Plot Synopsis: Geordi uses a virtual reality probe to explore a wrecked ship inside a gas giant, but he’s preoccupied by the disappearance of his mother’s ship.
Plot A and B Analysis: The teaser is initially confusing. Geordi is climbing a ladder in the ship with no VISOR, and appears to be seeing normally. This is cleared up when we see he is really in a science lab with a virtual reality interface, and his ‘body’ is a probe. Plot A is the lame story about Geordi’s interface and his mom, there is no plot B. The Enterprise in in orbit of a gas giant in order to help a small starship which is trapped within its atmosphere; the fate of the seven crew members are unknown. Picard is later informed that the ship Geordi’s mother captains has disappeared, and there is no trace of her. Geordi mans the interface to investigate the Raman, finds that the crew are all dead, but when a fire ignites it burns his hands for real. While Beverly figures out how to fix the interface Geordi talks to his dad and it’s clear he has accepted the likelihood of her death. Geordi does not. He stops by Data’s quarters for a chat, and tells us how he is really feeling: “It’s just that if she really is dead, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” On his next trip down via the interface he sees his mother *rolls eyes*. She tells him she is alive on her ship way down on the planet’s surface and wants him to go down there–when he touches her the interface overloads and almost kills him. Despite what everyone says he is obsessed with the idea she is still alive. He wants to go down again but Picard forbids it. At the climax he rigs the interface on his own. Data has anticipated him and eventually agrees to monitor him while Geordi does his thing. We learn the truth is: some stupid subspace life form got trapped on the Raman when it was lower in the atmosphere, and when they tried to communicate telepathically with the crew they died–Geordi was only spared because of the intermediary of his interface. He takes the ship down and the little jerks are saved. Yay.
Favorite Scenes: I don’t really have any, this whole episode is mediocre at best. Beverly Crusher and Deanna give us the best explanations of how Geordi could be seeing his ‘mother’ but since this is sci-fi, of course neither of them are right.
Use of Cast/Characters: This is really LeVar’s episode, and Geordi gets significant character development. We learn his mother (Silva) is the captain of the starship USS Hera, his father is a doctor, and he has a sister (Ariana) as well. We learn his mother is ‘brilliant, funny, perceptive, a good judge of character.’ Also Geordi gets to shoot a phaser out of the palm of his hand like a super hero. Picard is just a captain in this episode, Riker has a couple of scenes, Deanna has one scene, and Worf has just two lines. Evidently this is where Deanna’s new hairstyle is debuted, and it will be this way for the rest of the season. Data is involved and has a couple of decent scenes where he is Geordi’s friend, even helping him in disobeying his captain. Ben Vereen stars as Geordi’s father and does an alright job. Madge Sinclair plays Geordi’s mother, and is also fine.
Blu Ray Version: The promo here is a bit overblown, telling us that Geordi will die in order to save his mother’s life. No he won’t. The fire Geordi sees when he’s investigating the Raman is better defined and the environment is more recognizable now.
Nitpicks: This whole episode is one big nitpick, I don’t care for it. When you get an actor like Ben Vereen shouldn’t you use him for more than one brief scene? The guy’s character wasn’t even given a name! Madge Sinclair is an Emmy winning actress, so why write her a part where she stands there woodenly and doesn’t do any real acting? Why have the prop guys make a very detailed cool-looking probe and only show it once, for five seconds, as a reflection?
Overall Impression: This one just bugs me, it’s episodes like this that make the viewer feel TNG was running out of gas in season seven. Writer Ron Moore sums up my feelings: “We were in the room and we were talking about bringing Geordi’s mother in, and we all kind of looked at each other and we were like, ‘This is sad. Is this the best we can do, Geordi’s mother?’ It was such a ‘who cares’ idea.” If this was real life then some combination of Beverly and Deanna’s explanations would have been the reason he saw her, but because it’s Star Trek there have to be contrived aliens that need to be saved. There is no point at which the audience believes it really is his mom. Even the prop guys didn’t like this one because we only see the probe they made for a few seconds. Overall this is a bad episode. I rate this episode 2 out of 5 stars on a good day.
Behind the Scenes/Trivia: Having Ben Vereen work in this episode was a big deal for LeVar Burton. He said, “Ben is, in my case, a large part of why I became an actor.” You may not know that both Ben Vereen and Madge Sinclair worked with LeVar back on Roots, the role that made LeVar famous. Madge also played the captain of the USS Saratoga back on Star Trek IV. LeVar got headaches from wearing his VISOR during the entire run of the show; this might be the only week of shooting where he didn’t have one. If you want more information on Geordi’s parents or his mother, he talks about them in Imaginary Friend and Hero Worship.
The scene where Riker consoles La Forge on his loss was written by Jeri Taylor when it was discovered the show was running short on time. The scene was not filmed until after Phantasms, three episodes later! Jeri Taylor tells the initial reason for this episode: “We’ve had the family of everybody else on board. Every other character has had their family dealt with except Geordi and probably the main reason for doing it was there was an order to finally flesh out his character more.” Well lady, you did a piss poor job of it!
Missable/Unmissable? Definitely missable. The next episode is more mediocrity, but it is a step up.