Interface (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

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Star Trek: TNG episode
"Interface"

Episode no.	155
Prod. code	255
Airdate	October 17, 1993
Writer(s)	Joe Menosky
Director	Robert Wiemer
Guest star(s)	Madge Sinclair Warren Munson Ben Vereen
Year	2370
Stardate	47215.5
Episode chronology
Previous	"Liaisons"
Next	"Gambit (Part I)"

"Interface" is an episode from the seventh season of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Geordi tries to search for his missing mother, a Starfleet captain.

[edit] Plot summary

At the beginning of the episode, Geordi La Forge, Commander Data, and Beverly Crusher are testing an interface which allows La Forge to use the VISOR circuitry in his brain, along with a virtual reality suit to control a probe by remote control. This way La Forge could use the probe to go into areas that would be too dangerous for crew members to enter.

By using the interface to the probe, Geordi goes to see if there are any survivors on a ship that is trapped in a gas giant's atmosphere. He finds that there is no one left alive on the ship, but believes that he encountered his mother on the ship. But continued use of the probe soon exposes La Forge to unhealthy levels of neural stimulation. At about the same time Captain Picard learns that the ship that La Forge's mother commanded had disappeared.

La Forge is convinced that his mother was on board the ship, and wants to use the probe to communicate with his mother. But Crusher and Picard refuse to allow him to use the interface suit again. La Forge decides to use the suit anyway. While in contact with the probe, he encounters the being who appears to be his mother again, but learns that she is actually a lifeform native to the gas giant. This being talks La Forge into taking the ship closer to the planet, so that she and others like her trapped on the ship can go home.

In the end, La Forge realizes that his mother is in fact dead, and that the episode enabled him to in some fashion say goodbye to her.