Galaxy's Child

TrekToday · February 21 2009, 12:20 AM

Plot Summary: Picard informs LaForge that the designer of the Enterprise's propulsion unit, Dr. Leah Brahms, will be visiting the ship to meet with him. LaForge - who once created a hologram of Brahms that helped him through a difficult situation - is delighted, though Guinan warns him of the dangers of falling in love with a fantasy. Sure enough, the real Brahms is aloof, obsessed with her work, and irritated about some of the changes LaForge has made to her designs. While LaForge tries to come to terms not only with her offputting personality, but with the discovery that she is married, Picard and the crew encounter a large creature that shoots energy discharge at the Enterprise when it approaches. Picard orders Worf to fire phasers to protect the crew from rising radiation levels, then is horrified when the weapons kill the alien. Data detects an energy reading within the lifeless creature and concludes that there is a fetal alien within the body of the larger creature. Crusher and Worf perform surgery with the ship's phasers to help the infant emerge, though they fail to anticipate that the young alien will imprint on the Enterprise in the mistaken belief that the ship is its mother. When it latches itself to the hull and drains energy from the engines, LaForge and Brahms are forced to work together to boost the ship's energy, but Brahms inadvertently discovers LaForge's holographic version of her and is furious. When three adult creatures approach from a nearby asteroid belt, Brahms suggests that contaminating the energy might cause the baby to detach from the ship. The plan works, the creature heads off with its own kind, and Brahms forgives LaForge for his self-indulgent use of her image in his holodeck simulation.

To read the full reviews, please click here.

AntonyF · February 21 2009, 12:45 AM

This an episode that I think pushes way past the fictional universe and 'real world' invades too much. Examples:

Bringing Leah back. Doesn't really fit the story at all, no need, but the writers decided she was in it before and they want her back.
Leah must like Geordi. We think she's overreacting because we know he's a decent guy. But it doesn't fit with what she would think. She is there only as a chess piece for his story.
The tieing together of stories. Children outside, children for engineers, tied together into a 'Child' episode name. All too neat.

Also I think it backward pollutes Booby Trap. How on earth did the holodec create Brahms like a silly tart in the original episode if she's really like this?

I do like that they save the litle babby alien though.

JNG · February 21 2009, 01:38 AM

Ahh, I can always count on a M.E.G. review for a belly laugh.

It's pathetic that we're led to believe LaForge doesn't have a chance with Brahms only because she's married. He shouldn't have any more chance with her than a guy who owns a Jenna Jameson inflatable and has seen all her movies would have with the real Jenna Jameson.

Right, because designing warp drive is exactly like sex with strangers for money, and being a fellow professional in the same technical field is exactly like jerking off to that. A truly inspired comparison.

T.Geiger · February 21 2009, 02:45 AM

everyone seems to remember this as the episode where Geordi meets Leah Brahms, not the episode where the Enterprise performs a C-section and suckles a baby alien.

Think that might be because Leah is the A-plot and the baby alien is the MacGuffin?

I was an early-teens viewer when this originally aired, and I seem to recall the episode was awful even back then. No one likes a bitch, and Geordi was never particularly interesting to begin with. (And macguffins are always boring.)

Basil · February 21 2009, 02:52 AM

Sure, she could be a little nicer, but given some of the nutcase scientists we've seen in Starfleet, couldn't we have had a bit more celebration of her genius rather than a pity party for LaForge and his fantasies of the girl of his dreams?

N'ah, her genius doesn't trump the fact that she's a bitch, any more than Kazinsky's, from an earlier season, trumps the fact that he's an asshole. If we're to see the characters as human rather than cardboard, we need to look past their accomplishments -- and their genders -- and instead to their qualities as people.

The Laughing Vulcan · February 21 2009, 01:59 PM

Nice rant, when's the review gonna be posted?

Evil_Kirkneivel · February 21 2009, 02:50 PM

It's painful to watch Geordi in this episode (or, I should say, painful to watch the way his character was written). He's kind of like a stalker at the mental age of an early teen. It doesn't mesh with his professionality as an engineer, or with the respectful way he has always treated his co-workers (including the female ones) in previous episodes.

DorkBoy [TM] · February 23 2009, 03:27 PM

For once a MEG review where she goes off on somewhat of a gender-related rant, where I actually 110% agree with her.

