Imaginary Friends is a fairly well executed episode with a pretty lame premise. I guess there really are kids with imaginary friends, but mostly I am familiar with the idea from uninspired television like this episode. I guess the episode is supposed to all come together with Picards speech at the end about how the alien saw the ship from the perspective of a child and didn't like us as a result, but the alien here seems to have been malevolent from the start. Also, can she do stuff while invisible or not? And is the glowing ball that she takes as her natural form invisible or did they just not bother telling the actors that it was supposed to be where they could clearly have seen it?
The episode begins in a counselling session with Deanna talking to a little girl named Clara about her imaginary friend. Her father sits in the background looking concerned and after Clara leaves Troi explains that it is normal behavior, especially since Clara has been transferred between ships so many times she hasn't had time to develop real friends. Clara goes to the arboretum to plant stuff for Keiko along with her imaginary friend Isabella. Cut to a small red sphere of energy wandering around the ship and eventually flying into Clara's head and out again. Suddenly Isabella appears, Clara is confused since even she know Isabella wasn't physically present before. Isabella convinces Clara to take her to engineering.
When they get to engineering Isabella disappears and Clara wanders in alone and gets told sternly by her father that she has to leave. In the hallway Clara confronts Isabella about the disappearing thing and Isabella tells her she has to be invisible to grown ups. But when they run into Worf unexpectedly he seems to see her just fine. Meanwhile the ship is rocked by some sort of invisible obstacle in the nebula they are exploring in one of the thinnest B stories ever. Clara goes to Ten Forward at Isabella request and runs into Guinan who gets along with her just fine, but then her dad shows up since kids aren't really supposed to be in Ten Forward. Back in her quarters Troi shows up and takes Clara to a pottery class with the other kids and insists Isabella stay behind. In the class Isabella starts messing with the other kids while invisible. Clara confronts her and Isabella says she hates Clara now and she will let her die when the others arrive.
Back in her quarters Clara is so upset she won't go into her room until Troi arrives. She searches the quarters with Clara and everything seems fine until Isabella appears and attacks Troi with some sort of energy blast. Back on the bridge the situation is getting bad. The ship has been slowed significantly and now something is pressing against them eating through their shields. Troi wakes up in sickbay and tells the captain what happened. He has a security alert put out for Isabella when things get ever worse on the ship. Clara goes to the arboretum with the captain and they manage to convince Isabella to appear. She tells them her people feed off the ship energy and since they are all so mean she is going to let her people destroy the ship. Picard gives a speech about how we only set rules for kids to protect them and this convinces Isabella to save them all. As a parting gift Picard has the deflector dish set to send a feast of energy into the nebula.
Review: Episodes revolving around child actors tend be a little rough and this is no exception. It isn't as bad as it could have been, but unless you really want a star trek episode about a kid who needs friends, move on past this one.
3 out of 10
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