Deep space, emotional depth

When I was growing up, Star Trek was a Marmite show, even among sci-fi fans.  Some adhered to the purity of the original trilogy of Star Wars, denouncing the 'anodyne' (I euphemise) Star Trek whilst others were more catholic in their tastes.  I've been reacquainting myself with Star Trek: The Next Generation on Syfy (an episode a night) and have been quite struck at the complexity and emotional depth of the topics covered.  Last night, the episode Interface was especially poignant - shown in 1993, it explores the exact same territory as the strange case of the disappearance of Flight MH370 two decades later.
Chief engineering officer Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge (Levar Burton) is testing a new probe that allows him to control a remote avatar.  He is informed that the ship of his mother, a Starfleet captain, along with the entire crew has vanished.  Starfleet has conducted several sweeps of the last known area the starship was seen but to no avail - there is not even debris.  While Geordi's family come to terms with this and accept that everybody on board will never be seen again, Geordi refuses to accept his mother's death.  There was no body to recover, no wreckage to identify, not even a sub-space distortion.  Without being able to say goodbye, he comes up with outlandish theories as to how his mother and her ship have survived, aided by aliens manipulating him while he is manifested as an avatar (who need his help to escape their predicament).  Asked about the probability of a 'warp funnel' (as proposed by Geordi) by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (the always watchable Patrick Stewart), the android Lt. Cmdr. Data (Brent Spiner) believes it 'almost impossible'.  Still Geordi clings to his theory until the aliens can be helped to return to the surface of their planet - as one of the aliens had imitated his mother through reading his memory, he feels he at least had a chance to say goodbye.
The relatives of MH370 are in exactly the same situation as Geordi.  Without even wreckage, many cannot accept their relatives are dead at the bottom of the ocean.  They come up with kidnapping theories, all to avoid the horrendous truth.  Interface's extrapolation of this issue was uncanny and is tribute to the quality of the scriptwriters (enhanced by the acting).