“I think she’s real for you. And that’s real enough for me.”
We’ve spent a lot of time with the children of the Enterprise in Season Five. This is largely Alexander’s fault, and it steers the complexion of Star Trek: The Next Generation into a disappointingly bland amalgam of family entertainment, with all of the teeth taken out. (Imagine Doctor Who if it were never allowed to be scary.) The final child-centric episode of the year is “Imaginary Friend,” and it’s far and away the weirdest. An alien being poses as a little girl’s imaginary friend in order to explore the Enterprise. In an outright reversal of the approved structure of a Next Gen episode, the little girl in question – Clara Sutter – is not only a guest star, but is a guest star with almost no connection whatsoever to any of the principal characters.
It’s hard for the episode to find its feet when we have no real reason to connect to the A-story. I suppose the only option in this regard would have been to make Alexander the principal character, and make his imaginary friend an Atreyu-like Klingon adolescent. I’m so sick of Alexander by this point that I’m fairly glad they didn’t go that way (and did, meanwhile, find an excuse to throw clay at the back of his Klingon head), but it doesn’t help “Imaginary Friend” much. About the only saving grace here is the fact that the lead actress, Noley Thornton, is pretty good. The girl playing imaginary Isabella, Shay Astar, isn’t quite as convincing, but admittedly, she has a much harder role to play (it even includes technobabble!). Most of the conviction in the story is visual: the producers correctly cotton to the fact that little blonde girls in blue dresses are creepy as fuck.
The episode purports to concern itself with how frustrating adult authority would be from a child’s point of view. If you take the view that Isabella is a stand-in for a sexual predator, however, “Imaginary Friend” becomes an astonishingly disconcerting screed about just how far adults will go to flat-out ignore a child asking for help. (I’m sure that’s not what the writers intended. Although, who knows? There are five credited writers on this episode, and generally, when the writer credits completely obscure the frame they’re superimposed upon, it’s not a good sign.)
In a throwaway scene, “Imaginary Friend” tells us for the first time that Geordi grew up as an army brat, with both parents in Starfleet, frequently being posted to different assignments. Geordi being Geordi, he doesn’t mind at all; he considered the whole thing a big adventure. But it does slyly explain why he might be so unremittingly bad at finding and keeping a romantic partner.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Five is in stores now.