“Interface” (season 7, episode 3; originally aired Oct. 2, 1993)
Or The One Where Geordi Puts On A Cyber-Gimp Suit and Talks With His Mother
I got excited seeing Ben Vereen’s name in the opening credits for “Interface.” Vereen is a terrific actor—a little crazed if he doesn’t have strong direction, but brilliantly talented and unique—and I was curious to see what kind of energy he’d bring to the show. I was even more interested when I realized Vereen was going to be playing Geordi’s dad. The story was, in part, driven by Geordi’s concerns over his missing mother, and maybe there was going to be some estrangement or difficulty between him and Vereen that the two would have to overcome together to deal with the disappearance. Maybe halfway through the episode, Geordi talks with his dad via Future Skype. It’s a bit awkward, as La Forge Sr. has already given Mom up for dead, and Geordi isn’t ready to let go. Not a terrible scene, but there isn’t much to it; and that’s the only appearance Vereen makes. In fact, its his only appearance (so far as I can tell) in the entire franchise. I suppose he might not be quite as big a star to the rest of the world as he is to me (although surely everyone has seen him in All That Jazz?), but it seems like a waste. Much like everything else about this episode.
We’re into season seven now, no turning back. That’s over twice the number of seasons as the original Trek, and the stretch marks are starting to show. Seven seasons is an impressive number for any series, and however bad this end run gets, I’m going to leave TNG with a favorable impression on the whole. But man, if “Interface” is the mean for what’s to come, I’m not looking forward to the next couple of months. This was by turns boring, poorly constructed, and frustrating, a hodgepodge of half-considered ideas tossed together in an ill-advised hope that they might add up to more than the sum of their parts. It takes on a major issue—the potential loss of Geordi’s mom—and thoroughly bungles the delivery, treating behavior which in any other episode would be rewarded (i.e. Geordi’s refusal to believe that his mom is gone for good) as unstable, and throwing some magical aliens into the mix just to make everything worse. We’re not quite in the dregs of the first season here, as the episode isn’t badly acted, and characters behave roughly as they usually do, but man. This was a whole lot of not good.
To begin with, the level of coincidence required to make the story possible is a bit of a stretch. Geordi, Beverly, and Data are testing out a new virtual reality-esque interface, via which Geordi can physically control a probe from a distance, allowing him to study close-hand problems that would be otherwise fatal to human beings. (I thought this is what Data was for?) The Enterprise is on its way to check out what happened to the Raman, a science vessel currently trapped in the atmosphere of a gas giant, and Geordi plans to use the probe-suit to investigate the ship as directly as they can. It’s a little odd that, after so many years and God knows how many rescue missions, we get a mission that requires the use of a specific technology, and it just happens to be the episode that specific technology is first introduced, but it’s not like the show hasn’t played that card before. What really doesn’t work is that just as the Enterprise enters orbit around the gas giant, the word comes down that Geordi’s mother’s ship, the Hera, has vanished. Silva La Forge’s disappearance is what creates much of “Interface”’s dramatic tension, and it’s what ultimately puts Geordi in serious danger, when an alien race assumes the form of Geordi’s mom to try and get him to let them go. The heightened emotions of the situation make the interface process a highly unstable one—which means it’s awfully convenient for the episode that Geordi just happens to be hit with a crisis. And such a specific sort of crisis, too. His mom isn’t “dead,” she’s “vanished,” a plot hook that could have easily served as the foundation of an episode on its own.
