelled to a planet that he ignored for fourteen years but that was to ask them to do him a favour, not out of any sort of guilt about their circumstances.
And then, mere minutes before leaving, he decided he has to make a point by removing the “Romulans Only” sign, dropping it in the dirt and stepping on it in front of said Romulans. Of course, that leads to one of the Romulans being decapitated. For which he doesn’t express any remorse other than telling Elvor that he did something without permission.
And that’s just one example.
Or how about letting Soji know that she’s an android, not by talking to her but by casually dropping the news right in front of her while talking to Kestra. Hello, I’m right here! This is a woman who literally minutes before was “activated” and he’s ignoring her to pass along information about her to another person.
Or the great plan to go see former shipmates and their child when he knows that the Tal Shiar is after him. Sure, he doesn’t know about the tracker but he knows enough about the Tal Shiar to know that they’ll likely figure out where he went or at least a likely location that he would go to. He even mentions that he has to leave because he’s got the Tal Shiar after them. So what happens when they show up after he’s left? Torture the Riker-Trois perhaps? Great plan there Jean Luc.
There’s no evidence that Picard is learning anything along the way.
@131 – “3. He advised 7 against killing Bjayzl. “
But he then gave Seven a couple of big ass phasers and he knew that she was beaming back down to the planet. What did he think she was going to do with them, go on a tribble hunt? And they weren’t even his to give away, they belonged to Rios. So now weapons that Rios was responsible for have been used to commit multiple murders. Imagine it in today’s terms:
You give weapons that belong to someone else to someone who you have good reason to believe that will use them to commit murder. How would the police react to that? “Oh but I didn’t do it, I just gave them the means to do so”. Isn’t that what Mark Jameson did in Too Short a Season?
@144 “And it was written in close consultation with Picard producer and co-creator Kirsten Beyer, so there’s no reason to doubt it accurately reflects the backstory developed for the show. “
Jeri Taylor would like to talk to you about Mosaic. And after you talk to her, Gene Roddenberry would like to bring up his ST:TMP novelization.
Making a tie-in novel required reading for a TV show shows a lack of information being provided by the show.
Personally I always saw Picard as essentially a loner not a social animal. The idea that he needs friends to maintain his moral center doesn’t fit my conception of the character. Of course like anybody else he occasionally needs help and support, especially after a major trauma like being borgified and attacking a Federation system and killing millions.
Frankly I’m just tired of ultra high stakes and angst heavy storytelling
Personally I always saw Picard as essentially a loner not a social animal. The idea that he needs friends to maintain his moral center doesn’t fit my conception of the character. Of course like anybody else he occasionally needs help and support, especially after a major trauma like being borgified and attacking a Federation system and killing millions.
Frankly I’m just tired of ultra high stakes and angst heavy storytelling
@150/Roxana: Yes, that’s how I see him too.
And I’ve always imagined that the events of “Sarek” and “The Inner Light” – acquiring the memories of two additional lives, in essence – broadened his perspective and made him even more resilient and self-sufficient.
And if he “lost his way” despite all this, Guinan would visit him and bully him into accepting her help.
Jana, oh good! It’s not just me! It’s always struck me as significant that Picard didn’t automatically take charge in that episode where everybody lost their memories, Worf did. Picard is not a natural leader. Losing command wouldn’t phase him overmuch. He go it alone without hesitation if he had to.
@152/roxana: “Losing command wouldn’t phase him overmuch.”
It was never about losing command. It was about failing to save enough of the hundreds of millions of lives he’d devoted himself totally to saving. It was never just about his own situation, it was about all those other people.
The Picard I imagine would have reeled sure, then he’d have headed back to do what he could alone. After the first shock he may even have found his new independence from organizational ties liberating. It might have made a good story if after fourteen years of working with the Romulan refugees and rescued Borg Picard had looked around to discover he was now effectively an opponent of Federation policy and pitted against valued old friends as well as being targeted by Starfleet command as a serious threat.
@154/roxana: “then he’d have headed back to do what he could alone.”
As I said, there was probably nothing he could do. The Romulans were reluctant enough to let Starfleet help in the first place. Now they would feel that Starfleet, and Picard in particular, had betrayed them, broken a promise to them. They probably wouldn’t have let Picard get anywhere near their space after that, and any attempt to get involved privately would’ve just undermined whatever good the Federation could still do.
