“Oh, MAN!”
After a furious week or so of writing and scheduling posts for this rebooted Blogging the Next Generation, I took about a month off between “The Impossible Box” and today’s entry. I recall something similar happening when the first season of Star Trek: Picard was airing: this show is a slog, man, particularly in that middle brace of episodes, where any goodwill built up after the premiere has been completely eaten away by the weak plotting, bonkers characterization, and total lack of a sense of why Picard is branded as a Star Trek series at all. Then along comes “Nepenthe,” and we’re good again; except, we’re good in a way that I’ll simply never be comfortable with, which is: these legacy sequels leaning on the nostalgia button as hard as they can, to carry us past all of the sins listed above. In “Nepenthe,” it’s a lark, and the episode works nicely as a one-off; but it becomes the entire creative strategy of the show by the third season’s attempt at “Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Eight” (their words, not mine).
Still, it’s hard not to love Pizza Riker, and I do. I fucking love him. Looking entirely like he found out he was doing the show four hours before the car turned up at his place to drive him to the set, Jonathan Frakes evinces a kind of old-retired-man bliss here that Patrick Stewart never matches; nor, it must be said, does Frakes himself, in his appearances a season later, when he clearly begins to take this Return of Riker shtick a bit more seriously. In “Nepenthe,” the no-fucks-given vibe is immense, and it’s beautiful. (I know none of the above narrativization is true, by the way. Frakes is one of the key directorial players in NuTrek; so while he clearly hit the gym and the barber between “Nepenthe” and season 3, he was also fully a part of the plotting and creation of this season.) Riker, a routinely problematic character on Next Gen but also my Beard Icon, here reaches full aspirational-icon status by outlining, in totality, the recipe for my perfect retirement:
1/ Put your career completely fucking behind you, like who cares, it was a job and you’re retired
2/ Get a house in the woods with the love of your life, and make pizza
3/ Raise a semi-feral daughter who seems perpetually one remark away from disappearing into those woods forever (but likes the pizza).
All this roughly translates as: “Nepenthe” is the good one. Quite possibly, the only actually good episode of all of Star Trek: Picard, end to end; the only one that feels like it’s actually paying off the premise of, “what if we touched base with these characters again, years after the fact?” without leaning so insistently on the nostalgia button that it all comes off feeling facile (see: season 3). Which is not to say they’re not leaning on that button here at all; and which is not to say that they don’t lean on it at all this season. But, there is a sense of moderation this time; and Frakes and Marina Sirtis are in such fine form — as though decades of pent-up energy about playing these characters again is being unleashed — that they even elevate Stewart, and bring Captain Picard to a place that most Next Gen fans probably presumed this whole series was going to reside within.
It doesn’t hurt that the writers, thankfully, go all-in on the Riker Family, and all the stuff back on La Sirena is thereby kept to relatively brief action sequences at the start of each act — which nonetheless manage to handily tie off the Jurati assassination plot with a wild flashback that sees her being recruited by Commodore Oh. The La Sirena crew is overall gelling — not in any kind of an earned way, of course, because this is NuTrek; but at least all the shitty sniping is on temporary hold — and seem to respect each other enough that they are all stricken by the idea of Elnor sacrificing himself in the line of duty, a guy I’m pretty sure they all met an hour ago. Over on Nepenthe, Picard meta-annotates his observations about the differences between his new crew and his old one. The new one has “baggage.” Clearly he’s forgotten Riker’s issues with taking the captain’s chair, or Troi’s relationship with her mother! Quiet part loud, he’s just saying “I think they might all be raging alcoholics.” Which, based on this episode, they sure might be.
Another huge boon in “Nepenthe” is that Soji has finally caught up to the audience, re: knowing who she is, and god, that’s a relief. Having her behind us for five full episodes did the character, and Isa Briones, absolutely no favours; now Briones gets to play what Next Gen was always terrific at, which is seeing Soji interrogate the nature her now-troubled relationship with her own humanity. She gets to do the head-tilt, and form the most adorable relationship with Will and Deanna’s daughter, who is far and away my favourite part of the episode, and perhaps, my favourite single part of Star Trek: Picard (and yes, I’m pissed she never gets to play amongst the third season’s numerous “kids of the Next Gen crew” characters). Lulu Wilson gives an exceptional performance here, with big jittery energy and an enormous wealth of fascination for, and compassion for, Soji — a rare instance of the series introducing a net-new character and having her feel like she is fundamentally rooted in the story being told.
Between Kestra (the name, adding to the gold stars, is probably my favourite bit nerdy callback this season) and Picard, a genuine emotional relationship with the nascent self-aware android finally begins to form, and it gives a richness that has been lacking since Dahj was killed in the first episode. Of course, this is also the episode where we kind of have to stop calling Soji and Dahj “Data’s daughters,” because — as Riker points out — they’re both about twenty years too young for that. It’s too bad; the idea of either twin actually being a second Lal was always much more emotionally resonant than Soji and Dahj being secret agents from a planet of Soong-type androids who just wanted to find out what the fuck was up with the synth ban.
I chose not to rate Star Trek: Picard episodes on the star system I deployed for the rest of Blogging the Next Generation, because this is something of a different beast (on both sides of the screen). But “Nepenthe” is definitely the best episode of the first season, and it’s going to be hard to beat it for the series as a whole.
Blogging the Next Generation: Picard runs Thursdays on tederick.com as I work my way through every episode of Star Trek: Picard. The original BTNG did the same for Star Trek: The Next Generation.