Star Trek the Next Generation Episode Review: “Interface”

I was flipping through channels when I was home for lunch today and came across this particular episode from this series. I had not seen it before and it looked somewhat interesting so I ended up watching it. And, as it turns out, it was much more entertaining than I thought it would be.

I think the thing that I really liked about this episode was the mystery surrounding La Forge’s mom and whether or not she was real. There were quite a few possibilities ranging from her being a figment of his imagination, brought on by both grief and guilt, to his mom somehow being on the planet below despite the fact her ship was nowhere near the planet when she disappeared and there was no apparent way for a ship to avoid being destroyed by the planet’s atmosphere. And, even though I did actually end up guessing at the truth, I still didn’t know all the details.

La Forge and Data (Brent Spiner) defying Captain Picard’s (Patrick Stewart) order not to investigate the planet was also an interesting twist, mostly because it was unclear what kind of repercussions they might face, especially if La Forge was unable to find any evidence of there being life on the planet and the ship they were trying to rescue was lost because of his actions. However, the most intriguing part of this had to be Data making the decision to help him because that seems like something that would be completely out of character for him under most circumstances.

My only real complaint about this episode is we never do learn, for sure, what happened to La Forge’s mom or her ship. While the episode does go through the effort to at least give him some form of closure, I think the episode would have been considerably better if we would have had a clear answer about what happened to her, especially since I don’t think the series ever addresses that.

This, as I said, proved to be an entertaining episode with a good deal of mystery. It’s one I definitely enjoyed taking the time to watch as a result of that.

My Grade: A