“The Child” is written by: Jaron Summers, Jon Povill,
and Maurice Hurley and is directed by: Rob Bowman. It was produced under production code 127,
was the 1st episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season
2, the 27th episode overall, and was broadcast on November 21, 1988.
Last week, when I looked at “The Neutral Zone” I discussed
the 1988 Writer’s Guild of America strike which ran from March 7 to August 7 of
that year, the longest strike in the history of the WGA. It remains an important piece of labor action
in the filmmaking industry, giving writers a better residual payment scheme for
the repeats of programs. As with any
labor action, disruption is the part of the point and where the bargaining
power comes from for the ordinary people against the ruling class, and the
strike disrupted the start of the 1988 television season, pushing back the usual
September start until late-October and early-November. Star Trek: The Next Generation wouldn’t
actually begin broadcast until the end of November. The second season was also given a reduced
episode order from 26, cut down to 22. With
the strike ending August 7, production on the second season would have had to
begin immediately to make the deadline to broadcast. The November 21 broadcast date means that
there had to be four episodes completed before the show could take a break for
the Christmas holidays, those four weeks of broadcast also giving time for more
episodes to be both written and shot.
And there’s the trick, the plan for the first four episodes was proposed
on August 11, less than a week after the strike ended, with the first episode
going into filming in late September, giving approximately a month to come up
with a script for the episode. “The
Child” is the result, and it’s not an episode of Star Trek: The Next
Generation, it’s an episode of Star Trek: Phase II, the television series
in development in the mid-1970s before Paramount Pictures shifted the franchise
into a series of feature films. Maurice
Hurley is credited as one of three writers on the episode, doing the final
rewrites on the script of Jaron Summers and Jon Povill.
Hurley’s claimed contributions to the episode are
taking the dialogue and reassigning it to the characters of Star Trek: The
Next Generation, and writing two small subplots to explain why Dr. Crusher
has left the series after Gates McFadden was fired for speaking out about a lot
of the sexism in the series (and claims that Hurley was sexually harassing McFadden,
which is very possible considering Hurley left after this season and McFadden
returned) and to who her replacement Dr. Katherine Pulaski, played by Diana
Muldaur, is. Hurley also was tasked with
introducing the new character of Guinan, a bartender played by Whoopi Goldberg
added to the series because Goldberg wanted a part with inspiration of Nichelle
Nichols as Uhura. Hurley in actuality
did a total rewrite of the original concept, a concept that I am not going to
say doesn’t have potential, however “The Child” has the premise of Deanna Troi,
the only female character left as part of the main cast of the show (Muldaur
and Goldberg aren’t credited in the opening), is forcibly impregnated by an
alien entity, goes through a full pregnancy in approximately two days, give birth,
and raise the child (named Ian) until it turns out it’s causing radiation on
the Enterprise (they are transporting some virus samples that grow as
well as radiation) so he just returns to being an energy being. What I can give to the premise is that at the
very least, it gives much of the decision of giving birth to Troi, despite the fact
that she is vaguely shamed by Riker who is a jealous lover.
Marina Sirtis is trying, she actually has some
characterization of Troi as having mothering instincts, but outside of giving
birth she doesn’t actually get any focus on raising Ian. Never mind any attempt to explore the fact
Troi as a character was raped, forced to carry the pregnancy to term, give
birth, and raise the baby as it’s mother; framing this as something that doesn’t
affect Troi at all. Physically, in
universe, Troi has not been harmed, and the script doesn’t do anything with the
mental effects. Sirtis just doesn’t seem
to have the acting chops to pull off any of her scenes opposite Ian who is
already a child actor on a show and franchise that is notorious for bad child
actors. Deanna Troi is raped and it’s
totally fine, great. Instead, it’s the
men who get all the focus in the plot: the focus is on Picard and Riker,
especially Riker who is turned into a complete asshole because someone
potentially stole his woman. Okay, it
isn’t phrased that way, but that’s how the script has Jonathan Frakes play it,
Rob Bowman is directing and he’s too busy making the episode at the very least
visually slick. It’s all because the Enterprise
is transporting viruses as the B-plot which is a B-plot that is just kind of
there. The only other element of this
episode that at least shows potential is Diana Muldaur as Pulaski, mainly because
she walks into the episode a fully formed character ready to have conflict with
everybody else: Pulaski doesn’t see Data as a person, completely upstages
Patrick Stewart as Picard, and has a character arc of softening her attitude
clearly setup.
Overall, “The Child” is an episode that is the perfect
encapsulation of what went wrong with Star Trek: The Next Generation’s
first season and what seems to be wrong with the second season. It’s currently the second worst episode of
the show and makes it clear that Maurice Hurley as a writer is just plain
sexist, he’s the one who wrote the script and went on record saying he didn’t
read the original Star Trek: Phase II pitch. This is another episode among some of the
most regressive the franchise has done, the only light spot is that the
decision to carry Ian to term is fully given to Troi and accepted (an abortion
would be on the table). 1/10.
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