• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Episode 7 "Nepenthe"

Rate 1x07 Nepenthe

  • 10 - Wild Beard Riker

    Votes: 110 36.9%
  • 9

    Votes: 95 31.9%
  • 8

    Votes: 53 17.8%
  • 7

    Votes: 22 7.4%
  • 6

    Votes: 7 2.3%
  • 5 - Full Beard Riker

    Votes: 2 0.7%
  • 4

    Votes: 4 1.3%
  • 3

    Votes: 1 0.3%
  • 2

    Votes: 1 0.3%
  • 1 - Season 1 Riker

    Votes: 3 1.0%

  • Total voters
    298
Nepenthe
The seventh episode. Picard and Soji arrive on Nepenthe and meet Riker, Troi and their daughter, Kestra. La Sirena escapes from the Artefact, where Hugh and Elnor find themselves in over their heads. On La Sirena Jurati struggles with what she knows... Flashback, three weeks earlier. Commodore Oh mind melded with Jurati, showing her something similar to Spocks vision of CONTROL's apocalypse. (Of course, whatever the Zhat Vash are afraid of would be something different.)
However, the whole scene was very well presented, leading into the chase of La Sirena later in the episode. The struggles of the La Sirena crew in escaping from the Artefact were done very well. But the main focus of the episode was on Nepenthe. Picard and Soji arrive on the planet and are greeted by Kestra. (A rather good easter egg there, and a there is a thematic link when it's revealed that Kestra wasn't always an only child.) Picard's line about his heart being pure duratanium was a good call back to the fact he has an artificial heart.
Meeting Will and Deanna again was very nostalgic. The way their characters were developed for the episode was consistent with their characters in the series and movies. The following scenes were also well done. Of course, Soji would be questioning her existence, and be uncertain as to the reality of the situation. That it would be Kestra who would help her through it was obvious. Kestra having an older brother who died to a disease that couldn't be treated after the Synth ban was an interesting way to connect the situation to the overall themes of the series.
(And Thad wanting a homeworld of his own and coming up with constructed languages was also well conceived.) The interactions between Hugh and Elnor as they try to evade the Narissa and the other Romulans were very well done. But Hugh getting it, as it were, is definitely a missed oportunity. More could have been done with his character. But there is a very effective lead in to the next episode with the Fenris Ranger beacon. Back to La Sirena, they discover that Narek is following them...
Rios suspecting Raffi before Agnes doesn't seem that believable, but then she didn't say why she was down there. The way Agnes deals with the issue shows her desperation in the situation she has found herself in and it was very well depicted, showing that she didn't have much choice. 9/10.
 
The Kzin are canon, but I don’t know how canon. There are incompatibilities with TAS and other Trek. Not to mention copy write issues. Chabon got Niven to agree to a small mention free of charge, but after that? The Kzinti were to return on ENT too, but I imagine somewhat differently.
 
I enjoy Raffi and ... the captain dude. Sure wish I could remember his name though.

Cristobal "Chris" Rios.

But, about their deceased son: something trivial to cure, as long as you have a positronic brain? Surely, the Federation doesn't occupy the known galaxy (they never made it to Kyrian space even after 700 years). If the Riker-Trois, er, Troi-Rikers, (er, 300-year-old, difficult name conventions still exist?!) really wanted to cure their son, I'm sure there's some space not controlled by the Federation that deals in positronic brains, especially for something so trivial (and useful) as curing a disease.

I believe the implication is that literally nobody outside the Federation (who is actually accessible to Federation citizens) has developed positronic technology. Soong was an outlier genius whose work the Daystrom Institute had not been able to replicate, and nobody outside the Federation was even at the Daystrom level yet. (Except, of course, for Alton Soong and Bruce Maddux in isolation on Coppelius.)

So they have a full computer with shields, scanners, etc., on this random planet? How far away from everything is is Nepenthe?

