S01.E07: Nepenthe

[Llywela]

8 hours ago, paigow said:

If that kill team had been competent, Picard would have been dead before her arrival... then what would she do?

For all we know, the whole thing was a set-up to insert Agnes into the mission - her timely arrival in time to shoot down an attacker on his behalf gave her Picard's trust, while the attack also generated an acute sense of urgency, so that he would rush to get away without taking time to stop and wonder why Agnes was suddenly so keen to join him. We already know the Zhat Vash are completely willing to sacrifice Romulan lives in pursuit of their ultimate aim.

[DrScottie]

On 3/12/2020 at 12:16 AM, Prower said:

There won't be. The writers just pulled something completely unrealistic out of their asses to make the synth ban more tragic and to make the people who made it happen seem more unreasonable and evil.

I was looking at it from the perspective of Chekov's gun. Not the one on the Enterprise, but the one who said that things are that introduced earlier should come into play later,  You may very well be right, though. We'll just have to wait and see. 

[TAG42481]

This was a great nostalgia episode, but in terms of plot, especially considering it was nearly 60 minutes, it felt pretty light.

1. Hugh dies

2. Agnes feels guilty and (purposely) breaks the tracker, putting herself in a coma.  Oh yeah, one thing about that - the Commodore gave Agnes the tracker, NOT Narek.  So how can HE track them?  I missed Narek putting a tracker on anyone.

3. Soji thinks she might be able to trust Picard.

Otherwise this was generally a character development episode.  Those aren't bad, but I felt like the plot moved the least out of any episode so far.

[Llywela]

5 hours ago, TAG42481 said:

2. Agnes feels guilty and (purposely) breaks the tracker, putting herself in a coma.  Oh yeah, one thing about that - the Commodore gave Agnes the tracker, NOT Narek.  So how can HE track them?  I missed Narek putting a tracker on anyone.

Narek and his sister are working for Commodore Oh - we saw that way back at the start of the mission when Narissa was undercover on Earth as a Starfleet officer and went straight from Oh's office to the Borg cube to oversee Narek's efforts more directly.

[Stardancer Supreme]

I believe Narek is tracking Soji. I don't think he expected her to die in the slow red death cloud. He appears to be in love with her.

[mledawn]

"Something terrible happened to me, and my parents helped me" - so is Kestra referring to the death of her brother?

I was so happy when Riker and Troi showed up! I had a huge grin on my face. I loved hearing the theme at the end also.

[Llywela]

6 hours ago, mledawn said:

"Something terrible happened to me, and my parents helped me" - so is Kestra referring to the death of her brother?

Yes, it is pretty clear from the context that she is talking about her brother's death - it would have been the defining tragedy of her young life, and we see through the episode that she is clinging to his memory, dressing up as characters he created and speaking languages he invented, etc.

[mledawn]

8 hours ago, Llywela said:

Yes, it is pretty clear from the context that she is talking about her brother's death - it would have been the defining tragedy of her young life, and we see through the episode that she is clinging to his memory, dressing up as characters he created and speaking languages he invented, etc.

Thanks, I wasn't sure since the "happened TO me" part seemed important but I was clearly focussing on the wrong part!

[Netfoot]

I've had this episode saved for a month now, along with the ones that follow. Even in the midst of a quarantine/lock down, I just can't bring myself to watch any more of this, so I am deleting the episodes unwatched and "unfollowing" this topic.

[blueray]

 

15 hours ago, Netfoot said:

I've had this episode saved for a month now, along with the ones that follow. Even in the midst of a quarantine/lock down, I just can't bring myself to watch any more of this, so I am deleting the episodes unwatched and "unfollowing" this topic.

I see. I can't say I blame you but this episode was one of the better ones and it does get a better from here, still major pacing issues. it has Riker and Troi in it which added a nice call back to TNG. 

[Affogato]

On 3/5/2020 at 10:38 PM, ottoDbusdriver said:

Is it wrong that I'm hoping that the number of the planet is a Roman numeral, perhaps IX, for the ultimate Dune/Star Trek crossover ?


Though I am curious why Troi and Riker didn't take Thad for a visit to the Ba'ku from Star Trek: Insurrection, a planet also with regenerative powers.

So many callbacks in this episode -- Picard's artificial heart, Data's head tilt, reference to the Ready Room on the Enterprise, Deanna's daughter named after her older sister (Kestra), the planet Betazed, Thaddeus Riker (a callback to a distant relative of Wil Riker from the Voyager episode 'Death Wish')

The problems with the Kzinti, who became part of the Star Trek universe inthe animated series.  The Kzin and Klingon in the same universe has always delighted me, from a safe distance. So the mention delighted me, too. 
 

the artificial languages was a gift to fans, too. 

