I once read an interview by some well-regarded CEO. He claimed that one of the keys to his success was a position he created, an employee (whom he jokingly called his no-man) who would sit in at every meeting and receive briefings on all of the company’s new initiatives. This employee’s job was to carefully listen and review, and then come up with as many reasons as they could as to why the plan was the worst idea in the history of modern business. The "no-man" would voice these criticisms with no fear of retribution, and the CEO would only approve new initiatives if every single one of these concerns could be addressed.
Holy shit, I wish the producers that approved “The Child” had someone like this.
“The Child” is a strange animal. First, it’s not an original script. A writer’s strike between the production of the first and second season ended only days before the show had to start shooting, so in an effort to expedite the first episode, the producers pulled a script that had been written for Star Trek: Phase Two, an attempted reboot of the series that had never been aired. Unfortunately, they didn’t read the original script very closely, and instead, just gave the writers a loose summary: “Alien impregnates a female member of the crew; the resulting baby endangers the ship.” It’s a rushed, sloppy episode, but that’s not its biggest crime, and that’s not the reason I wish they’d had that no-man position. The problem is how wildly tone-deaf the episode actually is.
Before we get to the overarching plot of the episode, let’s take a moment to look at all the big changes between season 1 and season 2. Worf is wearing a gold security uniform, and has some impressive new facial hair. Riker’s sporting the beard that we all agree he should have had from the beginning. The musical chairs game that was the chief engineer position is over, and Geordi LaForge is now happily running the engine room. We have a new bartender (seriously), played by the fake nun from Sister Act (also seriously). But the biggest change is that Gates McFadden, who played Beverly Crusher, is gone, and replaced by Diana Muldaur as Katherine Pulaski.
I’ll get this out of the way first: I think Muldaur gets a bad rap as Pulaski. She’s a wildly unpopular character, and is fired at the end of the second season, replaced by the returning McFadden. But it’s important to realize that at the time they wrote and filmed this episode, the expectation was that Muldaur was going to be a permanent member of the cast. If she’d stayed, a lot of the problems that come up with the character could have become a positive, as Pulaski warmed to the crew, and slowly earned her place as part of the family. That never happened, so we just get the shrill asshole of a doctor that everyone has come to loathe.
Picard’s annoyed. His brand new doctor has arrived on board, but didn’t immediately report to him for duty. To make matters worse, when he asks the computer where she is, the computer calmly informs him that Pulaski is in Ten-Forward, the ship’s bar. Not the best first impression, and Picard immediately heads to set her straight and tell her how things work on the Enterprise. But before he can start tearing in on her, Pulaski calmly tells him to sit down with her and Deanna Troi, and explains that Troi got raped by Tinkerbell and is now pregnant with a super-fast growing baby.
Nope, not a typo.
The cold open of the show is a glowing ball of light, which looks remarkably similar to the form Tinkerbell takes before transforming into a fairy, appearing next to the ship. It passes through the hull, passes over a few sleeping crew members, and finds Troi. It then goes under her blankets, between her legs, and up inside her. It’s crude and disturbing, and I’ll admit that I reacted much more negatively to this scene as an adult than I did as a child. It’s not handled particularly well, and nothing that comes after justifies the scene.
If the initial impregnation of Troi is handled badly, that’s nothing compared to the following scene. The senior staff assembles in the conference room to discuss what’s to be done. Troi is sitting at the end of the table, and isn’t saying anything. Pulaski explains that at the rate the baby is growing, it will be born the next day. Riker gets super indignant and demands to know who the father is. Picard and Data debate what’s to be done while Troi sits silently. And, in one of the most uncomfortable moments I’ve had since I started rewatching this show, they debate whether or not to abort the pregnancy, all without actually asking Troi.
I mentioned my reaction to this episode being worse as an adult. Even with my limited experience in matters such as this, I find the idea of a bunch of men casually talking about forcing an abortion and demanding to know a woman’s sexual history repugnant. As a child, it seemed pretty abstract. As an adult, this scene is horrifying. Troi is marginalized, ignored, and debated over. She eventually insists that she’s keeping the baby, and Picard, to his credit, instantly ends the discussion, saying the decision has been made.
