Lost Time and the Unlived Life: DS9’s “The Visitor”

We’re not sure at first what century we’re in. Rain falls at night on the windows of a warm, cozy home. The score is gentle, haunting and ineffably sad. The camera pans in close up across a desk, past clearly personal objects: an African sculpture, a small framed photo of Ben and Jake Sisko together, and an old man’s hand gently clasps what we recognise as Ben’s baseball. Already, we’re in a space, an inner experience, of deep loss and sadness. These few moments immediately set the episode’s tone of grief in a way that is virtually unique in Star Trek.

“The Visitor” is, for me as for many others, a deeply personal episode to write about. In a way, I’m not sure why, because I’ve not yet experienced a major bereavement - though I have had big losses, and maybe that makes the episode even more universal, as almost everyone suffers those. “The Visitor” is written by Michael Taylor, then new to DS9’s writing team but going on to write other impressive and moving episodes, including a fair number for Ronald D Moore’s magnificent reimagining of Battlestar Galactica. (Of those, “Unfinished Business” stands out for me. Curiously, it similarly keeps flashing back to the past and ends with a deeply felt embrace and an affirmation of two people’s love, just like “The Visitor” does.)

The difficulty of writing about an episode like this one is putting my thoughts into words. “The Visitor” already expresses so beautifully what it wants to say, in large part through metaphor and also the performances, the direction, the score, the whole production. It’s a short film, a short story, a poem and a piece of music. Attempting to “analyse” it therefore runs the risk of trivialising it. So I wouldn’t blame anyone who loves this episode from steering clear of my piece altogether. I’m aware that anything I say can barely approximate what “The Visitor” is “saying”; the extent to which so many of us are deeply moved by it shows that we get it, even if we can’t (adequately) put it into words.

Still, I try to write about what I love, or at least attempt to find positives in things I like less. And the more I love a story, the more I tend to think about it. And if it’s Star Trek, I want to share those thoughts with my friends in the fan community. So I’ll try, but really I’m just affirming what I think is already there, in the episode. Because I love it.

Though very intimate, the story has huge implications for DS9’s mythology, and (typically for the series) some very grey ethical considerations. The title itself is ambiguous. For there are two visitors in this story: Ben Sisko, who is trapped in subspace but appears to Jake at brief intervals through his son’s life; and Melanie, a lover of Jake’s writing and an aspiring writer herself, who turns up at Jake’s house ostensibly seeking shelter from the rain. Melanie is a one-off character of course, but a uniquely memorable one. If Jake hadn’t changed the timeline at the end, I’m certain he would never have forgotten her.

Melanie may be soaking wet when she arrives, but the performance by Rachel Robinson is radiant. She captures the hero worship of a wide-eyed fan perfectly, but as Jake tells his story she becomes something more. She listens attentively, hangs on every word, and is full of empathy and kindness. The warm light in Jake’s room emphasises this, picking out her orange sweater and blonde hair. Melanie is almost naively open and trusting; she feels utterly safe with Jake, and she wants to hear his story with as much attention as she read his work. Even so, had she arrived on any other night, Jake says he wouldn’t have agreed to her request. This is his last and only chance to tell someone his life’s story, before it is lost forever.

Jake’s life was forever changed not just by his father’s apparent death, but by the fact that he’s still alive and keeps returning to Jake for moments that are all too brief. Each time this happens, it breaks Jake’s heart once again, finally leading him to give up writing to focus on the scientific problem of how to get his father back. His obsession leads to him losing his wife. On a recent episode of Snap Trek (one of my favourite podcasts!) Jenn Tifft made the point that Sisko’s returns are a perfect metaphor for grieving. Jake finds it impossible to live with grief because his father is trapped and keeps returning, reminding Jake of his absence. In real life, the problem of bereavement is the struggle to move on; the bereaved can’t escape the loss of the loved one. Sometimes this can even be a comfort, when people sense that the beloved is always with them, watching over them in some way. But not for Jake.

Jake goes so far with this that he’s ultimately willing to change the timeline, to save his father and his younger self. Jake’s apparently wasted life as well as his success in altering the fates of countless people (in retrospect, only we can imagine the scale of this), has led some to describe “The Visitor” as a tragedy. Perhaps it is, even though we know that for the sake of the story Jake has to succeed. It’s certainly heartbreaking, although each time I watch it the feeling I’m left with is mostly of warmth and love. But it’s love of such intensity that it’s almost frightening. (Future Odo also changes the timeline for his and Kira’s sake in “Children of Time”, and the horrified Kira cries, “and that [his love] makes it right?!”) The consequences of Jake’s actions are impossible to measure.

