[8.0/10] Parenthood isn’t a staple of Star Trek. You have Beverley Crusher and Wesley on TNG, but frankly, the show spends more time on Picard as a surrogate father than it does to Dr. Crusher as his actual mother. Deep Space 9 digs a little deeper with Captain Sisko and his son, Jake. And from The Original Series to the present, the franchise has navigated the complicated relationship between Sarek and his children. But for the most part, the nature of parent-child relationships are, at most, a “sometimes food” for Star Trek.
But if “The Offspring” is any indication, maybe the franchise should go to that well more often. More than almost any other episode, this installment is rooted in the amusing, difficult, and heart-rending aspects of being a parent. It once again plumbs the depths of the intersection between artificial life and the rights of sentient beings. And it draws poignance from Data’s sense of fatherhood in miniature, made no less real or piercing from his child looking and acting more than a little different than the kids we humans are used to.
These issues comes to a head when Data attends a Cybernetics conference and, after some furious tinkering, constructs an android of his own. He gives this daughter, Lal, transfers of his positronic brain, allowing her to slowly develop as a being roughly in line with human development. At the same time, the standard issue asshole Starfleet Admiral wants to whisk Lal away to a Federation laboratory so Lal can be studied and prodded in keeping with Starfleet’s scientific inquiries.
“The Offspring” tugs at the heartstrings and has some legitimately profound notions to impart on the nature of parenthood and development. But it’s not the most well-balanced episode in the world. It wants to present parenthood in microcosm, with quick-hit versions of the experience for both parent and child. It wants to extend “The Measure of a Man” into a meditation on whether Starfleet has the right to take Lal away. And it also wants to be a fairly broad comedy about the comical exaggerations of a child-like robot trying to emulate human behavior.
These pieces don’t always fit together perfectly. Frankly, I wish this episode were longer, as there’s meat and merits to each of these aspects of the episode, and each feels like it could more time to develop and build before the climax. But each works on its own terms, which gives the episode a certain cumulative force, even if the tonal shifts and rushed nature of certain scenes and plots leaves the viewer wanting more.
I’ll cop to enjoying the goofier humorous bits, broadly comic though they may be. Jonathan Frakes makes his auspicious start as a director here. He only moves in front of the camera for one scene, but a mixed up Lal planting one on the confused casanova of a first officer, only for Data to ask “What are your intentions toward my daughter?” is a knee-slapper. Lal asking a million questions only for Data to just instantly put her in sleep mode until the morning makes him the envy of parents across the globe. And while not every bit lands (Troi’s “It’s a girl” line delivery is pretty off), there’s a lighthearted vibe to these scenes that works.
At the same time, though, the episode gets at the bigger questions parents and children have to ask and answer for one another. In the process, Data articulates some of Star Trek’s core values. He commiserates with Dr. Crusher (who’s flattered to be called a successful parent) over having kids who feel alienated, something I’m sure plenty of nerdy younger viewers could related to. Ultimately, Dr. Crusher recommends relating the parent’s own experience, quelling Data’s fear that it’ll discourage his daughter, with the idea that it’ll show her that her dad understands what she’s going through, which is even more important. There’s a perfectly Trekkian sense of community, support, and understanding contained within the exchange.
More than that, Lal asks Data about her purpose, the reason for existing, and Data talks to her about striving to improve oneself and the world in turn, to do good throughout the universe. She asks him why they should strive to be human when it’s a mountain they can never truly climb, and he says that the act of striving lends its own rewards.
Some of the child development pieces of the story move a little fast -- the show is cramming a lot into forty-five minutes here -- but it also uses the Enterprise’s resident android to explicate big questions about the human condition: why we’re here, why we try to better ourselves, what the benefits of those Trek values of exploration and self-improvement are, even when the project is never fully complete. The show bites off more than it can chew in places, but the mouthful we get is worthwhile.
But while it doesn’t quite, well, measure up to “The Measure of a Man”, this episode finds meaning in the clash between Data as a sentient being who fathered his child, and a brilliant cyberneticist who invented a new android, between Lal as a new life form taking her first steps, and as a technological innovation that needs to be studied. It’s familiar ground. Picard’s “I helped define them” speech here gives off strong “we already dealt with this” vibes.
I particularly like the transition of Picard’s demeanor here. He goes from chastising Data for keeping the development of Lal under wraps, until he internalizes the notion that they are sentient beings and the captain has no more business intruding in these affairs than he does in the biological reproduction of his crew. He becomes Data and Lal’s staunchest defender, understanding their familial bond and right to self-determination. That Tevye-like shift has power, going from a doubter to a persuader, with Picard eventually taking a moral stand to protect the father and daughter, even at the risk of his command and his career.
