CONTAINS SPOILERS
Last week, I concluded my review by asking who or what was on the planet of Nepenthe, the destination that Picard asked Hugh to send him and Soji to. This week, we got our answer, and it was a delight. We also left Elnor and Hugh on a Borg cube swarming with angry Romulans, and wondered what might happen to them. Their situation was far more dangerous and less likely to have a happy ending.
This week's episode starts (as many of the episodes have done) with a flashback scene that answers the question: "What did Commodore Oh say to Agnes during that apparently brief conversation?" I'm still not sure if Oh is Romulan or Vulcan. She certainly has Romulan ears (Vulcans' are more triangular and upright, while Romulans' are almost circular and drawn to a point), and she's working with the Romulans on the Artifact, but it surprises me that a Romulan could have risen through the ranks of Starfleet so quickly. Did anybody else think that when Oh said, "Let me show you," and took off her sunglasses, that we'd see that she was an android? No? Just me, then.
Oh performs a mind-meld with Agnes - we've never seen what this is like for the participants, and we've never seen a Romulan perform one either. It's also highly debatable if the images that Oh forced on Agnes were actually true and accurate, or deliberately misleading. Nevertheless, Agnes swallows a tracker and agrees to follow Commodore Oh's plans.
Agnes' mental health declines rapidly and worryingly. We see that she's still feeling guilty about killing Maddox, but now has outbursts about tracking down Soji and instead suggests that they just go home. She's a living homing beacon on a ship that's determined to track down its target, and as well as being a passenger in the crew, she's now a passenger in her own life, with the Romulans pulling the strings.
On the Borg cube, meanwhile, the Romulans are pulling triggers. After a desperate and short fight, the Romulans have captured Elnor and Hugh, and a small group of ex-Borg. Narissa (Narek's sister, and the weirder of the two siblings) is resorting to extreme measures to obtain Picard and Soji's destination after they disappeared off the cube in the previous episode. She questions Hugh, then executes around a dozen ex-Borg in cold blood. Hugh and Elnor are able to escape, briefly, but they face overwhelming odds on a Romulan-infested cube. Things are not going to end well; I still wonder if the Borg are going to reawaken en masse, and start assimilating all the Romulans, and after the events of this episode, I'd be cheering them on.
Narissa tells Hugh that releasing the synth (Soji) has doomed half the galaxy and a trillion souls. Commodore Oh shared similar visions with Agnes during their mind-meld. Just what are the paranoid Romulans thinking of? How do they know it's so bad? If there's time travel and messengers from the future involved, I will NOT be happy.
The La Sirena is being held by the Romulans in a tractor beam, and Raffi and Rios are not happy about it. Agnes suggests that they should tell the Romulans where Picard has gone, and then they'll be allowed to leave. Despite Raffi's efforts, they are firmly in the tractor beam's grip, until Narek launches his scout vessel. The La Sirena is released, and starts off on its journey to rendezvous with Picard on Nepenthe. When Agnes asked Rios if his ship would be able to escape, Rios reminded me of Han Solo - Rios says his ship is fast enough (perhaps it did the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs?)
Nepenthe is an idyllic planet; warm, pleasant, sunny and bright - in stark contrast to the sterile walls of the Borg cube and the La Sirena. There's no visible technology, and the difference is immediately noticeable. Picard and Soji are greeted by a young girl, and Picard asks her to take them to her parents. Picard mentions his heart is solid duritanium, and perhaps the girl should point her arrows at his head - this is a brief nod to an event when he was in the academy and was stabbed in the heart in a bar brawl (as seen in the Next Generation episode "Tapestry").
