CONTAINS SPOILERS
It seems that none of the crew of the La Sirena are entirely intact. Raffi is heartbroken after a failed attempt to reconcile with her estranged son; Agnes is falling apart after killing Maddox, and is now in a coma; and Rios strikes me as a nihilistic narcissist (why else have all the holograms programmed to look like better versions of himself?). Picard (distraught over the death of Dahj, and still dismayed at Starfleet's treatment of the Romulans) and Soji (who's not entirely sure what she is) aren't on the La Sirena, but they're not exactly in one piece, either. The only member of the crew who seems to be intact is Elnor, the Romulan ninja with very little personality except "undying loyalty", and he's unlikely to last much longer on a Borg cube manned by Romulans who are out to get him.
Things are looking grim, but they could be worse. Picard and Soji have made an apparently successful escape from the Artifact (although it cost Hugh his life, and the lives of many ex-Borg), and are due to reunite with the rest of the crew. By the way, Picard is leaving a trail of destruction behind him that's unprecedented; I just hope the conclusion is worth it.
The episode begins by answering many of the questions we've had about the Romulans in this series. Fourteen years ago, a group of Romulan women met one distant planet identified in orbit (or within) a system of eight stars. It's virtually impossible to have a system of eight stars all orbiting neatly around each other - two stars (binary systems) are common, and there are some three-star (trinary) systems, but it's not really possible to get eight stars orbiting each other without two or more of them falling into each other due to gravity. This makes the planet significant, and the eight stars are a galactic signpost. On the planet is a circular beam of flaming light, and whoever touches it sees a message - a vision - of a future which will occur if the number of synths reaches a critical number. The Romulans there are the Zhat Vash - more than just the ultra-secret police and more like religious fanatics. Seeing the vision causes most of the Zhat Vash to go suicidally insane; three remain: Commodore Oh, Narissa and Ramdha - who went mad but remained alive (Soji met her on the Borg cube in what looked like an asylum - Ramdha called Soji 'the destroyer').
It turns out that Ramdha was assimilated by the Borg a few weeks later, and her unlimited depression permeated through the Borg and caused their collective mental breakdown and an entire Borg cube to go offline - the Artifact.
On the Artifact, Elnor is fighting a losing battle, but his SOS call is heard and Seven of Nine returns to save the day. I've mentioned before that setting this entire part of the story on a Borg cube placed a time bomb in the story, and Seven, with her Borg knowledge is the one to detonate it - she reactivates the Borg cube (I cheered with glee). However, the parasitic Romulans are not to be ousted from their Artifact and seeing the Borg cube regenerating prompts them to start shooting Borg drones on sight.
Realising that the Romulans are systematically slaughtering the newly-awakened drones leaves Seven with no option but to connect herself to the Borg and become a Borg Queen (see Star Trek First Contact for more on Borg Queens). This is a risky move - as she herself admits, the Borg will lose their individuality and although she will be able to separate herself from the collective afterwards, she may not want to. She would personally prefer not to form a collective, and when she says, "We are the Borg" you wonder if it's truly temporary.
Soji and Picard are picked up by the La Sirena, and as soon as they beam aboard, Rios acts like he's seen a ghost and immediately retreats to his quarters. This leads to a long and protracted series of discussions between Raffi and the set of holograms about Rios's strange reaction. For the record, the five holograms are
Engineering - Enoch (Scottish)
Weapons/Tactical - Spanish and dozy
Medical - American and formal
Hospitality - was that an English accent?
Navigation - Irish
I found this part of the episode a little irritating and longer than it needed to be, but the ends justify the means - but only just. And, in case you were wondering, these are the "broken pieces" of Rios, each containing part of his memories, but none of them having the complete picture.
Rios was, as Picard correctly surmised in the early episodes, "Starfleet through and through". Ina tragic tale, Rios was first officer on a Starfleet vessel that made initial contact with two humanoid aliens. The captain, Captain Vandermeer (not previously mentioned in Trek history), contacted the fleet admiral, who demanded that the captain kill the two aliens immediately, or suffer the destruction of the entire ship with all hands. The aliens were synths; the fleet admiral was Commodore Oh (who, we discover is half-Romulan and half-Vulcan), on her mission to rid the galaxy of synths. Captain Vandermeer carried out his orders, killing the two synths and thereby saved his ship, the USS ibn Majid (also new to Trek history) and subsequently killed himself, leaving Rios to pick up the pieces. Rios covered up the when incident, but suffered post traumatic "dysphoria" and left Starfleet six months later.