Sure enough, the next day, Troi gives birth to a bouncing baby boy. The birth is painless, which is strange, and Troi’s immediately in love with the child. By that evening, when Picard comes to congratulate her and meet the baby, he finds Troi in her quarters with what appears to be an eight-year-old boy. Pulaski insists that not only is Troi fine after the birth, but as far as she can tell, Troi shows no signs whatsoever of having ever given birth. However, before they can start trying to figure out why this kid is going to be forty by next Tuesday, shit goes sideways.
I haven’t mentioned the B-plot yet. There’s a plasma plague on some planet, killing lots of people. Starfleet Medical needs samples of this plague to work on a cure, and the Enterprise is going to transport these samples. If anything goes wrong, if even a single cell of the plague escapes the containment facility, everyone on board the ship will die within thirty minutes. Unfortunately, something on board (guess what) is causing one of the strains of plague to begin growing rapidly. If they can’t stop it, it’s going to breach containment. (Why not set up the containment unit inside a shuttlecraft and tow the damn thing? Why send the flagship, which has over a thousand men, women, and children on board, to carry a lethal pathogen that everyone seems to doubt can be effectively contained? Don’t you have cargo ships? Why doesn’t the Enterprise have HEPA filters? These are all good questions, but we have to get back to Miracle-Gro baby now, so no time.)
If you guessed that Troi’s kid (named Ian) is causing the problem, you’re right. So the senior staff assembles, and holds a discussion about how to address this problem that respects the rights of a life form - even if that life form violated a member of their crew - while simultaneously preserving the safety of the crew. Data comes up with a very effective isolation protocol, while Pulaski researches ways to prevent Ian from affecting the pathogen. Picard and Riker discuss the philosophical problem of whether Troi’s immediate infatuation with Ian is natural or forced, and how to respond to a life form that invades a crew member with no consent or consideration.
No, I’m just fucking with you. None of that shit happens. Ian kills himself, everything’s cool. Episode over.
Season 1 of this show had a LOT of problems. In most cases, it felt like the writers and directors had something they wanted to say, but were still remarkably clumsy and ineffectual with how they went about saying it. It makes episodes like “Justice” and “Symbiosis” a bit easier to accept, despite their many, MANY flaws. “The Child”, though? I don’t have a clue what they were going for. It’s a premise that is deeply screwed from the very beginning. It’s an episode that someone should have slowly raised their hand and pointed out that maybe, just maybe, Troi getting knocked up against her will was problematic at best. It’s a bad idea, a bad execution, and a bad episode. Not a promising start to season 2, but at least the next episode is a step in the right direction.
Holy shit, I wish the producers that approved “The Child” had someone like this.
“The Child” is a strange animal. First, it’s not an original script. A writer’s strike between the production of the first and second season ended only days before the show had to start shooting, so in an effort to expedite the first episode, the producers pulled a script that had been written for Star Trek: Phase Two, an attempted reboot of the series that had never been aired. Unfortunately, they didn’t read the original script very closely, and instead, just gave the writers a loose summary: “Alien impregnates a female member of the crew; the resulting baby endangers the ship.” It’s a rushed, sloppy episode, but that’s not its biggest crime, and that’s not the reason I wish they’d had that no-man position. The problem is how wildly tone-deaf the episode actually is.
Before we get to the overarching plot of the episode, let’s take a moment to look at all the big changes between season 1 and season 2. Worf is wearing a gold security uniform, and has some impressive new facial hair. Riker’s sporting the beard that we all agree he should have had from the beginning. The musical chairs game that was the chief engineer position is over, and Geordi LaForge is now happily running the engine room. We have a new bartender (seriously), played by the fake nun from Sister Act (also seriously). But the biggest change is that Gates McFadden, who played Beverly Crusher, is gone, and replaced by Diana Muldaur as Katherine Pulaski.