I got the impression it was supposed to be a remote colony world. But even if it weren't, it's a sensible thing for a high-ranking Starfleet reserve officer who lives in an isolated, rural area to keep a private security system active in the event he's targeted for an attack before the regional or planetary security forces are alerted or can arrive.

If it's in Federation space, wouldn't the Romulan/Federation security team have officers nearby to call, who can do whatever dirty work they're ordered? Why send our lover boy, unless we can't afford any extra cast?

If by "why send our lover body," you mean, why would Narissa send Narek -- Narissa doesn't know where Picard and Soji went. Her goal is to trace Soji's movements in order to discover the location of the Synth colony (later revealed to be Coppelius), so it's more rational to have Narek track La Sirena than to send a Tal Shiar taskforce to Nepenthe (particularly if they don't have a base of operations nearby).

I have no idea why you would imagine Narissa could order Federation police to do anything to Soji or Picard.

"Bunnicorn" also makes Picard feel like a self-parody, if not Trek in general look like a laughingstock....

Few things are as frustrating as the absolute refusal of some members of the Star Trek fandom to accept that sometimes, people can be whimsical and it's not a bad thing to depict that.

The Kzin are canon, but I don’t know how canon. There are incompatibilities with TAS and other Trek. Not to mention copy write issues. Chabon got Niven to agree to a small mention free of charge, but after that? The Kzinti were to return on ENT too, but I imagine somewhat differently.

Yeah, I don't think it's likely we're ever actually gonna see the Kzin in canon, or even in the tie-in novels or comics, precisely because it's unlikely CBS will want to cut a check to Niven. And if they ever do show up, it's not implausible that they might be depicted as different from the Kzin of Niven's canon.
 
TOS once had a small dog dressed in fake fur, a unicorn horn and two alien antennae and that episode is a classic. It's brilliant. Trek has always had animals that either look funny or have whimsical, silly names or both.
 
Sorry for this late post... I hard a hard time finding it (can't memorize the name, and it wasn't listed in the title at 1x07 and didn't think of JUST using 7), and just saw the whole season.

I liked it … I especially liked how Troi was portrayed... using actual counselor skills... but also sounding like somone NOT under on'e authority anymore (like a student who has matured and can speak to a teacher as an equal rather than Ms. or Mr.). I especially liked and relate to the "I don't feel as brave anymore" (or to that effect)… I certainly feel that way about myself... where I feel like I did a lot more when I was single without kids than I do now. ANd I suspect MANY people feel that type of way.

I think this was a more natural and "logical" way of fitting it "old" characters in a way that made sense.
 
I don't think anyone pointed this out, sorry if it's a repeat. Isn't it all kinds of crappy that Jonathan Frakes is called out in the opening credits, Jeri Ryan is called out in the opening credits, but Marina Sirtis is a special guest star dropped in the closing credits? Why not do Frakes and Sirtis together in the opening?

I found this puzzling and kind of gross.
 
Finally got back to my Picard Season 1 DVD set (I've already been warned about the "eye-screams" I haven't already stumbled onto; I was mainly just too damn busy with Christmas, Lent, Easter, and my new car to get back to it).

Not "Holy Shit WOW," but still a damn good episode.

I hope the Rikers don't end up buying a less literal kind of "farm" than they apparently already have.

. . . "The Admonition" or at least the part about artifical life ultimately sterilizing the galaxy of organic life, doesn't ultimately turn out to be about one AI in particular (one that goes by the name "CONTROL," even though its behavior seems more like "KAOS", if you want to "Get Smart" about it), rather than AIs in general, and the Zhat Vash have been unwittingly doing their damnedest to bring about the very galactic disaster they think they're trying to avert.

Is it just me, or did Marina's voice sound a tad choked? In terms of appearance and voice, Jonathan Frakes seems to have aged much better than anybody else in the cast.
 
Last edited:
By the way, about the poll: I like Season 1 Riker most of the times way more than full beard Riker in many of the later TNG episodes (Season 5 - 7);)

Less arrogant, stern and moody. And way more sympathic imho
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top