One of the synths that Rios met, Jana, looked exactly like Soji, and we realise that there are far, far more synths than just Dahj and Soji. It also explains why Rios was so distraught when he saw Soji.
Picard orders his crew to head to the nearest starbase, Deep Space 12. However, his crew aren't impressed: Rios has retreated to his quarters, and Raffi takes Picard to task over inviting Agnes onto the ship.
The story moves very quickly here - I wondered if the death of Maddo would be played out as a mystery, but no. The Emergency Medical Hologram (the formal American one) and Raffi very quickly find the cause of Maddox's death: fatal interruption of his treatment, bu Agnes. The EMH also diagnoses Agnes's current condition and treatment. It's all handled very quickly: Agnes took the poison to counteract the veridium isotope tracker that was in her blood, and in the process nearly killed herself. If the medicine is handled quickly, then the consequences are given plenty of time: Picard accuses Agnes of all she's done, and she confesses to everything, explaining her meeting with Commodore Oh; the mind-meld and the horrors trapped inside her mind. Agnes is well and truly in broken pieces, and comes across quite clearly as a victim, not as an evil villain. And she gets her moment of relief when she meets Soji. I thought this was a touching and important moment; Agnes comes across as an over-awed fangirl, "Do you eat? What do you do when you're thirsty?" but it's a key moment in her life and it gets its fair amount of time.
Picard speaks to Admiral Kirsten Clancy (the Admiral who told Picard he was arrogant when he first asked Starfleet for a ship) and he says he wants a full squadron of ships sent to meet him at Deep Space 12 - and he won't take no for an answer. Unfortunately, he won't shut up long enough to hear the answer, and Clancy has to tell him to shut up because she agrees. Picard and Soji will rendezvous with a squadron at DS 12.
Picard and Soji have a discussion about her personal history, since she doesn't have the life she remembers and her memories are all fabricated. They have a positive conversation about the relationship between Data and Picard, where Soji concludes that Data loved Picard. Data did indeed try to make his colleagues laugh, but succeeded most often when he wasn't trying.
The full crew, including Agnes, are reunited around the dining table, and the full story comes out. The Zhat Vash did indeed cause the synths on Mars to attack the base and fleet stationed there, hoping that this would cause Starfleet to retaliate against the synths, as they indeed did. Maddox fled Starfleet to a distant planet (the planet with two moons and lightning, which Soji calls home and which the Riker family identified last episode). Soji is seen as 'the destroyer' by the Romulans who identify her as the key cause of future galactic destruction, according to the message on the planet in the eight-year system. The Romulans have identified the synth's planet, where Maddox fled - Narek coerced Soji into sharing it - and are on their way there.
Indeed they are. The Romulans are fleeing the Artifact as the Borg begin to take control. Narissa orders the air locks to be opened, venting many of the Borg into space (this has been done before; in Star Trek Voyager's episode Scorpion, Captain Janeway vents Borg drones off her ship, only Seven survives). However, the remaining Borg do make a fight of it, and the last we see of Narissa is the Borg swarming all over her.
On the La Sirena, Soji decides to take matters into her own hands, and turns the ship away from its course to Deep Space 12 and towards her home planet. If she can get there before the Romulans she can warn them. Rios retakes control of the ship, and points out that navigating a Borg transwarp conduit without accounting for gravimetric shear (they always talked about this on Voyager) and chronatons (they cause time travel, see Star Trek First Contact) is foolhardy. The crew agree to go along with Soji's plan (nobody else's has worked very well), and the last thing we see is the La Sirena heading into the transwarp conduit (like a wormhole) towards the synths' home... followed by a small scout vessel which decloaks before pursuing. I suspect this is Narek, the Romulan brother, but I have no idea how he found the conduit or the La Sirena. Maybe Agnes's tracking is still active? I'd like to hope it's Seven and Elnor, but I can't see how they'd know where to go to meet Picard.
This was another great episode which has been difficult to summarise since so much happened. We learned why the synths attacked Mars; we discovered Commodore Oh's history; the Borg cube reactivated; Agnes regained consciousness and explained her role in events. Next? How many synths are there on their home world? Will there be enough time to prepare a defence? Do the Romulans have the whole message wrong? What about the fleet of ships at Deep Space 12? So many questions; so many broken pieces.
