The Enterprise has on-board a special guest, Dr. Leah Brahms an engine specialist responsible for the design of engines used on the Enterprise whom Geordi created a holo-simulation of last season in "The Booby Trap." In that episode Geordi and holo-Leah "worked together" to solve the problem of the ship being stuck in an alien trap that deprived the ship of power. Geordi has been smitten with Leah ever since and his very excited to get to meet her in person but is let down when her real persona is somewhat less warm than the holo-version was.
Geordi and Leah clash heads over the course of her time on the ship over modifications Geordi has made to the ship during his tenure as Chief Engineer, souring Geordi to some level on his impression of Leah as she doesn't live up to his expectations. Hoping they could become close he tries in vain to relate to her by inviting her to his quarters for dinner (where he creates her favorite dish, having learned it from the holo-version) and sharing some of their professional passions about engineering but Leah's cold demeanor turns Geordi away at every opportunity.
Leah learns of Geordi's holo-recreation of her and confronts him about it, rightfully outraged, and Geordi tries to explain it to her but isn't given the chance to, instead he tries turning the argument back to Leah calling her out for her cold behavior over the course of the last couple days.
Eventually the two are able to work together to save the ship from the week's crisis and manage to find something of a friendship, since a romantic pursuit at the time isn't possible since Leah is married. (A fact the computer simulation had left out.)
Meanwhile, the ship encounters a space-born lifeform and begins to study it only to be attacked. The crew fights back (by pulling the punch a bit) but inadvertently kill the lifeform. Shortly afterword they learn the lifform was pregnant so the ship's phasers are used to perform a C-Section on the mother's body to allow the infant to get out of the womb. Shortly afterwards the infant latches onto the hull of the ship and begins suckling power from the ship for sustenance.
The nursing child is a drain on the ship's reactors and no method can be immediately devised to detach the baby without harming it so the ship heads for what they determine to have been the destination for the mother (where other lifeforms of this type are.) Geordi and Leah eventually come up with the plan to wean the baby so it detaches from the hull and joins the others.
On the one hand this is an interesting episode in how the crew deals with the alien lifeforms and a nice follow up to "The Booby Trap" where we see the repercussions of Geordi's attachment to holo-Leah. On the other hand.... Geordi doesn't come through this episode looking too good, at least not until probably the end where he and Leah seem to have settled their differences and cleared up what had really happened on the holodeck last year. (Leah initially assumes the program was sexual in nature rather than Geordi trying to solve a problem using a prototype schematic and expert.)
Look, we can probably understand to some degree where Geordi was coming from when it comes to his attachment of holo-Leah. It's not too different than a fan having an attachment to an actor based on the character she plays on a TV-series and maybe having a bit giddy reaction upon meeting her. But Geordi takes that to next level of creepy by pretty much acting like they already know each other and are BFFs.
Geordi volunteers to greet Leah as she beams-in and rather than greeting her in a professional manner with a "Welcome aboard," and a handshake he gives her a friendly, "Hi." Geordi continually mentions over their encounters things he couldn't possibly know about her like her favorite foods, her specialties and other things without them having had a closer friendship. And he comes up with fairly lame excuses for why he knows these things.
Leah, sure, is a bit stand-offish and a bit rude towards Geordi when it comes to what he's done with his ship and engines but it's sort of her "right" to not act like she's his best friend. She's presumably there on a professional evaluation. Not to become Geordi's friend.
Then there's the encounter on the holodeck. We don't know how much of the program Leah saw but Geordi walks in right when holo-Leah is giving Geordi the "when you touch these engines you're touching me" speech she gave at the end of the program/episode. Leah is rightfully outraged but *maybe* rips into Geordi a bit too harshly. She's likely seen the whole program and knows "how far it went" and, well, she likely could use some-kind-of logic to know that any such program likely wouldn't be accessible on Geordi's professional list of projects.
But, still, she's understandably outraged and in the scene it's hard to take Geordi's side when he attacks her for her stand-offish behavior. Again, she wasn't there to become friends.
It's an episode like this that makes it hard to defend Geordi in the "Geordi is a creep" argument because, really, he doesn't come through most of this episode looking too good. I mean he invites a woman he's known, realistically, for only a few hours into his quarters, where he's casually dressed, has soft music playing and the lights turned down. Just overall odd behavior from him.
And if he really had been so taken with Leah why hasn't he done something as simple as look at her Starfleet profile which likely would have listed her as married?
Though the episode is named for it the stuff with the space baby is mostly a B-Plot. It's a pretty interesting and neat one but some of Picard's reactions in the bridge scenes seem a bit severe. I get that humans are supposed to be a bit more advanced and disturbed by killing innocent creatures but Picard's killing of the mother who posed a threat to the ship seems pretty severe. Even more severe when Picard doesn't take more aggressive action to detach the baby from the ship when it's presence there poses a threat. Again, understandable he wants all of the information possible before taking action but his grimness seems out of character.
This episode has a fun bit of continuity with a previous episode (The Booby Trap) and in a nice bit of continuity it is referred to in a future episode when Geordi relates the story of how they weaned the baby to Scotty in Season 6's "Relics."
GREAT LINES:
"Sir, is the appellation "Junior" to be the creature's official designation?" - Data, after the conference on what to do with the alien baby whom everyone refers to as "Junior."
REMASTERED THOUGHTS:
The effects of the original episode are faithfully recreated here. The original version of the episode when it was made back in 1991/1992 used very early and very primitive CGI for the effects of the space-born aliens. But this early CGI wasn't done at a great enough quality and resolution to make the transfer to HD for the BD, so they had to be recreated from scratch.
Unfortuantely I think those behind the project were a little "too" faithful. The CGI looks pretty much exactly the same as the earlier counterparts. Which on the one hand is good as overall it makes the episodes consistent with one another but on the other hand, well, it doesn't look very good. It looks like early CGI work when, certainly, much better stuff can be produced today and the opportunity should have been taken to create more "life like" or better shaded/colored alien creatures.
Other than that small quibble the recreation and remastering of the episode looks good.