Geordi is embarrassing and painful to watch in this episode. It isn't a terrible episode, but it is soooo predictable, and he comes across as completely pathetic.

Admiral Buzzkill · February 23 2009, 06:03 PM

It's pathetic that we're led to believe LaForge doesn't have a chance with Brahms only because she's married. He shouldn't have any more chance with her than a guy who owns a Jenna Jameson inflatable and has seen all her movies would have with the real Jenna Jameson.

That was pretty much my reaction when I watched the show originally - I couldn't believe that the audience was expected to identify with LaForge as some kind of misjudged, basically good guy in this episode. He was a creepy loser.

I disagree that Trek has often been really frank about how such technology would be put to use in reality. Access to pornography seems to have been a significant market force driving the early acceptance of every recent entertainment technology, whereas "Star Trek" treats its existence as an afterthought or eccentricity (witness the startlement with which the TNG crew greets Barclay's rather modest fantasies about his crewmates in "Hollow Pursuits"). But of course TNG wasn't produced for Showtime.

AntonyF · February 25 2009, 12:09 AM

JNG wrote:

Right, because designing warp drive is exactly like sex with strangers for money, and being a fellow professional in the same technical field is exactly like jerking off to that. A truly inspired comparison.

Some of you come here just to spit on MEG's reviews, with very little interest to actually discuss the episode.

She is spot on on this point. He creates a romantic dinner because he chatted to her fucking hologram for crying out loud! Who the fuck would think that's okay?

It is nothing more than a stupid crush, because he thinks he knows her -- much like a stalker. He thinks having been around a fake version of her, that he's in with a chance. Then the patronising copout that maybe if she weren't married, maybe one day (reinforced with All Good Things...").

It's really pathetic. It's like me thinking I'm in with a chance with someone I met on Facebook. Oh you mentioned the same field? I'll find someone in marketing then then it'll all be fine when I meet the person and sit down for a dinner wanting a shag with them at a marketing conference.

JNG · February 28 2009, 03:44 AM

AntonyF wrote:

She is spot on on this point. He creates a romantic dinner because he chatted to her fucking hologram for crying out loud! Who the fuck would think that's okay?

It is weak writing that he doesn't know she is married; I assume the version of her on which the hologram was based hadn't yet married, but it is still silly that he did not check that. Aside from that, being chief engineer of a ship she designed, admiring her work, and knowing that she was an attractive woman, what exactly is wrong with having dinner with her?

As for "led to believe" about his chances with her, I don't understand what makes it pathetic that they might have had a mutual attraction but it wasn't pursued because she is married. He had already met a simulation of her, which is, in a way, much more in-depth that any examination of the personnel file could have been...except that a biographical detail wasn't mentioned because it is irrelevant to the situation at that time.

Two professionals in the same field, one with an established great respect for the work of the other, as well as an awareness that she is an attractive woman and even some awareness of what her personality is supposedly like...so what exactly is offensive about the idea they could have had something, but they wouldn't, because she's off the market? Are you pretending you wouldn't even consider the idea in Geordi's situation? And it isn't as if the episode doesn't show his attempt at moving too quickly with the romantic atmosphere as a misstep! You'd only see a problem with this if you're up your own ass with a bunch of phoney feminist BS, so stop internet white-knighting.

AntonyF · February 28 2009, 03:53 AM

JNG wrote:

Are you pretending you wouldn't even consider the idea in Geordi's situation?

I certainly wouldn't go into a situation expecting romance when I'd not even met the person. And no, a hologram or knowledge of the person is not the same. If Geordi believes that, then he is rather delusional or just a bit sad. I go for the latter, at least they were consistent with Geordi being a loser in love throughout the show. Anyone normal meets someone, finds them captivating, then falls in love or tries for more.

JNG wrote:

You'd only see a problem with this if you're up your own ass with a bunch of phoney feminist BS, so stop internet white-knighting.

I'm sensing some pretty stron anti-woman sentiment from you. It's quite clear you think Geordi is right because women are feminists, shouldn't be in proper jobs and in fact Leah should have gone "Oooh Geordi, you are so clever and want to date little ol me? Well shucks, sure big boy!" How terribly wrong for a woman in the 24th century not to be into 19th century dating.

