Television Review: The Child (Star Trek: The Next Generation, S2X01, 1988)

The Child (S02E01)

Airdate: November 21st 1988

Written by: Jaron Summers, Jon Powill & Michael Hurley
Directed by: Rob Bowman

Running Time: 46 minutes

The inaugural season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, frequently dismissed as the weakest of its seven-year run, nonetheless achieved the monumental task of resurrecting the Star Trek franchise for a new generation, dealing with unforeseen production hurdles and audience scepticism. Yet, for this revival to truly ascend to the status of a Golden Age for Star Trek, the sophomore season demanded a significant and demonstrable leap in quality, ambition, and storytelling maturity. Regrettably, the season two premiere, The Child, signalled that this crucial evolution would prove far more arduous than optimists hoped, delivering instead a profoundly disappointing episode that squandered its potential and exposed deep-seated creative frailties at a critical juncture.

The narrative thrusts the audience immediately into a state of flux: Dr. Beverly Crusher, a cornerstone of the ship’s dynamic, has departed for Starfleet Medical, replaced by the acerbic Dr. Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur). The Enterprise-D’s mission – a seemingly routine retrieval of volatile plasma plague samples from Starbase Aucdet IX for urgent vaccine development – establishes a backdrop of scientific responsibility. This procedural setup, however, is swiftly upended by the arrival of an energy-based alien entity. In a scene of unsettling intimacy, it infiltrates the sleeping quarters of Counselor Deanna Troi, merging with her. The following morning delivers the bombshell: Troi announces an inexplicable pregnancy. Pulaski, confirming the bizarre reality, declares the foetus is developing at a accelerated rate, necessitating birth within thirty-six hours. The infant boy, named Ian (R. J. Williams), defies all biological norms, rapidly maturing into an eight-year-old possessing not only advanced cognitive abilities but an uncanny, almost prescient understanding of the Enterprise itself – knowledge seemingly derived from Troi’s own mind.

This central, fantastical premise intertwines problematically with a concurrent crisis: the plasma plague containment fields aboard the ship begin deteriorating at an alarming rate, threatening catastrophic contamination. Geordi La Forge, now promoted to Lieutenant and Chief Engineer, battles alongside technician Hester Dealt (Seymour Cassell) to diagnose the inexplicable energy drain. The resolution proves tragically mundane: Ian’s unique biology is inadvertently emitting radiation that destabilises the containment systems. The crisis abates only with Ian’s sudden, rapid decline and death in Troi’s arms. His final revelation – that he utilised Ian’s body as a vessel to experience humanity firsthand, purely for observational study – provides a cold, clinical explanation that utterly negates any emotional catharsis, leaving Troi with nothing but grief and a corpse.

The Child possesses one of the flimsiest scripts in the entire TNG canon, a fact rendered ironically stark by its pedigree. Originally conceived by Jaron Summers and Jon Povill for the unproduced 1970s series Star Trek: Phase II, the story lay dormant in the archives until the exigencies of the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike forced producers to resurrect it. Maurice Hurley hastily rewrote the decades-old concept as a convenient, expedient solution to restart production, a decision that prioritised speed over narrative coherence or thematic depth. The core failure lies in its egregious trivialisation of the profound personal and ethical dilemmas Troi’s pregnancy should provoke. Viewers, acutely aware of the episodic nature of 1980s television, instantly recognised the inherent temporariness of the situation; Ian’s accelerated life cycle guaranteed his swift departure, a narrative cheat that robbed the pregnancy of genuine stakes. The script mercifully avoids depicting Ian as an elderly man, yet the emotional devastation of his death occurring off-camera, while perhaps intended as tasteful, ultimately feels like an evasion of the trauma Troi would realistically endure. The episode fundamentally fails to grapple with the psychological aftermath for its central character.

Furthermore, the scenario is riddled with deeply problematic, unexplored implications. The conception bears stark, uncomfortable parallels to both the immaculate conception narrative and, more disturbingly, a form of non-consensual impregnation – a quasi-rape scenario the script pointedly ignores. Worf’s pragmatic suggestion that the rapidly developing, potentially dangerous entity be aborted for the ship’s security – a logical step given Starfleet protocols and the perceived threat – is summarily dismissed without meaningful debate. This evasion is particularly jarring for a series that otherwise frequently engaged with contemporary ethical quandaries, including the very real cultural and political battles surrounding reproductive rights raging in the United States at the time. The plasma plague subplot compounds the script’s weaknesses. Hurley’s apparent belief that a 24th-century starship, equipped with advanced technology and contingency protocols, would lack the capacity to jettison and safely destroy the contaminated cargo via phasers strains credulity to breaking point, reducing a potential tension driver to a mere plot device clumsily tied to Ian’s existence.

Fan reception was further poisoned by the conspicuous absence of Gates McFadden’s Dr. Crusher. While Diana Muldaur, a distinguished actress with notable prior Star Trek credits (The Original Series’s Return to Tomorrow and Is There in Truth No Beauty?), delivered a competent performance, her Dr. Pulaski proved a deeply unpopular replacement. Pulaski’s inherent coldness, cynicism, and antagonistic friction with Picard and Data starkly contrasted with Crusher’s warmth, empathy, and integrated presence within the senior staff, creating a palpable void that alienated a significant portion of the audience. A rare positive note emerged with Wesley Crusher’s (Wil Wheaton) decision to remain aboard the Enterprise rather than follow his mother to Starfleet Medical – a choice frustrating to many fans but crucially facilitating his first meaningful interaction with the newly introduced Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) in the debut appearance of Ten-Forward, establishing a vital recurring character and location.

Visually, The Child benefited from a modestly increased season two budget and the capable direction of Rob Bowman, one of the series’ most skilled helmers. Bowman endeavoured to elevate the Enterprise’s aesthetic, imparting a slightly more cinematic, filmic quality to the sets and lighting, notably in the intriguing alien point-of-view sequence introducing the entity. Cosmetic changes, such as Commander Riker’s now-permanent beard, were implemented. Yet, these superficial enhancements proved utterly hollow. They could not mask the fundamental rot within the narrative – the weak script, the unresolved ethical morass, the emotional vacuity – rendering the production upgrades mere window dressing on a structurally unsound foundation.

Ultimately, The Child remains watchable only as a historical curiosity, a stark marker of TNG’s ongoing growing pains. It represents a profound waste: the squandering of a genuinely intriguing high-concept premise (alien impregnation for study), the misapplication of Rob Bowman’s directorial talent, and, most lamentably, the underutilisation of Marina Sirtis’ considerable acting abilities. Instead of launching season two with the bold, mature storytelling required to cement TNG’s legacy, it delivered a muddled, ethically shallow, and narratively lazy episode that reinforced the worst criticisms of the show’s early struggles. Far from heralding a Golden Age, The Child starkly illustrated how much further the series needed to evolve, proving that resurrecting Star Trek was merely the first step; crafting its future demanded far more than hastily rewritten relics and cosmetic tweaks. It was a stillborn hope, emblematic of the difficult labour still ahead for the Enterprise-D to truly earn its place among the stars.

RATING: 4/10 (+)

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