They do, however, have the (for me) heartbreaking effect of wiping from existence the events we’ve spent the whole episode being so moved by - including Jake’s beautiful encounter with Melanie. What happens to Melanie after Jake alters the timeline? Is she even born? And when, unforgettably, she kisses Jake goodbye, does she realise that that’s a possibility? Somehow, I hope she does, because it would mean that having seen the depth of Jake’s grief, she accepts it. This would be love and compassion to the nth degree.

But it also renders Jake’s lovely parting words with Melanie (almost) meaningless. For neither he or she will ever remember them. For me, this is the most painful implication of the story. It’s almost as if he is knowingly cheating her. Is this a flaw in the episode’s writing? I honestly don’t know, because Michael Taylor is a wonderful writer, and I’m not. Perhaps it’s just another of those deep ambiguities so typical of DS9, which keep you thinking long after the episode is finished. You can keep mulling it over and over, and never come to a definite conclusion.

Certainly, the consequences of Jake’s actions reflect a classic, frequently recurring dilemma in Star Trek. Usually, Star Trek leaves the distinct impression that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. I have this feeling even in episodes which severely test or question the famous Vulcan maxim, such as “Damage” or “In the Pale Moonlight”. But in the third Star Trek film, Kirk’s love for Spock leads him to insist that the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. And in “The Visitor”, Jake appears to believe the same. 

Normally I would be horrified by the consequences this leads to. How many people’s lives are changed, how many die, because Jake changes the timeline? What right does he have to do this? Yet my response to the ending is always ambivalent. I feel loss, knowing that the future has been changed, yet also warmth and gratitude because Ben and the teenage Jake are both saved. And we know that the story has to be resolved, and the only way to resolve it is to sweep it away, as if it had never happened. 

I can’t remember how I felt when I saw this episode the first time. But surely, knowing the end of the series’ epic story does change how we feel about it. For Sisko has a destiny, one which will lead to many deaths but also potentially save trillions of lives (considering what we later learn of the Pagh Wraiths’ intentions). The Prophets know that destiny; existing outside linear time, they’ve “already” seen it. So it has to happen, but Ben is incapable of fulfilling that destiny until Jake snaps the cord.

And Sisko remembers. Like Picard at the end of “All Good Things…”, he’s the only one who does, and the implications of that must be huge for his relationship with Jake. He knows, to an extent that he couldn’t have done before, just how much his son loves him… and needs him. It also shows that although the future timeline is wiped from existence, it did still exist. Because otherwise, as T’Pol comments at the end of Enterprise’s “E2”, “why would we remember them?”

I love Star Trek when it asks profound human or even metaphysical questions and them leaves them unanswered. Is Data human after all, and what does “human” mean anyway? Did Picard really die, and is he still “human” afterwards? Are Moriarty, the Doctor, and Vic Fontaine truly sentient, and if they are, how did they become so? How can a hologram gaze at Nog with such compassion and then answer with such deep human understanding, so that I don’t believe him when he claims he’s “as hollow as a snare drum”?

And who is Melanie? On the one hand, she’s a wonderful narrative “device”: the creation of a storyteller writing about a storyteller who is literally telling her the story of his life. But I sometimes have an uncanny feeling about her, almost as if she’s a kind of angelic visitor (maybe without knowing it, like Kara in Battlestar Galactica). I’m not suggesting that she’s literally one of the Prophets, come to guide and comfort Jake, letting him experience a tiny piece of life and connection in his last hours. It’s just a feeling, and despite her radiant attention she remains a real and relatively inexperienced human being. She’s a true character, not a god. Perhaps it’s just another aspect of the story that remains mysterious - part of what makes it so uniquely and complexly moving.

At its core, however, the episode is gently but insistently suggesting something else to us. It almost contradicts the story’s implication that Jake “has to” change the timeline, both to show us the depth of his love for his father and to fulfil the destiny story that the rest of DS9’s mythology tells. And I think it’s the main reason why this episode affects me so personally, and makes me feel a little sadder each time I see it. This theme is that of the “unlived life”.

……………………………………………………………..

