Interface (S07E03)
Airdate: 4 October 1993
Written by: Joe Menosky
Directed by: Robert Wiemer
Running Time: 46 minutes
As the curtain fell on the seventh season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the writing staff found themselves in a peculiar position of closure. By this point, every single main cast member had their backstory fleshed out, their families explored, and their traumas laid bare. Picard had his brother and nephew; Riker had his father; Troi had her mother; Data had Lore; Worf had his father and son. Geordi LaForge, however, remained the glaring anomaly—a blind engineer whose parents were treated as background noise for seven years. With the final season approaching, any opportunity to address this was imperative, and Interface seized the moment shortly after the season premiere. It was a rushed, yet desperate, attempt to check the box on LaForge's personal history before the series concluded.
The title refers to a new interface Geordi is testing with the assistance of Data and Dr. Crusher. The device is emitting VISOR data directly into his brain, allowing him to appear in distant and dangerous locations while merely taking the feed from a probe. It is a fascinating concept, well ahead of its time, practically anticipating the neuralink technologies we see today. During one such experiment, Picard receives news from Admiral Marcus Holt (Warren Munson) that the USS Hera, a Federation science vessel, has gone missing and is presumed destroyed. The news carries a devastating weight, as Captain Silva LaForge (Madge Sinclair), Geordi’s mother, is presumed dead alongside the crew.
Geordi takes the news hard, but does so with the professional stoicism expected of a Starfleet officer. He uses the probe to investigate the wreck of the USS Raman, another science vessel trapped in the atmosphere of gas giant Marijne VII. He uses the interface to investigate the vessel and finds that the crew is dead, but he also finds his mother. She tells him that she somehow survived the destruction of the USS Hera and made her way to the Raman three hundred light years away. During the encounter, Geordi is exposed to high levels of neural stimulation that threaten his health, so Dr. Crusher is forced to sever the link.
Geordi is utterly convinced that he indeed met his mother and that she is alive, leading him to a state of delusion that he cannot shake. Acting on this conviction, he, with the help of Data, disobeys Picard’s order and takes the interface again. This time, the truth is revealed—what he believes to be his mother is actually a subspace alien being. This entity has picked up some of its signals and taken the familiar form of Geordi’s mother in an effort to communicate. The aliens actually killed the crew of the USS Raman during a previous attempt at communication, and now they desperately seek to leave the ship. Geordi helps them, accepting that his mother is most likely dead, and in doing so, he inadvertently leads to the destruction of the USS Raman. When he returns to the Enterprise, Picard gives him condolences but notes that his insubordination will become part of his record.
The episode is notable for a specific visual choice. During the probing scene, Geordi appears not as the actual probe but as the way he perceives himself—as a human being without the VISOR. This was one of the rare opportunities for the audience to see LeVar Burton’s natural look, and it was a refreshing break from the visual clutter of his visor. It humanised him in a way the show rarely allowed.
Adding a layer of nostalgia to the proceedings is the casting of Madge Sinclair and Ben Vereen. Sinclair, playing Geordi’s mother Captain Silva LaForge, appeared in the famed 1977 miniseries Roots as Bell, the wife of the protagonist Kunta Kinte, who had been played by LeVar Burton as young man. Ben Vereen, who appears in the episode as Geordie’s father Commodore Edward M. LaForge, appeared in the same miniseries as Kunta Kinte’s son George "Chicken" Moore. Seeing these two actors share the screen with Burton again was a treat for long-time fans.
Ultimately, "Interface" is a well-acted and well-directed episode that achieves its aim of filling the checkmark for character development, and even features what appeared to be an interesting concept in the early 1990s. However, all things considered, it is still a slightly disappointing episode. The concept of LaForge being faced with the grief and apparent inability to accept personal loss wasn't explored very well. The emotional beats felt rushed, and the audience was never given enough time to truly mourn with Geordi before the sci-fi plot took over.
Furthermore, the alien subplot looks almost like an afterthought. The aliens’ attempt at deception looks extremely weak in comparison with similar concepts used in classic Season 3 episodes, like The Bonding where an alien entity successfully manipulated grief to terrifying effect. In Interface" the subspace aliens simply hijack the mother's image. It is a cheap trick that lacks the nuance and menace of the Roots comparison.
Behind the scenes, the cracks in the production are visible. Many of the production staff expressed dissatisfaction with the episode, and many fans claimed that it was a sign of TNG staff being creatively exhausted. This is all but admitted by Jeri Taylor, who in the last minute added the scene in which Geordie and Riker discuss their respective parents’ losses and grief, and only in order for the episode to fit into the designated running time. The scene feels tacked on, a filler moment that should have been woven into the fabric of the narrative rather than shoehorned in at the end.
Given the advanced state of the series, it is a shame that Interface settled for competence rather than brilliance. It had the potential to be a poignant farewell to Geordi’s origins, but instead, it settled for a confusing alien encounter and a rushed emotional payoff.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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