Galaxy’s Child (⭑⭑⭑⭑)

With “Galaxy’s Child,” season four gives us yet another episode that functions as a direct sequel to a specific episode from a previous season (in this case, season three’s “Booby Trap”), and as usual to date, the sequel builds upon what came before to produce something better. I enjoyed Geordi’s romantic frustrations, and his connection with the computer-simulated Leah Brahms, in season three, but the plot backdrop against which his character story played out that time was less than stellar. This time, the space baby story is just interesting enough to play well in the background of what is primarily a character-focused episode, and then ultimately creates a situation just similar enough to what the Enterprise faced in “Booby Trap” to make it feel believable that Dr. Brahms would stumble upon Geordi’s old program—the one thing that our poor chief engineer would least want for her to see. Finally, it provides a problem for the two of them to work together to solve in the episode’s climax. Nicely done.

I really enjoy the way that this episode brings Leah Brahms to life as a real person who is believably connected to the simulated version we saw before, yet not at all what Geordi is expecting. Being a real person, she comes into the story with just the sort of situational emotional baggage—feelings, opinions, insecurities, etc. about where she is and what she’s doing—that a simulation based solely on recorded personality traits wouldn’t have. In some moments, one worries that the episode is perhaps going too far down the road of portraying her as cold and harsh, presumably to underscore its point that Geordi had presumed too much about her before actually meeting her…but ultimately, I think the portrayal does work. It isn’t merely that she fails to live up to Geordi’s preconceived notions about her; what we eventually come to understand is that she, too, came in with preconceived notions (about some smug field engineer who thinks he knows better than her when it comes to her engine designs), causing her to be brusque and defensive from the moment she arrives. Add Geordi’s weird over-familiarity into the mix, and it’s easy to make sense of pretty much all of her behavior. The twist about her turning out to be married also works; it’s not obvious or predicable, but it makes perfect sense, further contextualizes her reactions to Geordi after it’s revealed, and gets revealed in a scene that resolves the awkward tension in the air between them in a satisfying way. As cold as she may seem in other scenes, the slightly amused, moderately flattered, ever so slightly hesitant, but mainly compassionate way in which Leah breaks the news to him (“if I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing, then you should know…”) makes her, in that moment, extremely relatable.

(Some viewers find it implausible that Geordi would not have checked into his fantasy woman prior to now, at least enough to have learned the very basic fact about her that she is married…but I disagree. I don’t imagine that Geordi has been mooning over Leah Brahms ever since “Booby Trap”; in my mind, he has seen his experiences in that episode for what they were, as a one-off connection with someone who isn’t real, and hasn’t dwelt that much on it. His reference to the incident when talking to Barclay in “Hollow Pursuits” suggests as much, in fact. It was only now, when unexpectedly faced with the prospect of actually meeting the real Leah, that he began to give play to those old feelings, and to imagine that something might actually come of them.)

If I were to quibble with anything, it would be mainly that the episode’s early scenes go a bit overboard in establishing “Geordi is overconfident in his certainty that he’s going to hit it off with Leah Brahms,” too obviously telegraphing his inevitable comeuppance and disappointment. I like that the choice was made to portray him as overconfident rather than, say, a bundle of nerves; I just think it could have been done more subtly. Relatedly, Guinan shows her insufferably smug side a bit in her various scenes with Geordi: too perfectly aware of what’s in store for him, too superior about it, too trite and thinks-she’s-cleverer-than-she-is with her little bit about Geordi’s “old visor” that let him see whatever he wanted to see. In the end, her advice to Geordi that he set his expectations aside and try to see Leah Brahms for who she is, and not merely the ways in which she isn’t what he had hoped or expected, is sound, but again, I would have preferred for the episode not to have tried quite so hard to be too “cute” about how it conveyed this idea.

Even though they make me cringe for Geordi, the episode earns points for two deliciously/horribly awkward scenes: Geordi trying too hard to bridge the gulf between himself and Dr. Brahms via a romantic dinner in his quarters to which she, of course, comes with a wholly different agenda and set of expectations (and yet, for a moment, they do forge a tentative connection!), and of course the confrontation in the holodeck after Leah has discovered Geordi’s simulation of her. Throughout the former scene, all I can think is: “Geordi, no…read the woman’s cues…she does not want to have a romantic dinner with you! This is going to be mortifying! Abort!” And yet, the episode sells me on Geordi’s painful obliviousness, and Levar Burton sells me on his vulnerability, and I totally sympathize with him, and it all feels like something that could really happen. As for the latter scene, the episode makes what I think are some really interesting choices. Despite the apparently damning evidence that Leah has stumbled into, Geordi hasn’t actually done much that was particularly wrong; he really did only interact with the simulation to work through an engineering crisis, and it’s not as though he deliberately programmed her to say her cheesily suggestive lines about how every time he touches the ship’s engines, it’s like he’s touching her. (And if you want to go there…even the fact of visually simulating her at all comes across in “Booby Trap” like a bit of a leap on the part of the computer, rather than as anything that Geordi deliberately requests.) Okay, he did kiss her, which I can easily see the real Leah regarding as a kind of violation…but the point is, he didn’t plan any of this; it’s not as though the conclusion that Leah (understandably) leaps to about the simulation being essentially his sexual plaything is actually true. And the episode acknowledges this, even as it also allows Leah to fully react in the way that she realistically would to what she sees. Geordi, after his initially panicked, humiliated, “I can explain!” type reaction upon coming face to face with Leah in the holodeck, actually pivots to indignant anger, which is what I meant by the “surprising choice” made by the writers here. Yes, he’s been humiliatingly caught and exposed as having crafted a fantasy around her, and yes, it looks bad—but he deserves a chance to explain the truth of the matter, he insists. And incidentally, yes, I’ve been coming at you with unrealistic expectations ever since you came aboard, and that’s on me—but equally, you’ve been being kind of a jerk to me much of the time (and not just in response to my own behavior), and that’s on you! His anger isn’t entirely fair, since (again) the conclusions to which Leah has leapt are pretty natural ones to leap to, given what she has seen. But still, this turn in his reaction, I think, defuses her anger far more effectively than continuing to blurt out panicked explanations could possibly have done, and sets things up effectively for their reconciliation in the episode’s climax.

When they next interact, in engineering, collaborating to resolve the space baby crisis, I have a moment where I wonder if she has perhaps gotten past her anger a bit too easily, but again, I ultimately buy it. They are slightly awkward with each other, but are also finally on equal footing, interacting with each other as they are rather than in light of preconceived notions, and in the heat of the crisis, a working chemistry finally, spontaneously emerges between them, and it feels sort of exhilarating! And afterwards, they smooth things out and come to an understanding, and it feels like maybe they can be friends after all, even if Geordi will still feel disappointed that they can’t be more than that. As an ending to their little story, it works.

Incidentally, the other thing that happens in this episode is that the Enterprise encounters a new kind of alien being and accidentally kills it! This is treated with the respect that is due, yet without dwelling overmuch on it, given that it isn’t really what the episode is about. Still, it’s kind of shocking on a show that generally portrays its heroes as pretty straightforwardly good, and their actions as mostly leading to positive outcomes. It’s a nice little piece of realism, reflecting the fact that what Starfleet does—venturing out into uncharted space and encountering alien life, etc.—is inherently dangerous, and even with the best of intentions, things can go horribly wrong sometimes. It’s a small piece of the episode, but I appreciate it.