WARNING:  The following article contains spoiler information regarding the 
TNG episode "Interface".  Those not wishing contact with these spoilers 
should calmly avoid the article.

Briefly:  After "Descent, Part II" and "Liaisons", both fairly disappointing, 
I'm feeling better about TNG's new season with "Interface".  It wasn't 
top-notch, but it was a good, solid character story.

So, without further ado, let's get into (and out of!) the synopsis:

The USS Raman is in jeopardy, trapped inside a gas giant, and the Enterprise 
is naturally called in to rescue them.  They plan to do so by using a new 
piece of technology, a probe that Geordi uses via a direct neural interface, 
letting him experience the probe's responses as if he were actually where the 
probe is.  Although the gas giant's atmosphere is very turbulent, the probe 
should be able to transmit without problems.  All is well -- until Starfleet 
calls Picard with a message of bad news.  The USS Hera disappeared four days 
ago, along with all of her crew -- and her captain, Geordi's mother.

Geordi does not respond well to the news.  Not having seen her for months or 
even communicated with her in weeks, he feels somewhat guilty for not having 
done so.  However, he insists on carrying out the Raman rescue himself 
anyway, insisting to Riker that "the Hera is *missing*; that's all."  As the 
interface is brought on-line, everything works like a charm, although the 
input levels need to be very high (75% of neural tolerance levels) to get 
through the atmosphere.  Geordi finds the crew in a sealed cabin, but all 
are dead.  He prepares to move to a new location, but a fire suddenly appears 
from nowhere -- and not only does Geordi "feel" it, but the *real* Geordi is 
burned as well!

Fortunately, Beverly decides that a lower input level, while cruder, should 
be safe for Geordi to use, and in a few hours, Geordi will use the probe to 
bring the Raman out of the atmosphere.  In the interim, however, he talks to 
his father, who is planning funeral arrangements, and suggests that 
everyone's jumping to conclusions about his mother actually being dead.  He 
also talks to Data about it (after some helpful prodding by Data), but Data's 
recitation of the likelihood his mother is still alive doesn't help matters 
any.

Later, he works on the Raman at lower levels, and prepares to pilot the ship, 
but he suddenly stops dead -- seeing an image of his mother in that very 
control room.  She tells him that he needs to pilot the ship *down* -- "we're 
dying."  Geordi wants to know more, but his nervous system goes into shock 
and Beverly and Data quickly break the connection and help him.

He has no permanent damage -- at least, not yet -- but Picard forbids the use 
of the probe again, citing the danger and convinced that Geordi probably 
imagined it.  Geordi, however, insists he wasn't hallucinating, and that the 
Hera is trapped on the planet's surface.  Even after talking to Troi about 
his mother and about Troi's theory that he's invented this hallucination to 
stop himself from believing that she's really dead, he still believes -- and 
won't back down.

In fact, in a few hours' time he invents a very plausible story for how the 
Hera could have _gotten_ to the planet's surface in the first place, and 
insists that the Hera is down there and needs rescue.  Data admits the idea 
is possible, but adds that it is extremely remote.  Picard cites too great a 
risk, despite his sympathy for Geordi, and opts instead for a safer strategy 
to simply bring the Raman up.  Geordi is most upset, and even a talk with 
Riker about the death of Riker's mother doesn't lessen his bitterness.

Geordi prepares to engage the probe himself, when Data enters to stop him.  
Data threatens to confine him to quarters, but when he realizes that Geordi 
won't stop without such an action, he turns to help, saying "I cannot confine 
you to quarters for something you have not yet done."  Geordi "returns" to 
the Raman, where the image of his mother confirms his suspicions about what 
happened to the Hera.  

Jubilant, he begins to descend -- but the probe's signal begins to flicker as 
the atmospheric interference grows.  Data slowly increases the input levels 
until they verge on near-tolerance limits.  As the bridge detects the Raman's 
motion, and Picard, Riker and Beverly head to the lab, Geordi descends until 
the input goes _past_ tolerance levels, refusing to stop -- and Data cannot 
simply sever the interface without killing Geordi from the shock.  Despite 
the pain and despite orders from Picard, Geordi descends until he should be 
able to detect the Hera -- but it's not there.  He is puzzled, as his 
"mother" suddenly attacks him.  He repels it, only to find that "mom" is a 
subspace creature, one of many that was accidentally picked up by the Raman 
and mistakenly killed the crew by trying to read their thoughts.  Geordi 
continues down just far enough to free the creatures, then prepares to 
ascend.  The ship is destroyed, but Data and company manage to trick Geordi's 
nervous system into "thinking" it's still receiving high input levels and 
successfully break contact with the probe.  Picard puts a stern reprimand on 
Geordi's record, which he accepts -- and Geordi goes on to say that his 
experience felt so real that he had a chance to say goodbye to his mother.

----------

There, that takes care of that.  Now, the comments.

"Interface" was a very technical show on many levels, since the 
virtual-reality probe was a crucial part of the plot.  As such, you'd think 
it would be extremely prone to the Technobabble Virus that seems to have 
infected so many TNG episodes in the past year.

Amazingly, however, it didn't.  In fact, "Interface" was delightfully 
surprising in that it got back to what TNG does best:  focusing on the 
_characters_, not the gee-whiz techspeak.  While "Interface" had a strong 
technical component, what it was _about_ was Geordi dealing with loss, 
something we haven't seen any regular do on this particular level before.  I 
quite liked it.