[TVSpectator]

So, I didn't see a thread that was for all of Season 1 but I will just state that I tried completing this entire season and I couldn't.  I only made it up to Episode 7 and I was pretty much done with this show. It's just so bad and also I hate what they did to Star Trek. 

[Llywela]

3 hours ago, TVSpectator said:

So, I didn't see a thread that was for all of Season 1 but I will just state that I tried completing this entire season and I couldn't.  I only made it up to Episode 7 and I was pretty much done with this show. It's just so bad and also I hate what they did to Star Trek. 

Each to their own, but I disagree that this show has done anything to Star Trek, other than continue its legacy in a new story for a new era. Everything we see in this show has precedence in previous branches of the franchise. It simply takes an entire season to explore those issues rather than wrapping them up in a neat bow at the end of a single episode - and there is nothing wrong with that, it is simply a different approach than that taken by, for instance, TNG.

What exactly did you think was so bad? I have re-watched the show a couple of times and enjoy it more every time, it really does benefit from both hindsight and binge-watching. It isn't perfect, but nothing is - but as Picard himself might say, we shouldn't allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Funny that you say you dropped out at episode 7, which most people - even those who dislike the show - agree is the strongest episode in the season. Maybe the returning characters haven't ended up where fans perhaps wanted to imagine them ending up, but that doesn't invalidate the choices made for them here - life often doesn't take us where we might have preferred to go, and each of the character stories told in this show is a valid future to explore for these characters.

[TVSpectator]

17 hours ago, Llywela said:

Each to their own, but I disagree that this show has done anything to Star Trek, other than continue its legacy in a new story for a new era. Everything we see in this show has precedence in previous branches of the franchise. It simply takes an entire season to explore those issues rather than wrapping them up in a neat bow at the end of a single episode - and there is nothing wrong with that, it is simply a different approach than that taken by, for instance, TNG.

Yes, your mileage may vary and I am glad you enjoyed the show. But I found what I saw to be low quality TV, riddled with plot holes, the new characters are either unlikable and/or just poorly developed, and inconsistencies within the Star Trek lore. It's not really the serial nature of the show but that Picard is reduced into a frail old man, Data and Picard were never really BFFs (that was always Georgie. They literally forgot that Geordi WAS Data's best friend. Picard was more standoffish towards Data (probably because he took his job as captain seriously)) but I know that in the TNG movies they were building the whole Picard & Data relationship but they at least showed that Geordi and Data were still BFFs, the whole plot line with Zhat Vash to be terrible and aimless, Starfleet/The Federation were reduced to nothing but ad xenophobic/racist organization that was gleeful that (only one) Romulan homeworld was destroyed and was like, "nope we are not lifting a finger to help these people at all...Nope), Let's not even mentioned why the Romulan Star Empire didn't have ships of their own or have another planet lined up, Seven mercy killed Icheb- after Icheb was brutally tortured, Riker and Tory's oldest kid died because of some stupid law that prevented him from getting treatment, etc...

[Llywela]

On 6/25/2021 at 12:19 AM, TVSpectator said:

Yes, your mileage may vary and I am glad you enjoyed the show. But I found what I saw to be low quality TV, riddled with plot holes, the new characters are either unlikable and/or just poorly developed, and inconsistencies within the Star Trek lore. It's not really the serial nature of the show but that Picard is reduced into a frail old man, Data and Picard were never really BFFs (that was always Georgie. They literally forgot that Geordi WAS Data's best friend. Picard was more standoffish towards Data (probably because he took his job as captain seriously)) but I know that in the TNG movies they were building the whole Picard & Data relationship but they at least showed that Geordi and Data were still BFFs, the whole plot line with Zhat Vash to be terrible and aimless, Starfleet/The Federation were reduced to nothing but ad xenophobic/racist organization that was gleeful that (only one) Romulan homeworld was destroyed and was like, "nope we are not lifting a finger to help these people at all...Nope), Let's not even mentioned why the Romulan Star Empire didn't have ships of their own or have another planet lined up, Seven mercy killed Icheb- after Icheb was brutally tortured, Riker and Tory's oldest kid died because of some stupid law that prevented him from getting treatment, etc...

Hmm. Like I said, if you go back to TNG and its successors, you will find precedent for most of the issues you raise here, so I disagree that any of it is inconsistent with Star Trek lore.

Picard is a frail old man here because a) it is many years since we last saw him and he is now almost 100, b) he is dying of the Irumodic syndrome he was diagnosed with back in TNG days, and c) a number of years ago he suffered a severe blow to his sense of self that he hasn't recovered from. Nothing there is inconsistent with past Trek. TNG gave us a cameo from Bones as a frail old man, killed Kirk in one of the movies, and reintroduced Sarek as a frail, dementia-addled old man before later killing him off. Picard's life has moved forward in the years since TNG ended, and as a result he is no longer in the same mental and physical place we last saw him, which is as it should be, because life is not static. He doesn't end the show in the same place it finds him, either - quite the opposite, in fact, he ends the season fully reinvigorated and raring to move forward into new adventures.

