Galaxy's Child

LaForge's stalking finally catches up with him

Guess who’s coming aboard the Enterprise-D? Why it’s none other than Leah Brahms, whose image and personal history LaForge stole to make his dream hologram. What could possibly go wrong…? Well, pretty much everything. Let this be a lesson to all you cyberstalkers out there: your imagination is a powerful thing, but reality will have its revenge the moment you take it too far. But before Brahms can completely tear LaForge into the tiny little pieces he so richly deserves, the Enterprise encounters a Cornish pasty floating through space…

And it zaps them all with space lightning!

Under Captain’s orders, Worf blasts the alien pastry and kills it (Worf 8, Aliens 12 - although this victory is hardly worthy of a Klingon!). But oh no, under the crust was a little baby pasty. But don’t fret as the Enterprise will perform a space caesarean and save the li’l tyke. Except ‘Junior’ latches onto the Enterprise and starts sucking energy from the ship, forcing LaForge and Brahms to bury the hatchet and work together to save the day.

Words

Despite the bad blood between Maurice Hurley and Gene Roddenberry, Hurley apparently maintained a good relationship with Rick Berman and returned to write two more episodes after his exit as effective showrunner at the end of season two. That said, there was a lot of polish applied to this script by members of the current writing team, with Ronald D. Moore cleaning up the so-so space baby plot, and Jeri Taylor revising the Leah Brahms story. What’s more of a mystery to me is Thomas Kartozian, whose story idea this was in the first place - my best guess is this was pitched on spec, but handed over to Maurice Hurley to write because the main writing team was too busy. But why was Kartozian pitching if he couldn't write a screenplay? Or was his original draft just too problematic? I’m sure there’s a story here, but I’ve been unable to discover what it is.

There’s a small sequence from the screenplay that didn’t make it into the final show, and the meaning of which I find quite obscure. After encountering the spacefaring alien, Picard and Worf have the following exchange:

PICARD (almost to himself): “Asked the child of the stranger without any name... whither you go... and whence you came?”

Worf picks up the next verse almost without even thinking about it.

WORF: “To the child's delight the answer came clear... To the end I go for it all starts here.”

Surprised looks from everyone. Worf is a little embarrassed.

PICARD: It seems we were bread and buttered on the same nursery rhymes, Mister Worf.

I don’t recognise this nursery rhyme at all, and I can find nothing about it that isn’t connected with this story! I figured it might have something to do with “Monday’s Child”, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t beyond them both being nursery rhymes. If anyone can shed any light on this, and its relevance to this episode, please let me know.

Much as I love the opportunity to shatter LaForge’s holo-stalking fantasy (which retrospectively enhances my judgement of “Booby Trap” too, as I mentioned at the time), I find the interstellar baked goods plotline to be rather lacklustre. Moore’s sci-fi additions here are a bit clunky too - did we really need to namecheck two nonsense minerals, ‘meklinite’ and ‘Kefnium’, both of which read like they were picked out of a Scrabble bag...?

The ‘sour the milk’ plot twist is also a little too pat, and I’m no fan of these kind of solutions that nobody in the audience could possibly have anticipated. As a former astrophysicist, I can’t say I understand the idea that they can use the 21 cm radiation, which is the wavelength emitted by cold hydrogen atoms floating in the interstellar void, as an analogy to vinegar. Is the idea that whatever space baby likes to eat, it isn’t going to be cold hydrogen atoms? I suppose that nearly makes sense, if you squint, haven’t slept for a few days, and then get really drunk on an empty stomach. Yet despite all this straining of the plot logic, Michael Piller was a fan of this side of the episode:

I always felt that the idea of having reality versus fantasy was an interesting theme to explore and the Leah Brahms character allowed us to do that in this episode. This to me was one of the best concepts we had all year... I just thought the idea of an alien creature adopting the Enterprise as its mother is something you can’t do on any other show.

It’s not a terrible episode by any means, but it’s ironic that the best thing about it is the degree to which it enhances “Booby Trap” by forcing LaForge to confront the consequences of his fantasising.

Acting Roles

Much as with this episode’s predecessor, this is up to LeVar Burton to carry as LaForge, but he is given even more support this time around by Susan Gibney as the actual Leah Brahms, who is given the opportunity to shatter the fantasy version of this character she played in “Booby Trap”.

It works brilliantly, so well in fact that it really is the draw for this episode, since the other plotline really lacks any punch. Gibney’s outburst in the holodeck is the perfect antidote to her original holofantasy role, and best of all it gets a rise out of LeVar Burton's LaForge, which is something we don’t get very often on this show. I don’t buy his excuse, to be honest, but it’s highly believable that he would try to cover his ass in this way.

Patrick Stewart’s Captain Picard has a great moment after Worf kills space mom, and spends much of the episode exuding sombreness, but he’s really the only other member of the regular cast to get anything notable into this episode.

That said, I greatly enjoy Whoopi Goldberg’s understated performance as Guinan in the hook, and unlike “Clues” they get her back in at a pivotal point to help LaForge understand just how much he’s deceived himself.

Part of me feels that this could have been handed over to Marina Sirtis’ Troi (reduced in this episode to telling Picard it’s okay that he murdered the alien mommy because he followed procedure), but in practice Guinan’s barkeep role allows this to be delivered much more efficiently since LaForge can be more unguarded in Ten Forward than he would be talking to his co-worker and ship’s councillor.

April Grace is back in the transporter room this week, so no Colm Meaney, alas.

But the big(-ish) debut in the lower decks cast is the latest attempt to replace Wesley Crusher at conn, Lanei Chapman’s new conn officer, Ensign Rager - named as such on screen, and with two speaking lines too, albeit just “Aye, sir” and “Impulse engines at full power”.

Will she outlast such other season four conn officers as Mary Kohnert’s Ensign Tess Allenby? Nope, she too does exactly two episodes this season and then vanishes into the great box of unwanted guest stars… However, they do get her back twice more in season six, so I suppose she can be smug about that, especially since Kohnert remained in the box forever more.

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

I had long thought that the space pasties were CGI, and it turned out I was half right. The birthing sequence was computer-generated and made by an SFX firm called Rhythm and Hues...

...but most of the appearances are a fibreglass model built by Tony Meininger, who will do great work later in his career on DS9 (including creating the USS Defiant). Here’s the Cornish pasty model being handled by Visual Effects Supervisor Dan Curry…

But the big effects team debut this week are the Jefferies Tubes!

Sure, we saw something under this name in “The Hunted”, but these were big enough to walk in. From this episode until the end of time, the Jefferies Tubes are re-envisioned as movie-style ventilation shafts, which is fair enough because there’s much more atmosphere and dramatic possibility in cramped corridors than roomy ones. I mean, the realities of interstellar spaceship design (if this isn’t an oxymoron) don’t obviously suggest a need to conserve space - the Enterprise sure wastes a lot of it! But dramatically, these tighter Jefferies Tubes are brilliant, and do great work here and forever more. Well done sets team - it’s a hit!