But there’s also a seeming shift in the attitude of the standard issue jerk admiral who wants to take Lal away for study. He postures and threatens and makes demand, but in the end, his insistence and Picard’s defense are moot. One of the joys and truth of raising a child evoked by Lal is that she surpassed her father -- using contractions and, more importantly, having feelings. But it comes at the cost of her life, as her positronic matrix can’t sustain the sense of fear she has when the admiral threatens to take her away.
Still, in the end, even he seems to see Data as a father and not just an inventor, Lal as his child and not just a piece of technology, when he witnesses the lengths Data goes to save her. There is tragedy in that, but also truth, in the way a parent would do anything to save their child. The sight of it manages to crack even the cold dead hearts of Starfleet’s admiralty. You’d have to be made of stone not to. I teared up when Lal, capable of feeling in a way her father isn’t, tells him that she loves him. It got worse when Data says he wishes he were capable of returning the sentiment, and Lal replies that she’ll love enough for both of them. And my own cold dead heart shattered into a million pieces when she thanked her father for her life, as Data had to reflect on this fleeting glimmer of light that passed through his life while he watches it fade away. “The Offspring” is jumbled in places, but it goes out with one hell of a gut punch.
That’s parenthood though. Thankfully, few parents have to go through what Data went through directly -- the loss of a child. But all stories of parents and children, at least those in the real world, involve some pain. The irony of the episode is that it takes experiencing that pain, losing his daughter, to convince the stuffed shirts of the Federation that Data truly is a parent.
Star Trek as a franchise isn’t necessarily equipped to deal with that on a weekly basis. TNG, DS9, and even, sort of, Voyager would dabble with it, but it’s tough to balance those stories with galaxy-shaking geopolitical disputes and life-threatening space anomalies. And yet, as it often does, The Next Generation gets at one of those essential truths of humanity -- the love and difficulty of raising a child -- by abstracting it through the eyes of an android. Whether flesh and blood or bolts and circuits, the love doesn’t change, and that makes this episode as heartening as it is heart-rending.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-03-24T04:48:43Z
[8.0/10] Parenthood isn’t a staple of Star Trek. You have Beverley Crusher and Wesley on TNG, but frankly, the show spends more time on Picard as a surrogate father than it does to Dr. Crusher as his actual mother. Deep Space 9 digs a little deeper with Captain Sisko and his son, Jake. And from The Original Series to the present, the franchise has navigated the complicated relationship between Sarek and his children. But for the most part, the nature of parent-child relationships are, at most, a “sometimes food” for Star Trek.
But if “The Offspring” is any indication, maybe the franchise should go to that well more often. More than almost any other episode, this installment is rooted in the amusing, difficult, and heart-rending aspects of being a parent. It once again plumbs the depths of the intersection between artificial life and the rights of sentient beings. And it draws poignance from Data’s sense of fatherhood in miniature, made no less real or piercing from his child looking and acting more than a little different than the kids we humans are used to.
These issues comes to a head when Data attends a Cybernetics conference and, after some furious tinkering, constructs an android of his own. He gives this daughter, Lal, transfers of his positronic brain, allowing her to slowly develop as a being roughly in line with human development. At the same time, the standard issue asshole Starfleet Admiral wants to whisk Lal away to a Federation laboratory so Lal can be studied and prodded in keeping with Starfleet’s scientific inquiries.
“The Offspring” tugs at the heartstrings and has some legitimately profound notions to impart on the nature of parenthood and development. But it’s not the most well-balanced episode in the world. It wants to present parenthood in microcosm, with quick-hit versions of the experience for both parent and child. It wants to extend “The Measure of a Man” into a meditation on whether Starfleet has the right to take Lal away. And it also wants to be a fairly broad comedy about the comical exaggerations of a child-like robot trying to emulate human behavior.
These pieces don’t always fit together perfectly. Frankly, I wish this episode were longer, as there’s meat and merits to each of these aspects of the episode, and each feels like it could more time to develop and build before the climax. But each works on its own terms, which gives the episode a certain cumulative force, even if the tonal shifts and rushed nature of certain scenes and plots leaves the viewer wanting more.