Episode 1: Remembrance
Episode 2: Maps and Legends
Episode 3: The End is the Beginning
Episode 4: Absolute Candour
Episode 5: Stardust City Rag
Episode 6: The Impossible Box
Episode 7: Nepenthe
Episode 8: Broken Pieces
It seems that none of the crew of the La Sirena are entirely intact. Raffi is heartbroken after a failed attempt to reconcile with her estranged son; Agnes is falling apart after killing Maddox, and is now in a coma; and Rios strikes me as a nihilistic narcissist (why else have all the holograms programmed to look like better versions of himself?). Picard (distraught over the death of Dahj, and still dismayed at Starfleet's treatment of the Romulans) and Soji (who's not entirely sure what she is) aren't on the La Sirena, but they're not exactly in one piece, either. The only member of the crew who seems to be intact is Elnor, the Romulan ninja with very little personality except "undying loyalty", and he's unlikely to last much longer on a Borg cube manned by Romulans who are out to get him.
Things are looking grim, but they could be worse. Picard and Soji have made an apparently successful escape from the Artifact (although it cost Hugh his life, and the lives of many ex-Borg), and are due to reunite with the rest of the crew. By the way, Picard is leaving a trail of destruction behind him that's unprecedented; I just hope the conclusion is worth it.
The episode begins by answering many of the questions we've had about the Romulans in this series. Fourteen years ago, a group of Romulan women met one distant planet identified in orbit (or within) a system of eight stars. It's virtually impossible to have a system of eight stars all orbiting neatly around each other - two stars (binary systems) are common, and there are some three-star (trinary) systems, but it's not really possible to get eight stars orbiting each other without two or more of them falling into each other due to gravity. This makes the planet significant, and the eight stars are a galactic signpost. On the planet is a circular beam of flaming light, and whoever touches it sees a message - a vision - of a future which will occur if the number of synths reaches a critical number. The Romulans there are the Zhat Vash - more than just the ultra-secret police and more like religious fanatics. Seeing the vision causes most of the Zhat Vash to go suicidally insane; three remain: Commodore Oh, Narissa and Ramdha - who went mad but remained alive (Soji met her on the Borg cube in what looked like an asylum - Ramdha called Soji 'the destroyer').
It turns out that Ramdha was assimilated by the Borg a few weeks later, and her unlimited depression permeated through the Borg and caused their collective mental breakdown and an entire Borg cube to go offline - the Artifact.
On the Artifact, Elnor is fighting a losing battle, but his SOS call is heard and Seven of Nine returns to save the day. I've mentioned before that setting this entire part of the story on a Borg cube placed a time bomb in the story, and Seven, with her Borg knowledge is the one to detonate it - she reactivates the Borg cube (I cheered with glee). However, the parasitic Romulans are not to be ousted from their Artifact and seeing the Borg cube regenerating prompts them to start shooting Borg drones on sight.
Soji and Picard are picked up by the La Sirena, and as soon as they beam aboard, Rios acts like he's seen a ghost and immediately retreats to his quarters. This leads to a long and protracted series of discussions between Raffi and the set of holograms about Rios's strange reaction. For the record, the five holograms are
Engineering - Enoch (Scottish)
Weapons/Tactical - Spanish and dozy
Medical - American and formal
Hospitality - was that an English accent?
Navigation - Irish
I found this part of the episode a little irritating and longer than it needed to be, but the ends justify the means - but only just. And, in case you were wondering, these are the "broken pieces" of Rios, each containing part of his memories, but none of them having the complete picture.
Rios was, as Picard correctly surmised in the early episodes, "Starfleet through and through". Ina tragic tale, Rios was first officer on a Starfleet vessel that made initial contact with two humanoid aliens. The captain, Captain Vandermeer (not previously mentioned in Trek history), contacted the fleet admiral, who demanded that the captain kill the two aliens immediately, or suffer the destruction of the entire ship with all hands. The aliens were synths; the fleet admiral was Commodore Oh (who, we discover is half-Romulan and half-Vulcan), on her mission to rid the galaxy of synths. Captain Vandermeer carried out his orders, killing the two synths and thereby saved his ship, the USS ibn Majid (also new to Trek history) and subsequently killed himself, leaving Rios to pick up the pieces. Rios covered up the when incident, but suffered post traumatic "dysphoria" and left Starfleet six months later.
One of the synths that Rios met, Jana, looked exactly like Soji, and we realise that there are far, far more synths than just Dahj and Soji. It also explains why Rios was so distraught when he saw Soji.
