The Child

While en route to collect samples of a deadly plague in the hopes of creating a vaccine, the Enterprise encounters a mysterious pulse of energy that infiltrates the ship without detection. The pulse locates a sleeping Troi and impregnates her with a child that grows at an alarming rate.

The second season kicked off with this fairly routine episode that at least manages to feel like proper TNG - La Forge is now Chief Engineer, Worf is no longer a redshirt and we finally get Ten Forward and Guinan. But the story feels like reheated leftovers that has an intriguing premise but poor execution. And Dr Pulaski, the Enterprise's new on-board doctor, is as wooden as a stake and no replacement for Dr Crusher. And of course, Wesley has a subplot we don't care about because he always does. Fine but perfectly skippable.

It turns out, as revealed in the first part of "Making It So: Continuing ST:TNG" (a retrospective documentary that appears on the Blu-ray release of season 2), that this story was originally written for the projected (but never made) "Star Trek: Phase II", with Captain Kirk et al plus three new characters. With the Hollywood writers' strike looming, rather than come up with a new story, "The Child" was revised, with the parts originally written for the new characters of Phase II given to Riker, Troi and Data. Of course, some new elements were necessary: introducing Dr Pulaski, explaining the decision of Wesley Crusher to remain with the Enterprise, and so on. This would explain many of the complaints in earlier reviews published here: notably that the plot isn't up to the standard of other ST:TNG scripts of the time. Simply put, it's not really a ST:TNG script, but a composite of an older script with new characters transposed into it. And, to my mind, it's done pretty seamlessly.

There's an air of confidence as 'The Child' opens; you can totally feel this is a new season. Geordi's running Engineering, cosmetic changes abound on the bridge, chief among them the origin of Riker's beard (game-changer, baby!). The bad news is we also get Dr. Pulaski and her anti-android prejudice.

But as for the actual episode, we get the Enterprise transporting some sort of death plasma, while Counselor Troi gets impregnated by a glowing blue sparkle (so, Tinkerbell?) and delivers a baby within hours. Miracle of pain and scar-free delivery, no less. All kidding aside, there's actually some emotional weight to this, as the child is linked to the plasma stuff and the Enterprise is under threat. I must've watched a different episode than everyone else did, because I liked it. I got a real "Starman" vibe from this.

7/10

The A plot of Counselor Troy is quite disturbing and hasn't aged well -- while the general plot of Troy being fine with getting impregnated against her will is quite horrible, some of the scenes are cringe worthy. The scene of the bridge officers discussing how to terminate her pregnancy (entirely ignoring Troy) is particularly unpleasant.

The B plot about Wesley Crusher -- particularly the introduction of Guinan -- is fairly good. It provides a good bridge to keep Crusher even though his mom left the ship while providing some good life lessons.

Let's start with the bad. Mystery rape is always awful, it doesn't matter if it's TNG or the Bible. On top of that the creepy kid is manipulative and apparently knowingly endangers the ship. Also, a nearly instantaneous birth is just... ugh.

On the plus side, we get Pulaski - a no-nonsense doctor with a healthy distrust of technology. I've always preferred her to holier-than-thou Beverly. The 'crisis of the week' is clever and ties nicely into the b-plot. With only one security main character and a chief of engineering main character the show works much better. Though they do kinda undermine this efficiency by basically hiring another counsellor (Guinan).

There are two highlights. First we have the scene where the camera is focussed on Troi while a bunch of men discuss aborting her baby in the background. Oof. And Worf promising to tuck in Wesley is one of less than a handful of times TNG has made me laugh out loud on this rewatch. :-)