Purple Omelettes | TNG 5.22, "Imaginary Friend" | T7R #349 - The 7th Rule -- A Star Trek Podcast with DS9's Cirroc Lofton

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Clara likes to make purple omelets, Isabella takes two cubes
in her tea, and Alexander saw Cryonian tiger once. Hello everybody,
and welcome to the Seventh Rule, was Sir rock Lofton.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, Hello, My.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Name is Ryan T. Huskin. Today we are doing a
review of Star Trek The Next Generation Season five, episode two,
Imaginary Friend story by get Ready for This Jean Louise, Matthias,
John Wilkerson, and Richard Fleegel. Teleplay by Edith Swenson and
Brannon Braga, directed by Gabrielle Beaumont. This was May second,

(00:39):
nineteen ninety two. Where were you and how are you today,
sarrock Lofton.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm doing great episode twenty two. I think you said two.
I just wanted to correct that.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Oh did I say that? Yeah, it's Next Generation season five,
episode twenty two, but it was May second, so it's
five to two five two on five to two.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah. Yeah, you know. I thought it's interesting because I
wanted to ask you this is now the second time
that this has happened, and it's a small thing, but
I'm sure that there's a reason behind it mhm. And
that is when you mentioned the writers the names of

(01:25):
the writers are slightly different than I think the ones
that I see credited.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh cool, yeah, yeah, that's happened before. Which one Which
writer was it this time? I didn't check?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
So you said John Leuis Matthias, Yeah, and I saw
Ronald Wilkerson yea. And Richard Fleigel.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, that's I thought. That's what I said.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Okay, so then that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
I might have said it wrong, Okay, read my own
notes wrong, but yeah, Jean Louis Matthias, Ronald Wilkerson, Richard Fleiegel,
tell me by Edith Went and Brandon Braga. Okay, okay,
so we recognized one of those names out of five.
There were five writers for this episode. So let's talk

(02:12):
about this for a second. I remember this episode and
one of the things, now, I would have been a
curmudge in my whole life, even when I was a
little kid. One of the things I never liked when
I was a kid was caring about little kids once
they hit into like teens, late teens. I was okay

(02:33):
with that, but I was never I never was interested
in a seven year old's story, or a five year
old or a ten year old, you know what I mean,
Like it just never did it for me, even when
I was those ages. You know, if I'm watching Transformers
and the Transformers story follows a seven year old boy,
who I'm like, I don't care. I'm watching Transformers for

(02:54):
the Transformers. I don't need a little human boy to
identify with. I don't I don't care. I want to
see the Transformer. So I've always you know, even again,
even when I was that agent, I was the target audience,
I did not want it. I wanted to see Warf
and Jordi and Riker, That's what I wanted to see.
I did not want to see kids. And so when
I saw I do remember this episode.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I remember invited the card to the review.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
It's true. I'm telling you, I've been kind of kind
of a curmudgeon my ale life, but I just didn't
care about the kids. I'm like, when I'm watching Star Trek,
I'm watching I want to see adults doing adults things,
you know, and I don't want to see a six
year old doesn't do anything for me. So you can
imagine what my take was when I first saw this

(03:41):
episode back in the day. All I remember is this
kid going is a Bella is a Bella, and I'd
be like, oh, I stop saying that. But that's my
grumpy take that I've had for thirty years on this episode.
Maybe I liked a lot more this this next time around,

(04:01):
but you've never seen it before. Sarro Cloughton, what did
you think of it? Do you think these five riders
came together to put like Voltron.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Like bold? Yeah? I wasn't. I wasn't blown away by it.
You have to say, yeah, can you imagine that? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:28):
No, I thought you would have loved this episode absolutely
not really.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
It Actually, then they alled Alexander Rashenko into it. I
was like, oh god, this is becoming an Alexander episode.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Two morphed it morphed into wars Son.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, and we just recently had a kid episode. It
was Wharf's son right in the uh in Angel's episode
where you know the Cost of Mind the Cost of Living, right,
which I actually enjoyed better than this one. As far

(05:12):
as kid episodes, I guess was is concerned.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah wow, Well let me ask you this actually, since
because you were considered a kid actor, right, you started
right around the age of thirteen fourteen, right, when does
it stop being a kid episode? And then more of
like a young adult kind of episode, because I remember

(05:39):
loving like the Jake and Nogg stuff, especially when you
guys were becoming roommates and stuff like that. You know,
I remember liking that that didn't that didn't like trigger
my my child Curmudgeons stuff, you know what I mean.
Like it just felt like more like young adults because
you guys talk like adults rather, you know, like young
people talk like adults rather than kids. My kids and

(06:03):
the Wesley stuff was a little rough around the edges
for me, But I think it was mostly because of
the writing. It wasn't because of the age, you know
what I mean. So for me, I feel like it's
like right around thirteen fourteen, you know, where it was
palatable to me.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, I think it depends on how they write the
characters and also how familiar youre are with them. You know,
it's not easy on an adult show being the kid,
So that's a challenge in itself. I can understand, you know,

(06:45):
Wesley Crusher, Will Wheaton having to you know, go to
work with a bunch of adults every day and hold
your own the.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Bunch of people that are probably acting like how I'm
acting right now.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Well, yeah, they'd probably be like, oh God, I gotta
do this stuff with the kid, you know, And and
so I understand that. I mean, it's just it's just
a natural thing. But it has to be something that
like because I was watching you know, when you were
saying when I was growing up, was I watching stuff

(07:18):
with kids in it? I guess I was. But I
wasn't necessarily like putting myself following the story of the
kid as much as the story of what's happening, right, right,
And so I think what the story of what's happening
has to be good enough for me to be interested.
And I'm not going to just buy on because it's

(07:40):
somebody who's my agent, right. So I can remember, for example,
big kid movies or movies with kids as stars. ET
was huge for us when we were kids.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
That worked on me. Yeah, ET worked on me for sure.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Elliot, right right, so and he But I didn't necessarily,
as I was watching it, envision myself as Elliott, you know,
or or Et but I or Et for that matter,
But I did, But I did relate to a kid
who rides his bike through the neighborhood and you know

(08:18):
who's that that age.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
And like Goonies, right, Goonies worked. Goonies worked on me.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Goonies is another kid movie with kids that I didn't say.
Oh god, this is a kid movie. I can't watch
it anymore. So yeah, and there were also kids in movies.
I remember the kid who played in Indiana Jones for example. Uh,
you know stand.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Whose name was Data by the way.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Oh right, So so there's been good performances by kids
in movies. And obviously Home Alone comes to mind as
well as one of those movies that.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Oh wait, no, sorry, no, that's the same kid that
played Data in Good I don't remember what his name was,
but Indiana called him short Stack, so he's just known it.
And I can't remember the actor's name.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
But he actually just won the Oscar.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah he's still acting.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, I think he just won the Academy Award for
one of the movies he's just written. But also, like
Macaulay Cochin in Home Alone, carried several movies by himself
as a kid actor and it worked totally and it
totally bought it. I loved it. So like, I can't
just knock stuff because the kids in it. It has

