Picard takes a moment to remind us how good TNG was.
Toward the end of “Nepenthe,” Rios confides in Dr. Jurati that he thinks Raffi might have betrayed them to the Romulans. Given literally everything we’ve seen from Jurati in the episode so far, I assumed this was a elaborate ploy to guilt her into coming clean, because he’d noticed how obviously shifty she’d been acting throughout the episode.
Turns out, no. He was being totally serious and didn’t suspect Jurati at all. Which, while I found it literally unbelievable and frustrating to watch, is probably what I should have expected, since most of the major plot twists in Star Trek: Picard rely on everyone involved being kind of dumb.
The episode mostly deals with the fallout of Picard and Sohji’s escape, both on the Artifact and aboard La Sirena. Meanwhile, Picard and Sohji take shelter in Riker and Troi’s backyard, where they apparently rediscover the word “android” and Sohji comes to terms with being one.
Given that the episode is named after the planet where Picard and Sohji’s side of the story takes place, someone probably realized that this was the strongest part of the episode despite being the least consequential.
On the Artifact, the writers apparently decided that Nerissa wasn’t loathsome enough yet, so she murders all the former Borg who got such a refreshingly sympathetic portrayal in the previous episode, complete with a Bond villain-style monologue. She then leaves, Elnor shows up—inexplicably somewhere else even though we last saw him in between Hugh and the Romulans—and Hugh decides to return to the Queencell because it’s time for drastic measures.
Only it’s a trap! Nerissa was listening in all along from a secret hiding place that was apparently right in front of them. And rather than wait for Hugh to reveal where he was going or what he was planning to do—which was the whole point of her questioning him earlier—she just strides out, delivers another villain speech, goads Elnor into a fight, kills Hugh, and beams away, apparently leaving Elnor to do whatever he wants. So absolutely no one in this plotline seems to be exercising even a basic amount of forethought.
In Hugh’s case, it’s even worse. He’d have to be crazy not to have realized that helping Picard would be inviting retribution from the Romulans. Part of the reason he agreed to meet with Picard was to elicit his help as an advocate for the ex-Borg living under Romulan control, so his decision to put that at risk should have been a weighty one. Instead, it’s portrayed as though the possibility of retaliation never even crossed his mind.
Likewise, though Picard seems conscious of the risk that he’s exposed Riker, Troi, and their daughter to, he never seems to think about the consequences for Hugh and the other former Borg, or even the crew of La Sirena. He’s shown trying and failing to raise Rios, and wondering when they’ll arrive to pick him up, but he never considers the possibility that the small fleet of Romulan ships around the Artifact might have captured or killed them instead.
Picard’s case is probably the most excusable, since the show has actually been pretty consistent in suggesting that he’s lost his edge since his days as captain of the Enterprise. He’s made a series of questionable decisions where his younger, more deliberate self would have known better, and it seems pretty clear that the show is doing this deliberately.
Unfortunately, nobody is in a position to challenge him on this, because his crew is too deep in their own problems to even notice. This is the role that Raffi was supposed to fill, but the show decided to make her “The wreckage of a good person,” in her words, who, also doesn’t really care what Picard does.
“Nepenthe” actually finds a temporary solution to this problem in the form of Riker and Troi, who both actually challenge Picard on his weak decision-making. Unfortunately, Picard leaves them behind at the end of the episode, so he’ll have to go on making do with his regular gang of misfits and spies.
It seems like every Star Trek show feels the need to subvert the utopian image of the Federation, and this usually gets presented as a nod to realism. This would be easier to accept if realism had any role in the construction of the show’s story, on either a macro or micro level. Instead, we’re shown a chain of events that is so unrealistic that it relies on the characters being almost comically dense. It’s new territory for Star Trek, which has generally portrayed its characters as being pretty smart, but the tradeoff of populating your show with oblivious characters in order to get away with telling a ridiculous story doesn’t seem like a great exchange.