Imaginary Friend

DVD, TNG S5 (Imaginary Friend)

You won't like her when she's angry! Actually the sinister side of the story of an imaginary friend turned real wasn't played up. I was expecting all kinds of gremlins in the works, whether it was Troi being dropped in a turbolift for taking Clara away or Picard being 'haunted,' even more so with Brannon Braga's hand in the writing, but none of that happened. Too obvious, perhaps? Such scenarios had been done a few times on the series, but I think it could have done with being a much more disturbing episode. Isabella was very well played by the young actress, coming out with technobabble as well as childish talk, yet always in a stilted, emotionless tone, as if she didn't understand the simplicity of children's reactions, which suited the character's alien nature. The only moment of horror is limited to Deanna being blasted into a wardrobe, but it is enhanced by the Pah-Wraith red eyes and energy beam, modelled most memorably by Gul Dukat in 'DS9.'

Red is certainly the predominant colour for this episode, outside the ship, at least (the arboretum is plenty green in another of its rare appearances!), discounting Guinan's deep orange attire (which was made into one her action figures by Playmates back in the 90s). Commonly, the nebulas seen on Trek, 'TNG' particularly, were blue or purple, the reason being they were usually the same shots reused (often from 'Star Trek II'), so the dark reds of this one, with its cobweb texture and blood-red reflections on the ship, was a visual feast. On that subject, the precision of the effects had improved greatly, enabling the shots of the energy being roaming the ship, in and out of bulkheads, equipment, even little Clara Sutter's head, dancing round plants and generally behaving like most wispy energy beings do.

The concept of an alien race making first contact through a ship's children was a good one, although the story is fairly slow, and if it hadn't been for Picard's heartfelt speech about children, which you could never imagine him saying in the early seasons, I might have considered it an average story. Picard's come on a long way since those early days, and even this season, in 'Disaster,' he showed how he's come to be able to understand children better and not be awkward around them. Guinan gets most of the best scenes, as must have been written into Whoopi Goldberg's contract - how else could she have been so consistently fortunate in her appearances, though that heavy, dancing gleam in her eyes does half the job! This must feature one of the largest roster of recurring characters the series saw: along with Guinan, we also see Alexander and Nurse Ogawa, even Keiko gets mentioned, but isn't seen. You'd think her husband, O'Brien would have been in it more frequently as they must have been gearing up for his move to the new series, 'DS9.'

Noley Thornton was good as Clara, and I instantly recognised her from the 'DS9' episode 'Shadowplay.' Picard's speech reveals something that might not have been apparent through the episode since it mostly occurs from Clara's point of view - that the way adults treat children is with the motive of safeguarding them from dangers they don't know about or understand. It would be nice to imagine that one day that little girl will become and adult, serve in Starfleet and her ship might arrive at that nebula once more and that Isabella will be waiting for her still.

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