At the beginning of old Jake’s story to Melanie, teenage Jake is struggling, endlessly reworking a short story. Decades later, having eventually learned to live with his father’s loss, he’s a successful writer working tirelessly on a new novel; but his wife still has to remind him of her presence in his life. But then his father reappears briefly, retriggering Jake’s trauma, and after learning the reason for these visitations Jake gives up writing and begins to study subspace mechanics, searching obsessively for a way to free his father. This obsession leads to separation from his wife; he’s not paying attention to the life and people surrounding him. After failing to bring Ben back and knowing that he won’t return for many years, he eventually returns to writing. But only because he knows that there is a way after all, but that it won’t be possible until he’s an old man, coinciding with Ben’s next visitation.

The theme rings clearly through the layers of moral greyness, imaginary future science, metaphysical ambiguity, moments of connection with others, and even the ever present sense of grief and loss (expressed so movingly by the actors, especially Tony Todd and Cirroc Lofton as Jake). It’s there in the dialogue, repeatedly through the episode - such as when Jake first sits down with Melanie after bringing her tea: 

“There's only one first time for everything, isn't there? And only one last time too. You think about such things when you get to be my age; that today may be the last time you sit in your favorite chair, or watch the rain fall, or enjoy a cup of tea by a warm fire.”

It’s there, heartbreakingly, when Jake meets his father in subspace: 

“I'm proud of what you've accomplished.”

“None of it matters - now that I know that you're out there lost somewhere.”

“Of course it matters. You have a wife; a career. And don't think because I'm not around much, that I... don't want grandchildren!”

And it’s spoken most clearly twice, first by Sisko to his teenage son on the Defiant and then echoed many years later by Jake as he says goodbye to Melanie: 

“I... want you to promise me something.”

“Anything!”

“While you're studying my stories, poke your head up every once in a while. Take a look around. See what's going on. It's life, Melanie.”

“And you can miss it if you don't open your eyes.”

It’s a tragedy after all, at least on one level. Jake has wasted his life, and he has to wipe the timeline from existence to restore what might have been. In science fiction this is possible, but in real life? We only get one chance. And this is what makes me grieve after seeing this episode. I really take Jake’s final advice to heart, every time. Maybe especially this time.

So here’s a brief story of my own - not with the intention to self pity, but because “The Visitor” has an exceptionally personal resonance for me. I spent much of my adult life drifting, never sure of myself in any way, whether in relationships or work. After several years of finding happiness and fulfilment in my mid thirties, I was struck by a chronic illness which I still have, seventeen years later. It hasn’t all been bad; my partner and I have had some good experiences together, within limits imposed by my health. There have also been some very bad times, physically and mentally - but no worse than those experienced by many millions of other people.

I am aware though, that there’s an unlived life. In science fictional terms, a timeline that might have been if I hadn’t become chronically ill. I don’t believe that I’ve ever truly grieved for this, or moved on from it. I’ve learned to live with it, manage it, but also to avoid and distract myself from it. I can always find things that I love: music, reading, the internet… The imaginary future of Star Trek. And in the past few years, for complex reasons that have been exacerbated (as for so many other people) by the Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve been living even less than I was five or ten years ago.

For this reason, “The Visitor” affects me more deeply with the passing years - and it feels sadder than it used to. I haven’t yet lost my dad, or my mum, or anyone truly close to me through bereavement - though that very nearly changed seven years ago when my partner almost died in ICU. But all of us have lost something, and for me, the biggest and deepest one is the unlived life.

I know this is something I have to deal with, and having just watched “The Visitor” again I’m determined to work on it. Jake’s advice to Melanie can act as a wake up call, just as other episodes of Star Trek have helped others in profound ways, sometimes even literally saving lives. Chronic illness always means baby steps, but enough baby steps add up to something. Even ten minutes on the front steps of my house, catching the evening sun, is not nothing. And while the pandemic currently complicates things, three years ago my partner and I were in the Italian Alps! (I’ve been in love with mountains for decades now.)

But… the sadness is there - and in one of Star Trek’s greatest episodes too. In the end, “The Visitor”’s deceptively simple and intimate story hides a wealth of complexity in plain sight. And part of that complexity, along with its moral greyness and almost metaphysical questions, lies in its contradictions. It has a happy ending, and yet an indescribably sad one. It’s a tragedy, yet it leaves you with a unique sense of love, loss, warmth and human connection. It’s not a story that could be told in realist fiction, because it couldn’t be possible in our real world. But as the kind of story that Kim Stanley Robinson calls “fantastika”, it can act as a mirror for the contradictions and complexities at the heart of human life and sentient existence. In this story, a bereaved teenager can, many decades later, bring his father back to life, both wasting his life and at the same time recreating what could have been. 

“Jake - you didn't have to do this. Not for me.”