Besides, the problem with talking about what you’d expect a character to do normally is that it misses the point that none of this is normal. This is not an everyday problem for Picard. This is something he threw himself into relentlessly for four years and then had yanked out from under him, and it was too much. It devastated him. This is something that happens to people. They don’t always recover from a fall. Sometimes it breaks them. And yes, after such a thing, they act in a way that seems “out of character,” and that is the whole point. Character is a thing that can change, especially after extreme ordeals. (If anything, I always found it utterly implausible how little Picard was changed by the events of “The Inner Light.” He should’ve been a completely different person when he woke up.)
Patrick Stewart would never have agreed to do this series in the first place if it had just been more of the same way Picard had acted in the past. He wanted to play a different side of Picard, find a new challenge in the role. So yes, of course Picard had to change. He had to go through something so monumental that the old rules and expectations about “who Picard is” no longer applied. The series wouldn’t exist if that weren’t the case.
@155/Christopher: My experience is that life-changing events change people far less often than films and TV want to make us believe. I find it completely plausible that Picard would be the same person after “The Inner Light”, perhaps not immediately, but after a while back in his old life. Habit is a strong force, and Picard is an exceptional character, or he would never have resisted the Nexus.
I loved this episode, loved seeing Riker and Troi, and Deanna and Will supporting Picard, but without coddling him. The episode also broke my heart twice, first when Narissa killed Hugh (I still have hopes that he might survive in some way), and then when they revealed that Thad Troi-Riker had died. His fascination with homeworlds was touching and sad.
Kestra is the best, that kid did a great job with the role, we want more of her. Does Kestra have some Betazoid powers herself? I do question why they have to kill a bunnycorn if they could replicate it… I understand wanting to live a simple life; but it’s a bit cruel to kill animals when you don’t have to do it at all.
Back to Deanna, she absolutely acted like a mental health professional when she made Picard back off from Soji. It was nice to see how they helped Soji trust them, and Picard, but the passage of time was not well reflected. It seemed like they were there for days, but it wasn’t well translated on screen.
Speaking of Soji; is what Narek did to her rape? It’s at least something similar, gaining her trust under false pretenses, then having intercourse with her several times. As for Jurati, the mind meld she received from Oh means she’s probably not being herself; as mind melds might leave compulsions implanted by the melder, as well as bits of their personalities.
Are the Qowat Milat and Zhat Vash ancestral enemies? Are they related? They seemed to have rituals involving the two; as Narissa said to Elnor “Is this how a QM fights ZV?” or something of the sort, and Elnor set his sword aside to fight her hand-to-hand.
Oh, at last someone mentions Lal! Still, I didn’t much like that Riker had to remind Picard that he’s dealing with a teenager, when Jean-Luc has been a father and a grandfather, even if it’s just memories. It’s real to him.
@@.-@ – lerris: Oh yes, the Kzinti! I squealed so hard, my son thought I was having a stroke! :)
@6 – Chris: Yes, that was a 3D printer! :)
@16 – Chris: No, Soji hasn’t done the head tilt before, but seeing Riker, Troi, and Picard together might have triggered something in that moment. Like a Data Vu.
@91 – Philip: I’d love to see Starfleet back on the right track, but I doubt Riker would get to be CIC, since he’s been away from all the politics for too long.
@117 – M: Well said.
@121 – Chris: Well put.
@130 – wlewisiii: I just wish people who don’t watch the show would refrain from commenting in its reviews.
@134 – Sunspear: A Romulan Free State was mentioned in one of the earlier episodes. Nothing says there aren’t other factions.
@155 – Chris: I assume that the Kataanian technology that allowed Picard to experiment Kamin’s life was made in such a way that allowed compartimentalization, so as to not ruin the life of the person it interfaced with. They wanted to be remembered, not destroy a person. Although, now that I think about it, I was just reminded that Kataan was destroyed by its star going nova. I feel this gives Picard an additional personal stake, and the show should acknowledge it.
@154 / CLB:
Besides, the problem with talking about what you’d expect a character to do normally is that it misses the point that none of this is normal. This is not an everyday problem for Picard. This is something he threw himself into relentlessly for four years and then had yanked out from under him, and it was too much. It devastated him.
