Not a favorite, but not because there's anything wrong with it. It's more of a kid's episode and much like classic sci-fi stories that related to children.
In the opening, Troi is having counseling with a new ensign, Ensign Sutter, and his daughter Clara. Clara is talking about her imaginary friend, Isabella. Her dad is worried because Isabella seems like such a strong fantasy, but Troi assures him that this imaginary friend is just a coping mechanism for all of the moving their family does with a parent in Starfleet since she never has a chance to make lasting friends. Seems legit to me. I didn't have an imaginary friend personally. I tried to cuz one of my real friends said she had one, but I couldn't get into it. That's probably another reason why I can't relate to this episode personally. Then we get the Captain's Log explaining that the Enterprise is getting ready to explore a nebula that formed around a neutron star. Once inside a small glowing entity penetrates the hull and goes flying around the ship through the hallway, to sickbay where Crusher is talking with nurse Ogawa and finally to the arboretum where Clara is helping Keiko with some plants. She's also talking to the imaginary Isabella. While Keiko is in an adjoining room, the entity solidifies into a young girl next to Clara, making her think that Isabella has indeed appeared.
When they first made the script, Isabella was supposed to be a benign entity that's simply curious about everyone on the Enterprise, but they realized that this would just be a copy of the episode The Child, so they made her a more malevolent entity, but not in a dangerous way at first. In fact it's a lot like the episode The Bonding, in which the alien presence feels the need to protect the child in question. At first, she is simply leading Clara astray, getting her into trouble and leading her to places on the ship that are off limits to her. She takes her to engineering and disappears. After her dad gets understandably in trouble with Geordi for having a child in the engineering section, Clara is now in trouble with her dad. Meanwhile, Picard and the others are puzzled over apparent drops in velocity and other strange phenomenon in the nebula. While that's going on, Clara argues with Isabella about being ditched in these situations with nobody to blame except somebody that nobody thinks is real. Isabella leaves for a minute and fixes the ship's trouble and comes back. This just reinforces what the audience could see anyway - that Isabella and the nebula are connected. Being a kid, Clara's anger doesn't last long. As they are running along not paying attention, they run into Worf. So, the writer's don't stack the deck entirely against Clara as far as nobody seeing Isabella but her.
They kill some time with Clara's dad talking to La Forge about the hang ups of moving from place to place while growing up and the trouble Clara is getting into. Geordi relates his experiences of moving around and assures him that Clara will be fine as long as she's loved. Clara makes her way into Ten Forward which is also off limits to unsupervised children, but Guinan is cool about it as always. Troi catches up to her and takes her back to her quarters. After she leaves to talk more with Sutter about finding ways for Clara to interact with real children, Isabella appears. She wants to go roaming the ship some more, but Clara is starting to get tired of being in trouble. Then she disappears when Troi comes back to ask Clara to come to a ceramics class alone, without Isabella. After they leave, Isabella reappears and now she's mad.
Troi leaves her at a table with Alexander and they start to get on well while they make their clay sculptures. Troi goes back to her quarters and Isabella, while invisible, begins to mess with her. She knocks over her coffee cup twice. Then she starts to harass Clara and Alexander invisibly. She ruins Alexander's statue while his back is turned so that he thinks Clara did it. Then while he's mad at Clara, she throws some clay at him. Her anger manifests itself very childish at first, but Clara goes to the arboretum to cry and Isabella follows her and tells her that "when the others come" she can die too.
Strands appear in the nebula stopping the Enterprise. They can no longer go to warp and are having trouble with other systems. Troi and Guinan talk about the importance of imaginary friends and that Clara shouldn't have to give Isabella up even though her behavior has become erratic. But when Troi goes to see Clara, she tells her that Isabella is real, that there are more like her, and that they're going to kill everyone on the ship. Troi doesn't take her seriously at first. She offers to search Clara's quarters for Isabella... looking under her bed and things like that with the typical but also gentle attitude that adults have about such things. Clara suggests her closet next and when Troi turns around to assure her that Isabella isn't in there, she sees Isabella appear behind Clara. She attacks Troi and leaves her unconscious.
Clara talks to her father and Picard as it becomes clear that other entities are approaching the ship. Picard decides to confront Isabella in the arboretum. They kind of get away from the fact that she was jealous when Clara decided to play without her. Instead, Isabella's only objection is to what she sees as interference from the adults in Clara's life... more complaining about kids having rules and boundaries as it was in Cost of Living, only they seem to be siding with parents on this one. So Picard explains to Isabella the importance of following rules and that Clara will make rules for her own kids one day. This pacifies Isabella and she disappears and her fellow energy based creatures that live in the nebula release the Enterprise.
She visit's Clara one last time to apologize and hope that she'll come back to the nebula sometime.
I don't know, it just didn't seem terribly original and it didn't grab me. Perhaps it's more to the liking of others. This one is entirely dependent on personal taste. I have no technical complaints. The actors and effects were all good. The psychology was spot on. It's one of those episodes that comes down to personal taste and I can't give it more than three and a half stars because I just can't get into it.
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