“For you, and for the boy that I was. He needs you, more than you know. Don't you see? We're going to get a second... chance.”

Only in science fiction!

“To Quiet all Pain and Strife”: Thoughts on “Nepenthe”

“Helen, daughter of Zeus, took other counsel. Straightway she cast into the wine of which they were drinking a drug to quiet all pain and strife, and bring forgetfulness of every ill. Whoso should drink this down, when it is mingled in the bowl, would not in the course of that day let a tear fall down over his cheeks, no, not though his mother and father should lie there dead, or though before his face men should slay with the sword his brother or dear son, and his own eyes beheld it.”

Homer, The Odyssey

Even for Star Trek: Picard, “Nepenthe” is an amazing episode. Written by Samantha Humphrey and the show runner Michael Chabon, it is so beautiful, so emotional, so rich and subtle and layered, that for a long time I wasn’t sure how to write about it. Watching it again very recently, I was filled with so many thoughts, and so aware of myriad layers & connections, that I’m glad I’d already written down many of them in the year that I’ve been thinking about the episode. Like Picard Season 1 as a whole, it benefits from rewatches, because with its unhurried pace it contains so much. It’s a joy to see the actors given such a gift, and playing their hearts out on screen. The performances by Stewart, Sirtis, Frakes, Briones and the young Lulu Wilson as Kestra, are a deep, natural, joyous delight. And, as with some other episodes in the season, things that seemed jarring or out of place on a first watch now seem smoothed out, to find their place in the whole. 

At this point in the season’s narrative, which reached an almost unbearable pitch of tension at the end of the previous episode, we as viewers need a point of rest - for Picard and Soji, anyway. And on the planet Nepenthe, they find it! All is not perfectly calm and resolved here; as Deanna says, Soji is traumatised. But it gives them both a chance to catch their breath, be surrounded by love and trust, and gain a sense of stability. And for us as viewers, thrown into a series that’s very different from the TNG of three decades ago, that stability comes partly from the sudden sense of familiarity. There’s nostalgia here (in the best sense), a nostalgia achieved partly by harking back to a specific TNG episode. And it’s beautiful. 

This is one of the most immediately striking things about “Nepenthe” - that it’s a clear riff on “Family”, in which Picard returned to Earth and his family home to recover from the trauma of his assimilation by the Borg. That was in itself a nostalgic episode, of course; the Picard vineyard represented an older, simpler, less dangerous way of life, the scene of Picard’s childhood. And that same vineyard is where we found him at the beginning of this new series - except that he couldn’t find true peace there, not permanently. Picard belongs in space, with a mission. But in “Nepenthe” he finds a blessed moment of calm with Will and Deanna, part of his “found family” and the only one he was ever really happy with.

Here are some of the episode’s parallels and references to “Family”, some of them so specific that it can’t be coincidental.

Picard goes to a rural, safe place after escaping from a Borg cube, and is immediately accosted by a beautiful blonde child. In “Family” he raises his hands and says, “oh good lord, a highwayman!” Nepenthe is just a little darker; after he and Soji raise their hands Picard asks, “are we safe here, Kestra?”

Picard and the child walk along a quiet country path. In “Nepenthe” it’s actually Kestra and Soji who walk together, while Picard hangs back a little. Again, the mood and conversation are more serious this time.

The child runs ahead and calls to their parents that Picard has arrived. In both cases, it’s the mother who is first to greet Picard. (Especially in the context of this season, Marina Sirtis’ wonderful acting here is indescribably moving.)

Both episodes are preoccupied with food and drink! - in both the A and B stories. In both episodes, the food on the planet is home-grown, home-cooked, “real”, while the food on the ship is replicated. Soji bites into her first real tomato, while Auntie Raffi (who takes the place of Guinan here) makes the red velvet layer cake materialise as if in a transporter beam.

A family dinner scene, and a later one where Picard drinks wine with the father/husband. Although not completely free of tension, both of the Nepenthe scenes are far less awkward, far warmer than their counterparts in “Family”, because Picard is with his true, found family rather than his family of origin.

A big, deeply felt embrace at the end, followed by a leave taking. Picard feels more at peace, with a renewed sense of confidence and direction.