Right. And there’s another aspect of that from the prologue of “The End is the Beginning” that I don’t think enough people are focusing on: Picard’s quiet shell-shock at this resignation trump card backfiring.
Picard had been in Starfleet for over 60 years at the time of the Synth Attack on Mars. He’d given his entire life to the organization and to the Federation.
And then from his POV, not only does Command and the UFP betray that mission he’d invested himself into, but they call his bluff to resign without hesitation or guilt. It’s the equivalent of a life-long corporate man or public servant being unceremoniously given the boot after decades of faithful service.
Again, combine that with the failure of the Evacuation and it’s no wonder Picard broke.
Quoth Jana: “My experience is that life-changing events change people far less often than films and TV want to make us believe.”
My experience is the exact opposite. TV and movies generally suck at showing.the consequences of what should be life changing events.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@156/Jana: “My experience is that life-changing events change people far less often than films and TV want to make us believe.”
In general, perhaps, but stories are not about general cases, they’re about the cases that are exceptional enough to be interesting. The premise behind Picard is “What if the great man finally broke?” What if, finally, after all the tragedies and traumas he did manage to claw his way back from, he finally faced one that was the last straw? How would he find his way back from that? That’s a story about Picard that we haven’t seen before, except for the brief flirtation with it in “Family,” and that is exactly what makes it worth telling.
“I find it completely plausible that Picard would be the same person after “The Inner Light”, perhaps not immediately, but after a while back in his old life. Habit is a strong force, and Picard is an exceptional character, or he would never have resisted the Nexus.”
Except that he lived as Kamin for 42 subjective years! That’s about equal to his entire time in Starfleet up to then, practically his entire adult life. From his perspective, he was returning to a place and people he hadn’t seen in four decades. “Habit” is not enough to account for how simply he snapped back into normal behavior. He should barely have remembered how to be a Starfleet captain. Hell, he should’ve needed an extended leave of absence and months of therapy and refamiliarization training before he was cleared to resume his duties. And he should not have been the same person at all. He should’ve been more Kamin than Jean-Luc by that point. That’s not something that needed to be “resisted,” that’s living. It’s growing and changing in response to 42 years of life experience. That’s not something that can or should just be shrugged off in a week.
I had the same problem with O’Brien in DS9: “Hard Time.” At least he needed a whole episode to readjust after a subjective 20 years in virtual prison, but after that he was just the same old character and it was never mentioned again. It should’ve changed him permanently. Lord knows I think today’s TV has taken serialization too far, but TV back then often took episodic storytelling too far and put characters through life-changing experiences that were completely forgotten from then on.
@157/MaGnUs: “Speaking of Soji; is what Narek did to her rape? It’s at least something similar, gaining her trust under false pretenses, then having intercourse with her several times.”
It’s manipulation, certainly, but I wouldn’t say it was rape. If he’d impersonated a lover of hers in order to trick her into sleeping with him — as Sisko did with Mirror Dax in “Through the Looking Glass,” shamefully — that would be rape by fraud, because the false identity would mean she was unable to give genuine consent. In this case, while Narek concealed his motives, he did not conceal his identity. She knew he was a Romulan named Narek, she knew he was probably Tal Shiar or something like it, and she was still willing to sleep with him. She fully consented to that part of it.
“I assume that the Kataanian technology that allowed Picard to experiment Kamin’s life was made in such a way that allowed compartimentalization…”
Yes, of course it can be rationalized; I offered my own rationalization in my novel Greater Than the Sum. My point is that it was a missed opportunity, that it would’ve been more interesting if the writers had let it have a permanent impact on the character beyond just having him take up flute playing.
@160/Christopher: Personally, I would have found a story about a great octogenarian who is still doing useful work totally worth telling. Especially after all those Star Trek episodes about the horrors of old age.
As for the 42 years, I’m honestly not sure how much Picard would realistically have forgotten. I have the impression that it isn’t all that hard to go back to things you’ve done repeatedly and intensely one or two decades ago. I can’t say if two more decades would make a big difference. And he went back to an unchanged environment, which never happens in real life. So, hard to tell.
