Spoilers Santiago Cabrera as Captain Cristóbal "Chris" Rios

Is that in New Zealand, too?

 

Nah, she's just suffering from a Vulcan mind meld - pump her full of Lexorin and she'll be good as new...

 

Actually, that could be a cool scene: Rios impersonating the EMH, getting a confession of sorts from her, then Jurati trying to desperately shut him off and erase his program.

 

And the first hint she gets that something is amiss is the unlit stogie in the EMH's mouth, as he asks "just one more question.."

 

Quark might acquire the Rios holograms for female guests.... It could be a big success and Quark gets rich and finally buys his own moon.

 

Another Columbo fan, I see.

 

Rios is a soccer Brophy......... ehm Pro!

 

I'll take one off his hands and I ain't no female

 

Despite the tortured past, hardened loner, facade most read into him, they're definitely leaning into the care-giver, nurturer role, especially toward the women.

Although from the go he seems fiercely loyal to Picard, as if he's been waiting for a captain, to set him on the right again. And it looks like he's going to jump in to help save "the kid"
It's more with the women he's mostly reached out.

First when Seven, bent on revenge, is talked down by Picard, it's Rios who temporarily stays her hand by suggest nothing wrong with pursuing revenge, just not while others are in danger, ...then subtly wink flips the "locater" chip, showing Seven, she can still sneak back to satisfy her revenge (once everyone else is safe back on La Sirena).
When back on board, he casually leaves it for her, on the transporter dash, so Seven can (and does) pursue her revenge satisfaction.

Then again with Agnes, after having killed Madoxx and whatever "vision" Oh shared with her (although I could be wrong, my reading on it is Rios absolutely knows what she did) she shows up grappling with her tortured mind, again he's there to give her some relief, which she's looking for.

And then again with Raffi, these two obviously go way back, and at her lowest, he's there for her, and tenderly tucks her into bed, which is exactly what she needs.
(although not without walking off with her bottle of whisky LOL)
Seems we haven't seen the character type for the genre, love how they are playing this guy.

 

For my money, he has no idea (yet) what Agnes did - he has no reason to suspect her, none of them do, and has shown no sign of suspicion. They've been forming an interest in one another since Agnes came aboard, she was upset (about losing her former mentor, they all believe) and came to him for comfort in the form of a hook-up, and he's been on his own long enough to not take too much seducing. I agree, though, that beneath that existentialist surface, he is a caretaker at heart, we've seen ample evidence of that.

Did anyone else notice that among the questions Michael Chabon answered on instagram was one about whether the multiple holograms were planned before Cabrera was cast or whether he had input - Chabon answered that it was planned, but then getting to know his talent up close changed those plans. Interesting - I wonder what the original plan was.

 

^IIRC the leaked casting sheet originally called for a separate actor to play the EMH, although I don’t think it mentioned any other holograms at the time.

 

Rios - again sexy as hell. He should take off his clothes again.

He looks like Che Guevara.

 

And then Rios disappears! Alright, I'll stop joking about Rios being a hologram.

However, the scene might find her surrounded by holograms who take a defensive formation and tell everyone else to back off which might be interesting.

BTW, can the projectors make more than one hologram at a time? I'm not a big enough Trek details guy to remember if they've done that before.

 

Well, the holodecks on Starfleet vessels certainly could, and La Sirena's holo projectors are capable of reproducing Picard's entire study from the chateau, whih suggests they have plenty of capacity available. I suppose the more pertinent question is whether the various emergency holograms are separate programmes capable of running simultaneously or if they are different facets of the same programme - and back in episode three, it was implied that the ENH had been repairing the navigation system the whole time the EMH was treating Rios's shoulder wound, which implies separate programmes that can run simultaneously.

 

So how did people read Rios' approach to confronting Agnes?
He takes Agnes aside, and tells her that he suspects it's Raffi who is maybe betrayed them, and helping them be tracked.
But that reads to me that he doesn't really believe it's Raffi at all, he's just putting that out there to try and guilt Agnes into admitting it's her. .
And it somewhat works the guilt gets to her. (although not quite as intended as she is pushed to far the other direction)
Thoughts, did Rios know it was Agnes?

 

I'm 50/50 on it.

 

He should leave them off if you ask me.

 

I'm very much in two minds. He clearly knows that something dodgy is going on, the Romulan fighter is able to find them wherever they go, which means it has a means of tracking them, which means either the ship itself or someone on board has a tracking device. The ship has never made landfall, there are only three people on board currently, and he knows his own movements, so that leaves Agnes and Raffi - or a tracker placed on board by one of the people who is no longer on board, perhaps, which he either hasn't thought of or keeps getting interrupted before he can continue his train of thought. After all, he has multiple sources of stress right now.

Agnes is clearly distressed, but that distress can be explained as grief over the death of her mentor, she has never left the ship since coming aboard, and there is no reason (yet) to suspect she was compromised before ever leaving Earth. Raffi, on the other hand, is a beloved old friend - but Rios isn't saying he thinks she has deliberately betrayed them. He said he was worried someone might have planted a tracker on her without her knowledge, and I can see why he might think that, since Raffi is the only person to leave the ship at Freecloud, which was where everything started to go wrong, whose movements can't be accounted for. Everyone else was in a group. She probably returned to the ship drunk, which means she'd have been vulnerable planet-side.

So, I can see where he'd be worried and might come to Raffi as the more likely suspect. But then again, it was hard to get a read on what he was really thinking - so it is possible that he doesn't actually suspect either one more than the other, that his conversation with Agnes was equal parts confiding his concern and sounding her out, trying to get a read on her because he knows he doesn't have enough evidence to form an accurate conclusion.

 

LOL They actually did it! I almost died laughing.
When he showed up with that tool tinkering under that warp core/teleportation lights fixture, I was like here it comes!

Then Raffi talking to all of them at once trying to extract and put together his past, and the explanation for all the EHs was hysterical!

His connection to Soji(and Madox) was a huge surprise, did not see that coming for a second.
And the fall of his ex captain and betrayal by Starfleet was quite emotional,

Loved the scene of him and Picard focusing in on what makes Starfleet right.
Going ahead and exploring where fear would make anyone else turn back, they move ahead.

They nailed it.

(also never thought in my life I would here Arroz Con Leche sung on Star Trek, let alone as an emergency override password.

Love this show!

 

Disappointing that they made his story part of the Synth stuff. I was hoping it would be unrelated and explored in a later season.