“Imaginary Friend” (5×22)
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This era of Trek doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to kids, so I was a bit apprehensive going into this episode, but I actually liked it quite a bit.
There is something very creepy about the idea of a kid’s imaginary friend actually being a nefarious alien intelligence. And Shay Astar, as Isabella, ups the creepy factor significantly playing a “child” without any of the cutesy qualities usually associated with children.
Noley Thornton, as Clara Sutter, is pretty wooden. But she brings a sweet innocence to Clara that nicely counterbalances her “Isabella’s” increasingly worrisome behavior.
And crucially, the solution isn’t to destroy the nefarious alien, but rather to reason with it. The behavior of these strange corporeal beings aboard the Enterprise is foreign to “Isabella”, and she judges them according to her limited understanding. Over the course of her time aboard the Enterprise, her understanding expands and then Picard takes the time to explain further. And when he promises her people energy through a less destructive means, he keeps his word, targeting an energy blast from the warp engines right to the aliens as a parting gift.
Guinan adds value to every episode she appears in, even if Whoopi’s presence didn’t feel necessary here.
It’s another episode where the Starfleet ranks make very little success: Clara’s father has been in Starfleet for as long as she has been alive, so at least a decade. During the scenes in engineering, he is shown to be a competent officer who gets along well with his colleagues and direct superior. And yet he apparently hasn’t been promoted since he graduated from the Academy.
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