@161/Jana: I don’t see what Picard’s age has to do with it. That’s never been the issue. If the Romulan tragedy hadn’t happened, if Starfleet hadn’t cast him aside so casually, I’m sure he’d still be as active and useful as ever. But that’s not the way his life went.
As for “The Inner Light,” it’s not about whether Picard would’ve remembered things. It’s just implausible that he hadn’t grown in any way, that he was still exactly the same character afterward as though he hadn’t experienced 42 years of living in the interim. The reset-button approach did an injustice to “The Inner Light” by trivializing the profound experience Picard went through. I mean, this was a man who’d always been afraid of intimacy and uneasy with children, and he now had decades’ worth of memories of being a husband and a father and a grandfather. His outlook should’ve been massively different.
What I find odd is Picard not pursuing archaeology after Starfleet dismissed him. He did nearly follow that path as a young man and it still held his interest later in life, as we saw in TNG. And with the future rejecting him, so to speak, it would make sense for him to get lost in the past. Of course, he did that with the vineyard, too, but growing grapes was never really his passion.
I don’t know, maybe this was covered in the tie-in novel. I’ve yet to read it.
@163/JFWheeler: Well, in my novel The Buried Age, Picard did pursue archaeology as a career in much of the 9-year gap after losing the Stargazer. So if you chose to accept my novel in the continuity, you could say he already tried that.
I think maybe the reason he retreated to the vineyard was to punish himself. In his depression, he didn’t feel he was worthy of his usual pursuits.
@164
Perhaps. That’s some hardcore, Vader’s Castle style punishment though, retreating to the place where his brother and nephew died in a fire. Whew.
@164:
I think maybe the reason he retreated to the vineyard was to punish himself. In his depression, he didn’t feel he was worthy of his usual pursuits.
Huh.
I can’t considered that interpretation, but now that you bring it up…yeah, that definitely feels plausible.
@CLB: are you ramping yourself up to write a Picard book? Seems like a lot of processing going on.
I can follow along with some of what you lay out as a progression for the character, but it’s not entirely or well fleshed out on screen. Someone earlier said a TV audience shouldn’t have to read a tie-in novel to understand the lacunae in the show’s story. I remember the distinction I learned in Film & Communication courses between plot and story. They sometimes get confused with each other. The plot is the entirety of events that happen. Could be from a character’s birth to death. The story is how that is presented. It would be ridiculous in a filmed format, for example, to show a character driving across town for two hours. It’s part of the imaginary plot, but it would ruin the story.
I may be misusing the terms all these years later, point being that much of what you’re saying isn’t on screen. It’s in the novel, which I haven’t read, not sure I’m going to read. If it contains essential information that doesn’t show up on screen, it goes a long way toward explaining why some viewers have problems with the show.
Again, for those who need it stated, I like the show, I want to love it, and critiquing is not hating.
But, big But, nothing you’ve said, or we’ve seen on screen, justifies Picard’s clueless behavior when he takes advantage and uses people who are also damaged and vulnerable. No matter the rationalizations of how much he’s suffered in the interim (and I do sympathize with him; I’ve had one forced resignation in my career that hurt a lot; after 16 years of service to a company, new board members just discarded me; did not give two shits about my contributions), I personally cannot get past his mistreatment of Raffi. Address that in a rationalized context and maybe I’ll feel better about it.
@154 princessroxana –
I absolutely love that idea! It wouldn’t have been difficult to write this story that way.
Thank you!
Picard was totally opposed to helping Sarjenka’s people. He was prepared to let an entire planet die. and ordered his people not to do anything to help, at least at first.
Same with the people on the planet with Nikolai Rozhenko. Picard raised a major stink about Nikolai saving even one village.
I have trouble imagining Picard turning into a hermit for 14 years because he couldn’t save some people.
Now, being told no by Starfleet and having his bluff called. That I can see. But 14 years seems like a gross overreaction to that.
Jeez Louise. 160-odd comments already?! I’m going to post my comment before I attempt to read them all!
