The Child

A kid with massive hair, but there should've been more of it.	Try emailing us if you know who this guy is. (Address below.)	Some ginger school teacher.
(more images below)

Overview: Deanna Troi gives birth to a mysterious child, whilst the USS Enterprise transports a dangerous cargo.
Writer: Jason Summers, Jon Povill & Maurice Hurley
Director: Rob Bowman

Anon²: It was.

Anon: I guess the main things to point out are the changes between season 1 and season 2: Riker's got a beard.

Anon²: Geordi's the Chief Engineer.

Anon: Both Geordi and Worf are wearing yellow tops. Worf's now got a metallic sash.

Anon²: There's a new Chief Medical Officer who's miserable as fuck.

Anon: Yeah, we'll come back to Pulaski. I think there's some good mileage in Pulaski.

Anon²: Guinan's there too.

Anon: Yeah, Guinan and O'Brien. Wesley has a new gay outfit. Geordi's new job as Chief Engineer has given him a promotion, although Worf hasn't had one for becoming Chief of Security. So, there's no Beverly Crusher this season; she's replaced by Dr. Pulaski, played by Diana Muldaur who was in a couple of episodes of the original series. Almost certainly got fucked by Captain Kirk. That's what he does, after all: Captain Kirk fucks people.

Anon²: Yeah, sometimes up the arse.

Anon: Shoot to kill, in fact.

Anon²: Oh, card-count: I got one!

Anon: Yeah, you got Engage Shuttle Operations.

Anon²: Something like that, but we didn't spot any others. We just sat here. Basically, I wrote a few notes about things that had changed. Obviously there's Pulaski, and what's the first thing she does? She goes down the pub. Ten Forward.

Anon: Y'know, Pulaski scans everything, doesn't she?

Anon²: Yeah, she does. She's got her way with the tricorder.

Anon: We might have to keep an eye out for the number of times each episode Pulaski scans something.

Anon²: That's something we could start. We've done Geordi-watch.

Anon: Geordi actually has a purpose now, though.

Anon²: Yeah, they've finally decided what he fucking does. It's taken an entire season to decide. We'd been asking, "What does Geordi do?" Apparently he does do something now.

Anon: Both Geordi and Worf now have a purpose in the show, which is something they should've really thought about when they started the series.

Anon²: Yeah, but the nut of this is: what does Troi actually do?

Anon: Yeah. There's very few episodes in the series where she actually does any counselling for the 1,400 people or whatever it is on the Enterprise.

Anon²: She's just fucking there, isn't she? Y'know what I mean?

Anon: Sure. She's there and she'll say, "I can sense something, but I don't know what it is."

Anon²: Occasionally she can't sense anything. Like with the Ferengi, "I can't sense anything." Then she'll get all upset. In fact, she cries in this episode. She cried in the last season I think too. Sob sob sob.

Anon: Yeah, she can be a blubbering, moaning, Tottenham Hotspur supporting bitch. Going back to Pulaski again, obviously the audience reaction to her wasn't positive during season 2 and that's what led them to get Gates McFadden back for season 3.

Anon²: Yeah, I think... this is going to sound bad but I can't associate with the character. She's too old.

Anon: She's a bit crusty, yeah. But then again, if you look at her back in the 60's when she was in The Original Series, she was quite reasonable. I can't remember the episodes... I think Is There In Truth No Beauty? was one of them; I can't remember the other one.

Anon²: I think back then she was reasonably hot. But maybe it was just the miniskirt thing.

Anon: Well, the miniskirt goes a long way.

Anon²: Erm, no they don't!

Anon: (laughs) Spot on, dude. Spot on.

Anon²: (laughs) By the way, this is my first day of drinking in what... 3 weeks?

Anon: Yeah, it's been a while since we recorded the commentary to The Neutral Zone. Bowdy slept through that. We went on a bit of a journey abroad.

Anon²: We went to Amsterdam. The Mecca.

Anon: I met a Dutch bird at Niagara Falls actually.

Anon²: Yeah? Was she having a smoke?

Anon: No, she wasn't actually. Went on a helicopter out there though. That was quite cool, I was in the passenger seat.

Anon²: Oh nice. I've never been in a helicopter.

Anon: Yeah, it was the first time for me too. It was an expensive holiday though. It was about 95 Canadian Dollars for about a 10 minute helicopter ride.

Anon²: 10?! Fucking hell!

Anon: Yeah, but to be honest, it was awesome. I look at it as fairly good value for money in terms of the amount that I enjoyed it.

Anon²: I guess so. When I go flying with Paul, it's usually about £100 an hour. Then again, that's a full hour. Anyway, we digress... massively. So, The Child: at the start of the episode there's this thing going through the ship - it goes past Deanna Troi frigging herself off.

Anon: Yeah, she was properly doing herself. She had a Rabbit or a Lady's Finger or something there.

