TNG Flashback: The Offspring

In television production, a "bottle show" is an episode filmed on existing sets, limiting the guest stars and visual effects needed, and generally trying to save money across the board. When one episode overspends its share of the season's budget, a bottle show is needed somewhere along the line to balance the books. Bottle shows can feel dry and inert, but they can also put a more meaningful emphasis on character. "The Offspring," falling between the budget busting "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Sins of the Father," is very much an example of how a bottle show can be done right.

Working in secret, Data has succeeded in creating a new android based on his own systems. His child, Lal, selects for herself the appearance of a human female, and begins to interact with the crew and her father in an effort to become fully sentient. But when Starfleet learns of Data's breakthrough, an unyielding admiral arrives to take Lal away for education at a starbase.

This episode marked two big firsts. It was the first television script for writer Rene Echevarria. He'd go on to work extensively on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine (and later, other non-Trek series), but here he got his first ever chance at television thanks to head writer Michael Piller's open script submission policy. Though Echeverria's first draft put too much emphasis on new android Lal over the main characters (and included a needless Ferengi subplot), Piller saw the strong core of the premise and ran with the idea.

This was also the directorial debut for actor Jonathan Frakes. He'd expressed his interest in directing an episode, and was at first put off by producer Rick Berman. But when Frakes hung in there tenaciously and "went to school" by spending hundreds of hours of his free time learning in every other department of production, Berman broke down and gave him this shot. This paved the way for several other members of the main cast to eventually direct their own episodes. Meanwhile, Jonathan Frakes would go on to direct dozens of Next Gens and DS9s, and even two Star Trek films. He continues to work as a director today, having done episodes of Dollhouse, Leverage, Falling Skies, Castle, Burn Notice, and more other shows than you'd care for me to name.

Jonathan Frakes deserves every bit of the success he found in the director's chair, because even here in his very first effort, it's clear that he knows how to work with actors. The hallmark of this episode is the fine array of performances given by everyone involved. Hallie Todd is exceptional as Lal, creating a clear arc that shows her character even more robotic and stilted than Data in the beginning of the episode, and growing ever more human with each passing scene. Nicolas Coster is saddled with the thankless role of the "heavy" in Admiral Haftel, but is compelling in his final scene, where he speaks in amazement of Data's attempts to repair Lal. And of course, Jonathan Frakes knows how to either elicit or get out of the way of great performances by the main cast -- Brent Spiner, Patrick Stewart, and Whoopi Goldberg are especially strong here.

Interestingly, not everyone on the writing staff loved this episode. Melinda Snodgrass, writer of "The Measure of a Man," outright hated it, calling it "fairly obvious and tired and stupid." She felt that it was recycling her earlier story, and far too soon. Personally, I find it sad that Snodgrass couldn't see her way to giving another young writer with no television experience -- just as she'd been when she sold her Data script -- the same chance she'd received. I also think she missed the key differences between the episodes: her tale was one of individual rights, while "The Offspring" plays out very much as a custody battle.

Moreover, I think she misses that both episodes taken together paint a very accurate picture of reality. Historically, human rights have never been won all at once. For example, in the United States, the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education was where racial segregation was found to be unconstitutional; despite this, it took another case more than a decade later, Loving v. Virginia, to affirm the national right to interracial marriage. Or barely a month ago, Windsor v. United States established federal recognition of same-sex marriages, while still holding for some future date the decision that will actually outlaw state-level bans against it. Or, to pull it back to Star Trek: just because Data's individual rights were won in season two doesn't mean he might not have to fight for his parental rights in season three. (And as a side note, how special is an episode of television that not only resonates with real-world events more than 20 years before it aired, but also with real-world events more than 20 years after it aired?)

This really is a brilliant script, another wonderful "ripples in the pond" episode where we see how Data's creation of a daughter resonates with many people in the crew. We see Picard struggle to even think of Lal as a daughter in the conventional sense, before meaningfully -- and almost accidentally -- accepting her as such in the final act. We see Troi interact with Data and Lal from a psychologist's point of view (and even make a very oblique reference to her own parenting experience). Wesley and Beverly provide touchstones on a parent-child relationship, covering both viewpoints.

The episode has wonderful comedic highs. Guinan worms her way out of an awkward sex talk with Lal (after an earlier deadpan reaction from Whoopi Goldberg to being called "old"). Lal tries a disastrous flirtation on Commander Riker (culminating in Data's hilarious "Commander, what are your intentions toward my daughter?"). In other scene, Data turns his daughter off when she starts asking too many questions, as I'm sure many parents sometimes wish they could do.

There are even more powerful dramatic moments. Picard is a diplomat with the utmost respect when dealing with his superior officer, until the admiral makes an essentially racist remark, whereupon he unleashes appropriate anger. We get an almost horrific scene when Lal experiences her first emotion... and that emotion is unbridled fear. And the goodbye scene between Lal and Data is surprisingly heartfelt and emotional, given that our real access into the scene -- the main character of Data -- is incapable of expressing emotion.

How good is this episode? Michael Dorn called it one of his two favorites of the series (along with "The Drumhead"), even though his character of Worf hardly appears in it.

Other observations:

• To accommodate Jonathan Frakes' turn in the director's chair, Commander Riker was written out of most of the episode. In the opening log entry, Picard specifically mentions that Riker is away on personal leave.

• The opening scene has Geordi, Wesley, and Troi walking down a corridor to Data's lab. They're walking strangely, almost comically fast. Seriously, watch poor Marina Sirtis trying to simultaneously keep up and look at least vaguely natural.

• Patrick Stewart shows some rather unnecessary skin in this episode, when Picard is wakened in the middle of the night to answer a message in his pajamas.

• Having argued myself at the legal distinctions examined in this episode vs. "The Measure of a Man," I will agree that once Lal articulates her desire to remain on the Enterprise late in the episode, that should foreclose all debate. Her own individual rights, as established from the prior episode, should apply.

• The final shot of this episode is a powerful testament to the way people read into others' expressions. It's a lingering shot on Data's face, moments after he's informed the crew that Lal's memories have been transferred back into his own mind. In theory, he now holds the memories of the emotions Lal experienced, and we the audience are left to imagine what that means from looking at his blank face.

• There was a reported controversy on the set during the filming of this episode, during the Ten Forward scene where Guinan and Lal watch a couple flirt with one another and then leave together. Guinan apparently had a line saying something like "when a man and a woman are in love...", and Whoopi Goldberg objected to the opposite-sex-only framing of romance. She argued tenaciously that Star Trek was beyond that, and wanted to say "when two people are in love..." She even wanted an additional same-sex couple placed elsewhere in the background of the scene, but reportedly someone on set made a call to the main office, and producer David Livingston rushed down to prevent any alterations from being made. To this day, there has never been a depiction of a true gay or lesbian relationship on any incarnation of Star Trek (though there have been a few attempts at allegory, which we'll get to later in The Next Generation's run). In the final cut of this episode, Guinan has no line about the love between a couple, "man and woman" or otherwise.

Even if you do think "The Offspring" covers some of the same ground as "The Measure of a Man," it's hard to judge it harshly when it makes its statement so powerfully. Once again, an exploration of Data's humanity yields a stellar episode. This one's an unreserved A.