User Reviews

Watching episode 7. Marina Sirtis deserves every award going for her first two minutes on screen. The finest acting I've ever seen. What she can do with three words and a look was mesmerizing. Bravo. Great to see a fine actress at the top of her game.

Picard visits old friends on Nepenthe with Soji.

I enjoyed this episode as a fan of TNG for the reunion between some of the franchise most well known characters, plus the relief it provides from the darkness presented in the first six episodes.

Healing from emotional and psychological pain is the theme of the episode and many of the characters embody it. The plot allows Picard and Soji an opportunity to remedy some of the issues they are experiencing through a connection with friends and it is done in warm and positive way. The other plot threads are not quite as compelling as this one, but keep the main narrative ticking over in a compelling way.

All production values are strong with great visuals and effects as always. Whilst performances from all are all good. Patrick Stewart and Allison Pill standout for me.

Marina Sirtis stole the show. What a beautifully emotional performance. Jonathan Frakes was right there too, he hasn't lost a step in that character. They've both beautifully evolved. And how often are we annoyed by some offspring that's brought between characters we love? (I'm looking at you Mutt Williams). The young girl was fantastic, dynamic and charismatic. This was a perfect episode with the Riker family.

What an emotional episode. Good story and verry well produced. This was Great! Now i have to wait another 7 days .. whaaaa... TNG feelings all over!!

If this episode gets negative ratings I wouldn't understand why. This was a beautiful episode, seeing star trek veterans Riker and troi again, there performance was perfect. I love that the episode is longer and that there were 3 different parts, picard and soji on nepenthe with riker and troi. Hugh and elroy on the cube and raffi, Rios and jurati on the ship. The episode flew by, I even got the chills watching troi, riker and picard reunite. Every episode gets better and better.

Any fan of Star Trek Next Generation will be teary-eyed face this emotional episode !

We find with pleasure and nostalgia Will and Deanna, whose destiny and characters are better treated than those of Seven of Nine previously.

The ship's crew is also treated with more intelligence and depth, so that when the writers want they can make good stories true to the Star Trek spirit.

As long as the series remains on this path !

This is absolutely classic , a TNG feeling from beginning to the end , an absolute joy to watch , thank you Sir Patrick , Mr. Frakes and Ms. Sirtis for this !

This entire episode made me cheer...and cry ! It really was an amazingly written and wonderfully directed(no need to mention acting) this is so far the best episode this season!

Just finished it and as a Star Trek Next Generation fan of the late eighties early nineties... I am extremely grateful to the writers and actors for this gem they gave us... Thank you for this. Sincerely.

For this so touching meeting , I am very grateful. It is the prize erasing many sins and mistakes and artificial / not inspired solutions. Because it is like a return to home for a viewer of Star Trek Next Generation. And because it is a beautiful hommage to a legendary serie and its audience. So, the best episode.

Episode 7 contains two uneven and unbalanced "halves" or components: the first following Picard and Soji who are the principal characters and have now finally shared useful screen time together and the second follows the rest of 'em.

The first component warrants my first higher rating of the entire series but the latter continued to be interminably dire.

I'm the Nepenthe storyline Picard and Soji encounter characters that are A) established star trek and B) presented as actual human beings who have lived lives since we last saw them.

This allows Picard to grow by interacting with meaningful characters with whom he already shares important parts of his life and Soji is illuminated as a character by her own exposure to the same both in her own right and in contrast to Picard's revival in a welcoming environment.

The fact that half of the effectiveness of this strand of the episode is second hand, borrowed, unwarranted by any new characters or plot lines does diminish the value of the episode to the series as a whole. However I enjoyed the entirety of the sojourn with Riker and Troi and their family.

Even when nuisances like contrived and creaking plot devices are used to find Soji's "homeworld" I still enjoyed this exchange overall.

Riker and Troi show the advantage of writing humanly believable and approachable characters and offer a saddening contrast with all the characters and plot machinations depicted elsewhere in the episode and in the entire series.

I'd have happily preferred to just see this character vignette as a half of a three part mini series encountering Jean-Luc Picard and his peers along with Picard's encounter with whatever "new" factor the series writers could imagine.

For now I am more satisfied with watching this episode, solely due to it's first "component", than any other in the series, the only regrettable corollary is that now that I've seen the contents of this episode I don't actually want to watch the remainder of the series with any positive intent; purely a passive inclination to see Picard complete this Trek.

Finally all pieces are falling together. Picard's acting is getting better as the weight on his shoulders are divided in several other main actors and actresses. It feels like he's more Picard now in a commanding position, and not a does-it-all character. Old friends came back for everyone's nostalgia. Storyline is getting way interesting and this show is knocking out Discovery for good...

Great feeling to see the TNG crew back together on screen. Enjoying this wonderful ride and hoping it never ends.

Well, now I'm excited. Congrats to the producers for a very satisfying full hour of Star Trek. This episode didn't spare anything except maybe a small space battle. The tempo of this episode was excellent. Direction was excellent. Great support from the full cast as well as some old friends. This is how Star Trek should be. More please!

Picard and Number 1 make a reunion and I will not spoil it for you but I personally enjoyed it and especially how on point Jonathan Frakes does his job playing his role like the next generation stopped airing yesterday. He and P. Steward have a screen chemistry that will never be dampened by time obviously. I am a major Star Trek fan especially next generation and DS9 so this episode was really special for me as far as closure to some questions I once had... I guess im a little biased because of how much I love these two characters but if you are a long time fan like me then this episode will make your day early in... Blessings and good day or night to all who read this.