Anon²: (laughs) Indeed. Then she wakes up and she's pregnant and has a kid that grows up.

Anon: It's a very cliched science-fiction storyline, that. The rapidly-growing child.

Anon²: Then again, they have to fit it into an episode.

Anon: That's the trouble though. As we pointed out, if they'd just got rid of the kid at the beginning of the episode, it would have been a nice, short episode.

Anon²: Yes. If they'd concentrated on the virus storyline, it may have been more interesting anyway.

Anon: Potentially yeah. It had that guest star in the virus storyline that we think has been in other stuff. Maybe we'll look that up. Probably won't. Fuck it: if you're reading it, you can look it up. Send your answers to the usual email address of wearenotgoingtoreadyouremail@fuckoff.com.

Anon²: (laughs) We might, but we won't. Episode rating then... okay, it's not the best one of season 2, but it's a rather poor one to start off with.

Anon: There's certainly better ones in season 2, as we'll discover, of course. This is the first episode with Whoopi Cushion in it as Guinan too. She was a big Star Trek fan growing up.

Anon²: Yeah. Did she request to be in it?

Anon: Basically, she found Lieutenant Uhura to be a really positive role model when she was growing up. She was watching The Original Series and called her parents in and said, "Mommy, Daddy, there's a black woman on the telly and she's not a maid!" That would've been a pretty fair observation for the time.

Anon²: Yeah, absolutely. You've got to bear in mind that 50 to 60 years ago, there was this change in America.

Anon: If you look at Uhura, the woman that played her wanted to quit the series, but she met Martin Luther King who told her she wasn't allowed.

Anon²: Yeah. I think that was on that show...

Anon: The Trekkies documentary? Maybe not the one I watched with you, but the first one.

Anon²: No, I tell you what it was on. It was on... what's the name of the guy with the beard?

Anon: Oh, Justin Lee Collins.

Anon²: Yeah, it was on that.

Anon: Okay. Plus I think if it wasn't in Trekkies 2 it was in the first one, which you can't get very easily in this country. They had it in Canada, mind you but it was a bit pricey where I saw it. Anyway, Guinan made her first appearance in Ten Forward. Quite a cool set.

Anon²: Any pub is a good set.

Anon: Yeah, but there was no Newcastle Brown Ale, and that's what you really need in a good pub.

Anon²: To be fair, you need ample beer in a good pub. Decent beer. Newcastle Brown is good in a way, but it's not everywhere. When you find it, it's like "Get in!"

Anon: Especially when you're in another country. You see it and you think, "Hey, I'm back home." Usually when I'm in other countries, the only think I'll drink is cider or Guinness. And Guinness, although they brewed it in England for a long time, isn't really associated as being a British drink.

Anon²: Anyway, slight rant: you know this thing about Stella Artois? Y'know, the Belgian lager that they market as being "Reassuringly expensive."

Anon: Brief interlude... can you name five famous Belgians?

Anon²: (pause)

Anon: Difficult, isn't it?

Anon²: I'm sure I can name one.

Anon: Is it Joeri Hoste?

Anon²: No, he's not famous enough.

Anon: When I've seen people being asked this before, the answers have usually been limited to the bloke who invented Stella Artois and Marc Dutroux, who was involved in some paedophile ring.

Anon²: (laughs) Yeah, I can't think of any other famous Belgians.

Anon: Oh, plus Philippe Albert.

Anon²: Oh yeah, he was a Belgian. He played for Newcastle.

Anon: Anyway, same email address folks: wearenotgoingtoreadyouremail@fuckoff.com - send in your answers.

Anon²: Yeah, you'll get a Newcastle bottletop as a prize.

Anon: Oh, there's Hercule Poirot as well.

Anon²: Yeah, but he's fictional.

Anon: Ah, we didn't define that.

Anon²: But it's like the Name Game, isn't it?

Anon: Ah, I lost The Game in this one.

Anon²: Oh yeah. I said some people look like the guys out of the Ktarian Game. Anyway, if the season carries on with a stream of episodes like this, it's not going to be a very good season, is it?

Anon: It does get better eventually. I think from memory the next episode is a bit better, but not considerably. Anyway, what do you reckon to Guinan's hat? It's not very practical, is it? I know she's a short-arse...

Anon²: Isn't she a Rastafarian? Ah, hang on, she's Jewish. It's bizarre. Black Jewish people aren't particularly common, are they? I mean, you can't suddenly decide you're going to be Jewish. You have to be born into it, or marry into it.

Anon: Oh, I got stopped in New York a couple of weeks ago by a 14-year-old Hasidic Jew. He stopped me in the street and said, "Are you Jewish?" I wasn't looking at him or anything; I was just walking past and he goes, "Are you Jewish?" Anyway, I carried on walking, but having seen every episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, I was tempted to go back to him and say, "Do you want to check my penis?"