(09:31):
to be subject matter that the story in itself is
interesting and compelling and compliments the fact that a kid
is in Like, it makes sense that this thing is
happening through the kids' eyes and lens and stuff like that.
So with home alone, that makes sense. You know, your
every kid has the home alone moment when you know

(09:54):
your parents trust you enough to leave you announced by
yourself for a few hours, not for the but for
a few hours, right and so you're you feel that
home alone sense of oh wow, you know, home alone.
So so in that way, I can say I've watched
those movies. I've liked kids in movies. I've liked the

(10:16):
way they perform. But in this particular episode, that's where
the butt comes in there. Just like you tell me,
it's hard to fall in love with, you know, hard
to believe two people fall in love in a single
episode and you know in thirty minutes they're like, want
to get married. It's also hard for me to care
about a character that I just met. So it's not

(10:41):
necessarily that it's a kid, but it's also this is
a brand new character, right and and her father is
a brand new character. So emotionally, I don't even have
a connection or an attachment to this person or character.
That's why I said, at least with the The Cost

(11:04):
of Living episode with Major Roddenberry and Rashenko, at least
we know Rashenko's backstory, Alexander's backstory. We've seen it before.
There's some attachment there. I might not like it the best.
I might not want to see it the most out
of it. If you give me, you know all these
characters storylines, do you want to see this, this, this,

(11:25):
or that? It would probably be down on the bottom
of the list of things I want to see. But
at least I have a connection because there's Wharf's character
connected to it. It's the main character's kid. This is
this is a guest stars a guest star's guest star kid.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
And you know that's the thing is that I'm pretty
sure these characters were introduced for this one episode, never again.
And then but this is such a tng thing to do,
which is introduced this character and suddenly there the dad
is in Maine engineering with Jordie, he's talking with Picard,

(12:08):
he's figuring out that. And then he wasn't there in
the first one hundred and something episodes. He's not there
in the next sixty something episodes. But then whoever, And
that happens all the time when we saw someone else's kid.
Maybe it was like Jeremy ast or something, somebody else's
kid and suddenly his mom is there in main Engineering,
hanging out with Jeordie. She's like the top dog there,
and we're like, wait, what, so, whoever is introduced in

(12:32):
that scene or in that season or episode is going
to be one of the main characters in something. It's
it's so strange how they would do that, or they'd
be at the helm, you know, or something like that.
It's always been this strange next generation phenomenon where somebody
gets introduced, suddenly they're one of the top people in
they're in the scenes, and then they're gone, never seen again.

(12:57):
And we saw it in this case.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, but like I said before, we've seen it. We
saw counselor Troy have a baby, right, didn't she have
a new baby and grew up really fast or something
like that. It uh so, but there was a connection
that's Troy. And then we saw we saw Data have
a kid.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
Well yeah, and that was cool because it all ended
in one episode, but still it was Data as kid.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
So it was like a storyline centered around a figure
that we already have familiarity with. In this particular episode,
it was just like it was them talking about this
guy who's serving in command I guess, or working in
engineering with Jordy and data, and we don't never seen

(13:49):
him before, don't know really what he does, but he's
problem solving with Jordie, right, and then his kid is
seeking counseling, right. And I thought, oh, this maybe was
a Troy episode, but it really wasn't a Troy episode.

(14:11):
So I wasn't sure what I was watching it. You know,
as I'm watching, I'm like, whose episode is this? Essentially
that was exactly That's what I was trying to get to.
Whose episode is that?

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Because Clara, you know, you might think maybe it's a
Clara episode, but Troy, we see her just as much
as Clara. We see Sutter just as much as Clara. Basically,
you know, there we almost see Isabella an Isabella episode. No,

(14:42):
but yeah, we kind of see a little bit of everybody.
Certainly Troy was the most involved of the senior staff
and warf a little bit. Let me ask you this, though,
why could it not have been just going along with
what you're saying? And I agree with what you're saying,
why could it not have been an Alexander episode? Because

(15:03):
then we already know Alexander, we already know Wharf, we
already know their relationship to Deanna Troy. There's already something
built in. Why couldn't it have been? Why wasn't it
because I don't know.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah, and we've already established that Alexander's having troubles on
the station growing up, dealing with his dad, and so
there's been issues there, and so if he had taken
on this imaginary friend role, you know, that would have

(15:44):
made it kind of We would have seen Troy and
Wharf having those parental conversations like we did in previous
episodes and maybe extended up extending that storyline some continuity there.
It could have worked, They could have worked. I was
totally cool. I would have been cool with that. I mean,

(16:09):
and you know what, And and I feel bad because
I feel like I've been a little hard on these actors.
Who are these kids in this episode? I thought that
the kids did good.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, they were fine.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
I thought they were you know, you know, I thought
they were good.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Better than I expected. I because again, I remember not
liking this episode twenty years ago. Or whatever it was.
And so I was like, oh, god, kids, Oh they're
not the kids can't act this is and that.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
But they were.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
They were, okay, they were. They were pretty good children
actors for the early nineties because we all know what
passed for kid acting in the eighties and seventies was like,
just remember your lines, kid, you know, like just just
say the line.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Well, and then they cast it well because they got
one girl who was, you know, sweet, the cleric girl
who was sweet and believable and you know, seemingly honest
and truthful, just had a pleasant demeanor about her personality
and spirit. And then they got this other girl who

(17:17):
has big eyes and she looked like a Greek, right,
she looked like a stalker or like she looked like
the villain you know, the what was those movies back? Yeah,
like it was basic instinct, you know at that time
when they came out with the Hand that Rocks the
Cradle and those kind of stalker ish movies.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Oh you know who she could be now thirty years later, Misery.
She could take the Kathy Bates roll in misery.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, she had that misery hand that rocks the cradle.
Just the main kind of antagonists in those films of
that kind of fabric of that. So I thought that
Kathleen was good and the performances were good. This girl
was super creepy in her performance. There was a moment

(18:09):
there when Clara said to Isabella as she said, you
know you're you're mean or something because you haven't smiled since,
you know, and she was She's like, you know, I'll
comeute and smile, like why don't you smile? And Isabella
gave like the creepiest I thought it was great acting.
She's just like forcing the smile and she did it

(18:32):
like a touch of her own face, like yes, this
is what it be like, this is oh am I doing?

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, this is weird.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, this is weird. Okay, by the.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Way, we're words wisdom. Don't tell a girl to smile more.
By the way, I just kind of thing if she
could get away with it. But yeah, I agree with
you though, like that I took for granted back in
the day. In this today, I was like, Okay, good actors.
They got some good people. So I guess my question

(19:02):
to you is, Sarak, did you like this episode? Oh boy,
that's a hard hitting question.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, no, I honestly I can't figure out how they
had five writers on this, Like, like it took five
people to figure this out. It didn't seem that complex
that you would need a meeting of all these minds
to figure out, like how are we going to do this?