Picard and Data weren't BFFs, no, but I re-watched TNG only recently and Picard was consistently portrayed as a mentor to Data, and a champion of his rights, a relationship that evolved and grew through all 7 seasons of the show and into the movies. Data then sacrificed his life for Picard's in the last movie. All this show tells us is that this sacrifice had a profound impact on Picard, and that he is still haunted by it because Data was a remarkable, unique being who could almost have been functionally immortal, if he hadn't made that choice. Survivor guilt. I honestly don't see why anyone would have a problem with this, because there is nothing about that set-up that doesn't ring true with the history of the characters and their relationship. It certainly isn't inconsistent with previous installments of the franchise. Continues their legacy, more like. Geordi isn't mentioned because this isn't his story, and because Picard deliberately chose not to take this current mission to his old crewmates - quite explicitly because he knew they would be totally loyal and would support him even unto death and he didn't want that on his conscience again, so opted instead for a crew without any personal ties.

I'm sorry, but your summary of Starfleet/the Federation bears no resemblance to what I saw on my screen during my Picard viewings. I saw no glee over the destruction of the Romulan homeworld and we certainly weren't told that they hadn't lifted a finger to help - quite the opposite, in fact. We were explicitly told that the Federation had devoted enormous resources toward helping evacuate the Romulan people before the end, over a period of years, and only ended that relief effort after suffering an immense disaster of their own, which crippled their shipbuilding capacity and caused a death toll of almost 100,000. We were also told that the politics around both the relief effort and the decision to suspend it were extremely complex, which is only to be expected given the fractious, mistrustful history between the Federation and the Romulans. Picard believed that ending the relief effort was a mistake, and that Starfleet/the Federation had become too cautious and inward-looking and had lost sight of their values, but again, there is nothing inconsistent with any of this - it tracks perfectly from where we last left them, after all the invasions and wars seen in TNG and DS9, the cumulative effect of which would have been very damaging. I can think of many, many examples through past shows where Starfleet or the Federation were seen to fall short of their own values, for whatever reason, and were shown the error of their ways by the Hero Crew, so that things were turned around again by the end of the episode. The only difference here is that the story is spread over a short season instead of all wrapped up in a bow within one episode, and that we spend most of the season outside of Federation space, viewing them from the outside instead of from the inside.

As far as racism/xenophobia goes, we've seen that in Star Trek before, many times. It is always challenged as part of the story (apart from when it is Bones insulting Spock for being Vulcan, of course), just as it is here, too.

We don't know that the Romulans weren't evacuating their people themselves - it stands to reason that they would be. It also makes sense that they would need outside help, that no matter how big their fleet, it wouldn't be big enough to evacuate not only the entire population of their homeworld but also any colonies etc. within the blast zone. It wouldn't just be a matter of transporting all those millions or billions of people off-world. They would also have to find suitable planets to re-home them, and supply sufficient resource to establish these new settlements with everything they would need to thrive. That is an absolutely immense undertaking. Requiring outside help seems entirely reasonable! And, like I said, that there would be enormous political issues around this help is entirely in keeping with Romulan-Federation history.

Icheb's death scene is pretty gory, I agree, but I can think of examples of equally unpleasant goriness in TNG - one really memorable one was when Picard and Riker realised Starfleet Command had been infiltrated by shapeshifters and literally blew their heads off, right there on-screen. Now that was gory! Here, apparently the scene was far less gory on paper and Jonathan Frakes (Riker), who directed the episode, is to blame for upping the body horror, so blame him! Icheb's death in itself is nothing out of the ordinary for the Star Trek franchise. He is hardly the first character to die in unpleasant or unexpected circumstances (Tasha Yar and Jadzia Dax spring to mind), and he was hardly a fan favourite anyway (plus given how gross his original actor has proved to be, I'm actually glad the door has been firmly closed on the character, leaving him no way back). His death was used to help us understand how Seven came to be where she is now, and it worked. It's been a while since I watched DS9, but isn't Kira's backstory that her father was tortured to death right in front of her during the Cardassian Occupation? Picard was tortured on-screen during a memorable episode of TNG. So, torture isn't exactly new to the franchise.

