“His hands… were moving faster than I could see.”
Yeah yeah yeah, the one where Data has a kid. I was merciless to this episode when I was younger, for reasons that I, at 36, can only attribute to my (hopefully elapsed) status as a useless, coldhearted bastard. No, “The Offspring” still isn’t my favourite episode of the season, and I find a great deal of its storytelling fairly cheap. But it’s an out-of-the-park hit on at least one level: you really, really buy that child.
I heart Hallie Todd and always have, and find in reviewing the episode that she gives a richly modulated performance throughout. She builds on a series of physical and verbal ticks as Data’s android daughter, Lal, to credibly communicate Lal’s slow maturation into sentience and then, unfortunately, emotional awareness. Against Todd, Brent Spiner gives one of his all-time best performances, and there is monumental tragedy about the basic calculus of Data’s project to create his own daughter. He is an unfeeling being attempting to create an unfeeling being, but wishes to embue her with a sense of his own desire to be human; he is, in effect, purposefully creating a creature who will always feel the same inadequacy that he does. Data explains all of this away with one of the most beautiful reiterations of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s whole philosophy on the meaning of life: “We must strive to be more than what we are, Lal. It does not matter that we will not reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards.”
Although it is glossed over far too quickly, there’s something brilliant about Data not even choosing his offspring’s sex; one could get a lot of science fiction mileage out of the notion of a sentient being given the right to choose all aspects of their sex and gender. In fact, the majority of Lal’s best moments come about over the development of her awareness of sex and sexuality, right up to the moment when she spies a couple making out in the corner of Ten Forward and then wonders why they head off to their quarters a moment later. Guinan demurs on the response, perhaps directly demonstrating that if you don’t arm a young person with a healthy knowledge of basic sexual education, they’re very likely to experiment on their own – as Lal does, seconds later, by manhandling Commander Riker.
“The Offspring” is Jonathan Frakes’ first turn in the directing chair, and thereby the first time an episode of Star Trek was directed by a member of the cast. He picked a honey of a breakout here. There are great scenes throughout – I love the one where Data goes to Beverly for advice about parenting, and find Stewart’s entire performance as Picard to be one of his richest and most interesting.
The flaws? I absolutely loathe the score, for one thing, making this one of Ron Jones’ few misfires in an otherwise tremendous canon. And having set up the existence of Lal so brilliantly, the episode really has no way to back out of the problem. Conjuring the usual Evil Admiral from Starfleet angle would be fine if the sort of questions he raises weren’t so completely redundant after “The Measure of a Man,” and having Lal suffer a systemic breakdown to resolve the whole situation without resolving it seems like the easy way out. Nonetheless, her final scene with Data – as she verbally lists off (in reverse order) the things she has learned about in her life – is stunning.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Three is available now.