Star Trek Picard: Episode 6: The Impossible Box
The supporting characters, led by Michelle Hurd’s Raffi, are slowly but surely taking over Star Trek: Picard (STP). And, with Episode 6, “The Impossible Box”, STP is back on track.
Episode 6 is a moody, deliberately paced psycho-drama that packs a last-minute punch and, more importantly, continues the development of Rios, Jurati and Raffi, taking each of them in directions that are sometimes expected and sometimes complete surprises.
Let’s start with Jurati, played by Canadian Alison Pill. “I have a super power,” she tells Rios after a sexual relationship suddenly ignites between them. “I can sense mistakes while I’m making them.” The super power didn’t engage while she was torturing her old friend and lover Maddox to death but it does interrupt her encounter with the handsome captain.
It’s a quirky little scene, completely out of the blue, and rendered even more distasteful since, not so very long before, Jurati had murdered Maddox. And it gives us a lovely moment when Rios asks Jurati how she is feeling and she replies, with a gentle piano playing in the background, “Hollow… hopeless… lonely… afraid.”
Hollow… hopeless… lonely… afraid. An accurate description of how so many of the characters in STP feel: Picard, Raffi, Jurati, Soji and perhaps several others. Each is an impossible box at this point.
The scene where Jurati rhymes off the horrifying details of Picard’s assimilation from TNG suggests to me that the good doctor is also a synth but that is still to be seen.
Despite the enigma that is Jurati, Raffi is starting to steal the show. She’s falling to pieces (planning on drinking herself to death, as she puts it) and yet shows a remarkable ability to pull herself together when it’s really needed. Michelle Hurd’s performance is wonderful – that extended scene of her negotiation with her colleague at Star Fleet is a tour de force of emotions, brought to a moving close by the look of devastation that spreads over her face as her friend tells her never to call her again.
There follow several scenes between Raffi and Rios, back in Raffi’s room, that help to deepen their relationship and reinforce the fact that each is suffering, each has tragedies in their past with which they still must deal.
What I’m not sure about is whether the writers/producers are aware of the fact that, as Raffi’s fragility is made more explicit, our impression of Jean Luc Picard suffers. She is a broken person, he was complicit in her demolition and now, here he is, asking for more, demanding more, apparently unaware of (or worse not caring about) the damage he continues to do to her.
I normally wouldn’t question the intentionality of this narrative strategy but I just can’t understand why the writers and producers would permit our image of Picard to suffer so significantly. And I watched in wonder as, after Picard trots a broken friend out to sacrifice herself for him yet again, Picard applauds her even as she collapses in upon herself. And the STP creative team injects a trumpet shot of the original TOS musical theme, a triumphant trumpet shot, into the scene as a satisfied Picard grins/grimaces over the success of Raffi’s sacrifice.
Is it possible the creative team actually believes we, the viewers, will continue to see Picard as admirable, heroic, even as he permits his supposedly dear friend get torn to pieces in support of his personal rescue mission?
Are there elements of sexism and racism in this? Is the creative team so used to seeing/portraying women sacrificing themselves for men, black people sacrificing themselves for whites, that they don’t even recognise how horrific their presentation of Jean Luc Picard is?
Or is this intentional?
“The Impossible Box” is told, once again, in the classic cross cutting style and I am impressed with the patience with which the creative team allows each side of the story develop. I am sure that some people will experience Episode 6 as moving too slowly. I, however, really enjoyed the time we spend watching Narek manipulate Soji into opening up to him throughout the episode and finally through the Zahl Makh; and I enjoyed watching Picard deal with the psychological and emotional impacts of his return to a Borg environment.
Yes, his struggles in STP bely his experiences in Star Trek: First Contact. Back then, Star Fleet calls Picard too unstable an element to permit him to take part in the battle against the Borg in the Terran system only to have him prove himself stronger and more capable of dealing with his Borg history than they gave him credit for.
But his struggles are particularly well evoked, both visually (that slow melding of Locutus on his computer screen and Picard in the present is particularly well done) and through Patrick Stewart’s acting. Stewart manages to present an interesting blend of strength and vulnerability – it can’t be easy considering much of his best acting is in response things that he, as an actor, cannot see (scenes from his past, special effects, etc.). As it develops, STP brings forward the plight of the former Borg and the possibility of “Picard fighting for a free Borg”.
I have to wonder about the contradiction between what Picard says about the Borg early in “The Impossible Box” -- “They coolly assimilate entire civilizations, entire systems, in a matter of hours. They don’t change; the metastasize” – and what he says about them to Hugh, after witnessing the reclamation work Hugh has been doing on individual former drones -- “You are showing what the Borg, are, underneath. They’re victims, not monsters”.
I expect we will see this contradiction play itself out in future episodes.
On the other side of the story, Harry Treadaway and Isa Briones are doing a nice job convincing us that Narek’s seduction of Soji is realistic and effective. I still have reservations about the decision to have seduction as the chosen method of cracking open the impossible box that is Soji (there are misogynist overtones to it, in my opinion) but Treadaway and Briones do an excellent job of making it real. And there’s a wonderful tympani roll that accompanies the moment when Soji says, “Narek, I’m scared,” and then his hand. Her trust in him is complete.
And there are some lovely lines – for example, “The key to opening [anything] is taking the time to understand what’s keeping it closed,” Narek tells his creepy sister.
All of this builds into a remarkably tense climax, an action-packed ending to an episode that moved along with almost stately grace. Narek has found the location of Soji’s “nest” (“Two red moons dark as blood, and lightning, so much lightning.”); Picard has rescued Soji and someone, a former Borg drone, sure, but who?, has recognised Picard as Locutus.
It’s a fantastic episode that brings phase one of STP to a thrilling end. And starts phase two with the promise of amazing things to come.
And it ends with the laugh out loud image of the blast door closing behind Elnor and Hugh, followed by the line, “Please, my friends, choose to live.”
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