(19:36):
How are we going to this? Didn't seem that complex, And.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
I think I was gonna save that for after the break,
but we got a few minutes before this one. But
I think I think that may have been what the
problem was, too many cooks. Because we've seen it before
where an episode has a ton of writers and it's
not good. Now, we've seen it before where I had
a ton of writers and it was good, like Yesterday's Enterprise.
But a lot of times you have three story by people,

(20:04):
so maybe two of them had one kind of story
idea and another one had a different story idea, and
they used kind of both of those story ideas, and
then Edith and Brannan wrote it together. And there's just
so many you know, there's just a mishmash. Plus this
is the twenty second episode. It seems like a lot

(20:26):
of seasons of Star Trek, different kinds of Star Trek
are kind of notorious where like episodes twenty one through
twenty four can get a little choppy because they're out
of ideas except for the really good one or two
that they're saving for the end of the season, you
know what I mean, they have like one or two
really good ones at the end of the season, and

(20:47):
now they're scraping the bottom. Twenty one to twenty four
is bottom of the barrel. If you get a good one, great,
but you may just be like using one because you're like,
we need one, we have a deadline. Just go with it,
Just do your best, Good luck, godspeed. I think that.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah, So an answer to your question, you know, really
I did not like it? What Yeah, I didn't like
it now and there's so many reasons that. One of
the big reasons is the b storyline as well. And
there was no saving grace in this, Like sometimes there's

(21:28):
like there's just a okay, at least I got some
comedy out of war, or I got data to do
something cool, Like there's always some saving grace out of
an episode where you're like, wasn't that bad? Well, you know,
at least the costumes were great or the you know,
the set design was like or the music or I
mean there's something there or the B storyline. You know,
the B storyline can often be the you know, the

(21:50):
thing that you're like, Hey, you know what, I wish
they focused more on the B storyline than the A storyline,
And that would have been good. If they focused more
on this B storyline, I would have fell asleep faster.
It's like they're in a nebula. That's like zapping that.
I mean, I didn't feel danger. I didn't feel I

(22:11):
just felt like the B storyline also was like a
poor compliment to try to explain away some of this
cross connection between this entity and all of this other stuff.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
Yeah, so, boy, oh boy, we could not disagree more
on this. Ye boy, let me tell you we got
to jump to our break. But on the other side,
I'm gonna give you a couple of silver linings. I'm
going to talk about the B plot. This is gonna
be man, this is gonna be Fraser and Ali in

(22:49):
the next round. You watch. All right, everybody's sit around
and we've got our break. We'll be right back on
the seventh rule. Hey, everybody, welcome back to The seventh
rule was to rock the game, change or loft and hello,
here are the trivioids of the week. Clara likes to
make purple omelets. Isabella takes two cubes in her tea.

(23:13):
Clara is Keiko's helper in the arboretum. Today nam for
Keiko uh Nurse Ogawa and her date take a walk
on the chance Le. Data prefers FGC forty seven to
Sutter's Cloud and the LaForge Nebula. Jordie's father was an exozoologist.

(23:34):
I guess I should have said Sutter's cloud or the
la Forge Nebula uh Jeordie's father was an exozoologist and
his mother was a command officer guidance. He's a fish
and then a Mintonian sailing ship. Isabella can't come to
ceramics class. Alexander is making a cup for wharf that
took him two weeks. More on that in a moment,

(23:54):
good golly, miss Molly. And lastly, Alexander saw Cryonian tiger once. Okay,
let's just jump into that. Actually, when he said I've
been working on this for two weeks, I said, Okay,
this kid, the teacher needs to give him extra attention
because clearly she has not taught him how to do ceramics.

(24:17):
If it's taken him two weeks to do a cup.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Well, first he had to design the cup, he had
to think of the color he wanted. He had to
get the finest romulan clay from the shores of no
I have no idea that that made me laugh to
the whole. Alexander Rushenko Seene made me laugh in general

(24:43):
just a little bit because I was like, uh uh
this there's it goes back to why this alien character
inhabits this imaginary friend only to smash out clay pottery
from another kid, Like, like, what is the purpose of this?

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Is so disjointed?

Speaker 2 (25:11):
So are we talking about intelligent life or are we
just talking about like this doesn't even have any sense
to me. That's why I was just looking at it, like,
and what was the purpose of the constant incessant Uh
need to go into the control room or into you know,
like this character kept asking Clara, let's go over there too.

(25:37):
I forgot where it was the command or.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
And it wasn't even nefarious, It was just apparently out
of curiosity. Well, you don't want to be curious about there.
There are thousands of things to see.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
That. But you're able to fly around as an entity
of light right, so like, you can't do that on
your time when you're disappeared on me, you know what
I mean?

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, I mean I thought that the concept was good.
I saw something that I didn't notice the first time,
which was first the red light goes into a flower,
and then it leaves the flower and duplicates the flower.
So I guess that's supposed to somehow translate into it

(26:24):
goes into Clara's head, can read what's in her head
and duplicate that. I guess was what it was demonstrating.
But here were some silver linings. One was we got
to see wharf be a qtie when he's like, oh,
you must go back to your room, and he says,
you know, we can overlook this or forget this, or

(26:47):
you know, he said something very sweet, which is cute.
Return to your quarters and we will forget this incident.
And we're like, oh, war if you little rascal also
data saying besides, it is clearly a bunny rabbit. Not
my favorite line, but I'll tell you what was the

(27:08):
silver lining for me was we got some Guynan. We
got some Guynan, and they gave her some good stuff
when like when she met Clara she knew how to
talk to her, you know, she she knew not to
be judgy and it worked. It wasn't like she wasn't like,

(27:30):
you know, condescending or patronizing or judge or anything like that.
It worked. You know when she first comes up, you know,
I remember if she if I wrote down my nose,
but oh, when she says, that's what it was. She
comes up to them and she says, hey, you know,
kids aren't supposed to be in here without you know,

(27:52):
a parent or guardian. And she says, but you can
be my guest. And I'm like, that's that's such a
great Guynan opening, you know, kind of moment totally worked
for me. So to me, she was the silver lining
in this episode. She didn't have to do a ton,
but it all worked and it was It was sweet,

(28:13):
it was genuine, and it shows that she kind of
comes at things from a different angle. You know, Troy's
a little more Clinical's just wise. She's wise, and she's compassionate.
She's patient. She can just go right in and just
start talking to people, whether it's ensign Row or whether
it's this weird kid.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
It's weird old kid.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, we're no.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, very loving. No, I loved guy, and I did
think she one looked very beautiful in that red outfit
she was wearing. She was stunning and her performance was
very believable, natural, it was connecting, and so yeah, I
do think she was a highlight of it. And I
also note to put in my notes that you know,

(29:00):
guyingan you know is funny because there's certain like athletes,
for example, where where the where they're they're known as
let's say your favorite basketball player's favorite basketball player, right,
and there's like your favorite you know, football players favorite

(29:22):
football player. And so even though the public has their
own view of what they think is the best, if
you ask the players themselves, that view sometimes is different
than what the general public is because they're in the
trenches with those people, right Totally.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Case point, it is, yes, Raymond Green of the Golden
State Warriors. Where is number twenty three? Why does he
wear number twenty three? Most would say Michael jan Michael Jordan,
but the answer is actually Jason Richardson, who wore twenty
three coincidentally for the Warriors as well, because they're both

