Synopsis: Retired Admiral Picard and Dr. Asha arrive on Nepenthe.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what James Hillman called the metaxy.
In “Nepenthe” Retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard and Dr. Soji Asha arrive on Nepenthe, a planet known for its rejuvenating powers and the home to former Starfleet officers, Captain William T. Riker and Commander Deanna Troi. The two moved their family there when their son, Thaddeus, came down with an illness that once would have been easily cured but because of the ban on synthetic life, including the positronic matrix that would have saved his, were unavailable. They had hoped he might have regained his health. He did not, and his sister, Kestra, is now the couple’s only living child. Kestra immediately befriends Asha, and convinces her to trust Picard. When the crew of the La Sirena rendezvous with them, Picard learns that Dr. Agnes Jurati has injected herself with a neurotoxin when she realizes that the Romulan spy known as Narek is following their vessel through a tracking device placed in her.
In this episode, the title “Nepenthe” references a potion that in ancient times was given to an individual to help one forget pain or sorrow. And while it is Jurati who ingests a neurotoxin, it seems an appropriate name for a place to heal the memory of a loss, such as that suffered by the Troi-Riker family. The planet, isolated and shielded from the Romulans yet out of range of the La Sirena, can also be compared to the metaxy; a theoretical space that Hillman located outside of the conscious ego and the unconscious, but somewhere where they both could exist and where psychic healing could begin.
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