I’ll get this out of the way first: I think Muldaur gets a bad rap as Pulaski. She’s a wildly unpopular character, and is fired at the end of the second season, replaced by the returning McFadden. But it’s important to realize that at the time they wrote and filmed this episode, the expectation was that Muldaur was going to be a permanent member of the cast. If she’d stayed, a lot of the problems that come up with the character could have become a positive, as Pulaski warmed to the crew, and slowly earned her place as part of the family. That never happened, so we just get the shrill asshole of a doctor that everyone has come to loathe.
Picard’s annoyed. His brand new doctor has arrived on board, but didn’t immediately report to him for duty. To make matters worse, when he asks the computer where she is, the computer calmly informs him that Pulaski is in Ten-Forward, the ship’s bar. Not the best first impression, and Picard immediately heads to set her straight and tell her how things work on the Enterprise. But before he can start tearing in on her, Pulaski calmly tells him to sit down with her and Deanna Troi, and explains that Troi got raped by Tinkerbell and is now pregnant with a super-fast growing baby.
Nope, not a typo.
The cold open of the show is a glowing ball of light, which looks remarkably similar to the form Tinkerbell takes before transforming into a fairy, appearing next to the ship. It passes through the hull, passes over a few sleeping crew members, and finds Troi. It then goes under her blankets, between her legs, and up inside her. It’s crude and disturbing, and I’ll admit that I reacted much more negatively to this scene as an adult than I did as a child. It’s not handled particularly well, and nothing that comes after justifies the scene.
If the initial impregnation of Troi is handled badly, that’s nothing compared to the following scene. The senior staff assembles in the conference room to discuss what’s to be done. Troi is sitting at the end of the table, and isn’t saying anything. Pulaski explains that at the rate the baby is growing, it will be born the next day. Riker gets super indignant and demands to know who the father is. Picard and Data debate what’s to be done while Troi sits silently. And, in one of the most uncomfortable moments I’ve had since I started rewatching this show, they debate whether or not to abort the pregnancy, all without actually asking Troi.
I mentioned my reaction to this episode being worse as an adult. Even with my limited experience in matters such as this, I find the idea of a bunch of men casually talking about forcing an abortion and demanding to know a woman’s sexual history repugnant. As a child, it seemed pretty abstract. As an adult, this scene is horrifying. Troi is marginalized, ignored, and debated over. She eventually insists that she’s keeping the baby, and Picard, to his credit, instantly ends the discussion, saying the decision has been made.
Sure enough, the next day, Troi gives birth to a bouncing baby boy. The birth is painless, which is strange, and Troi’s immediately in love with the child. By that evening, when Picard comes to congratulate her and meet the baby, he finds Troi in her quarters with what appears to be an eight-year-old boy. Pulaski insists that not only is Troi fine after the birth, but as far as she can tell, Troi shows no signs whatsoever of having ever given birth. However, before they can start trying to figure out why this kid is going to be forty by next Tuesday, shit goes sideways.
I haven’t mentioned the B-plot yet. There’s a plasma plague on some planet, killing lots of people. Starfleet Medical needs samples of this plague to work on a cure, and the Enterprise is going to transport these samples. If anything goes wrong, if even a single cell of the plague escapes the containment facility, everyone on board the ship will die within thirty minutes. Unfortunately, something on board (guess what) is causing one of the strains of plague to begin growing rapidly. If they can’t stop it, it’s going to breach containment. (Why not set up the containment unit inside a shuttlecraft and tow the damn thing? Why send the flagship, which has over a thousand men, women, and children on board, to carry a lethal pathogen that everyone seems to doubt can be effectively contained? Don’t you have cargo ships? Why doesn’t the Enterprise have HEPA filters? These are all good questions, but we have to get back to Miracle-Gro baby now, so no time.)