After last weeks opening of "the impossible box", which could have been Narek's little toy , the Borg cube itself , the queen chamber, or even Soji's path to "Self Realization Fellowship", we can say simply that all Hades has broken loose.

Picard has just taken one small step for synthetics, one giant leap for justice.

We can now see even before this episode aired, that one member of Picard's crew was definitely planted, on the basis of a lie, and that the person who planted the SHILL on Picards ship is definitely not what she appears to be. Especially after a small conversation with a "Lt Rizzo" in a previous episode which revealed complicity. The only real question is why would a Vulcan be complicit with Romulans? It certainly can't be any form of "Reunification". But the rot has gotten deep into the roots of Starfleet. This is something that has never been allowed to happen before, it was nipped in the bud in the next generation season one episode "conspiracy"... and that episode was originally going to feature the Borg as well. Since we never saw those aliens ever again, they may still have had something to do with the Borg, but that story was basically never told.

This series has done something that no other Star Trek series has ever done. We have learned a lot in the past about Vulcans, Andorians, Klingons, Xindi, Bajorans, and also those aliens with the snouts like pigs, and we have learned a lot about those races various cultures. But due to the secrecy of the Romulans, we've never learned much about them. They would always commit hari-kari or blow their ships up rather than let the Federation learn even the smallest detail about their technology or culture.

But now thanks to this slowly unraveling story we are learning a lot about the Romulan language, customs, entertainment, fears, and even religions.

And it is not being dumped onto us all at once but rather it is slowly being disbursed into each episode so we can "assimilate" the information. Because it is actually quite a bit of information, the Romulans are now seemingly almost as populous as humans are in the alpha and beta quadrants.

But now we get back to the cameos of this week, which is where Picard has gone, to the Little House on Nepenthe.

"Nepenthe" has two major definitions. First, a potion used by the ancients to induce forgetfulness of pain or sorrow. Actually I was thinking of "Absinthe" for that purpose... works just as well (when you can find it) The second definition, something capable of causing "oblivion of grief or suffering".

And that appears to be what is going on with our two next generation cameos of this week, something horrible had happened to them and they are just living with it daily until the pain goes away. Like we all do, I suppose.

The problem here is that Soji has just experienced a major betrayal, and who can she trust, really? I would be as skeptical as she.

Picard's crew have split up, his assassin Elnor is still on the cube, helping Hugh. His crew are still on the ship, which last we saw was in a tractor beam, and of course Picard and Soji took that small step across light years to a safe place. But she doesn't want to believe in safety right now.

But even across the light years the story develops on three fronts. I'm so glad that they are showing this season on a weekly basis rather than having dumped it all at the same time like Netflix or Amazon always does. It gives us something to look forward to.

Side-Tangent: As viewers, we have gotten used to this latest media trend which includes eight episodes per season, given to us all at once, and absorbing entire shows in a couple of days and then there really is nothing to do for another year or so.

When Star Trek the Next Generation was being syndicated, we got to look forward to 26 separate episodes per season distributed over a course of seven years and it's just a large body of work to enjoy.

And as much as I love this one focused story being told in a serialized fashion, I really miss the days when a show could take an entire season of up to 30 episodes and tell the same story but have other things happening at the same time. Much like the third season of Enterprise, which has one particular focus but it is told over the course of an entire year. I didn't originally like the Xindi story, now I enjoy it.

It is like television these days is being meted out in a disposable fashion, because basically there are so many different voices yelling to be heard over the cable lines (funny, I would have said airwaves 30 years ago), and due to the superfluity of shows of all kinds, not just drama-action-science fiction like this show, but now reality shows and even documentary shows are being distributed like this now. And there are lots of channels, Netflix, Amazon, CBS, Disney, Apple+.... But with so many channels and shows, it is very hard for a show to make it's impact these days. So for Picard to rise above this glorious din is a welcome development.

And we have to buy access to this entertainment rather than the way it was freely distributed to us during the golden age of television. And it has gotten to the point of "who can expose us to the most advertisements?"

Regardless of these constraints, this episode has us gripping our lazy boy chair or our knees if we are sitting on the couch. and I enjoy every minute of this show.

Expect to see a particular Fenris Ranger show up to help our Romulan elf Elnor. It just came to me that this character is very Legolas. The actor would do well in middle earth.

It's also possible that our Starfleet-planted SHILL is now rethinking the lies that she was told by Commodore Oh....

Oh yes, I forgot: look for a reference to a Feline race created by the author of Ringworld, Larry Niven. Which refers to Star Trek: The Animated Series.

I was so close to giving up on this series and walking away. But then this episode aired. Such a sweet mini reunion of an episode. Finally some of that familiar family Star Trek feeling starting to pop up in the show. I think I might just hang on for a few more episodes.

This was an extremely painful episode to sit through as it relied solely on the merits of the past work of the TNG actors. The entire episode was service to the bottom feeders of Star Trek, the people who are more interested in the inter-personal drama and not what Trek is about. Speaking of which, Picard is so far removed from Trek it's almost laughable. No, I don't expect retread, but this show is simply trying to ape what's current (Game of Thrones) and is doing a lousy job of it. The actors broadcast their emotions so that even those in the audience who are blind can follow. And after 7 eps it's still difficult to tell what the point of the show is. As far as I can tell, it's just one much-adieu-about-nothing chit-chat after another. The whole Riker family thing could have been condensed into ten minutes since the only point was getting the name of the planet that the android woman claims to be home. Still, if you consider seeing Riker burn pizza interesting Trek, then I guess your time has come.

By far the best episode so far. I love it. It was nice to see Riker and Dianna. The episode also had some good action. 10/10.