I was so happy to see Picard, Riker, and Troi reunited. I was also terrified something horrible would happen to them, given this show. Thirty years of Trek nerddom for this moment, but I was terrified every moment of it…
…And that fear was totally justified. Watching Hugh die was a kick in the face, especially after that previous wonderful reunion with Picard. I said in a Voyager thread briefly that I’m less and less inclined to revisit characters we know and love. This episode reinforces why, as either they’ll be damaged, or fully the characters we knew and love and then die. For this reason, I hope we never see any other DS9 or VGR alums, because, just like with Riker and Troi, and the amazing Kestra, every moment they’re onscreen, I’ll fear for they’re safety.
…So Commodore Oh forced a mind-meld on Jurati, showed her a bunch of apocalyptic scenes, and from that alone Jurati decided, “Yep, I’m totally gonna be a murderer now.” No! Does not justify her actions. No, she wasn’t implanted with a suggestion to kill Maddox, or she wouldn’t have been standing over Maddox crying while he very slowly and painfully died.
But every moment on Nepenthe was great, even if, of course, Riker and Troi had to suffer a horrible tragedy because show. I particularly loved how Riker and Troi call Picard “Jean-Luc”, and don’t default to “Captain.” (Riker does call Picard “Captain” once, and the moment was perfect.) I’m so glad Riker and Troi were they’re to remind Picard not to be just an arrogant ass bent on saving the universe, but also to consider the people you’re trying to save. But, since it’s this show with this team of writers, I hope we never see the Troi-Riker family, or the lovely Nepenthe, ever again.
@167/Sunspear: “are you ramping yourself up to write a Picard book?”
No; I’d certainly be interested, but they haven’t asked me for one. I’m approaching this mainly as a viewer, albeit one who has written a couple of novels about Picard in the past — including a novel (The Buried Age) about how he dealt with an earlier great failure, the loss of the Stargazer.
“much of what you’re saying isn’t on screen. It’s in the novel”
You’re mistaken. The main body of the novel goes up to just before the flashback in “The End is the Beginning,” the point where Starfleet accepts Picard’s resignation. What I’m talking about is what happened in Picard’s head after that point, which the novel only covers briefly in its epilogue. If anything, I felt the epilogue was too cursory in dealing with the psychological aftermath for Picard, but presumably that’s because it deferred to the show to cover that. Most of what I’m saying is extrapolated from what was presented onscreen in the first few episodes, and just from what I know about who Picard is from watching him for 30-odd years and writing about him from time to time.
“nothing you’ve said, or we’ve seen on screen, justifies Picard’s clueless behavior”
I never said it did. I’m not saying his current behavior is right. I’m saying that the changes in his behavior are not arbitrary or “out of character” but are plausible developments given the bad things that have happened to him in the interim. We all have a mix of positive and negative impulses within us, and though we try to emphasize the positive, sometimes things go badly for us and the balance can shift toward the negative. So a person can end up behaving in a way that seems outwardly “out of character” but is really just a shift in their inner balance. I’m not trying to “rationalize” that or excuse it, merely to dispute the perception that how he’s written now is inconsistent with how he was written before.
@CLB: Don’t entirely believe you about not drawing from the novel in your extrapolations. You quoted a 900 million refugee figure, which isn’t mentioned on the show. And the extrapolations do read as rationalizations, which usually means leaving out details, arranging things so they make sense in the context you give them.
You’ve volunteered your struggle with depression, then said it influences your viewing “not at all.” It does seem like a lens, probably a legitimate one. But does suffering from it justify a person like Picard becoming an imperceptive ass? It may make them anti-social, hence Picard’s withdrawal for many years. But despite all the denial, it is a change in personality. Not a total change (as we see during his visit to Nepenthe, the old personality is recoverable), but still a change I don’t find wholly plausible or consistent with what we knew of his character before.
@173/Sunspear: “You quoted a 900 million refugee figure, which isn’t mentioned on the show.”
Yes, it is, by the reporter interviewing Picard in the very first episode.
“You left the Enterprise to command the rescue armada. Ten thousand warp-capable ferries. A mission to relocate nine hundred million Romulan citizens to worlds outside the blast of the supernova, a logistical feat more ambitious than the pyramids.“
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Remembrance_(episode)#Memorable_quotes
Don’t assume that something wasn’t there just because you can’t remember it. Memory Alpha is there for a reason.
“You’ve volunteered your struggle with depression, then said it influences your viewing “not at all.””
