Star Trek: The Next Generation — 5x22 — Imaginary Friend

Aired 1992-05-04

SpaceOpera.com rating:2

Average reader rating:3.06

Synopsis

A little girl's imaginary friend threatens the ship.

Remarkable scenes

Watching the red dot thinger travel around through things. A nice bit of graphics work.
Data and Guinan debating the image in the clouds.
Guinan describing her Tarkassian Razorbeast imaginary friend.
Isabella striking down Troi.

Review

It's always nice to see Troi doing her counsellor job, which she does well in this episode. Beyond that this episode is largely unremarkable except in that it is the final episode of the season to deal heavily with children, a trend which was prominent in this season. In some ways I say good riddance. In other ways I think it was productive. In the first episode, Picard informed Riker to make certain that he was kept away from all matters that dealt with children as much as possible. In this season and especially this episode he seems to have finally lightened up from that.

6 reader comments

At the beginning of the episode, Clara states that Isabella has pierced ears. When Isabella materializes, her appearance exactly matches Clara's description, except Isabella doesn't have pierced ears.
by DSOmo | 10/02/2007 at 6:42 am

This episode was largely a waste, except for a couple things:
Data says the "clouds" look distinctly like a bunny rabbit!
The girl who plays "Isabella" is delightfully freaky. She gives me the creeps!
by DJB | 04/20/2008 at 12:03 am

DSOmo is that supposed to a plothole or something? Everything you identify as a problem is so ridiculously unimportant or not a plothole at all. You say it as if you've uncovered something amazing, and crucial to the episode.
by curt | 04/07/2010 at 8:57 pm

The only part of this episode I liked was the end, where Picard figures out how to pacify the aliens and makes his little speech. I thought the idea of aliens judging humanity through children could have been the plot of an interesting episode." But not this episode, which was more of a children's story about how an evil ghost, who grownups don't believe in, gets you into trouble.
by Christopher Alexander | 03/26/2011 at 4:43 am

Actually think there's some unintended hilarity in this. We know how Picard hates children (though this comes after episodes like "Disaster" where he starts dealing with them more prevalently).
When he hails Worf over the comm, asking for security to be on the lookout for a dangerous alien masquerading as an 11 year old blond girl, Worf seems to take it completely in stride. I had to laugh and imagine that it's not the first time that the Captain has asked for security to detain children that he didn't want to deal with.
by Bronn | 12/01/2012 at 7:21 am

Well, hopefully Clara doesn't need too much therapy after this. I'm sure Ensign Sutter is happy that psychological treatment is free on a 24th Century Federation starship.
I'd put this one at about a 3. It suffers from the same problem as several of the more mediocre Trek episodes. The crew encounters an intriguing new phenomenon, alien, or problem of some kind which takes up about 45 minutes of the episode. It reaches the denouement and tries to wrap it all up in about 3-5 minutes, usually poorly. I liked Picard's confrontation with "Isabella" but it would've been nice to learn a little more about these life forms rather than spending so much time on Clara's imaginary friend issue. I get it, though. TNG did try at times to cater to the younger age group, so they occasionally have these messages directed toward kids. That's the only explanation I could come up with for why we have multiple scenes where Guinan talks about her own imaginary friend.
by Mike L. Jackson | 04/23/2017 at 7:13 pm