If you guessed that Troi’s kid (named Ian) is causing the problem, you’re right. So the senior staff assembles, and holds a discussion about how to address this problem that respects the rights of a life form - even if that life form violated a member of their crew - while simultaneously preserving the safety of the crew. Data comes up with a very effective isolation protocol, while Pulaski researches ways to prevent Ian from affecting the pathogen. Picard and Riker discuss the philosophical problem of whether Troi’s immediate infatuation with Ian is natural or forced, and how to respond to a life form that invades a crew member with no consent or consideration.
No, I’m just fucking with you. None of that shit happens. Ian kills himself, everything’s cool. Episode over.
Season 1 of this show had a LOT of problems. In most cases, it felt like the writers and directors had something they wanted to say, but were still remarkably clumsy and ineffectual with how they went about saying it. It makes episodes like “Justice” and “Symbiosis” a bit easier to accept, despite their many, MANY flaws. “The Child”, though? I don’t have a clue what they were going for. It’s a premise that is deeply screwed from the very beginning. It’s an episode that someone should have slowly raised their hand and pointed out that maybe, just maybe, Troi getting knocked up against her will was problematic at best. It’s a bad idea, a bad execution, and a bad episode. Not a promising start to season 2, but at least the next episode is a step in the right direction.
We’ve had two Q episodes in this show so far. And honestly, that’s more than I would have preferred. Q is a concept that works, but only sparingly. By their very nature, god-like beings are a bit of a cheat, a way to create a challenge that the Enterprise’s technology cannot overcome. This episode doesn’t have Q in it, but “Where Silence Has Lease” does raise one interesting question. Q is a dick. But what if he was worse than that? What if he was a killer?
The Enterprise has found an unexplained phenomenon, an area of space that’s just blackness. (At a certain point, I believe I’d be warping as fast as possible away from anything that I didn’t 100% know for sure what it was. “Sir, we have an unexplained phenomenon… oh, I see, we’re already leaving. Statistically, that’s probably smart.”) They shoot a few probes into it, and they just vanish. Picard’s about ready to head on their merry way when this hole in space envelops the Enterprise in an eyeblink, and suddenly, the stars are gone, and they don’t have a clue where they are.
There’s something immediately eerie about the views out the windows that show nothing. The backdrop of stars is such a fundamental reality of any show about space travel, and the simple act of taking those away is disturbing. (See the brilliant novel by Robert Charles Wilson, Spin, for a terrific take on that idea.) Things go from eerie to dangerous fairly quickly, though, when a Romulan warbird decloaks right in front of the Enterprise and starts lighting her up. Picard gives them one chance to stop, then orders Worf to fire. On their first shot, the warbird explodes. The ease of its destruction is a bit confusing, and Picard tells Wesley to take them back the way they came. When they can’t find an exit, they drop a stationary beacon behind them, and head away from it at full impulse. After a few moments, that stationary beacon isn’t behind them anymore. It’s in front of them.
This scene is fantastic. I’m a sucker for creepy horror or science fiction that plays with the idea of things being simply wrong, of the basic assumptions we make about the universe being turned sideways. The beacon sounds a tone at steady interval on the bridge, an interval that increases as they get further away. When that interval begins to speed up again, it’s a simple but wildly effective technique of showing just how bizarre things have gotten. Their instruments say they’re going in one steady direction. Their instruments also tell them that the beacon has not changed position. But they’re not going anywhere.
While they try to determine what’s going on, they detect another ship. This one is the USS Yamato, the Enterprise’s sister ship. It’s not responding to hails, and, desperate for answers, Picard orders Riker and Worf to beam over and find out what’s going on. The scene on the Yamato is even better than the beacon. Riker and Worf are beamed to the exact same location, but materialize decks apart. Riker hears Worf screaming in agony, and runs to reach him, only to find Worf running to reach Riker, whom Worf heard screaming in pain. They make their way towards the bridge, and everything is just a little… off. The bulkheads look the same, but are made of the wrong material. The carpet is a strange color. They arrive at the bridge, but when they open another door, they’re looking onto another exact copy of the bridge. The corridors and rooms loop back upon themselves impossibly, and Worf begins to lose his composure as things begin to make less and less sense.