These parallels and call backs are very moving; as with other stories in the new era of Star Trek, both episodes somehow enhance each other. But what of the deeper themes of the episode? “Family” explores some darker undercurrents beneath the idyll, but “Nepenthe” goes further, and the “B” and “C” stories are remarkably more troubled than the earlier episode’s. So much so that they stand in an uncomfortable contrast to the beautiful scenes on the planet. The La Sirena story is more troubled than the planet bound one, while the scenes on the Artifact are violent and upsetting. Hugh sees his own found family massacred by Narissa, before we (who care about Hugh as another legacy character) see him murdered in his turn. This was a development that upset many fans, and it’s such a sharp, unexpected contrast that for a long time I too saw it as an unnecessary blot on an otherwise perfect episode. Why Hugh? Why this character we had really only just got to know, yet already come to love? It all felt a bit senseless.

Now I’m not so sure. Beneath the episode’s sharp contrasts, there are deep underlying themes common to all the three stories. Like “Family” but even more so, “Nepenthe” is not the perfect idyll it may superficially seem, even down on the planet. The clue is in the title, after all. Nepenthe is a drink or potion mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, with the power to make one forget sorrow. And despite the abundance of love and trust between the three main legacy characters, there is plenty of sorrow in this wonderful but far from carefree episode. Perhaps more than anything else, “Nepenthe” is an episode about grief and the assuaging of grief.

One of the main themes of Picard Season 1 is that of grieving, remembrance and learning to live with loss, not through anaesthetising or dissociating but through openness, trust and connection with others. This applies both in the wider political story and on the deeply personal level experienced primarily by Picard, but also the rest of the crew of La Sirena, all semi-broken in their different ways. Each learns this lesson gradually, and in the episode that follows “Nepenthe”, the broken pieces of the story and the crew finally come together. La Sirena starts to become a classic Star Trek “found family”. So it’s appropriate that a turning point in the season comes when Picard returns to a part of his own found family, Deanna and Will. The Troi-Rikers are not immune to grief and have not escaped it, but they can cope with it and at the same time love the life they have together, because they love and trust each other.

The sense of stability that this brings is expressed in part by the season’s recurring theme of home and homeworlds. The Romulan people have lost their homeworld, destroyed by the supernova, and now live as barely tolerated refugees. The XBs were wrenched away from their homes the moment they were assimilated, and are feared and hated outcasts. Soji and Dahj both came to the horrified realisation that their “homes” were pure illusion, and Soji is now trying to find her true homeworld before the Zhat Vash do. Picard returned “home” fourteen years ago, but ironically never felt at home there, because he’d always looked to the stars and besides, didn’t feel at home in himself. And Thaddeus Troi-Riker, who grew up on a starship, was fascinated by the idea of homeworlds and created imaginary ones, with maps and invented languages that he shared with his sister. (This is very moving and, if I may say so, typically Michael Chabon!) Even now, years after Thad’s death, Kestra plays out some of those stories on what has become her own homeworld, the idyllic planet of Nepenthe. Riker may be on active reserve with Starfleet, but he and Deanna have chosen to remain on Nepenthe, providing a sense of peace, beauty and stability for their daughter to grow up in.

The crew of La Sirena have no such home, and very little stability, but “Nepenthe” is a turning point for them as well as Picard and Soji. Although Raffi’s attempts to soothe Agnes are ultimately ineffective (and very Raffi, in that she’s using food as a drug), her motherliness shows the beginnings of a sense of family on the ship. And Agnes’ response, though drastic, shows that this growing feeling (still mixed with some distrust on Rios’ part) is affecting her in positive ways. Exhausted by her constant deception, her inability to be her own self with people who care about her, Agnes finally decides to trust the others and get rid of the viridium tracker in her body. So, for a brief while, cake may have seemed to be the answer (the drug that induces forgetfulness), but love does manage to get through. And things begin to change.

Agnes may now be in a coma, but in the following episode she awakes, and shares her grief, fear and guilt with Picard. Yes, grief is an overwhelming part of her experience too. The planet she saw in the Admonition, the tumult of traumatic images she received through Oh’s mind meld, is Aia, the Grief World. This we see in the cold open of “Nepenthe”, though we only learn its name later. Agnes is living a grief that no one can truly comprehend, the loss of all organic sentient life, partly (she believes) through her own role in helping to create synthetic life. This burden is overwhelming, and she cannot bear it anymore. So she takes a decision that may kill her (which would be one form of escape, the ultimate anaesthetic), but ultimately allows her to share her burden with her found family. Picard, Raffi, Rios and Elnor- the only family she appears to have.