I wish I hadn't seen a spoiler from last week, as I knew that Picard was going to meet Riker and Troi. Riker and Troi were both officers on the bridge of the Enterprise, and they married in the final Next Generation movie, Nemesis (the same film where Data sacrificed himself for Picard). At the end of the film, Riker was being promoted to Captain, and was taking on his own command, the USS Titan. Nothing else has been mentioned about them since then; everything else (their home, their career and family) is all new. Troi is a half-Betazoid: Betazoids are fully telepathic, but as Troi has a human father, she's only able to sense strong emotion and read more subtle telepathic cues; nevertheless, she can tell immediately that Soji is an android (but lets the moment pass without comment, and only mentions it to Picard later).
There is no 'action' or any major plot developments on Nepenthe. Instead, we see Riker call Picard arrogant (it's a recurring theme), and tell Picard that he should ask for help instead of marching off on his mission on his own. This is a mission which by Picard's own confession is not going to plan (not that he had a real plan anyway). Instead, the episode takes its time to set up conversations between Riker and Picard; Soji and Troi; Troi and Picard, and Kestra (the young girl) and Soji.
Introducing Kestra as Riker/Troi's daughter is a very clever move. Data (Soji's 'father') was obsessed with human nature and has frequently been seen conversing with children in an attempt to better understand human life (there are multiple examples in the film Insurrection). Kestra has almost no filter, and at various points in the story, I thought she was going to scare Soji into leaving immediately. However, it seems that the adults are more likely to do this; as Soji and Troi both explain, their actions are very similar to Narek's - convince her that their intentions are genuine, then betray her. It seems that Kestra builds the bridge between them all, since children generally - and Kestra in particular - are not capable of complex deception. There are multiple references to Data in the conversations between Kestra and Soji: telling jokes (Data wished he could); ballroom dancing (he took lessons); Sherlock Holmes (Data was fascinated with deduction and logic). I could go on.
Soji opens up about the dream she shared with Narek - about the two red moons and the lightning, and Kestra is able to track down the planet that Soji will call home. There is a large amount of interesting exposition around the Riker/Troi family, but I'm going to skip almost all of that and carry on with the main story.
It's a sad time for Agnes Jurati, and despite cake and consolation from Raffi, Agnes is not in a good place. It turns out that Narek is able to track the La Sirena, despite all of Rios's expert tactics at evasion, and Agnes makes the horrifying conclusion that the Romulans are using the tracking device she swallowed on earth. The scene where Rios talks with Agnes and shares his suspicions that Raffi is sabotaging the mission is truly fascinating. On Nepenthe, everybody is confident that they're in a safe and secure place surrounded by friends (except Soji, who has to believe them), and there is absolute candour between them all. On the La Sirena, everybody is deliberately concealing the truth and manipulating everybody else: I truly didn't believe Rios's suggestion that Raffi had betrayed them, and I firmly believe he was trying to manipulate Agnes into confessing. This doesn't work out, and by the end of the episode, she's taken a does of uranium hydride (not previously seen in Star Trek, but a real-world compound used in nuclear power) that causes her to go into a coma.
I thought that the uranium hydride would be lethal - the body count for this series is remarkable, and the writers have no issue in killing off characters - and I suspect that Agnes would have died if the Emergency Medical Hologram had not intervened. It's an interesting plot development that the tracking device stops working when Agnes is in a coma. Will restoring her consciousness cause the tracker to reactivate? Is she like a synth, which is 'safe' until it's activated?
Things are equally bleak on the Borg cube. Elnor and Hugh start looking to actively sabotage the Romulans, and are caught in the act. Despite Elnor's best efforts, Narissa kills Hugh. This was a truly tragic moment; Hugh has been completely loyal to Picard and deserved better. The pile of bodies mounting up behind Picard's little escapade is growing week by week. Who's next? Elnor realises he's in a no-win situation (even by his standards) and calls for help, using the SOS device that Seven gave to Picard previously. His situation may be delicate, but he's not lost yet.