I was concerned early on that virtual reality would be held up as a giant 
technical advance within the show itself, and have a strong "gee-whiz" 
component.  Fortunately, I was wrong.  Although there was certainly some 
shock value in seeing Geordi with eyes (and firing phasers out of his palms, 
but that's a different point), this was head and shoulders above any virtual 
reality program that's ever been done before on TNG, and so far as I know 
it's well ahead of anything people are even envisioning as workable these 
days.  As such, I'm more than satisfied.

Interestingly, though, I thought that all of the best scenes did _not_ take 
place on the Raman, but on the Enterprise, as we saw Geordi's denial dig 
itself in deeper and deeper.  In particular, almost all of the fourth act was 
phenomenal.  We saw Troi doing her job as well as she can, trying to get 
Geordi to realize what he might be doing -- and Geordi rejecting it.  We saw 
Geordi seemingly doing his job on the surface, but then without warning we 
see that he's still locked into his pet theories and his convoluted 
explanations.  Finally, we saw Riker get as personal as he ever has about his 
past (and Frakes's best performance since "Second Chances" last year), and 
really making an excellent point to Geordi -- and Geordi rejecting *it* out 
of hand as well.  Those three scenes, back to back, were extremely effective 
in showing us just how much Geordi had invested in "keeping" his mother 
alive, and it was a good bit of storytelling on all counts.

And, as I already said, there was surprisingly little in the way of tech to 
slog through to get to the meat of the show.  We had to take it as given that 
the probe somehow gave Geordi "regular" sight when he couldn't get it any 
other way; that's a bit of a stretch, but not bad.  However, once we had that 
and the fairly easy addition of the "input levels" issue, which hung together 
nicely, that was it.  We didn't hear every single detail of how the probe 
worked -- and *nor should we have*, because it's not the point.  I know I'm 
harping on this, but since I've griped so much about technobabble lately I 
want to make it clear how pleased I am to see an episode which so neatly 
avoided it.  

It was nice to see a role which finally let LeVar Burton show what he's 
capable of.  He was a bit sub-par last time he had the focal role, but then 
nothing could have saved "Aquiel".  The last time he had the crucial part in 
a show worth watching was over two years ago, back in "The Mind's Eye".  
That's too long for a character that still has a lot to learn, and for an 
actor of Burton's caliber.  "Interface" is great, but since we've now met 
some of Geordi's family, I think we need another Geordi-centered show before  
too much time has passed.  

Another very strong plus that the show had was that Geordi's vision on the 
Raman was *not* his mother.  As a colleague of mine thought while he was 
watching it:  "Okay, so if this show's any good, it won't be his mother; and 
if it's really really hokey, it will be."  I completely agree.  Had the Hera 
actually been trapped down on the planet, it would have been another case of 
Geordi LaForge, Technobabble Genius -- and it would have undercut everything 
the previous 40 minutes had built up.  I'm glad that the Powers That Be 
decided not to go for the happy ending this time; there was no need to, and 
it made for a much more affecting story this way.  (It also, by the way, 
brought the point home that space is a *big* place.  Sometimes, things will 
just vanish without a trace.  I won't be distressed at all if we never find 
out what happened to the Hera -- not everything in the universe is going to 
be immediately understandable.  Leave it alone.)

I've already said that Burton did a good job, but I have to say that everyone 
really did.  Frakes, as I've said, was at his best when Riker was talking 
about his mother's death.  Marina Sirtis did a nice job as Troi *doing her 
job*.  Brent Spiner did a very nice job as well -- in fact, the scene where 
Geordi basically blackmails Data into going past safety limits was well 
played enough to make me squirm as much as Data was.  The rest of the 
regulars were somewhat less crucial to the show, but were all quite up to 
their respective tasks.  I was quite pleased.

(Actually, one Picard-related scene worthy of note is the last one.  It's 
rare that we see him really chewing someone out, and I happened to like the 
way he did it this time, a lot.  "I am not happy," indeed.)

I was a little disappointed we didn't get to see more of Ben Vereen as 
Geordi's father, but with luck we'll see him again.  For what it's worth, I 
thought he did a nice job with what little time he did have -- I had no 
problems believing the relationship.  Then again, I've been a Ben Vereen fan 
for years, so my impressions are, as Data would have said, "biased".  :-)

Madge Sinclair was fine as Captain LaForge in the letter to Geordi, and 
though I never got much of a sense of the character on the Raman, that's 
intentional -- it wasn't her.  I feel vaguely as though something was 
missing, but nothing major.

Finally, a quick word on the directing.  While nothing was as striking as 
DS9's "The Circle" was this same week, I thought everything was well done.  
In particular, one scene that struck me as very difficult to make work was 
towards the very end, when everyone's trying to figure out how to save 
Geordi, and at the same time we're hearing just Geordi's side of his 
conversation with the subspace being.  That's a tough scene to manage, and I 
thought it came off as very tense and powerful.  Good job to Robert Wiemer on 
that one.

That really takes care of it.  "Interface" wasn't quite up with TNG's best 
(bits of it seemed slow, but I can't put my finger on any specific spot), but 
it was a very strong, very affecting character drama, which I've been waiting 
for for a while.  I was glad to see it.

So, to wrap up:

Plot:  Definitely strong.  A good technical premise, but used only to move 
	the strong character angle forward.
Plot Handling:  Capable.  Not stunning, but very capable.
Characterization:  Exceptionally good, especially Geordi.

OVERALL:  Call it a 9.  Nice work.

NEXT WEEK:

Picard as a mercenary and a traitor?  Most intriguing...

Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
BITNET:  tlynch@citjulie
INTERNET:  tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"I cannot have you confined to quarters for something you have not yet done."
				-- Data
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Copyright 1993, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
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