(29:59):
from saga A, Michigan. So you never know why somebody
is someone else's favorite. But when Draymond Green was a
kid growing up in Saginaw, Michigan, there was one other
player that came from Saginaw, and so he's like, that's
my favorite guy.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah, And so my notes I put Guynan is a
counselor's counselor, you know. And so you know, when you
have the counselor, the ship's counselor in Shroy feeling a dilemma,
feeling like she's lost for her own kind of clarity
on some issue or subject matter, then she goes to

(30:35):
the counselor's counselor, which would be Guynan. You know, the
person who can counsel the even the counselors who have
all the tools and they have all the knowledge and
the clinical ways to analyze, you know, whatever thing they're
going through, and methodology and technique for those things. But
sometimes there's a level of frustration that you reach where
you just need somebody to talk to who can give

(30:57):
you a loving person, respect of a loving advice, just
uplifting And I think that's what Guynan provides for uh
in this episode, for Troy and for the kid.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, and it just kind of works. You know, because
I've always found it to be a little strange to
have basically two counselors. They got rid of the security character,
they kept the counselor, and then they added another counselor
when you would think it would be better to get
rid of it. You know, clearly the plan was to

(31:32):
get rid of counselor Troy, keep Yr and then add
Guynan as kind of the counselor type role. Then you
have the perfect you know, kind of balance there. But
then when Denise Crosby left and Gates McFadden left and
they replaced it, you know, they could not get rid
of Troy. Otherwise all three of their women would have

(31:55):
gone in the same second season at the same time
and it would have looked really bad. So they kept her.
And Marina Surtis has gone on record saying that that
Denise Crosby leaving saved her job. Otherwise she was going
to be out. So it is strange to have two
counselor types. But in this case, again it worked. It

(32:16):
worked for me, you know, worked because she she actually counselor,
counseled counselor Troy, and she knew how to talk to
the kid on a non professional basis, because sometimes a
kid needs a friend, a listener, somebody that's wise just
an adult figure more so than somebody whose job it
is to assess what kind of weird thing is going

(32:40):
on in their head. Sometimes that's a little cold and
it's not really what the kid's looking for. Maybe the
kid doesn't want a doctor or you know, something like that. Somebody,
they might just want to just hang out and talk
to cool Gaynan who's a million years old. That's cool
who carries a gun.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
But yeah, and their approach is different, you know. Troy
always takes like the clinical approach, like she's like, what
you have to do is it's it's totally understandable kids
at this age do this about the third and you know,
and you should do this and what you should do
is this that in the third And that's a clinical
approach to like how to deal with it, you know.

(33:18):
But Guyanan actually listens and then ask you a question
or probes or listens or gives a personal story.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah, or gets you to answer your own question yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yes, And and that's how she counsels. She counsels through
a way, like through this kind of very personal connection
you know, sharing stories, sometimes putting posing a question that
you already know the answer to, you know, And she's

(33:52):
very calculated in that way, which comes from lived experience
and wisdom of you know, the the centuries that her
character is supposed to have been alive and witness things.
So you can tell that that is how she counsels,
you know. It's actually a different approach.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, but there was something I didn't like about Guyan
that I was very upset about.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Uh oh, I know.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
And when she mentioned that she had an imaginary friend
once and Clara says what was her name? She goes, oh,
it wasn't her, And she goes, what was his name?
It wasn't his. It was a Tarquassian razor beast. And
I was like, you telling me that my kitty or

(34:37):
my puppy can't be a he or she, that I
have to call them an it. Now, this is a
fictional beast, so it's entirely possible that there's no male
or female, that they're just it's or just that they
have a million genders and they're just known as it's
so whatever. So I will not judge that too harshly.

(34:59):
But I was like, hey, animals are people too kind
of and they deserve to be give it a name,
call it you're sweetie, be nice to it. But anyway,
I did think it was really cute when she said
but it had the softest purr, and I was like, oh,
I could imagine that a big old beast that's lying there,
and then you, as a kid, you just kind of
put your head on on its chest and hear it

(35:21):
purr or something like that. But the other part that
I thought was really funny was when I did remember
this was when Troy goes, well, I'm going to talk
to Isabella myself. Isabella, you're not supposed to blah blah
blah whatever, and then Clarire goes, TIHI she's over there,
and it's like and Troy's like, okay, let me go

(35:42):
pretend to talk to the imaginary person over there.

Speaker 5 (35:46):
So that was I don't know, that was funny, yeah,
which also kind of was weird for the climax as well,
because Isabella was claiming that everybody was so mean.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
But that wasn't really the case when from my perspective,
I saw everybody trying to be polite to this imaginary
character for the sake of Clara's own you know, play along,
and there wasn't really much credit given by this alien
entity for that. You know, that these people were trying

(36:19):
their best to play along with her, and you know,
and and and the species and by the way, that
whole this whole episode essentially was done to set up
what I think was the last scene or the climactic
scene with Captain Picard, where he's basically saying, are you

(36:40):
judging us by the eyes of a children? You know,
of a child? And then you know, he goes on
to say that as adults, we protect children and and
essentially that's what the message of the episode is, right,
the morality of adults and how we protect children from

(37:00):
things that they don't have understanding of.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
It just shows that the adults care, that's all.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Yeah, that's the way we don't let you in the
warp core near the reactor.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Because blow sit up. So and I had a couple
more nitpicks by the way that I'll have you know,
oh wow. One was they're in Clara's bedroom, counselor Troy.
Counselor Troy gets zapped by a laser beam or whatever.
She gets blasted. How come every alien when They're like, uh,

(37:33):
it needs to be powerful. What do you want? I
don't know. Zap's it with their hand. You know they
all have the magic zapping powers, right, they all have it.
So Troy gets zapped and then they're like, oh no.
She goes to the medical bay. There's the meeting. They're talking,
and then the dad says, Clara, go back to bed,
we'll figure this out. You're sending your daughter back into

(37:55):
the room where this alien just sapped and all near
killed an adult, and you're just like, yeah, go go
right back there to the scene of the crime. And
you know, nice knowing your kid. I was like, what
kind of parenting is that? Are you not aware of
what literally just happened. Okay, that's one bro take away

(38:16):
this guy's parenting license.

Speaker 6 (38:18):
Two is.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
When they were first playing in the arboretum or when
she was Clara, there was this extra lady with like
overall's doing something, you know, derbidubid, right, theoretically being the
adult in the arboretum, so she could watch over this kid. Right.
Several scenes later, the enterprise is shaking shields here down

(38:44):
to eight percent or three percent, we're all gonna die.
And then they go back in the arboretum to have
like the show down with Isabella and that lady Extra
is still there, just kind of gardening, doing her thing
with her back done. Like wait, the ship is about
to blow up and you're still like tending to these
seeds or doing you know, like you got to think

(39:06):
about these things, like she would not still be there,
she'd be in her quarters or duck and cover or something, right,
I would think, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Well, you never seen that guy who was doing dishes
in the Titanic, you know, he was like dishes, gott
to be clean. I don't know. I didn't really pay
attention to that the arboretum, you know, what was going
on there. I was more focused on the kind of

(39:36):
the climax, so between the moment between this alien and
per Card. But I can tell you what though. One
thing I did think is when I first saw this
beam of light alien that was floating around the consoles
and on the main bridge.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Was going to get pregnant again?

Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yeah, I thought, Troy, you better run, you better run, Joy,
this thing's back for more man, so you gotta get
out of here.

Speaker 5 (40:06):
Uh so uh And.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Sure enough it kind of came for Troy. But didn't
one percent come for Troy.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
But that's funny.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
But yeah, that was the first thing I thought. I
was like, is this the same thing that was snooping
around Troy's room?

Speaker 1 (40:22):
More than Snoop.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Tell me about it?

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Uh yeah, Okay, Well we're almost out of time here
at s ROX, so I'm gonna have to ask you
who gets the home run of today's episode?

Speaker 7 (40:38):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (40:43):
I know it's a tough ye.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, this is a tough one, you know what. I'm
actually going to give it to the the kid, the
the Isabella kid, the creepy kid. I thought the creepy
kid was just creepy enough, almost acted like kind of

(41:10):
an adult, you know, like there was a there was
a composure there that was an adult like composure. Wasn't
kid instincts. To me, it was really creepy. And so
for the creep factor alone, I'm going to give it
to Isabella, the actor who played Isabella my friend.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
You know, I'm almost there with you, but I'm just
so grouchy and curmudginy that I'm going to go with
Oh boy, you know, actually it's tough. Runner up is
Jordie for walking down the hall acting like he's just
talking about sipping a drink of water but throwing out

(41:55):
some of the craziest technobabble we have heard to date.
And he just says like, oh, yeah, you know, blah
blah blah blah blah blah. And You're like, how do
you even memorize that line, let alone just toss it
out without tripping over in a million times unbelievable. But
I think I'm going to actually go with the lrin
herself Guynan, because she had a couple moments. She wasn't

(42:20):
in there a ton, But for me, the stuff that
she did worked the most. It was it flowed easily
if there weren't any nippicks in there. There wasn't anything
that I thought was too outrageous or not character like
or you know, thought it was perfect. So good job, whoopie,
good job Guynan. Good job writers for the Guynan stuff.

(42:41):
One of those five writers right now is like that
was I added that that was uh okay. And here
are some people that are also great characters. Their names
are doctor Amery Siegel, Eve England out in Wales, Yvette Blackman,
Tom TJ. Jackson Bay out in Missouri, Titus Mueller, doctor

(43:01):
Mohammad Nora, anil Oh Platt, Joe Balsaradi, Mike Goo, doctor
Stephanie Baker, Carrie Schwent, Faith Howell, Edward Foltz Aka Crewman
Guy the Matt Boardman, Chris McGhee, Jake Barrett, Henry Hunger,
Allison Leech Hide, Julie Menasfi, Jed Thompson, doctor Susan V. Gruner,

(43:24):
Glenn Iverson, Dave Gregory, Chris Sternet, Greg k Wickstrom, Cassandra
g chuck A, Chris Garris, Mark Zutkoff, Leamayah Lancaster, Sean mouch,
am Iram Mizznee remember him, amiram Amram Misna, and of

(43:45):
course Jason m Oakin. All right, everybody stick around. It
is time for the Free for All. They're banging on
the window. They're like, let us in. We'll be right
back on the seventh Rule. Hey, everybody, welcome back to
the Seventh Rule with sarrok loft in. This is the
Free for All, with Melissa Longo, also Jason m ok In.

(44:07):
Cool background, everybody, Mark Zutkoff has his notes on his background.

Speaker 6 (44:14):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Doctor Amery Siegal is here to defend this episode. Probably
op she's gone is. Harry Schwent is also here. She
seems like part of the Defense Club. TJ. Jackson bays
on the bridge of the Enterprise, d Alison Leech Heid's
got her Abyssinian Kiosk shirt that Cisco kid Chuck A

(44:38):
is gonna say not one of the best episodes he's seen.
And Chris McGee is here as well. Cool seventh Rules
shirt made by Melissa. All Right, Jake Cisco guesses the
IMDb score.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Okay, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm
gonna say a five nine, five point nine.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Does anybody else have any guesses that doesn't already know?

Speaker 8 (45:07):
Sixt one?

Speaker 7 (45:08):
No freak?

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Mm hmmm six.

Speaker 6 (45:13):
Five six.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Five six, Wow, this guy's Keith Jennings. This thing, uh
personal bias creeping in. You guys are all pretty close.
It is a six point oh m hmm a six
point anel all right, did we have any oh? I

(45:39):
got a non appearance mentioned, I got cake? O right,
did we have any others?

Speaker 4 (45:44):
Twice you keep getting Does nurse McCluggage count only if
we've seen him or her? Well, that's probably an homage
to carry mcluggage.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
That's carry mcgluggage almost you know.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
The best quoifet member of starfleet.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
A good hair's good hair.

Speaker 9 (46:07):
That's a lot of baggage to carry around.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
M no bugage?

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Okay, gotcha? Uh do we have any some kinds of
or some sorts of today, Chris.

Speaker 10 (46:25):
McGee I caught one spoken by Ricker women He asks,
could some kind of damping field have caused us to
lose velocity?

Speaker 1 (46:35):
We also had a ton of like Trekkian names like
Cryonian tiger and uh what was the Mintonian sailing ship?
And they were like five of those things. They just
went yeah, they went nuts with it all right, Malisse ango,
will you please get a start off on the right
track by telling us what you thought of this episode
with your black and white background.

Speaker 11 (46:57):
I love this is it behind the scenes. And I
love Gynon. I love Guynan.

Speaker 12 (47:09):
She is probably one of my favorite characters in Trek.
I have a lot of favorite characters in Trek, and
she's definitely up there. And I think she she was
probably in my favorite scene with Clara at the intent
forward when she was talking about her imaginary friend. And

(47:32):
I just love the way Gynon has with people and
the way she relates to people, and so for that.
I can't hate on this episode too much because there
were some quite endearing moments. When Troy is walking down

(47:52):
there one of the corridors with Clara and she grabs
her hand, it was such an organic and it was
just so tender, and I really, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
I like.

Speaker 12 (48:05):
I like how Troy interacted with Clara, and I liked
how gay And interacted with Clara. And I don't feel
that she was dismissed in any way. In fact, I
think they were really trying to help her acclimate with
this station, and I love that. And I and I

(48:28):
do have some I can It's relatable to me because
I am a military brat, so I understand what Clara
was going through going from port to port or city
to city or place to place, so that that was
relatable to me. And I'm not. Jordie's story when he

(48:51):
was talking about his experience with that was relatable as well,
So I liked Jeordi in this as well. There were
some really good moments. I do have a lot for
things left unsaid, but you'll have to wait. You'll have
to wait for.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
That, So stay tuned for that, everybody, all right. Jason
m Oakin your thoughts. Top five.

Speaker 4 (49:18):
Absolutely, let's see where do I begin. It is certainly
not one of my favorites. I did get a bit
of a different sort of take on it this time around,
having looked at the script. I think it was meant
when it was rewritten, it was meant to be creepy,
and I think that's not the way it was shot.