Overall, this episode was good, but not as good as we've seen previously. The plot moves on at a more moderate speed, and there's a welcome change of pace from the phasers and fighting we've seen recently. After the high-speed escape and rescue of Soji, the plot takes time to go through the consequences of Soji's activation. We've lost Hugh; Agnes is in a coma; Picard and Soji are taking the long way round to Soji's homeworld. Elnor has called for Seven and the Ferris Rangers for support (I wonder if we'll see Seven, or if the writers have somebody else in mind) and I wonder if we've seen the last of Riker and Troi.
Last week, I concluded my review by asking who or what was on the planet of Nepenthe, the destination that Picard asked Hugh to send him and Soji to. This week, we got our answer, and it was a delight. We also left Elnor and Hugh on a Borg cube swarming with angry Romulans, and wondered what might happen to them. Their situation was far more dangerous and less likely to have a happy ending.
This week's episode starts (as many of the episodes have done) with a flashback scene that answers the question: "What did Commodore Oh say to Agnes during that apparently brief conversation?" I'm still not sure if Oh is Romulan or Vulcan. She certainly has Romulan ears (Vulcans' are more triangular and upright, while Romulans' are almost circular and drawn to a point), and she's working with the Romulans on the Artifact, but it surprises me that a Romulan could have risen through the ranks of Starfleet so quickly. Did anybody else think that when Oh said, "Let me show you," and took off her sunglasses, that we'd see that she was an android? No? Just me, then.
Oh performs a mind-meld with Agnes - we've never seen what this is like for the participants, and we've never seen a Romulan perform one either. It's also highly debatable if the images that Oh forced on Agnes were actually true and accurate, or deliberately misleading. Nevertheless, Agnes swallows a tracker and agrees to follow Commodore Oh's plans.
Agnes' mental health declines rapidly and worryingly. We see that she's still feeling guilty about killing Maddox, but now has outbursts about tracking down Soji and instead suggests that they just go home. She's a living homing beacon on a ship that's determined to track down its target, and as well as being a passenger in the crew, she's now a passenger in her own life, with the Romulans pulling the strings.
On the Borg cube, meanwhile, the Romulans are pulling triggers. After a desperate and short fight, the Romulans have captured Elnor and Hugh, and a small group of ex-Borg. Narissa (Narek's sister, and the weirder of the two siblings) is resorting to extreme measures to obtain Picard and Soji's destination after they disappeared off the cube in the previous episode. She questions Hugh, then executes around a dozen ex-Borg in cold blood. Hugh and Elnor are able to escape, briefly, but they face overwhelming odds on a Romulan-infested cube. Things are not going to end well; I still wonder if the Borg are going to reawaken en masse, and start assimilating all the Romulans, and after the events of this episode, I'd be cheering them on.
Narissa tells Hugh that releasing the synth (Soji) has doomed half the galaxy and a trillion souls. Commodore Oh shared similar visions with Agnes during their mind-meld. Just what are the paranoid Romulans thinking of? How do they know it's so bad? If there's time travel and messengers from the future involved, I will NOT be happy.
The La Sirena is being held by the Romulans in a tractor beam, and Raffi and Rios are not happy about it. Agnes suggests that they should tell the Romulans where Picard has gone, and then they'll be allowed to leave. Despite Raffi's efforts, they are firmly in the tractor beam's grip, until Narek launches his scout vessel. The La Sirena is released, and starts off on its journey to rendezvous with Picard on Nepenthe. When Agnes asked Rios if his ship would be able to escape, Rios reminded me of Han Solo - Rios says his ship is fast enough (perhaps it did the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs?)
Nepenthe is an idyllic planet; warm, pleasant, sunny and bright - in stark contrast to the sterile walls of the Borg cube and the La Sirena. There's no visible technology, and the difference is immediately noticeable. Picard and Soji are greeted by a young girl, and Picard asks her to take them to her parents. Picard mentions his heart is solid duritanium, and perhaps the girl should point her arrows at his head - this is a brief nod to an event when he was in the academy and was stabbed in the heart in a bar brawl (as seen in the Next Generation episode "Tapestry").