Things aren’t much better on the Enterprise. Moments after Riker and Worf beam to the Yamato, an opening in this blackness appears directly in front of the Enterprise. Data confirms that it’s an escape, but now they can’t reach the away team, and can’t beam them back. As they scramble to try to get in touch with Riker, the Yamato begins fading from existence. They manage to beam Riker and Worf back just as the other ship vanishes, and as they do, the opening seals again. There’s a terrific moment where Riker gets back to the bridge, yelling at Picard that they have to get out of there. Jonathan Frakes sells this scene perfectly, looking genuinely angry and slightly unhinged. Another opening appears. They dart towards it, but it seals seconds before they reach it. Moments later, another opening appears behind them, and Picard realizes the truth: Someone’s fucking with them.
He orders all stop. A few seconds later, a face appears in the blackness in front of the ship. It introduces itself as Nagilum, and begins questioning Picard about the nature of humanity. It casually jerks Pulaski around the bridge like a marionette, asks her to demonstrate sexual reproduction, and when she refuses, moves to another topic of curiosity. Humans, it points out, have a limited life span. That intrigues Nagilum, who decides to test this by murdering the helmsman, who screams, bleeds from the ears, and falls dead at Picard’s feet. Nagilum is pleased by this, and informs Picard that he wants to see all of the ways that mortals can die. He assures Picard that these experiments should only result in the death of about half of his crew.
I mentioned Q at the beginning of this review. Nagilum provides an interesting contrast to Q. If we are okay with the concept of beings that can simply do anything they wish with a thought, Q might very well be the best case scenario: someone who is curious about us, but seems to demonstrate some level of restraint. The frightening truth is that Nagilum is probably the more likely result. Picard, realizing that he can’t stop Nagilum from murdering half of his crew in increasingly imaginative ways, decides on a scorched earth approach. He sets the auto-destruct, insisting that it’s better for the crew to die on their own terms rather than at the mad whims of some psychotic god creature.
There are several issues with this. It’s a very James Kirk thing to do, but it feels a bit impulsive for Picard. Also, I’m not sure why a being that could create ships from nothing, twist spacetime to meet its needs, and manifest as a giant face in space would have much difficulty switching off a countdown. With that said, it’s kind of an intriguing scene. Picard sets the timer for twenty minutes, and goes to listen to music in his quarters while waiting for the end. Data and Troi come to see him, and begin questioning his decision. They argue that a chance of surviving Nagilum’s experiments is better than assured death by the self-destruct, and that the captain is making a mistake choosing this for the entire crew. When they both refer to Picard by first name, he realizes that they aren’t really Data and Troi, and he’s once again being fucked with. Picard doesn’t like being fucked with. He tells Nagilum to get bent (he doesn’t phrase it that way, but he absolutely should have), and as faux-Troi and faux-Data vanish, the Enterprise is suddenly among the stars once more. Picard doesn’t buy it at first, and orders the ship to book it in any random direction, but as the self-destruct winds down, he realizes that Nagilum has indeed released them, and ends the countdown.
The episode ends with Picard having a quiet conversation in his ready room with Nagilum, who appeared on his laptop. (Yeah, I thought it was stupid too.) Nagilum delivers the standard god-like being speech: Humans are immature, they’re violent, they’re always double-dipping chips at the party and don’t put the toilet seat down, etc. Picard doesn’t point out that humans also don’t go around murdering people, which I kind of feel was the right response, but instead points out that humanity and Nagilum both have one trait in common: curiosity. Nagilum agrees, vanishes, and the crew go on their merry way. It’s an oddly abrupt ending, and one that doesn’t quite work. But it’s a solid, creepy episode throughout, and if this had been the first episode of this season, I’d be feeling pretty damn optimistic about where this show was going.
