In the episode Offspring, Data decides to procreate and become a parent. As his child, Lal (Hindi for beloved) grows, develops, experiences and finally achieves emotional sentience; she is unable to cope with the physical stresses of her newly-discovered feelings and her system essentially shuts down. The fears that every person feels when becoming a parent are laid bare in in this episode. First, Data has to deal with his own anxiety (even though he cannot express it) and lack of experience in providing guidance to this new life. Then, he has to concern himself with dividing his time between his work obligations and parental ones. Is the care and attention he gives his child enough? When Lal experiences problems at school, he has to play the role of the responsible parent sitting across the desk from the teacher who describes the shortcomings of his child. Then, he is faced with the prospect of someone threatening to take his child away from him on the grounds that he is an inadequate parent. Finally, every parents ultimate fear is realized when Lal suffers a complete neural systems failure and Datas daughter dies. This is an episode that manages to tweak every essential fear that every parent dreads. While the obvious human drama of this episode is apparent, there is a true visceral and gut-wrenching dimension to this episode that is made particularly poignant by Datas inability to express his own sense of loss and sadness at his childs passing. Even non-parents can understand the significance of this episodes effect, but only a parent can truly feel its emotional impact as they put themselves in Datas place and are forced to imagine their own worst nightmare.
John Kirk is a Teacher-Librarian and currently a History/English Teacher with the Toronto District School Board.
But mostly, John teaches Geek.
Comics, Sci-Fi (Notably Star Trek), Fantasy and Role-Playing and table-top games all make up part of John’s repertoire, There is a whole generation of nerds-in-embryo who rely on him to make sense of it all, to teach that with great power comes great responsibility, that the force will be with us always and that a towel IS the most useful thing to have in one’s possession.
When John isn’t in the classroom, he can be found in his basement writing comic reviews for www.popmythology.com and features for Roddenberry Entertainment's www.1701news.com.