You’re twisting it. When I said “Not at all,” I wasn’t saying it didn’t influence me — I was rejecting your premise that Picard’s character had been “redefined.” You were accusing me of having “personal reasons” for projecting something onto the show that wasn’t there, which is deeply insulting and also simply wrong. It is there — my personal experience just helps me to recognize it and understand the Picard writers’ approach to the character.
“But despite all the denial, it is a change in personality.”
I have never denied that it is a change in personality. Of course it’s a change. I explicitly said as much in the last paragraph of my previous post, and in several earlier posts. My point is that it is a plausible change rather than an arbitrary one.
@CLB: you’re right. I didn’t remember that. But hearing it again still puzzles me. “…a logistical feat more ambitious than the pyramids”? No wonder Picard got a big head. It leaves a lot out of what the actual Romulan effort to evacuate was. I’m with the CiC somewhat when she’s amazed by Picard’s gall in asking for help. Again, we see a man not quite in tune with reality.
@162/Christopher: Sorry if my comment about Picard’s age wasn’t clear. In comment #160, you said: “That’s a story about Picard that we haven’t seen before […], and that is exactly what makes it worth telling”. And my immediate thought was that stories about broken characters are common and easy to tell, and we have seen them many times before. But stories about admirable old people are rare, and thus worth telling.
Picard’s unease with children has been portrayed inconsistently. The way he talked to René when he first met him in “Family” was perfect. If that scene had come after “The Inner Light”, I would have seen it as evidence that his attitude to children had changed thanks to him having been a father.
Perhaps he’s only uncomfortable with children on starships.
I’m sure that being a husband and a father and a grandfather broadened his perspective. But as Roxana said, he isn’t a social animal, and he had already found his perfect life. Being subjected to a different life, one he never would have chosen himself, would enrich him; but it wouldn’t necessarily change him in any overt way.
@138 CLB, Oh God, is “Justice” still canon, with Wesley and the flower beds and orgies and all that?
Thanks, I’ll show myself out!
@177/Stephenc202: Yes, sex and flowers and a condemnation of the death penalty. Bad costume choices, though.
@177/Stephen: Why do fans these days have to pollute every conversation by bringing “canon” into it even when it has no possible relevance? I don’t care from canon, it’s just a cool line. The rest of the episode isn’t so great, but that line of Picard’s was fantastic, and it always stuck with me.
@160 – Chris: Not rape, but I still think it’s abuse.
@180/MaGnUs: It’s a pretty common spy-story trope, sleeping with someone to get close to them and extract some information. In fiction, it’s as often done to men by female spies as the reverse. And there are civilian examples too, e.g. a golddigger (of either sex) sleeping with a rich person and pretending to love them in order to get access to their money. Manipulating people with sex is as old as humanity. It’s certainly exploitative, dishonest, and unfair, but I think maybe it trivializes the idea of sexual assault or abuse if we apply it too broadly to something like this. It’s more of a betrayal of trust.
It’s a trope, but that doesn’t make it less evil. And I hope the writers don’t have Narek and Soji get together again, because that would be disgusting.
@180/181
Definitely at least a shade of abuse there, given that some, at this point unquantified, part of him believes the feelings of a synthetic are invalid.
@179 CLB, Good question! I’m not seriously asking; just holding a mirror up to society.
As to “Justice,” though, even I recognized the flowerbed death penalty plot was a little far-fetched, and I was only 8 when it first aired. At least Worf started to show some personality in that episode though.
STO update: reached level 55 (of 65) with my Romulan captain, now an admiral. She’s named M’aturine Au’brey in honor of Patrick O’Obrian series set during the Napoleonic Wars, featuring Stephen Maturin (doctor/naturalist) and Jack Aubrey (captain, later rear admiral) on the Surprise. I usually make male characters in online games. In STO’s case, most of them are alien, as the game defines them. You can create your own species and roleplay them as aligned with a particular faction. So my Fed, Klingon, and Rom captains all look more or less like blue-skinned Kree, with pointy ears, bald with slight ridges down the midline of their skulls, and maybe a a tattoo.