Anon²: (laughs) But would that disprove anything?

Anon: Well, it's probably best not to get your cock out in front of a 14-year-old. Particularly not if you're Marc Dutroux.

Anon²: (laughs) You could've got your cock out and said, "Actually, I'm not!" (laughs) You know, I've missed these commentaries. It's been too long. (laughs)

Anon: So, back to the episode. This commentary has a huge number of tangents. Chief O'Brien's back. He was in a couple of episodes in season 1. I don't think he's got a name yet though.

Anon²: No, I think he's just "Eyebrow Man." He wiggles his eyebrows a lot.

Anon: I think at some stage in season 2, he is officially named O'Brien, but he doesn't get a first name until season 4. Then in DS9, he probably got his middle name.

Anon²: When does he actually become Chief O'Brien? Is that just DS9?

Anon: I don't know. He's the transporter chief, isn't he?

Anon²: Actually, who did most of the transporter operating in the original series? It was Scotty, wasn't it?

Anon: Either him or Lieutenant Kyle, I guess.

Anon²: That's the thing: why would the Chief Engineer bother his arse going to the transporter room just to beam people up and down? He's be thinking about the Warp Core - that's where he'd want to be. It's like an engineer who works for a Formula 1 team finding out that he's got to repair a toaster. It's a bit of step-down, isn't it?

Anon: There were a couple of great lines in this episode. I quite liked the line that Picard says to Riker, "I'll relieve you at 09:00 hours." So, basically, Picard's going to turn up early in the morning and wank off his First Officer.

Anon²: (laughs) It's a bit like... who's the guy that's running Ipswich Town right now? The guy that wanks his dog.

Anon: Roy Keane.

Anon²: That's it, Roy Keane. He wanks his dog every day.

Anon: What a twat.

Anon²: Fucking knob-jockey.

Anon: There's a reason they can't win a game this season.

Anon²: Yeah, because they've got that fucking knob-head there.

Anon: The only satisfying thing is that Ipswich are a league above Norwich.

Anon²: Apparently it was a cracking game against Doncaster today. 3-3 it ended up. It was 2-1, then 3-2, then 3-3. Y'know, I'm from Doncaster but I don't really support the club, but I've been to a few games. (pause) This is becoming less and less of a Star Trek commentary.

Anon: That's alright. I'll be out of beer soon anyway. The other line I thought was great was when Riker said to Troi, "I don't mean to be indelicate, but who's the father?"

Anon²: (laughs)

Anon: I think season 2 is where Riker becomes a more likeable character.

Anon²: I think the beard helps.

Anon: He's a lot more... perhaps "charming" is the word for it.

Anon²: If you look at the first season, he's trying to be this really relaxed character. He's always putting his leg up and striking a pose.

Anon: Yeah, and going, "Look at my balls! Look at my balls!"

Anon²: Yeah, that was a famous one. Anyway, he's decided, "I'd better grow a beard now." I go through this thought process occasionally. Once a week in fact. If you think, "This guy's trying to be cool and be relaxed" as the main dude on the starship, the beard gives him something else. It's a bit of a tool really. It allows him to do what he was trying to do in the first series. Do you agree?

Anon: Sure. A few quick words about Deanna's son, Ian Andrew Troi Jr. Very hairy kid, wasn't he?

Anon²: Yeah, he should have been hairier though. And his nails should have been a lot longer.

Anon: Exactly. Do you remember the series 6 opener of Red Dwarf, where Lister comes out of the hypersleep and cuts his nails with the pencil sharpener? It would have been like that if the kid was growing that fast.

Anon²: (laughs) Yeah.

Anon: Why didn't that happen? And who cut the kid's hair? Is Counselor Troi also a hairdresser? Or did she go and see Mot, who hasn't actually appeared yet, although we have had a Bolian. In fact, if you look at the fact that Marina Sirtis is a Tottenham fan, maybe the reason why Troi's son decided to give up on his life was because he couldn't face life if he grew up supporting Spurs.

Anon²: I've got to say, I'm not obviously bothered about Spuds fans. They're not offensive to me. They've got a shit fucking ground in the middle of nowhere.

Anon: And no bacon.

Anon²: Yeah, you can't get a bacon sandwich at White Hart Lane. Ah, fuck it, she's a Spuds fan. You've just got to feel sorry for her. She's a woman and she thought, "I'm going to support the nearest team to where I live." I don't know. It's all Greek and Turkish around Islington and that area. Right, I'm going to get a beer.

Anon: Yeah, do that. The next episode is Where Silence Has Lease. That's the Nagilum episode.

Anon²: I'll look forward to that.

Anon: And when we watch it, we can score 5 bonus points too. We'll be seeing you all soon. Bye.

- Anon & Anon², 19-Sep-2009