Imaginary Friend is an awful episode. It’s almost entirely and completely pointless. The acting isn’t very good, not even from Picard. And the story is utterly ridiculous.

The premise of the episode is to have the invisible imaginary friend (Isabella) of a little girl (Clara) become visible by way of a glowing alien entity. Nevermind that this “alien entity boarding the Enterprise as a glowing point light” was already done, rather poorly, in season two’s The Child. Nevermind that the exact same visual effect was used (all they did for Imaginary Friend was change the color from white to red). I guess the writers thought that the audience could be taken in by the same exact bad premise … twice.

Shame on them.

The girl, Clara, has imagined Isabella as a means to cope with her father’s many shifting assignments in Starfleet. But when the Enterprise starts exploring some nebula, the alien entity boards the ship, explores briefly, and finally appears to Clara as Isabella.

The rest is just silly. Isabella goads Clara into misbehaving. And when Clara resists, or adults intervene, Isabella throws temper tantrums such as … knocking over Troi’s hot chocolate. Scary, huh? Did some writer somewhere really think that knocking of cups of hot chocolate was high drama for TNG?

Finally Isabella gets so pissy that she zaps Troi with some energy beam. At first we cheer because we think Troi has finally bought it. Then, when we see she has survived, we are dismayed at how pointless the scene was. Really, truly, the majority of the episode centered on the juvenile jealousy of a little girl — who isn’t a little girl, who isn’t part of the crew, who is some alien, whose other alien friends decide they want to destroy the Enterprise (including Clara) because the adults are too strict.

Because, running alongside this Isabella story, there is a minor issue the Enterprise is having navigating the nebula. Seems their warp field creates a web-like structure that impedes the ship. The visuals are enjoyable, but other than that, the story is little more than technobabble run amok. And as we later learn, the webs are actually not created by the Enterprise warp field. So it, too, was pointless.

Of course, these mysterious glowing aliens are also somehow responsible for the web. And it isn’t until after Picard give another speech on why humanity should be saved that the web disappears and Isabella agrees to not be an annoying little snot. But Picard’s speech is half-hearted at best. And we never felt any real tension or impending peril throughout the episode.

Imaginary Friend is a hollow episode, giving its audience very little to enjoy or appreciate. I give the episode some credit for its visuals. And Guinan’s brief presence (and talk of her own imaginary friend) are bonuses. But outside of that, there is little to redeem it. This episode really feels like someone’s idea of fan-fiction, rather than an actual official TNG story.

Filed under: TNG Reviews