Saxman1 · February 28 2009, 04:53 PM

I don't often agree with MEG but I agree Geordi's pathetic in this ep and hard to watch. It's nice they gave LaVar a spotlight for a change given his considerable acting chops, but too bad it's in such a poorly written piece. He didn't bother to find out if she were married? Come on.

February 21 2009, 12:20 AM	#1
TrekToday Rear Admiral	Galaxy's Child Plot Summary: Picard informs LaForge that the designer of the Enterprise's propulsion unit, Dr. Leah Brahms, will be visiting the ship to meet with him. LaForge - who once created a hologram of Brahms that helped him through a difficult situation - is delighted, though Guinan warns him of the dangers of falling in love with a fantasy. Sure enough, the real Brahms is aloof, obsessed with her work, and irritated about some of the changes LaForge has made to her designs. While LaForge tries to come to terms not only with her offputting personality, but with the discovery that she is married, Picard and the crew encounter a large creature that shoots energy discharge at the Enterprise when it approaches. Picard orders Worf to fire phasers to protect the crew from rising radiation levels, then is horrified when the weapons kill the alien. Data detects an energy reading within the lifeless creature and concludes that there is a fetal alien within the body of the larger creature. Crusher and Worf perform surgery with the ship's phasers to help the infant emerge, though they fail to anticipate that the young alien will imprint on the Enterprise in the mistaken belief that the ship is its mother. When it latches itself to the hull and drains energy from the engines, LaForge and Brahms are forced to work together to boost the ship's energy, but Brahms inadvertently discovers LaForge's holographic version of her and is furious. When three adult creatures approach from a nearby asteroid belt, Brahms suggests that contaminating the energy might cause the baby to detach from the ship. The plan works, the creature heads off with its own kind, and Brahms forgives LaForge for his self-indulgent use of her image in his holodeck simulation. To read the full reviews, please click here.

February 21 2009, 12:45 AM	#2
AntonyF Administrator	Re: Galaxy's Child This an episode that I think pushes way past the fictional universe and 'real world' invades too much. Examples: Bringing Leah back. Doesn't really fit the story at all, no need, but the writers decided she was in it before and they want her back. Leah must like Geordi. We think she's overreacting because we know he's a decent guy. But it doesn't fit with what she would think. She is there only as a chess piece for his story. The tieing together of stories. Children outside, children for engineers, tied together into a 'Child' episode name. All too neat. Also I think it backward pollutes Booby Trap. How on earth did the holodec create Brahms like a silly tart in the original episode if she's really like this? I do like that they save the litle babby alien though.

February 21 2009, 01:59 PM	#6
The Laughing Vulcan Admiral Location: At The Laughing Vulcan's party...	Re: Galaxy's Child Nice rant, when's the review gonna be posted? __________________ "Don't try to live so wise. Don't cry 'cause you're so right. Don't dry with fakes or fears, 'Cause you will hate yourself in the end." Anime @ MyReviewer

February 21 2009, 02:50 PM	#7
Evil_Kirkneivel Lieutenant Commander	Re: Galaxy's Child It's painful to watch Geordi in this episode (or, I should say, painful to watch the way his character was written). He's kind of like a stalker at the mental age of an early teen. It doesn't mesh with his professionality as an engineer, or with the respectful way he has always treated his co-workers (including the female ones) in previous episodes. __________________ Next Generation, Voyager, Dollhouse, Lost, and Movie reviews at the Review Zoo! Last edited by Evil_Kirkneivel; February 21 2009 at 02:52 PM. Reason: clarification

February 23 2009, 03:27 PM	#8
DorkBoy [TM] Captain	Re: Galaxy's Child For once a MEG review where she goes off on somewhat of a gender-related rant, where I actually 110% agree with her. Geordi is embarrassing and painful to watch in this episode. It isn't a terrible episode, but it is soooo predictable, and he comes across as completely pathetic. __________________ Homer: The information superhighway showed the average person what some nerd thinks about Star Trek.

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February 28 2009, 04:53 PM	#13
Saxman1 Commodore	Re: Galaxy's Child I don't often agree with MEG but I agree Geordi's pathetic in this ep and hard to watch. It's nice they gave LaVar a spotlight for a change given his considerable acting chops, but too bad it's in such a poorly written piece. He didn't bother to find out if she were married? Come on.