This is consistent with another theme of the episode, the question of “real versus unreal”. Agnes has been living a whopping great lie since she arrived on board: her true reason for being there, her murder of Bruce Maddox, her reluctant mission to end synthetic life, not save it. It’s her growing sense of trust and connectedness with her found family that allows her to stop lying and reveal the truth. Lying and deception are a huge theme of the season, on both political and personal levels, and they are based ultimately on fear of annihilation. But as Picard says to Rios at the end of “Broken Pieces”, “They may be right about what happened 200,000 years ago. The past is written, but the future is left for us to write, and we have powerful tools, Rios: openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity. All they have is secrecy, and fear, and fear is the great destroyer, Rios.” , “They may be right about what happened 200,000 years And so, Agnes gives up deception and is “real” for the first time. Her found family, however flawed and as yet half-formed, allows her to do this.

Similarly on Nepenthe itself. Soji has also been living a lie, without knowing it this time; everything she remembers of her life has been implanted false memories. She’s not even human; Narek told her she wasn’t “real”. Again, the grief such a sense of loss must bring is something we can’t completely comprehend, since it can only happen in science fiction (although it’s also a metaphor for the gaslighting, othering and dehumanisation in our real world). Soji now questions reality itself, since anything she experiences may be just another illusion. “Just get on with the mind games”, she tells Picard bitterly. As Deanna chides Picard with unforgettable emphasis, “her capacity for trust was a flaw in her programming.”

Fortunately, Soji has now fallen in with people who know all about what’s “real”. It’s not just the delicious tomatoes, the home-cooked pizza, the basil that “grows like weeds” in the planet’s regenerative soil. Riker and Troi knew Data, the android who wanted to be human. And they loved him, clearly. Kestra, who was born after Data’s death, is fascinated by him, not just his extraordinary abilities but also that “all he ever really wanted to do was have dreams and tell jokes and learn how to ballroom dance.” Kestra can only know these things because her parents told her so many stories about Data - which shows how deeply they knew and loved him. Riker even recognises Soji as somehow “related” to Data, simply by her curious head tilt (a wonderful moment by Briones!) Data, whose memory has haunted Picard for twenty years, is very present in this episode, as indeed is his daughter Lal, who was in a sense the half sister of Dahj and Soji. 

Riker and Troi know that Data was real, even if he wasn’t biologically human. His self awareness, his selflessness, his desire to procreate and to make art, to contribute to society, his capacity to mourn dead friends (in his way), to love and be loved, are what made him a real person. This is the constant background “message” of Picard Season 1, and arguably of Star Trek as a whole: that we are all of equal value (“everybody’s human”, as Kirk goodnaturedly insults Spock by saying). You can be a Romulan, a human, an ex-Borg or a “synth”, and it doesn’t matter either way. We’re all real. “Romulan lives”, comments the unconsciously racist reporter. “No, lives!” insists Picard, his moral compass undamaged even by the mistakes and traumata of the past fifteen years.

In “Dark Page”, another TNG episode recalled by “Nepenthe”, Deanna had tried to help her mother uncover true memories, in order to save her life. Now, she helps Soji to deal with the fact that her memories are false, so that she can start a new life. And to know that regardless of whether she was made or born, she’s still real and her life is real too. This pure Star Trek idea is taken to its ultimate conclusion in the season finale, when Picard is briefly reunited with his friend Data, then has his own consciousness downloaded into a synthetic body, while remaining absolutely himself in every way. Picard is still Picard. Data was human. Picard is an android. Both of them as real as anyone, any life, can be!

The abundance of love and trust on Nepenthe (even the slightly cranky-sounding Captain Crandall is trusted as Kestra’s friend!) is what allows Deanna, Will and Kestra to live happy lives, despite their shared sorrow. Grief is far from absent on Nepenthe - though it might be forgotten for a little while, in the presence of nature, laughter, family. And it can’t be banished by red velvet layer cake and bunnicorn pizza alone! But love, trust, and openness, a connection with those we most love, can make it bearable. For me, the defining image of “Nepenthe”, the one that comes immediately to mind when I think of the episode, is the one at the head of this article. Love soothes all pain, even if it can’t actually cure it.

So grief and sorrow remain. And recognising that, the upsetting scenes on the Artifact - Hugh’s death included - now make sense to me. Why does Hugh’s murder upset us so much more than that of a character we’ve never met? Precisely because we know him and care about him. (“Or though before his face men should slay with the sword his brother or dear son…”) Why is the murder of his fellow XBs so distressing to watch? Because we see Hugh’s traumatised, distressed, grief stricken reaction - so we feel his grief. It was no different for the Troi-Rikers when Thad died; he was their family, so they grieved for him. Where there’s love there’s potential grief; it runs the risk, even the likelihood, of sorrow. Grief is the price of living, just as death is. The question both asked and answered in “Nepenthe” is, how do we deal with this?