(49:39):
I think frankly it was very very static and slow
and pedantic, and the fact that, you know, I think
Shay Astor was putting a very very sort of unfavorable
position of having as a child to play the sort
of menacing adult and it was hard for anybody to
do that. I certainly don't fall to performance, but I

(50:00):
think they put her in this sort of in a
very very difficult situation. I think normally Thornton was you know,
she's very endearing as a young actor. You know, the
fact that they had her back on Deep Space in
a couple of years sort of speaks for itself. I
think frankly, she held the episode together for whatever, you know,
we were watching for the forty two minutes. To me,

(50:22):
it was sort of a kind of a bad remake
of the child, and that was not a great episode
to begin with. You know, there are a lot of
things here that seemed off in terms of sort of pacing.
It's just not a great episode. I think they were
going for something that was a little spooky and creepy,
and it certainly did not turn out that way. I

(50:44):
think this this would have been good for something like
a half hour or fifteen minutes, maybe like a short truck.
Certainly not something that holds on for forty some odd minutes. Again,
when you're doing twenty six a year, something like this
will come up and compared to what you know, if
you compared this one to comes next, it's like night
and night. Oh boy, there's a lot more to say,

(51:06):
and I'll say that for later.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Earmuffs, Serroc and Eve, great stuff as always, Jason m Oakin,
All right, Mark Zutkoff, what do you got for us today?

Speaker 9 (51:19):
Well, all I remembered of this episode from its original
airing was shay astar is Isabella couldn't even remember the
name of the other child this time around, seeing five
writers credited was immediate concern. Yesterday's enterprise had five writers,
but that's the exception, not the rule. Also, another kid
centric episode in a season with four of them, and

(51:41):
that's not counting the two Wesley episodes. Brandon Braga had
taken to calling it Romper Room the next Generation. The
episode might have had more punch if Isabella hadn't looked
mean and acted as a bad influence on Clara from
the beginning. Another entity comes onto the ship unnoticed, at
least this time they have an explanation for it. But

(52:01):
that entity sure doesn't like Data and Jeordie's technobabble, nor
Crusher and Ogawa's talk of romance. Speaking of Ogawa after
her appearance in the game, is she really not ready
for Riza? We frequently criticize the amount of technobabbel in
the series, but in this episode, the scene in the
briefing room reminds us this is their job and the

(52:23):
technobabble can have a purpose. Loved getting some of Jordie's
background inside on family life and thoughts on raising children.
The team of Data and Guynon and Ted forward, soft
spoken comedy, gold and Whoopy's facial expressions adds so much
even more impressive when we learn from Memory Alpha that

(52:43):
Whoopy only came available shortly before filming, So the scene
which originally featured Crusher and Troy was rewritten for Data
and Guynan. Later we get a scene between Guinon and Troy,
two counselors or one counseling the other speaking of Troy
first power play. Now this Troy is getting banged up
a lot lately. Nice speech from Picard at the end,

(53:05):
explaining why there are rules for children and that Clara
will establish rules when.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
She has kids.

Speaker 9 (53:11):
He doesn't threaten, just talks, and Clara shows forgiveness and
friendship to Isabella. The ending between Isabella and Clara in
a is a sweet way to end the episode. In
a couple of years after this episode airs, Pixar will
create a movie where dolls and action figures move only
when adults aren't looking, similar to how Isabella only appears

(53:31):
to Clara. So my home pun of the episode, this
is Star Trek's Troy story.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Ah ah ah, thank you very much, Mark Zutkoff. Excellent work,
all right, Carrie Schwent.

Speaker 13 (53:48):
Aka Crafty Bears here and by the way, Srock, we
didn't even talk about that be plot we're going to
and we totally forgot how that happen, but we will,
and things left unsets, so stay tuned for that.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Terry Schwent aka Crafty Bear, please take it away.

Speaker 7 (54:06):
I enjoy this this episode. I love that we get
the hanging out hanging out with the little kid. I
definitely feel like it definitely has a slight horror horror
movie vibe to it. Yeah, especially the guest star stage.
She pulls off the same sort of slightly creepy vibe

(54:27):
that the little girls in the in the Shining Dew
and they're standing in the hallway asking Danny to come
come play with them forever and ever, which for for
a minute it kind of seemed like Isabella was asking
Clara that just a little bit. Maybe that's just me
project projecting, but both father and daughter. I enjoyed both

(54:48):
of them. Their actors aren't their actors. I know one
more than the other. Jeff Allen the ensign isn't a
fantastic Season six episode of Voyager is in a really
cool sort of alien makeup that I really like, so
I recognize his voice pretty pretty much immediately. The episode
is called Dragon's Teeth and Little Clara her I know,

(55:12):
as I've watched the entire series. She is Dylan's little
little sister Erica on Beverly Hills nine O two one
oh and is just as adorable in that in that
series as she is in this one and the and
the Being Space nine episode with with Odo when he
turns spins into it turns into a top for her
at the end of that episode. She is just the

(55:34):
cutest thing. I would totally hang out, hang out and
do like ceramics with the ceramics with her. I haven't
worked with clay, probably like mushable clay, like like like
they do in the class, probably since high school. But
I've done a fair amount of ceramics off and on.
And this is probably Alexander Alexander's I think, probably best

(55:56):
best scene of of all of his scenes. He's very
patient with with Clara, teaching her how to make how
to put her thumbs into the clay to to start
the bowl process. And yeah, I laughed, I admitted I
laughed when Isabella through the chunk of clay at the

(56:17):
back of Alexander said I couldn't know, but I yeah,
I thought that was kind of hysterical, kind of hysterical. Personally,
I love how wonderful Carey was with Clare. We get
to see her doing her job. You know, playing playing
along with when Isabella is still imaginary and doing the
whole pretend he party thing and walking her, walking her

(56:39):
around the apartment, you know, check, checking the checking the
room and all all the places. Always Anyone who has
ever watched a horror movie knows that almost never goes
very well. They hide until they don't. By the time
they don't, that's curtains, curtains for curtains for you. But yeah,

(57:02):
I also loved, loved, loved that whip he was available,
available and adding her to the to the episode. Her
scene with with Clara is so sweet, just he's so gentle,
gentle with her and talking to her, like talking to
her like like an equal, and telling her about her
her her imagine her imaginary friend. And even though the

(57:25):
later on she says that the imaginary friend doesn't have
a body or she still think thinks, thinks about them
and talks to them occasionally. And of course I had
to include my my, my good, my good friend Pebbles here.
Not exactly imaginary, but she has her I've had her
since I was like two or three. He has her
own person personality, loves her sarcastic t shirts, not not

(57:49):
unlike me, so I definitely enjoy the enjoy her with
with that and then talking to talking to Tory later
too is sweet. But my favorite favorite scene of the
of the entire episode, it's definitely the the the data
and data and guyn and picking picking out patterns patterns

(58:10):
in the in the nebula, because we've all done it
with clouds and data has clearly mastered comedy. When he
goes well, it's clearly a bunny rabbit. Just absolute mic drop,
dead pan moment. He has mastered comedy, I feel like.
But that scene curve inspired the limerick for the episode,

(58:31):
and I'm actually I gave the nebula a name because
they couldn't decide what to name it. Jeordi wanted to
name it after himself, suit Run it to name it
after himself, so I combined the names. It is a
Las Sutter nobula, so they both get both get it
named after them. But here is my limerick for the episode.

