4x16 Galaxy's Child

[4.2/10] “Galaxy’s Child” comes sooooo close. When Dr. Leah Brahms finds Geordi’s holodeck program from “Booby Trap” and hears her holographic doppelganger practically cooing at him, she is understandably as furious as she is aghast. She tells him it’s violative. She tells him she’s outraged. She dresses him down for not only turning her very being into some sort of romantic plaything, but then using the knowledge gained from the recreation to try to ply her in real life.

Let’s be frank. Geordi’s behavior in this episode is creepy. Really creepy. His actions in “Booby Trap” are largely forgivable. The computer constructed the ersatz Dr. Brahms without him really asking for it. He utilized the hologram to solve a pressing problem. And while his attraction to this artificial representation of a real person was a little weird, he stopped it before it went too far. If anything, the message of the episode seems to be that technological comforts are no substitute for real life, a lesson Geordi took to heart and one worth imparting to our fellow Trekkies.

But the violation in “Galaxy’s Child” isn’t the fact that Geordi still has that program on his futuristic hard drive. It’s that he uses what he learned about Dr. Brahms from it to try to woo her in the real world, without ever coming clean to her about where his off-putting level of info about her came from. This may be the cringiest, most uncomfortable installment from any Star Trek project this side of Kirk trying to “civilize” an alien princess, and most of that rests on how the episode treats Geordi’s borderline disturbing behavior.

When taken to task for invading Dr. Brahms’s privacy, for her understandable reaction to seeing a recreation of herself making goo goo eyes at a stranger, for all but rummaging through her garbage, does Geordi apologize for any of it? Does he see why it’s wrong? Does he accept that it’s wrong to try to approach someone, even someone you think you might like, in this way?

No, of course not. Instead, he dresses down Dr. Brahms for being “cold” and unfriendly to him when “all he wanted to do was be her friend.” The episode largely leaves it at that in terms of interrogating Geordi’s conduct here, turning it into one of the most lopsided, even gross, false equivalencies the franchise would ever put forward.

That’s the big takeaway from the A-story here. Dr. Brahms, the object of Geordi’s fantasy, arrives on the Enterprise in person to examine the modifications to the ship. Geordi anticipates a real world chance to hit it off like he did with Leah’s holographic equivalent, taking on an air of familairity with her and concocting little bits of social engineering to grease the wheels of the friendship he wants to forge. But when those plans go awry, when Dr. Brahms seems increasingly uncomfortable at Geordi’s approach, the episode blames her lack of receptiveness to his advances as much, if not more, than it slates Geordi for them.

Thank goodness for the B-story. The Enterprise encounters a sort of giant whale flying through space (Hello Voyage Home fans!) which turns out to be a species the Federation’s never seen before. A brief attempt to study it results in an unfortunate situation where the crew is forced to repel the creature, accidentally killing it in the process. But the creature turns out to be pregnant, and its offspring attaches itself to the ship. As it sucks up the Enterprise’s energy, Picard and company have to figure out how to get it home and detach it safely before it drains the ship of all power.

It’s the best thing in the episode for multiple reasons. For one, it creates some necessary jeopardy to help add a sense of urgency to the episode beyond Geordi and Leah butting heads over changes to the ship. For another, the concept of large creatures that fly free in space and have little hives where they float amongst the stars is just inherently cool, a testament to the wonders of the universe. (Though in fairness, the crew has seen something along these lines already, in the form of Tin Man.)

But what drives it home most of all is Picard’s reaction to everything. His awe at the creature’s existence is infectious, and his sadness and regret when they accidentally kill it is palpable. That creates an emotional urgency, not just a practical one, when it becomes incumbent on the Enterprise to save the offspring and ferry it home. It’s a nice mix of nuts-and-bolts problem-solving, a cool sci-fi concept, and an emotional connection rooted in the captain’s respect and appreciation for the opening mantra’s vaunted “new life and new civilizations.”

