The Child, TNG 2
Before I get into the radical changes found in Season Two, let’s take a moment to shout, at full voice: it’s Seymour Cassel! On Star Trek! Awesome!
Okay, with that out of the way, let’s weigh the good against the bad. Good — Riker has a beard. Bad — Dr. Crusher has been replaced with some old bat. Whereas TNG started out with three hot women, we now only have one. And even though Counselor Troi and her indecipherable accent is beautiful, her character is frickin’ annoying. Oh well.
In this episode Troi is “impregnated” by a glowing dot of light. A day later she gives birth and a day after that she’s packin’ the kid’s lunch for his first day of kindergarten. One needn’t be a Lt. Data to figure out that the kid isn’t gonna last long. Hearts are broken as the “life force” realized he “has to leave now.” If they only listened to Worf and killed the thing in the womb!