Galaxy's Child by: Maurice Hurley from a story by: Thomas Kartozian and directed by: Winrich Kolbe

 

“Galaxy’s Child” is written by: Maurice Hurley, from a story by: Thomas Kartozian, and is directed by: Winrich Kolbe.  It was produced under production code 190, was the 16^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 90^th episode overall, and was broadcast on March 11, 1991.

 

To be generous to “Galaxy’s Child”, there is potential in telling a story about reassessing a character’s hero when they get the chance to meet.  People are complicated and it’s a universal experience.  The internet age has intensified this feeling with the rise of extreme parasocial relationships around every public figure (and several private figures).  An episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation exploring this should be an easy win.  “Galaxy’s Child” is a direct sequel to “Booby Trap” as Dr. Leah Brahms, played by Susan Gibney, comes aboard the Enterprise and Geordi La Forge, played by LeVar Burton, is madly smitten based on the hologram program he made of her in that previous episode.  This should be Geordi realizing that Dr. Brahms is her own person with her own life and deleting the hologram permanently at the end of “Booby Trap” was the right decision.  It is not.  The increasing conflict of Geordi being unable to come to terms with Dr. Brahms as a person and not this idealized partner for him.  “Galaxy’s Child” was written by Maurice Hurley, the previous showrunner of the show, who left at the end of the second season due to disagreements with the rest of production, even wishing to open a potential new season with an entirely new cast because he disliked the current production.  Brahms as a character is introduced insulting Geordi, rhetorically meant to let the audience know that this is not the hologram from the last season, but in practice places her as antagonist of the episode.  With this framing Geordi is the protagonist, his arc in the episode being complaining that while there is the occasional lip service to the fact that he never knew Dr. Brahms, by the end of the episode he is treated as if he has done nothing wrong and Brahms is given the blame for their conflict.

 

“Galaxy’s Child” is an episode dripping in misogyny.  Outside of Dr. Brahms’ introduction, her personality keeps the stone-cold demeanor at best, something that could work perfectly well if it treated her as a person and not the sole object of Geordi’s desires.  The script has her on the Enterprise to attempt to learn from Geordi’s improvements to her designs in “Booby Trap”, something that she continually disregards as wrong, often idiotic, and not willing to even look at the possibility they are improvements.  Brahms is also established as a married woman after a scene where Geordi lures her into a date on the false pretense of discussing the scope of the changes to the engine.  The script and direction from Winrich Kolbe frames this as a romantic date that Brahms is far too cold and wrong, using her marriage to shut Geordi down.  The episode builds to the point where Brahms discovers her hologram replica, and the episode frames her as being in the wrong for getting angry about it.  Maurice Hurley clearly does not understand that the hologram is a sex object, it is a fantasy using the skin, voice, and body of a woman for the pleasure of a male character who then wishes to use the real woman as object for his romantic and sexual desires.  The episode having the gall to frame Geordi in the right is the problem, the resolution is Geordi and Brahms working together to solve the B-plot which is a space eel latching onto the Enterprise.  That B-plot is not a bad B-plot, just unremarkable and never really intersecting with the sexist A-plot that’s the core of the episode.  For their part Gibney and Burton are trying with the episode, though there is a strain on both of their performances because the material is not there.  Burton’s actually great in the few moments Geordi is opposite Guinan who is the one person to even indicate that he may be in the wrong.

 

Overall, Maurice Hurley seems to be at the scene of the crime when Star Trek: The Next Generation produces its worst episodes.  “Galaxy’s Child” is a product of rape culture.  While no sexual assault or rape is depicted, the script is steeped in the idea that a man is owed a relationship and will not take no for an answer.  It blames the woman for not being nice and personable enough to a man who is continually overstepping personal and professional boundaries, adding further blame when the discovery of her body being used without consent as essentially a sex toy.  The only thing stopping this from being the absolute bottom of the barrel is having a perfectly fine B-plot and exactly one scene where Whoopi Goldberg tells the man no, he’s being delusional.  2/10.