Sadly, apparently, that respect doesn’t extend to women who are brusque with you. The big theme of “Galaxy’s Child” is that you have to accept people as you find them and not judge them based on your expectations or for failing to live up to your fantasies. For Geordi, his epiphany is supposed to be that he should accept Dr. Brahms even though she doesn’t align with the woman from his holodeck program. And for Dr. Brahms, it’s supposed to be that she’s wrong for holding a preemptive grudge against Geordi for tampering with the ship specifications she designed. And somehow, these are supposed to be equal sins.

It’s mind-boggling. There’s a good episode to be written about a ship’s designer and a ship’s engineer being at loggerheads over whether the drawing board or experience from operation should drive engineering decisions. There’s a good episode to be written about not pre-judging people based on their reputation or expectations and instead accepting them as the full three-dimensional person they are. But building Geordi and Leah’s interactions around those ideas completely ignores how wrong Geordi’s cyberstalking routine is, and placing blame on Dr. Brahms for being “cold” in response to his creepy behavior is beyond the pale. The approach to the episode is almost as wrongheaded as Geordi’s approach to his dream girl.

This is where I somewhat reluctantly note that the writer for this episode is former showrunner Maurice Hurley. No one’s ever come out with anything official, but rumors have circulated for years that Gates McFadden’s departure from TNG in season 2 stemmed from Hurley sexually harassing her. I don’t want to make too much of something that’s never been fully confirmed, and the episode’s problems exist wholly apart from any behind-the-scenes issues. But it does cast a particularly concerning light on a situation where gross behavior is treated as romantic, and a woman is implicitly chastised for being “cold” and unreceptive to it.

So much of the Geordi/Leah business is just uncomfortable and hard to watch. Geordi’s forwardness to someone he’s never actually met before, his knowing her favorite dish and commenting about how she wears her hair, his attempts to woo her in his quarters, all just come off like the work of a cyberstalking predator. Honestly, at times the episode feels like a horror movie.

Some of that may just be the way the script frames Dr. Brahms and Susan Gibney’s performance. What may be intended to play as “Dr. Brahms feels weird about this because she’s already decided she dislike Geordi because he’s messed with her ship,” instead plays out as “Dr. Brahms feels deeply uncomfortable at this dude she’s barely met reeling off personal details about her and assuming an air of familiarity to their relationship that doesn’t exist outside of the holodeck.” The distance between what the episode is going for and what it actually conveys make its blind spots seem worse.

Of course, by the end, Dr. Brahms and Geordi have to set aside their differences to help the baby whale, and after Leah’s suitably wowed by Geordi’s solution, they save the day at the last minute. There’s a detente, and past trespasses are laughed off in Ten Forward, and the episode seems to settle on more goo-goo eyes and a “We were both wrong” landing spot. The show wraps up the expectation vs. reality theme on both sides of the table, but never resolves the real issue with Geordi’s choices here, or deals with their implications.

At its best, Star Trek isn’t just a series of exciting speculative fiction stories set in outer space. It’s an aspirational vision for what humanity could one day become. That doesn’t mean that the characters at the center of those visions shouldn’t have flaws or that they shouldn’t err in very human ways. There’s something comforting about seeing the brilliant professionals aboard the Enterprise in familiar ways. But it means the show has to know when they’re stumbling, and not minimize their mistakes or, worse yet, paint them as in the right all along.

Geordi’s sin here wasn’t treating somebody like a fantasy rather than a real person. It was violating that person’s autonomy, using her personal information to try to manipulate her, and practically blaming her for it when it doesn’t work out the way he’d hoped. You can’t expect any T.V. show to share all of your values, but the way “Galaxy’s Child” writes off such uncomfortable behavior goes so far afield of my ethical bearings, one informed by shows like The Next Generation, that the episode becomes almost unwatchable. The episode flies right to the edge of the real point, the real problem with its character’s misstep here, and then walks away from it. That’s beyond disappointing for a series whose moral compass was never perfect, but rarely, if ever, pointed its audience in so wrong a direction.