The [Space Rapist] Child – ST:TNG s2e1

Originally posted at Recaps in Hindsight. Check out the season 1 Next Generation recaps here!

The short recap:

It’s like a brand new day aboard the Enterprise, so let’s celebrate with the WORST TROPE EVER.

The long recap:

There are good things about this episode. They are, in no particular order:

• Riker’s beard
• Geordi gets to be Chief Engineer
• Worf’s forehead is greatly improved
• Riker’s BEARD
• 2 instances of the Riker Manoeuvre including a Reverse Riker Manoeuvre
• Colm Meaney as an as-yet-unnamed Transporter Chief
• GUINAN
• That Jonathan Frakes certainly is a good-looking man.

But then there are the bad things about this episode, chief among them the plot. Yes, finally it’s here, the Deanna Gets Psychically Raped/Mysteriously Impregnated trope.

I hate nothing more than this trope. Not even holodeck episodes. Not even that baseball game holodeck episode from DS9.

So, an alien being gets curious about humanity and decides to impregnate Deanna without her consent so it can experience being human (or at least half-human half-Betazed). This is handled incredibly badly by every single member of the crew except for Dr Polaski, who I would love if she weren’t not-Beverley.

Picard just plunks the news down in the middle of a briefing – “Oh hai, Deanna’s pregnant.” No context or anything. This would provide an interesting opportunity for Riker to get all Spurned Imzadi at her, but he completely underplays it … until Polaski explains it’s a completely unnatural pregnancy proceeding at an impossible rate, and then Will’s all “so who’s the father? Huh? Huh?” so Deanna basically has to recount her experience of being impregnated in her sleep against her will in front of all her colleagues.

Nice move, Will, you dick.

Worf declares that they should terminate the pregnancy for the safety of the ship (hello, Deanna’s right here), Data makes some kind of anti-abortion Prime Directive statement (Deanna is right there, guys), Riker is pissy about the situation (remember Deanna’s the pregnant one, dudes?) and makes this grandiose statement about how “we can’t assume the being’s intent was belligerent” and yep, I spent about half this episode shouting “You, all of you, you SUCK” at the television.

Deanna decides to keep the baby, and Picard to his credit says “Well, that’s the end of that discussion, then.” And throughout the episode Deanna will be utterly motherly to the baby who is subsequently born and (of course) grows at an unnaturally fast rate. And I almost wouldn’t mind if they made some comment about the fact that her Betazoid empathy/telepathy induces really strong attachments in pregnant Betazoids and that’s why she goes from deeply disturbed and upset to sunshine and rainbows overnight …

But then we’d have to retcon a lot of Lwaxana Troi’s characterisation and that would be terrible.

The birth scene is amusing, not only because it sets up this delightfully weird TNG/DS9 trope of Worf Must Be Present At All Birth Scenes. Data gets to “stand in” as the father (because Dr Polaski loves some heteronormativity) and his utter uncomprehending confusion is only trumped in sci fi by River Tam’s “I wonder who’s in there?” line from Firefly.

It’s also weird because Deanna feels no pain so there’s none of the standard TV birth scene screaming, just deep, heavy breathing … mostly while the camera is focused on Riker, who’s all concerned-face out of Deanna’s line of sight. It’s a bit … sexual.

In favour of the birth scene: the newborn Ian Andrew Troi looks like a newborn, and they have Deanna in a near-vertical seated position.

Meanwhile! As young Ian grows too quickly and Deanna plays mum, the Enterprise is transporting incredibly dangerous biological plague samples, which of course start breaking out of their containment field because baby Ian emits a dangerous type of radiation which no one has picked up because no one’s thought to run the fast-growing space-rape baby through any kind of tests.

Ian figures it out and promptly dies of no actual cause, leaving a tearful Deanna behind. THE END.

Seriously, it’s a weird story and even with all my lifelong love of Trek, I’ve got nothing. There’s more emotional connection with the puppies they apparently keep in the Enterprise kindergarten than there is with the space-baby.

To round it all off, Wesley decides to stay aboard the Enterprise after a good heart-to-heart with Guinan about self-care being a radical act … and after getting Picard’s permission before talking to his mother about it. Dammit, TNG, I was already missing Bev, and then you reinforce the fact she’s the biggest badass on the crew. Even Picard is like, “you can stay aboard, Riker will be your legal guardian, but only if your mum says it’s okay, because I ain’t crossing Beverley Crusher even if she is halfway across the quadrant.”

 Other weird things about this episode:

• Picard is really, really weird about the existence of Ten Forward, and before we see that it’s a fairly ordinary 90s-futuristic bar you’d think it was the Mos Eisley Cantina (or Quark’s)
• There are PUPPIES aboard the Enterprise, and Picard has miraculously gotten better dealing with children (as long as they aren’t Wes)
• Picard interrupts before we find out just how awesome Guinan is. Boo, Picard.
• Polaski is somewhat dismissively described in my house as “Bones with tits” because she’s basically written as Dr McCoy – grumpy and single-minded and definitely not in love with Picard. And they seem to want to set up a McCoy/Spock dynamic between her and Data, which is interesting BUT YOU’RE STILL NOT BEVERLEY.
• Data’s persnickety-ness about the pronunciation of his name is evidence against the bloody emotion chip they’ll give him in the future. He’s Pinocchio enough as is!
• Polaski has an unusual blue-minidress-over-pants uniform, distinct from Bev’s blue-pantsuniform-and-lab-coat

Points:

• Riker: 2 for the Riker Manoeuvre
• Wes: 1 for awkward grinning
• Data: 1 for picking the most awkward time to interrogate Deanna about the experience of childbirth

MVP: Dr Polaski

For a character who’s not-Beverley and gets dropped into the cast rather unceremoniously, I have to say I like her. She gets real humour, is one of the few characters that seems to give a damn how Deanna feels about being used as a broodmare, and doesn’t take crap from Worf about letting security concerns get in the way of proper medical care.