(58:53):
In this nebula, what shapes do we see? Buildings? Animals
or maybe some trees? Why can't it be a large
fish or keeping chip? Just let your imagination run free.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
YEP, great stuff is always Thank you very much, Carrie,
Schwent aka Crafty Bear. All right, oh, doctor Anne Marie Siegel,
you hinted that you liked this episode. What happened?

Speaker 14 (59:23):
I absolutely love this episode. I thought when I was seven,
And I just think it's really cool that Star Trek
occasionally has a little girl episode and I hate when
people hate on it. I just like it really really
moved me. It's like scary, it talks of it, kind
of like touches on being lonely as a kid. I
just think it's wonderful. And I was really happy to
read that people like Brandon Braga actually loved it and

(59:45):
thought it was really interesting writing for kids because like
there was an edict like gene Rod and Berry and
then later Rick Berman wouldn't let you write like imperfect humans,
and then it became very hard to have like tension
and like any plot drama. And so by having kids,
like by definition they're imperfect because they haven't like grown
and matured, and it's a really interesting way to like

(01:00:08):
look at relationships through a kids vantage point. Also, like
the two girls are so amazing and shadow play in
BC's nine and take Caretaker episode with Gary Graham.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
I just can't get enough of.

Speaker 14 (01:00:18):
Them and like everything about them, like the way they say,
like is it Bella, It's just it's just so, they're
just so such wonderful, brilliant actors. And yeah, I just
I absolutely love this one. Can't get enough of it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Ten out of ten.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
I was just gonna ask you one out of ten.

Speaker 14 (01:00:36):
Okay, obviously, it's always been one of the most memorable
from the second.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
I first thought.

Speaker 14 (01:00:42):
And yeah, and I'm going to have dinner with my
non imaginary friend, so.

Speaker 7 (01:00:47):
Thanks for let me go early.

Speaker 14 (01:00:48):
Enjoy your meal, all right, I'll say how to out
back for everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
All Right, thanks very much. We've got t J. Jackson
Bay out in miserra the others.

Speaker 6 (01:01:01):
He says, yes, all right, so listen up, all of
you that don't like this episode that was tex to you.

Speaker 15 (01:01:10):
I liked you, but now I don't care. So when
the others come, they're gonna get you.

Speaker 6 (01:01:22):
Oh. I'm too. Like this episode for very very many reasons.

Speaker 15 (01:01:29):
And I think it's because I like a different kind
of episode, right, A different kind of episode speaks to me.
And the kind of episode that really speaks to me is.

Speaker 6 (01:01:37):
Kind of like a day.

Speaker 15 (01:01:40):
Of life on the enterprise, Like this is just living
on the Enterprise, and we get to see it from
a child's perspective this time, and so I really enjoyed that,
really seeing how Clara's days go.

Speaker 6 (01:01:53):
The places she can go, the places she.

Speaker 15 (01:01:55):
Can't go, how people react when she's somewhere she's not
supposed to be, Like when they ran into Wharf and Wharf,
you know, at first he's mean and greff, like what
are you doing here? And then he's like, all right,
you guys, get out of here and we'll just kind
of forget this happened, all right, you know, he's cool
about it, and these smiles when they walk away.

Speaker 6 (01:02:14):
I thought that was super cool scene.

Speaker 15 (01:02:18):
And I also, actually, you know, enjoyed the way that
Isabella was played. I think, you know, we get to
see an alien entity come onto the ship, and this
alien is exploring too and trying to see who these
people are. But the person that they connected with was
a child, and so it's from a child's perspective, but

(01:02:40):
they don't know anything about being a child, and so
she has this super serious look on her face the
whole time, and even Clara calls it out, like why
you look so mean all the time since she became real?

Speaker 6 (01:02:51):
You suck like smile.

Speaker 15 (01:02:55):
Sometimes she doesn't know how to smile. She's just like, man,
all these peopeople are mean, you're kind of cool.

Speaker 6 (01:03:02):
Let's go.

Speaker 15 (01:03:03):
I need to go look at the shields and stuff.
Let's go get in trouble. And so I think that
she actually played it well. And I got to tell you,
as a kid watching this episode, seeing that little girl
in the blue dress was worse than the kids from
the Shining for me. I mean I didn't have nightmares

(01:03:26):
about it, but I didn't think about it a lot.
Now Guynon, oh my goodness, Guynon is absolutely the person
I want to be when I grow up. And the
spirit that I feel that cost to me, I really
really really appreciate, uh, the way that she just accepts everybody.

(01:03:49):
We've seen her do this with ro Laren when no
one when she was per sonning on Grada, she went
and talked to her, accepted her, got her to open
up a little bit and said, this is my friend.

Speaker 6 (01:04:01):
She did the.

Speaker 15 (01:04:01):
Same thing with Clara when they come into ten forward,
even though she can't see Isabella. She treated Clara with
just the utmost respect right and talk to her like
she was a whole person. And I appreciate that I
did not receive that much as a kid. I received
his son, but not a lot. I felt quite a

(01:04:22):
bit disregarded. And I think that's just what we do
with kids as a society. But I also think that's
a shame. I think, and I endeavored to do this
when I talk to kids, to give them my whole
attention and to really listen to what they're saying and
what's in their heart, what they're excited about, what they're experiencing,
because that's what's important to them, and I think they

(01:04:45):
have her right to feel the kind of acceptance I
would want to feel when I'm sharing something i'm excited about.

Speaker 6 (01:04:51):
And so that's what I want to give to kids,
and that's what I saw God and do.

Speaker 15 (01:04:55):
So I was very appreachable for that a lot to
say clearly, that cloud was out a bunny rabbit or
a ship.

Speaker 6 (01:05:02):
It was a bajorant.

Speaker 15 (01:05:05):
The old spaceship or thing that that that man and
Jake built was a solar ship. It's a maajorant. So
that's what it was, and you can't sway me from that. Also,
check out the iridescent currents. They're beautiful. If you ever
get a chance to go to that minor planet.

Speaker 6 (01:05:26):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Okay, well that was great stuff today.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
T J.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Jackson, bount in Missouri. I think that's like three people
in a row that loved this episode. Maybe we got
it all wrong. We're winning, We're winning, Allison, what have
you got for us today?

Speaker 16 (01:05:46):
Well, as a kid, I did not like this episode.
And it's because Isabella kept getting her friend in trouble
and Clara was in trouble all the time, and I
didn't like that because I was her age pretty much
when this episode came out, I'm like, she's not a
good friend. She keeps getting her in trouble, Like why
would she want to hang out with her when everyone

(01:06:07):
else is being so nice to her? And so and
of course you know the blank face. She was super creepy,
you know. So as not my favorite episode, I love
hearing more about Jeordie because he's my favorite. So I
love that scene. And then as an adult, I really
like the idea of this episode because what would an

(01:06:28):
alien race think of us if they saw us through
our children's eyes? Like that is a really interesting way
to look at, you know, what we have as important
in our society. It is like is it our children,
is it ourselves you know? Is it something in between?
So I thought that was a really cool idea for
this episode. Like, yeah, if an an alien race went

(01:06:50):
and befriended a child and then saw everything from a
child's point of view, especially one that isn't a new
place and doesn't know a lot of people and doesn't
know where they can be safely, how would they feel
like they can't go anywhere they don't know anyone. It
could seem very alienating. So I thought that was a
really cool idea for this episode. And I really loved

(01:07:11):
Bookard in this episode, especially at the end when they're
in sick Bay after Troy's been blasted into the closet
and Clara comes in.

