Star Trek Picard: Every Easter Egg & Hidden Reference From 'Nepenthe'
Never Mind The Bunnicorns, Here's The Rikers...
Star Trek: Picard's seventh episode is here and it has all of the hugs.
"Nepenthe" sees Picard and Soji taking a pitstop on the planet Nepenthe, home to Will Riker and Deanna Troi, their daughter Kestra, and their pizza oven. As with any tearful reunion, there were numerous callbacks, references, and allusions to the past and this episode included some of the deepest cuts yet for a show so good at cutting deep.
This being Star Trek, there are some things happening with the Borg, Romulans, and space ships, but really, we're here for the gardening and sitting by the lake.
Let's take a leisurely gander at the comprehensive easter eggs and hidden references in "Nepenthe".
20. My Vom To Your Vom
"Nepenthe" begins with a standard Star Trek: Picard flashback, this time to the scene in which a sunglasses-sporting Commodore Oh recruits Agnes Jurati (see "The End is the Beginning") as she's listening to Doctor Hugh Culber's favorite music, Kasseelian opera (Star Trek: Discovery, "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad").
Unlike in "The End is the Beginning", the scene continues and we see Oh initiating a Vulcan mind meld to convince Jurati to help Starfleet Security (and the Zhat Vash) track down Soji and stop the Destroyer.
Vulcan mind melds are as iconic as the "live long and prosper" salute and date back to the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Dagger of the Mind". The trick was used in numerous episodes of the franchise from all of the individual series, last seen in the Star Trek: Discovery "If Memory Serves" (more on that in bit).
When she breaks their connection, Oh seems to have a shocked, pained reaction similar to Jurati's. Spock Prime explains to Kirk in Star Trek (2009) that emotional transference is a side effect of mind melds. This was also demonstrated when Spock mind melds with Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
"Nepenthe", however, is the first time we've seen someone vomit from a mind meld, but there's a lot of that in this episode.