The Romulan specific storyline ended with discovering the truth about the Elachi (the mute aliens from Enterprise), which was that they were mass kidnapping other species of all stripes to experiment on them Mengele style. This was done at the behest of the Tal Shiar, their allies, who were testing brainwashing and mind-control techniques. I was captured by the Tal Shiar at one point and underwent some conditioning during which I did some terrible things, like kill one of my crew (although as a player it was clear it was an illusion) and use a thalaron weapon on some cute critters, before escaping.
The Elachi take whatever is left over from the experiments as growth stock for future Elachi, which is similar to what the Kobali do, except the Kobali only take the dead and resurrect them, not incubating live sentient beings. It’s not clear if the captives serve as fodder (at one point they are referred to as livestock or feedstock), or if they transform into new beings. In either case, their old selves cease to exist. The Elachi are effective villains, very creepy, even in the way they walk and stalk you, appearing from stealthed mode. I have an Elachi as a bridge officers on my Fed ship, not knowing their history. Now I look at him (her?) sideways and am considering reassigning them.
In other news, made a Jem’Hadar character, which was auto-leveled to 60, since there isn’t much content to be played from heir point of view. It’s actually nice to have a fully outfitted ship and crew available with high level gear and the appropriately thematic polaron weapons without grinding too much to get good stuff. Have already played thru the post DS9 story of the Hur’q threat to the Dominion from the viewpoint of my Fed character. Will be interesting to see how my Jem’hadar reacts to the Founder on DS9, Odo. (hearing Rene Auberjonois’ sometimes gravelly voice in game is such a treat.)
At this point in playing the game, I have a lot of affection for the free Romulans trying to establish their new Republic and to move away from the old ways of secrecy and duplicity. Maybe the show will arrive at a similar place, with Roms as allies rather than antagonists. Picard’s past diplomatic efforts (aiding Spock in his reunification work) makes him an ideal figure pointing toward such an outcome. However, a future alliance in the filmed content seems predicated on a common threat, not on a choice consciously made as a culture. Don’t think I’d be happy if the secrecy brewing inside Starfleet means they are already working with secret agencies/elements on the Rom side.
@krad I liked Kestra a lot, but I’m shocked that anyone could replace Kira as your favoite (or one of your two favorites)!
I am WAY behind here. Okay, I just don’t excel at binge watching a show…
But I’m still kind of floored by everyone who is all “OMG this is too grimdark to be Star Trek”. I’m seeing some broken-but-still-good people moving Sto’vo’kor and Gre’thor to do some good in this galaxy, that’s all.
And I actually had to stop the episode at the line “Is this a safe place, Kestra?” God I love “Dark Page”; I’m not even sure what deep wells of sadness it digs up in me, or maybe it’s just the sight of Lwaxana and Deanna just broken at the end of the episode that did it, but that episode stuck with me since it first aired. (Not TOO long after losing my grandmother, that could’ve been a factor.) So sorry, CLB, I think I like Kestra better as their kid’s name… just a scosh, Tasha still would’ve worked. And of course Lulu Wilson knocked it right out of the park, and I am not saying that because she seems exactly as bright as my 16-year-old niece either.
Alright, comment over, I’ll try to finish up and drop the rest of my thoughts on the recap of the last episode.
One aspect of this episode I adored is the way it used Deanna Troi. I can’t think of an episode or movie that got her role this right. Not her empathic or telepathic aspect, but her original role, being that of the Counselor. TNG episodes revolving around her job were never really effective. Guinan usually took that role and performed it better.
But Nepenthe absolutely nails Troi the therapist. The way she befriends, studies, analyses and diagnoses Soji without relying on her mental abilities is worth the episode. Also, her admonishing Picard in front of everyone over his attitude towards Soji is also a highlight. And Frakes is as natural as he’s always been portraying Will Riker. Charismatic to his core.
And the casting department nailed the role of Kestra. It’s hard enough to find good young actors, but Wilson makes it her own, covering an insane range of emotions and having instant chemistry with everyone especially Briones.
I wasn’t as enamored of the shipboard aspects of this episode – everything felt too disjointed (though i do appreciate that Jurati has enough humanity and self-loathing in her to realize what she’s done), and the Borg Cube scenes with Elnor left something to be desired. But then again, the heart of the episode was in Nepenthe itself.
@krad, four years later, with all the Trek content (across multiple series) that followed this episode: is Kestra still your favorite Trek character of all time?