A few other thoughts:
Next time, Pulaski continues being a huge bigot, causing Data to pick up the Sherlock Holmes pipe once again for “Elementary, Dear Data”, and we get to see a bargain-basement Han Solo eye-fuck half the women on the ship while dodging child support in “The Outrageous Okana”. Are we sure season 1 is done?
- Dietrich Stogner
The Enterprise has found an unexplained phenomenon, an area of space that’s just blackness. (At a certain point, I believe I’d be warping as fast as possible away from anything that I didn’t 100% know for sure what it was. “Sir, we have an unexplained phenomenon… oh, I see, we’re already leaving. Statistically, that’s probably smart.”) They shoot a few probes into it, and they just vanish. Picard’s about ready to head on their merry way when this hole in space envelops the Enterprise in an eyeblink, and suddenly, the stars are gone, and they don’t have a clue where they are.
There’s something immediately eerie about the views out the windows that show nothing. The backdrop of stars is such a fundamental reality of any show about space travel, and the simple act of taking those away is disturbing. (See the brilliant novel by Robert Charles Wilson, Spin, for a terrific take on that idea.) Things go from eerie to dangerous fairly quickly, though, when a Romulan warbird decloaks right in front of the Enterprise and starts lighting her up. Picard gives them one chance to stop, then orders Worf to fire. On their first shot, the warbird explodes. The ease of its destruction is a bit confusing, and Picard tells Wesley to take them back the way they came. When they can’t find an exit, they drop a stationary beacon behind them, and head away from it at full impulse. After a few moments, that stationary beacon isn’t behind them anymore. It’s in front of them.
This scene is fantastic. I’m a sucker for creepy horror or science fiction that plays with the idea of things being simply wrong, of the basic assumptions we make about the universe being turned sideways. The beacon sounds a tone at steady interval on the bridge, an interval that increases as they get further away. When that interval begins to speed up again, it’s a simple but wildly effective technique of showing just how bizarre things have gotten. Their instruments say they’re going in one steady direction. Their instruments also tell them that the beacon has not changed position. But they’re not going anywhere.
While they try to determine what’s going on, they detect another ship. This one is the USS Yamato, the Enterprise’s sister ship. It’s not responding to hails, and, desperate for answers, Picard orders Riker and Worf to beam over and find out what’s going on. The scene on the Yamato is even better than the beacon. Riker and Worf are beamed to the exact same location, but materialize decks apart. Riker hears Worf screaming in agony, and runs to reach him, only to find Worf running to reach Riker, whom Worf heard screaming in pain. They make their way towards the bridge, and everything is just a little… off. The bulkheads look the same, but are made of the wrong material. The carpet is a strange color. They arrive at the bridge, but when they open another door, they’re looking onto another exact copy of the bridge. The corridors and rooms loop back upon themselves impossibly, and Worf begins to lose his composure as things begin to make less and less sense.
Things aren’t much better on the Enterprise. Moments after Riker and Worf beam to the Yamato, an opening in this blackness appears directly in front of the Enterprise. Data confirms that it’s an escape, but now they can’t reach the away team, and can’t beam them back. As they scramble to try to get in touch with Riker, the Yamato begins fading from existence. They manage to beam Riker and Worf back just as the other ship vanishes, and as they do, the opening seals again. There’s a terrific moment where Riker gets back to the bridge, yelling at Picard that they have to get out of there. Jonathan Frakes sells this scene perfectly, looking genuinely angry and slightly unhinged. Another opening appears. They dart towards it, but it seals seconds before they reach it. Moments later, another opening appears behind them, and Picard realizes the truth: Someone’s fucking with them.
He orders all stop. A few seconds later, a face appears in the blackness in front of the ship. It introduces itself as Nagilum, and begins questioning Picard about the nature of humanity. It casually jerks Pulaski around the bridge like a marionette, asks her to demonstrate sexual reproduction, and when she refuses, moves to another topic of curiosity. Humans, it points out, have a limited life span. That intrigues Nagilum, who decides to test this by murdering the helmsman, who screams, bleeds from the ears, and falls dead at Picard’s feet. Nagilum is pleased by this, and informs Picard that he wants to see all of the ways that mortals can die. He assures Picard that these experiments should only result in the death of about half of his crew.