Speaker 7 (01:07:21):
And it was closet.

Speaker 12 (01:07:26):
I'm like, oh, that had to.

Speaker 16 (01:07:28):
Hurt hitting that well, she had like nowhere to go.

Speaker 7 (01:07:31):
I really liked put.

Speaker 16 (01:07:33):
Card when he's like, you know, thank you for talking
to us about this, and will you help us if
we need your help later, and she's like yes, I
really like that. He truly risk, you know, understood. She
was kind of like the authority on Isabelle because she's
been hanging out with her for days now and He's like, yeah,
you know more about her than we do, so we

(01:07:53):
might need your help on this. Will you do this?
I thought that was really sweet. So as a kid
didn't like it, I like it more as an adult.
Is it still you know, lower on my totem pull?

Speaker 7 (01:08:04):
Sure?

Speaker 16 (01:08:05):
But I think there are some great things in the episode.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Uh hm, all right, thanks very much, Allison leech Heid.
I'm trying to decide if she liked it or didn't
like it. It's kind of an in between me but
mostly alike, Chuck A is gonna tell us, boy, this
is his least favorite episode ever, though, what do you
think of it? Chuck A?

Speaker 8 (01:08:30):
Well, I tried to avoid this episode as much as possible.
I didn't like it very much at all. My opinion
is a little bit better. I liked it a little
bit more, but still, you know, not my favorite episode.
We got a non appearance mentioned in reverse until Isabella appeared,

(01:08:54):
because she kept on talking about Isabella and she wasn't appearing,
even though you know that means that she had to
have appeared in other Star Trek, but she appeared after
the non appearance mentioned. The girl that played Isabella I
thought was really a good choice. For that role, and

(01:09:15):
like like Jason was saying about being originally being a
creepy episode, I got that feeling as well. There were
some aspects of that I did like. The Jordi's story
and Guynan's appearance added something something else to the episode.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
At least.

Speaker 8 (01:09:42):
The girl that played Clara was really good, and as
it was mentioned that she winds up being in Deep
Space nine a couple of years later. Like I said,
I liked it slightly better than what I remembered it.
But you know, it's uh an episode that I really

(01:10:03):
did not want to watch when I came across it.
But the next three episodes to finish the season, those
spoilers are considerably considerably better than this particular episode we
just reviewed. So I'd like to uh looking forward to
seeing the next three episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
All right for you?

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
All right?

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
Uh, Chris McGee, tell us what you thought of this episode.
Are you on team Carry the others and uh Anne
Marie or are you more on the Mark or Chuck
side or are you like Allison where you're like there's
nuance to this.

Speaker 10 (01:10:47):
Well, it's not a great episode.

Speaker 6 (01:10:53):
Bad either.

Speaker 10 (01:10:54):
I'd say it's a perfectly average episode. As such, I
don't have much to say about it, so this will
be relatively short. I think it's a good idea for
a story, though, one that reminds me of the original series.
An alien species that doesn't understand why children have a
different set of rules than adults, so they assume the
worst of the adults.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
You know.

Speaker 10 (01:11:17):
At least we get to see more of Nurse Ogawa
as her character gets just a bit more depth. We
also get more depth for Jeordie learning a bit about
his parents.

Speaker 6 (01:11:27):
This is the first.

Speaker 10 (01:11:28):
Time in nineteen episodes that we see Gaya, and she
was last seen in in sign Row, the third episode
of this season. I think Noley Thornton did great as Clara,
and Shay Astor, who played Isabella, did a good job
portraying in alien entity in the body of a human girl,
especially with her technobabble lines that she had to recite.

(01:11:52):
And that's pretty much all for that. I'm going to
go ahead and mention my memorable quote for whatever reason,
this is the one that has stuck in my memory
all these years, and that's when Jordie says children are
a lot stronger than you think.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
Great stuff. As always, dark Lord Chris McGee, All right,
uh Jake's final take rock. Any final thoughts on this episode.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Well, I did like that Captain Picard resorted to what
really he is the best at, and that is his diplomacy.
You know, he came when it came down, when the
rubber met the road. He was really diplomatic and articulating

(01:12:43):
not only what his entity was looking for, but the
defense he's He basically puts on a defense for humanity
multiple times in this show. And he really starts with
Q when Q puts him on trial and he defends humanity,

(01:13:04):
and then he continues to throughout the show find ways
to defend humankind in some way or another, or the
starfleet or Starfleet's intentions or you know, he's always defending.
So I thought this showed what his skill set is
best at, which is this diplomacy. When there when I

(01:13:30):
was a kid, there was a movie called Drop Dead
Fred and it was about an imaginary friend. Came out
in nineteen ninety one. So there's no way that Drop
Dead Fred did not have some kind of influence on
this because the entire movie was about an imaginary friend.
It's the only movie I can think of that start

(01:13:54):
an imaginary friend, and so I think that somehow, some
way that this came out of that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
There was also right, said Fred, So.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
I saw the mention of the number forty seven. You know,
we've talked about forty seven being a number, but forty
seven came up twice in this episode. Data said, I
prefer FGC forty seven as opposed to the LaForge nebula,

(01:14:31):
and then they said there were forty seven million strands
in the nebula itself, so two forty sevens in the
same episode. Also, I thought the design of Clara's pajamas
was beautiful and well made. The pink pajamas with the

(01:14:54):
robe over on top of it, the little dinosaur she
had was extremely adorable, well made, well designed kids pajama outfit,
and I could totally see myself wanting to buy that,
you know, it was just so well designed. And then

(01:15:17):
I like the quote that Data had when he said
people try to find meaningful pattern and things that are random.
I think there's some truth to that, you know. I
enjoyed that line, And yeah, I mean that's about it.
It wasn't high on. The episode wasn't terrible either, and

(01:15:38):
I do think the kids, you know, carried it, but
you know, it's not easy for me to be watching
an episode that doesn't really feature my main stars that
I like to see, so you know, but the kids
did a good jobs as what they were asked to do,

(01:16:00):
and I thought they cast them well because I thought
they both played different emotions and types of kids that
we see, so it was great.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Maybe you weren't, but I wish I was hired during
that episode. So everybody, I mean, maybe you know I've
gone slower, but still thank you too, Mark, Chris McGee,
Chuck A, Alison each Hyde, T J. Jackson, bay Out In Missouri,

(01:16:33):
Carrie Schwent aka Crafty Bear, Jason m Oakin, Melissa Longo
for myself, Sarak Malissa, and of course mister Aaron Eisenberg.
Thank you all very much for hanging out with us.
We really appreciate it, and we'll see you next time.
Until then, always remember the seventh rule.

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Purple Omelettes | TNG 5.22, "Imaginary Friend" | T7R #349

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Purple Omelettes | TNG 5.22, "Imaginary Friend" | T7R #349