I’ll cop to enjoying the goofier humorous bits, broadly comic though they may be. Jonathan Frakes makes his auspicious start as a director here. He only moves in front of the camera for one scene, but a mixed up Lal planting one on the confused casanova of a first officer, only for Data to ask “What are your intentions toward my daughter?” is a knee-slapper. Lal asking a million questions only for Data to just instantly put her in sleep mode until the morning makes him the envy of parents across the globe. And while not every bit lands (Troi’s “It’s a girl” line delivery is pretty off), there’s a lighthearted vibe to these scenes that works.
At the same time, though, the episode gets at the bigger questions parents and children have to ask and answer for one another. In the process, Data articulates some of Star Trek’s core values. He commiserates with Dr. Crusher (who’s flattered to be called a successful parent) over having kids who feel alienated, something I’m sure plenty of nerdy younger viewers could related to. Ultimately, Dr. Crusher recommends relating the parent’s own experience, quelling Data’s fear that it’ll discourage his daughter, with the idea that it’ll show her that her dad understands what she’s going through, which is even more important. There’s a perfectly Trekkian sense of community, support, and understanding contained within the exchange.
More than that, Lal asks Data about her purpose, the reason for existing, and Data talks to her about striving to improve oneself and the world in turn, to do good throughout the universe. She asks him why they should strive to be human when it’s a mountain they can never truly climb, and he says that the act of striving lends its own rewards.
Some of the child development pieces of the story move a little fast -- the show is cramming a lot into forty-five minutes here -- but it also uses the Enterprise’s resident android to explicate big questions about the human condition: why we’re here, why we try to better ourselves, what the benefits of those Trek values of exploration and self-improvement are, even when the project is never fully complete. The show bites off more than it can chew in places, but the mouthful we get is worthwhile.
But while it doesn’t quite, well, measure up to “The Measure of a Man”, this episode finds meaning in the clash between Data as a sentient being who fathered his child, and a brilliant cyberneticist who invented a new android, between Lal as a new life form taking her first steps, and as a technological innovation that needs to be studied. It’s familiar ground. Picard’s “I helped define them” speech here gives off strong “we already dealt with this” vibes.
I particularly like the transition of Picard’s demeanor here. He goes from chastising Data for keeping the development of Lal under wraps, until he internalizes the notion that they are sentient beings and the captain has no more business intruding in these affairs than he does in the biological reproduction of his crew. He becomes Data and Lal’s staunchest defender, understanding their familial bond and right to self-determination. That Tevye-like shift has power, going from a doubter to a persuader, with Picard eventually taking a moral stand to protect the father and daughter, even at the risk of his command and his career.
But there’s also a seeming shift in the attitude of the standard issue jerk admiral who wants to take Lal away for study. He postures and threatens and makes demand, but in the end, his insistence and Picard’s defense are moot. One of the joys and truth of raising a child evoked by Lal is that she surpassed her father -- using contractions and, more importantly, having feelings. But it comes at the cost of her life, as her positronic matrix can’t sustain the sense of fear she has when the admiral threatens to take her away.
Still, in the end, even he seems to see Data as a father and not just an inventor, Lal as his child and not just a piece of technology, when he witnesses the lengths Data goes to save her. There is tragedy in that, but also truth, in the way a parent would do anything to save their child. The sight of it manages to crack even the cold dead hearts of Starfleet’s admiralty.
You’d have to be made of stone not to. I teared up when Lal, capable of feeling in a way her father isn’t, tells him that she loves him. It got worse when Data says he wishes he were capable of returning the sentiment, and Lal replies that she’ll love enough for both of them. And my own cold dead heart shattered into a million pieces when she thanked her father for her life, as Data had to reflect on this fleeting glimmer of light that passed through his life while he watches it fade away. “The Offspring” is jumbled in places, but it goes out with one hell of a gut punch.
That’s parenthood though. Thankfully, few parents have to go through what Data went through directly -- the loss of a child. But all stories of parents and children, at least those in the real world, involve some pain. The irony of the episode is that it takes experiencing that pain, losing his daughter, to convince the stuffed shirts of the Federation that Data truly is a parent.
Star Trek as a franchise isn’t necessarily equipped to deal with that on a weekly basis. TNG, DS9, and even, sort of, Voyager would dabble with it, but it’s tough to balance those stories with galaxy-shaking geopolitical disputes and life-threatening space anomalies. And yet, as it often does, The Next Generation gets at one of those essential truths of humanity -- the love and difficulty of raising a child -- by abstracting it through the eyes of an android. Whether flesh and blood or bolts and circuits, the love doesn’t change, and that makes this episode as heartening as it is heart-rending.