Customer Reviews

Star Trek - The Next Generation, Episode 64: The Offspring [VHS]

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Data secretly builds a daughter named Lal, and then begins the job of raising his daughter, until he is asked to turn Lal over to Starfleet for study and training. The questions of parent/child rights, governmental intervention into family concerns, and the wonder of seeing the world through a child's eyes makes this a thought-provoking emotional episode that many of my non-Trekker friends have enjoyed viewing.

I should begin by saying that I am not a die-hard Star Trek fan. I enjoyed the exploits of Shatner & Co. and watched the first few episodes of TNG but never really got into it.

I picked it up again around season 3 and found that the characters had matured significantly. The scripts were strong and the show now looked as though it had some mileage. This episode in particular stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Brent Spiner had achieved something with the character of Commander Data that is actually quite difficult to pull off without overdoing things: Having a character that is devoid of any emotion evoke sympathy and pathos from the audience.

The Offspring sees Data become a Father, when he creates a child android (named Lal) based on his own neural network. As Lal 'grows' Data is reminded of his own developmental processes and finds that being a father is not easy.

Lal's existence also attracts the attention of Star Fleet and the notions of who knows best for the child, the State (Star Fleet) or the parent, are allegorically explored.

The final 15 minutes are heart wrenching and have bought a tear to my eye on more than one occasion. Definitely a classic and worthy of anyone's collection even if, like me, you're just a casual viewer.

After attending a cybernetics conference Commander Data constructs his own android.A female named Lal (the Hindi word for Beloved).It is a very touching story about family,love and loss.Like any child Lal has many questions about the world on the Enterprise and Data's friends and fellow officers,even as to why human's only have two hands.Adding to this is a Starfleet admiral who believes Lal and Data should be seperated because of Data's familial shortcomings.Lal becomes as popular with the Enterprise crew as Data,even falling victim to some of Data's own shortcomings.Strangely enough Lal actually begins to show signs that her programming has exceeded Data's own,starting with her ability to use verbal constractions.These small abilities to a full blown emotional panic attack when she is told she'll be seperated from her father.Sadly being an android this leads to circuit falier and in the end she does not survive.Even though Data has no feelings the audience will feel for him.This episode features many interesting (and sometimes humorous) observations on the travails of parenthood and humanity in general.One of them being that striving to better oneself is a goal onto itself and fullfills it's own purpose (points like this being why I love this show so much) and Data trying to explain to Lal why she was laughed at by human children-quite correctly observing that people often hide fear and intolerance behind humor.I have faced that dilema more times then I'd like to count so I sympathize with Lal for being different and the troubles she encounters.'The Offspring' has a sad ending but it makes so many good point it'll cancel that out fast.

I loved it so much