Picard orders his crew to head to the nearest starbase, Deep Space 12. However, his crew aren't impressed: Rios has retreated to his quarters, and Raffi takes Picard to task over inviting Agnes onto the ship.
The story moves very quickly here - I wondered if the death of Maddo would be played out as a mystery, but no. The Emergency Medical Hologram (the formal American one) and Raffi very quickly find the cause of Maddox's death: fatal interruption of his treatment, bu Agnes. The EMH also diagnoses Agnes's current condition and treatment. It's all handled very quickly: Agnes took the poison to counteract the veridium isotope tracker that was in her blood, and in the process nearly killed herself. If the medicine is handled quickly, then the consequences are given plenty of time: Picard accuses Agnes of all she's done, and she confesses to everything, explaining her meeting with Commodore Oh; the mind-meld and the horrors trapped inside her mind. Agnes is well and truly in broken pieces, and comes across quite clearly as a victim, not as an evil villain. And she gets her moment of relief when she meets Soji. I thought this was a touching and important moment; Agnes comes across as an over-awed fangirl, "Do you eat? What do you do when you're thirsty?" but it's a key moment in her life and it gets its fair amount of time.
Picard speaks to Admiral Kirsten Clancy (the Admiral who told Picard he was arrogant when he first asked Starfleet for a ship) and he says he wants a full squadron of ships sent to meet him at Deep Space 12 - and he won't take no for an answer. Unfortunately, he won't shut up long enough to hear the answer, and Clancy has to tell him to shut up because she agrees. Picard and Soji will rendezvous with a squadron at DS 12.
Picard and Soji have a discussion about her personal history, since she doesn't have the life she remembers and her memories are all fabricated. They have a positive conversation about the relationship between Data and Picard, where Soji concludes that Data loved Picard. Data did indeed try to make his colleagues laugh, but succeeded most often when he wasn't trying.
The full crew, including Agnes, are reunited around the dining table, and the full story comes out. The Zhat Vash did indeed cause the synths on Mars to attack the base and fleet stationed there, hoping that this would cause Starfleet to retaliate against the synths, as they indeed did. Maddox fled Starfleet to a distant planet (the planet with two moons and lightning, which Soji calls home and which the Riker family identified last episode). Soji is seen as 'the destroyer' by the Romulans who identify her as the key cause of future galactic destruction, according to the message on the planet in the eight-year system. The Romulans have identified the synth's planet, where Maddox fled - Narek coerced Soji into sharing it - and are on their way there.
Indeed they are. The Romulans are fleeing the Artifact as the Borg begin to take control. Narissa orders the air locks to be opened, venting many of the Borg into space (this has been done before; in Star Trek Voyager's episode Scorpion, Captain Janeway vents Borg drones off her ship, only Seven survives). However, the remaining Borg do make a fight of it, and the last we see of Narissa is the Borg swarming all over her.
On the La Sirena, Soji decides to take matters into her own hands, and turns the ship away from its course to Deep Space 12 and towards her home planet. If she can get there before the Romulans she can warn them. Rios retakes control of the ship, and points out that navigating a Borg transwarp conduit without accounting for gravimetric shear (they always talked about this on Voyager) and chronatons (they cause time travel, see Star Trek First Contact) is foolhardy. The crew agree to go along with Soji's plan (nobody else's has worked very well), and the last thing we see is the La Sirena heading into the transwarp conduit (like a wormhole) towards the synths' home... followed by a small scout vessel which decloaks before pursuing. I suspect this is Narek, the Romulan brother, but I have no idea how he found the conduit or the La Sirena. Maybe Agnes's tracking is still active? I'd like to hope it's Seven and Elnor, but I can't see how they'd know where to go to meet Picard.
This was another great episode which has been difficult to summarise since so much happened. We learned why the synths attacked Mars; we discovered Commodore Oh's history; the Borg cube reactivated; Agnes regained consciousness and explained her role in events. Next? How many synths are there on their home world? Will there be enough time to prepare a defence? Do the Romulans have the whole message wrong? What about the fleet of ships at Deep Space 12? So many questions; so many broken pieces.
Season 1 Episode List
Episode 1: Remembrance
Episode 2: Maps and Legends
Episode 3: The End is the Beginning
Episode 4: Absolute Candour
Episode 5: Stardust City Rag
Episode 6: The Impossible Box
Episode 7: Nepenthe
Episode 8: Broken Pieces