I mentioned Q at the beginning of this review. Nagilum provides an interesting contrast to Q. If we are okay with the concept of beings that can simply do anything they wish with a thought, Q might very well be the best case scenario: someone who is curious about us, but seems to demonstrate some level of restraint. The frightening truth is that Nagilum is probably the more likely result. Picard, realizing that he can’t stop Nagilum from murdering half of his crew in increasingly imaginative ways, decides on a scorched earth approach. He sets the auto-destruct, insisting that it’s better for the crew to die on their own terms rather than at the mad whims of some psychotic god creature.
There are several issues with this. It’s a very James Kirk thing to do, but it feels a bit impulsive for Picard. Also, I’m not sure why a being that could create ships from nothing, twist spacetime to meet its needs, and manifest as a giant face in space would have much difficulty switching off a countdown. With that said, it’s kind of an intriguing scene. Picard sets the timer for twenty minutes, and goes to listen to music in his quarters while waiting for the end. Data and Troi come to see him, and begin questioning his decision. They argue that a chance of surviving Nagilum’s experiments is better than assured death by the self-destruct, and that the captain is making a mistake choosing this for the entire crew. When they both refer to Picard by first name, he realizes that they aren’t really Data and Troi, and he’s once again being fucked with. Picard doesn’t like being fucked with. He tells Nagilum to get bent (he doesn’t phrase it that way, but he absolutely should have), and as faux-Troi and faux-Data vanish, the Enterprise is suddenly among the stars once more. Picard doesn’t buy it at first, and orders the ship to book it in any random direction, but as the self-destruct winds down, he realizes that Nagilum has indeed released them, and ends the countdown.
The episode ends with Picard having a quiet conversation in his ready room with Nagilum, who appeared on his laptop. (Yeah, I thought it was stupid too.) Nagilum delivers the standard god-like being speech: Humans are immature, they’re violent, they’re always double-dipping chips at the party and don’t put the toilet seat down, etc. Picard doesn’t point out that humans also don’t go around murdering people, which I kind of feel was the right response, but instead points out that humanity and Nagilum both have one trait in common: curiosity. Nagilum agrees, vanishes, and the crew go on their merry way. It’s an oddly abrupt ending, and one that doesn’t quite work. But it’s a solid, creepy episode throughout, and if this had been the first episode of this season, I’d be feeling pretty damn optimistic about where this show was going.
A few other thoughts:
- This week, on scenes that totally happened but Dietrich didn’t care about: In “The Child”, Wesley thinks about leaving the Enterprise, chats with Whoopi Goldberg, then doesn’t leave after all. In “Where Silence Has Lease”, Worf and Riker beat the shit out of Skeletor on the holodeck for kicks. Okay, the latter scene is pretty cool, actually.
- I didn’t really get into Pulaski’s bizarrely bigoted attitude towards Data. It’s really aggressive (she mocks him when he asks her to pronounce his name correctly, refers to him as “it”, and suggests that Troi needs a person to hold her hand during delivery, not “the cold unfeeling touch of technology”). Again, if the show had taken the time to show her coming to respect Data, that could have been interesting. Instead, we get strange racist doctor.
- “The Child” would have gone from being a disaster to the greatest episode ever if Ian had exploded from Troi’s torso, fully grown, wearing a spangly tuxedo and singing “New York, New York”. Please, someone get on that animation post-haste.
Next time, Pulaski continues being a huge bigot, causing Data to pick up the Sherlock Holmes pipe once again for “Elementary, Dear Data”, and we get to see a bargain-basement Han Solo eye-fuck half the women on the ship while dodging child support in “The Outrageous Okana”. Are we sure season 1 is done?
- Dietrich Stogner
RSS Feed