As for the death of Riker and Troi's son, what's not Star Trek about that? TNG is positively littered with family tragedies! Worf's family were slaughtered at Khitomer. His on-off partner was murdered right there on the Enterprise, in front of their young son. Then Worf married Dax, and she died on him too. Crusher lost her husband and Wesley his dad. Yar grew up alone on a lawless planet roamed by rape gangs. Riker's mother died when he was young and his father abandoned him when he was still a teenager. Geordi's mother went missing in action, presumed dead. Picard's brother and nephew burned to death in a fire. Troi found out she'd had an older sister who drowned as a young child. And I could continue into other branches of the franchise with similar stories (Sisko lost his wife at Wolf 359, Kirk lost his son in one of the movies...). My point is that Star Trek has always used family tragedy to shape its characters, and the tragic premature death of young Thaddeus Troi-Riker fits right into that pattern. He died of a rare space disease - that's also 100% Star Trek. That there was a possibility (only a possibility, mind) that a cure might possibly have been found if only positronic research were still allowed is a coincidence, sure, but Star Trek is full of those, too, and it serves to tie the story back into the main plot as a reminder that the Mars tragedy had far-reaching consequences that rippled way beyond the initial death toll. Which, to me, deepens the story and adds additional layers. And it then ties back in with the resolution of that story, when we eventually learn the truth of what happened on Mars that day, and how it all links together - but you never watched that far, you said.

I mean, we all like to imagine our favourite characters living happily ever after once the cameras stop rolling, but whenever any franchise gets a new installment, there is always a good chance we'll find out that in fact their lives instead continued to go through the same sort of peaks and troughs they'd previously experienced on-screen. Tragedy and sorrow are as much a natural part of life as happiness and joy. The Troi-Rikers have known both during the 20 years since TNG ended, and are shown to have currently reached a place of peace. That seems realistic enough to me.

As far as plot holes go...well, TNG never had those, did it? 😉 Picard's plot actually holds up pretty well, if you, you know, watch the show all the way through to the end, so that you fully understand that plot. Can't expect to make sense of a story if you stop watching part way through! Perhaps it asks viewers to be a bit generous with their suspension of disbelief, here and there - but what show doesn't do that, really speaking?

Look, I'm not saying the show is perfect. It isn't. The storytelling is uneven and most of the characters not fully developed. Michael Chabon is a very gifted science fiction writer, but an inexperienced showrunner, and it shows. His social media makes clear that he did a massive amount of worldbuilding for the show, but only a fraction of that worldbuilding made it onto the screen, and for a TV show that's a major flaw. He wrote most of the show at his father's deathbed, and I'm not sure that working through those issues in his writing was really a good idea. I also think that the emphasis on everything always having to be about Picard detracts from everything else in the show, which introduces a lot of really interesting characters, but then fails to fully utilise them effectively, which is a shame because Star Trek works best as a strong ensemble. But inconsistency with past Trek isn't, in fact, one of the show's flaws. It is tonally different, to be sure, but that isn't a bad thing. It is okay for different branches of the franchise to be wildly different. They don't all have to be identical to be enjoyable.

Personally, I hope that season two builds on the foundations laid instead of giving us more of the same. But I'll be there for it either way, because the show worked for me, flaws and all. I'm sorry it didn't work for you.

Edited June 27, 2021 by Llywela

[TVSpectator]

Well, if you liked that is fine but Star Trek:: PIcard is a failure as a show.  

[Llywela]

12 hours ago, TVSpectator said:

Well, if you liked that is fine but Star Trek:: PIcard is a failure as a show.  

Sure. Because nothing says failure quite like getting renewed for a second and third season...😉

 

[formerlyfreedom]

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[RedHawk]

On 3/7/2020 at 2:41 PM, Ottis said:

I thought Kester was way too precocious and eager to pal up with Soji.

Replying two years later while rewatching S1. Kestra's quick adoption of Soji seemed quite realistic to me. It made me recall three times when I was dating in my 20-30s and my boyfriends introduced me to their younger sisters or nieces (ages 10 to 13) and the young girls were friendly to me right off and wanted to spend a lot of time with me. I was flattered that they looked up to me in that way yet I think it's a natural thing. Plus, Kestra doesn't seem to have a lot of gal or guy pals around, and I guess her brother died not long ago, so she's probably lonely.

Edited March 12, 2022 by RedHawk
Clarity

[Tachi Rocinante]

On 3/6/2020 at 3:54 AM, HerkyJerky said:

I Googled her and the first person who comes up is a 21-yr-old Disney star and I thought who the heck was she on the show?  You would think that SAG would have a rule about actors having the EXACT same name. 

(P.S.  She's bad but not as bad as Sophie Skelton on Outlander...)

SAG has a very specific rule about same names.  That is why Michael Keaton (born Michael Douglas) had to change his name.

However, for some bizarre reason, SAG let two actresses named Peyton List both get their cards.  They admitted their mistake, but let both actresses keep their names. As far as I know, they are the only two.