12/22/2025
For feminist Star Trek fans, “The Child” feels like a bruise you keep pressing just to see if it still hurts. It does. Every time. I’ve circled this episode before—years ago, even—trying to make sense of why it unsettles me so deeply, why it refuses to fade into the comfortable background noise of Next Generation reruns. And I’m far from alone. Among fans who care about Troi as more than a soft-lit empath in flowing dresses, this episode has become a kind of battleground.
Most conversations start in the same place: the pregnancy. Not a choice, not a plan, not even an accident in the ordinary sense—but a violation. The episode opens with an image that still makes my skin crawl: an alien energy drifting through Troi’s quarters while she sleeps, slipping beneath her sheets like a thief in the night. It’s quiet. Intimate. Invasive. The show doesn’t linger, but it doesn’t need to. The damage is already done.
That moment doesn’t exist in a vacuum. For many viewers, “The Child” fits into a broader, deeply uncomfortable pattern—Troi’s body and mind repeatedly treated as open territory, something other beings can borrow, occupy, or override. Feminist critics have pointed out how often Troi is written as a vessel rather than a person, her autonomy dissolved in service of someone else’s mystery or evolution. Here, that pattern crystallizes into the so-called “mystical pregnancy” trope: the sudden impregnation, the accelerated gestation, the birth almost as soon as the shock has worn off.
Try to sit with what the episode asks us to accept. Troi discovers she’s pregnant. Thirty-six hours later, she gives birth. Within a day, she’s watching the child grow, speak, ask questions no parent is ever ready to answer. And then he’s gone. Dead, vanished, transformed—pick your sci-fi euphemism. The show barely pauses for breath, and when it moves on, it never looks back. No grief arc. No trauma. No lingering consequences. It’s as if this life-altering event were a strange dream Troi simply wakes up from.
That’s part of what makes the trope so corrosive. It treats pregnancy like a temporary plot device—here today, gone tomorrow—while placing the entire spectacle squarely on a woman’s body. The alien force itself remains frustratingly vague. There’s little effort to grapple with how unsettling its actions are, or to ask whether good intentions erase the violence of what it did. And Ian, the child at the center of it all, becomes a ghost the series politely forgets.
When people talk about Troi’s response, the conversation gets complicated. Strangely enough, “The Child” has been cited by both pro-choice and anti-abortion Trek fans as evidence for their side. The episode does, at the very least, make it clear that reproductive choice exists in the Federation. Termination is openly discussed. And when Troi decides she will continue the pregnancy, Picard accepts it immediately. He understands that the only opinion that matters here is hers.
But that single moment of choice doesn’t magically turn the episode into a feminist triumph. It’s almost cruel how narrow her agency is. She chooses to carry the fetus—yes. Everything else? Out of her hands. The alien intelligence dictates the timeline, the growth, the outcome. Troi is left reacting, enduring, accommodating.
Then there’s Riker. His initial response lands with a thud. In a public setting, with just enough edge to sting, he demands to know who the father is—less a question than a territorial reflex. To the episode’s credit, he grows. Later, he supports Troi with genuine tenderness. Still, there’s an undertone that lingers, the suggestion that what she really needs is a father figure standing beside her, as if her strength alone might not be enough.
And Troi isn’t the only woman who takes a hit in this episode. “The Child” also introduces Doctor Pulaski, and from the moment she enters, the deck is stacked against her. First impressions matter, especially when you’re stepping into a show with an established captain the audience already trusts. Pulaski’s first mention comes filtered through Picard’s irritation—she hasn’t checked in, she’s already off duty, she’s apparently wandered into Ten Forward instead of reporting for work. Before we even meet her, we’re primed to judge.
The truth—that she’s there supporting Troi—barely softens the blow. The damage is done. She’s framed as unprofessional, maybe even irresponsible, and it’s a sour note to start on.
It doesn’t help that Pulaski quickly alienates viewers further with her attitude toward Data. During Troi’s labor, she suggests that what’s needed is “human” comfort, not the presence of an android—reducing Data to cold machinery at a moment when compassion matters most. Later, she brushes off his correction when she mispronounces his name, as if respect were optional. For fans who already loved Data, it was almost unforgivable.
Taken together, “The Child” leaves a residue. It’s an episode full of big ideas—alien life, evolution, empathy—but it stumbles badly when it comes to women’s bodies, consent, and consequence. It asks us to marvel at the wonder of creation while quietly sidestepping the cost. And maybe that’s why it still provokes such strong reactions. Not because it’s the worst episode Star Trek ever made, but because it could have been so much better—and because Troi deserved so much more.