In the fourteen years leading up to “Remembrance”, Picard had tried to escape from painful regrets by retreating to rural France, dissociating from his feelings, his friends and from his long, fulfilling former life in Starfleet. But as he recognised in that first episode, “I haven’t been living. I’ve been waiting to die.” Recognising this is Picard’s first step towards a new life. He has to face and admit to other regrets as the season progresses, including the cost of his withdrawal on Raffi, Elnor and the Romulan refugees. But his epiphany in “Remembrance” is the start of his adventure.

In “Dark Page”, Lwaxana Troi had tried to bury grief, by repressing all memory of her deceased daughter Kestra - but the psychological pressure of forcing such a traumatic event out of her consciousness was killing her - until Deanna helped her to face it and ultimately celebrate Kestra’s life. Now a bereaved mother herself, Deanna has one child dead and one child living, just like her mother. But unlike Lwaxana, she allows herself to feel the grief, however painful. She knows that with the help of her husband and daughter, their shared grief and love, she can live with it and celebrate Thad’s remarkable life. Just as she’d celebrated her sister’s life by naming her own daughter after her.

And so… Deanna and Will lose their son, and Kestra loses her brother. Hugh loses his found family, and then his own life, and we as viewers with our own feelings lose Hugh. Agnes and Soji lose their sense of reality; everything they’d thought was real is wrenched away from them, leaving no sure ground to stand on. Loss, grief, death, sorrow… all these things are an inevitable part of life. How do we live with that? With fear and distrust? By hiding from the world and our friends, our “family”, as Picard was doing in “Remembrance”?

It’s a testament to the writing, direction and intensely warm and “real” performances that despite the grief and occasional horror in this episode, most people’s dominant impression seems to be of love and beauty and warmth. “Nepenthe” is like a soft warm blanket to snuggle up in. And perhaps, after all, love and trust *is* the drug that brings forgetfulness of sorrow. Deanna tells Picard that Kestra’s ache for Thad is gradually fading, and Kestra tells Soji that a bad thing happened to her but her parents helped her through it. We can accept mortality, however painful, and still enjoy the life that we have while we have it - because we have each other.

To quote “The Faerie Queene”, written by Edmund Spenser in 1596:

Nepenthe is a drink of sovereign Grace,

Devised by the Gods, for to assuage

Heart's grief, 

                      and bitter gall away to chase,

Which stirs up anguish and contentious rage:

Instead thereof, sweet peace and quiet age

It doth establish in the troubled mind.

Few men, but such as sober are and sage,

Are by the Gods to drink thereof assigned;

But such as drink, eternal happiness do find.

And in his own way, perhaps Data says it too, right at the end of this first season of Picard, when he meets his friend and former captain in the quantum simulation and asks him to terminate his consciousness:

“I want to live, however briefly, knowing that my life is finite. Mortality gives meaning to human life, Captain. Peace, love, friendship, these are precious, because we know they cannot endure.”

As so often in Star Trek, Data is as wise and human and real as anyone!

Ragtime and Pretending in Picard

Picard and Seven: two levels of "pretending" in Stardust City

"Stardust City Rag". What a wonderful title! Considering this and the episode's setting, I used to wonder if it was a David Bowie reference (see "The Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud"), a thought confirmed by Michael Chabon's "Some Notes on Freecloud". As for the "rag" part, I looked that up and was reminded that the signature trait of ragtime music is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm" - a "placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur". Which describes the episode perfectly! "Stardust City Rag" is known for its unusual juxtapositions of tone and style, something which is undeniably disconcerting, and seems to have left some critics just as much at sea as poor Elnor, who is a perfectly congruent being in an ocean of incongruence!

These tonal shifts give the episode its characteristic feeling of unease. Beginning with the most shocking cold open in all of Star Trek (the brutal torture and death of a beloved Voyager character), it juxtaposes the Picard equivalent of a holodeck romp with scenes of emotional heartbreak and more murder. Also, an editing technique used before in the series, that of cutting back and forth between one scene and another that takes place some time later. In this case it's simultaneously fun (except when it isn't) and disorienting. We can't relax into the holodeck romp because Icheb's horrific vivisection haunts us and we never know what to expect next. Whatever happens might be equally traumatising.

 "But you like it enough to keep it!" Seven sees through Picard's statement that his anachronous holo-office wasn't his idea.