And that’s another problem with this episode—the handling of Silva’s disappearance is unusual, and while it’s possible to view that unusual quality as a sign of the writers trying to take risks, it plays instead as sloppy storytelling. The Hera vanishes, and seemingly within hours, everyone is telling Geordi he needs to accept that she’s gone for good. There’s nothing wrong with drama that deals with the difficulties of overcoming grief, but the balance here is all wrong. Until “Silva” shows up on the Raman, Geordi seems like the sane one, and there’s something almost suspicious in the ease with which everyone—including the afore mentioned Vereen—is willing to let go. We’ve been trained by decades of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy stories on the principle that no body means no death, and while there’s a tale to tell that uses that need for closure to good purpose, “Interface” is not that story. Geordi’s grief and confusion are really just a means to an end, which makes his emotional responses throughout seem less a natural response to his situation, and more something that has been dictated by the needs of the story. That does a disservice to the character, and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to really care about anything that happens here. At the end of the hour, Geordi says that his experience with the magic shape-shifting aliens has allowed him to find closure regarding his mom’s probable death. Which is nice for him, but there’s no closure or catharsis for us, no transition from “Wait, her entire ship vanished? Leaving no trace? Okay, something has to be up with that,” to “Aww, she’s space vapor.” As far as I can tell, the issue is never resolved, and it’s not some sort of “Pine Barrens”-esque commentary on the essential mystery of life. It’s basically just half-assed. (If I had to guess, I’d say Silva’s hotshot engineer pulled something that destroyed the ship, but what’s bizarre is the cavalier attitude everyone has towards a vanished-without-a-trace starship. Any other time this happened, the Enterprise would be investigating. Here, it’s treated like this sort of thing happens every week.)
Then there’s the aliens. When Geordi uses the probe-suit to project his mind on-board the Raman, he finds a damaged ship full of corpses—and then Silva shows up. She tells Geordi he needs to bring the Raman down to the surface of the planet somehow, claiming that the Hera is down there, and Geordi believes her. He spends most of the episode believing her, and doing his best to explain to everyone else how her ship could’ve somehow teleported itself onto a planet where the atmospheric pressure would easily be enough to crush its hull. At least in these conversations, Geordi comes across as actually off-kilter, as opposed to the other points in the episode where we’re simply told he’s being unreasonable. It’s silly, and it’s the sort of silly that could’ve maybe worked if they put a little more effort into making it work. All you’d have to do is make “Silva”’s story just a little more plausible. Like, have her claim her crew is trapped on the gas planet instead of saying her whole ship. Sure, the idea is that the alien pretending to be Silva is just pulling things off the surface of Geordi’s mind, and that Geordi is so desperate for some sign of his mom that he’ll believe it, but in order for the episode to work, I think we need to be able to believe it too. At least at first. This isn’t “Interface”’s worst crime, but it’s such a needless one that it’s hard to accept.
Turns out, the aliens are the reason everyone on board the Raman is dead. Oh, they’re nice aliens to be sure, but they tried to communicate with the ship’s crew in the same way they communicate with Geordi-in-a-Probe, and that killed ’em. For some reason. Now they’re trapped on board the Raman, and they’re dying, and they need to get back to the planet. So that’s enough to give us some conflict—only thing is, that’s all we get. These aren’t sentient beings, they’re a plot device, as nakedly anonymous as they come. Everything about them is convenient to the needs of the episode and nothing else. Which is not a first for TNG (or Trek in general), but I’d be more willing to accept this if it was in the service of a story that actually earned a level of expedience. Here, we have mind-reading aliens to exploit Geordi’s grief; and we have Geordi’s grief to make sure the interface with the probe becomes dangerous, and that’s as far as it goes. Once you clear away all the interference, there’s barely anything left.
There are other complaints. The virtual-reality probe system is pretty ridiculous—I’m not sure why it’s necessary for Geordi to be fully immersed in the system, in a body suit and everything (when we see the probe, it’s basically a floating trash can), and I certainly don’t understand the physics that go into a system that can create physical burns on its users hands simply because he’s really feeling it. (Maybe the aliens psychic powers caused it? Sure, let’s go with that.) And there is some good here as well, mostly in the interactions between Geordi and Data. It’s also great to see Geordi getting reprimanded for his behavior here—he’s irresponsible and directly disobeys Picard, and at least this doesn’t just get swept under the rug. Still, that doesn’t go very far. This is a weak effort, and while it’s possible to imagine various elements making for good television, the way they’re combined here mostly makes for a tedious, unrewarding hour.