There is no 'action' or any major plot developments on Nepenthe. Instead, we see Riker call Picard arrogant (it's a recurring theme), and tell Picard that he should ask for help instead of marching off on his mission on his own. This is a mission which by Picard's own confession is not going to plan (not that he had a real plan anyway). Instead, the episode takes its time to set up conversations between Riker and Picard; Soji and Troi; Troi and Picard, and Kestra (the young girl) and Soji.
Introducing Kestra as Riker/Troi's daughter is a very clever move. Data (Soji's 'father') was obsessed with human nature and has frequently been seen conversing with children in an attempt to better understand human life (there are multiple examples in the film Insurrection). Kestra has almost no filter, and at various points in the story, I thought she was going to scare Soji into leaving immediately. However, it seems that the adults are more likely to do this; as Soji and Troi both explain, their actions are very similar to Narek's - convince her that their intentions are genuine, then betray her. It seems that Kestra builds the bridge between them all, since children generally - and Kestra in particular - are not capable of complex deception. There are multiple references to Data in the conversations between Kestra and Soji: telling jokes (Data wished he could); ballroom dancing (he took lessons); Sherlock Holmes (Data was fascinated with deduction and logic). I could go on.
Soji opens up about the dream she shared with Narek - about the two red moons and the lightning, and Kestra is able to track down the planet that Soji will call home. There is a large amount of interesting exposition around the Riker/Troi family, but I'm going to skip almost all of that and carry on with the main story.
It's a sad time for Agnes Jurati, and despite cake and consolation from Raffi, Agnes is not in a good place. It turns out that Narek is able to track the La Sirena, despite all of Rios's expert tactics at evasion, and Agnes makes the horrifying conclusion that the Romulans are using the tracking device she swallowed on earth. The scene where Rios talks with Agnes and shares his suspicions that Raffi is sabotaging the mission is truly fascinating. On Nepenthe, everybody is confident that they're in a safe and secure place surrounded by friends (except Soji, who has to believe them), and there is absolute candour between them all. On the La Sirena, everybody is deliberately concealing the truth and manipulating everybody else: I truly didn't believe Rios's suggestion that Raffi had betrayed them, and I firmly believe he was trying to manipulate Agnes into confessing. This doesn't work out, and by the end of the episode, she's taken a does of uranium hydride (not previously seen in Star Trek, but a real-world compound used in nuclear power) that causes her to go into a coma.
I thought that the uranium hydride would be lethal - the body count for this series is remarkable, and the writers have no issue in killing off characters - and I suspect that Agnes would have died if the Emergency Medical Hologram had not intervened. It's an interesting plot development that the tracking device stops working when Agnes is in a coma. Will restoring her consciousness cause the tracker to reactivate? Is she like a synth, which is 'safe' until it's activated?
Things are equally bleak on the Borg cube. Elnor and Hugh start looking to actively sabotage the Romulans, and are caught in the act. Despite Elnor's best efforts, Narissa kills Hugh. This was a truly tragic moment; Hugh has been completely loyal to Picard and deserved better. The pile of bodies mounting up behind Picard's little escapade is growing week by week. Who's next? Elnor realises he's in a no-win situation (even by his standards) and calls for help, using the SOS device that Seven gave to Picard previously. His situation may be delicate, but he's not lost yet.
Overall, this episode was good, but not as good as we've seen previously. The plot moves on at a more moderate speed, and there's a welcome change of pace from the phasers and fighting we've seen recently. After the high-speed escape and rescue of Soji, the plot takes time to go through the consequences of Soji's activation. We've lost Hugh; Agnes is in a coma; Picard and Soji are taking the long way round to Soji's homeworld. Elnor has called for Seven and the Ferris Rangers for support (I wonder if we'll see Seven, or if the writers have somebody else in mind) and I wonder if we've seen the last of Riker and Troi.
No comments:
Post a Comment