Nothing else is as horror film as that, though. But the effect of all these weird contrasts and juxtapositions is very jarring, especially on a first viewing, and I think it's meant to be. It's the most brutal episode of Season 1, physically and emotionally, and the "syncopation" is brutal too in its way. The scene where Raffi visits her son (ironically, at a maternity clinic) is a devastating contrast to the high jinks in the casino. And it's another odd juxtaposition, because it doesn't seem at first to have anything to do with the rest of the episode. What's the scene doing here? It has to be more than Raffi simply needing a reason to hitch a ride on La Sirena with Picard and Rios.

The two main themes of the episode are these:

1) Deceit (what Elnor calls "pretending").

2) Characters hurting people they were once close to.

Almost every scene expresses one or both of these themes - the unity beneath all the jarring contrasts. The deceit is lighthearted on the surface, when the crew play dress up to trick Bjayzl, but it's a high risk game; they're deceiving people who could kill them if it all goes wrong. They're also deceiving each other. Seven deceives them first about her real motive for confronting Bjayzl, then let's Picard think that she only wants two phasers because they might come in handy. Agnes has been deceiving them all since the mission began. And Raffi tries to convince her son Gabe that she's clean now, "doing well" and rebuilding her life - when we know, and can plainly see, that she isn't.

As for the second theme: Seven mercy kills Icheb, who she loves like her own son, and then later shows no mercy to Bjayzl (where the subtext is that they once had a sexual/romantic relationship). Agnes kills, heartbreakingly, the man she loves, because she believes she has no other choice. And Gabe (the theme of parenthood also permeates this episode; even Bruce Maddox is much older than his former lover Agnes) metaphorically sticks the knife into his mother, with a viciousness which comes from his own pain but is no less distressing to see. Michelle Hurd's acting in this moment is unforgettable. Raffi says nothing in response to Gabe's cruel words, but she feels it in her body, and you can see the precise moment that the knife sinks in. Again, more syncopation: Picard's awful over-acting in the casino (and Elnor's touching inability to even try to act) is contrasted with the fact that Seven and Agnes are acting all too well. And the actors themselves give absolute tour de forces, especially Alison Pill and Michelle Hurd. It needs to be this way because the episode is only "pretending" to be a holodeck romp. Underneath the quirky surface it's as serious as the season gets - a season which I think is the most original in all of Star Trek.

Raffi's emotional wounding.

Another reason for the Raffi scene is that like the season itself, this is the point where she reaches her lowest ebb. The worst thing has happened to her once her son has rejected her; all she can do now is follow Picard on his seemingly quixotic quest (which she shares his interest in, after all) and see where it takes her. In fact, at this point Raffi's emotional trajectory can only move upwards. Because having lost her blood family, Raffi (like the rest of the crew) begins to find a new family. It doesn't happen all at once, for any of them, but every starship crew in Star Trek is a "found family", and Season 1 of Picard is partly about how a dysfunctional group of broken people (as broken as the XBs, in their way) gradually find a sense of trust and belonging to each other. Three episodes after "Stardust City Rag", the broken pieces of the story and the crew finally come together.

This fifth episode of the series, however, is as dark as it gets, as is the deceit. For deceit isn't just a theme of the episode, but of the whole season - "lies upon lies", as Maddox tells Picard. Everything the Federation believes about synthetic life, about the Mars attack, maybe even the Romulan supernova itself (we shall see!) is based on a web of lies, which Raffi has long suspected and Picard now has a personal reason for uncovering. These layers of deception and distrust that are so characteristic of the Romulan power structure are cleverly juxtaposed with their opposite: the absolute candour practised by the Qowat Milat. Elnor has spent his whole life with this group, so he instinctively expects the truth all the time and is disconcerted when he finds its opposite. And he'll never find more deceit than in this episode, where we don't know what's going on either, because the web of lies and confusion is at its thickest (even Elnor's friends are "pretending"). 

Perhaps that's another reason for the humour, the playfulness; without it, the episode would be simply too dark! The first time I saw it I was absolutely wracked by the ending, which in its own way was as shocking as the cold open. The horror of Maddox's death, and the emotional agony of his murderer, the heartbreaking acting of Alison Pill, was just devastating. Here, exactly halfway through the season, the story reaches its lowest, deepest, darkest point; Season 1 forms a perfect (upside down) arch. I don't think it's coincidental that of all the places the story visits, Freecloud is the furthest from the Federation's utopian values. And there'll be more pain, loss and heartbreak ahead, but from here on the story begins its gradual climb back into the light, and to healing for all the characters we've come to love in such a short time.

The darkest point in the season.