“The Child” was the first episode of the second season. An entity enters Counselor Troi’s womb and goes through the birth process in a rapid rate. She gives birth to a fully developed baby within 36 hours of the start of her pregnancy.
The senior staff have a meeting to discuss the situation, lead by the newly arrived Dr. Pulaski. Troi tells the staff she will have the baby. Meanwhile, the medical lab has dangerous viruses that need to be contained, but they are rapidly mutating and will break through their containment with a few hours, killing everyone on board the ship.
Troi’s baby, who she named Ian, is now the equivalent of an 8 year old. He is busily learning human experiences, even allowing himself to be burned in a hot bowl of soup. Being half Betazed like his mother, he senses trouble on the ship and realizes he’s the cause and returns to his original form and leaves the ship and floats back into space. The viruses are contained with no further growth. Troi grieves for her loss.
Not THE worst episode, but certainly one of them. What I didn’t like was that the entity entered Troi’s body without permission and then leaves her to grieve it’s loss. It’s like the biblical story of the virgin birth. Mary, mother of Jesus, didn’t have a choice. Deanna chose to have the baby because of her telepathic ability and was able to sense it wasn’t dangerous. Not dangerous, at least until the type of radiation the entity was giving off began harming the ship and causing the viruses to multiply. Rather than use it’s ability to change it’s shape and appear as an adult and introduce itself and ask to observe the humans, it decides to violate a woman’s body without her permission.
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