“Favorite Son”

Oh my God. This was the most awful Voyager episode EVER. I mean, you gave it 1 star, I would give negative if I could. I actually fell asleep during that pointless pampering of Harry by one dimensional female characters. I didn't finish the episode. Really, would the world have been a better place if I had finished it ?

"The actress who informs Harry of his fate speaks this line like a robot."

Interesting that you put it that way because that actress in question (Kristanna Loken) would go on to play the T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
Having said that, I agree that this episode sucked.

"While this episode didn't have the bizarre visuals that allowed Rush to show off the way 'Thaw' did, he still exhibited some camera angles (particularly some low-angle shots, use of rack focus . . . ."

I definitely like it when a director focuses on racks.

"one Taresian explains he must die because Taresian women 'must enucleate a large number of cells'"

She said "denucleate."

Whenever a stinker like this comes along, the people I feel most badly for are the guest actors. Most of them only appear in one episode of Star Trek, and it has to be this piece of _____.

Surprisingly though, in the original premise, Harry would have stayed an alien permanently and there was no "blood-cell sucking women". Instead of changing the premise they should have jettisoned it completely. This episode was basically PG-rated porn.

A definite lowpoint for the season. I actually enjoyed the actress who portrayed the Matriarch blood-sucker, but the peons screamed "we're swimsuit models, not actors, look at us but don't listen!"

I actually enjoyed the last act the most (not because it was insightful or intelligent or meant anything important) for the pacing and camera work. The final beamout amidst the phallic tantra clubs was effective in that it was watchable excitement. But really quite a lousy episode.

I can't believe I actually sat through this one again. This is quite possibly the worst Trek episode of all time. Even worse than "Threshold," and that's saying something. What kind of a wretched cavalcade of B-list soap opera rejects did they come up with for this show, anyway? They actually made Riker's man-whore scene from "Angel One" look like high art.

Seriously, I'd rather be strapped Clockwork-Orange-style to a chair and be forced to watch Nicholas Cage screaming for mercy in "The Wicker Man" over and over and over again than be subjected to this dreck ever. EVER again.

At least this episode appears to be the last serious pitfall for season 3. Favourite Son was certainly a failure, but in some ways it attempted to do something new at the core of its concept and the sorts of atmosphere it sometimes manages to capture is very unique for Trek because it aims for the bizzare vibe and combining it with sexual subtext.

When I say it aims for that kind of atmosphere, that might be a misconception. It may have unintentional. I've got a habit of trying to see each episode in the best light, even in the likes of Favourite Son. But scenes and stretches of this episode which radiate that dreamy Lynchian atmosphere are were things almost work.

Take the last leg of the episode where a crazed Harry suggestively ties up his new wife and entices his second wife to join in a trick to escape...how often do you get a scene of that nature in Trek? And the sexual elements have a kind of creepy sinister undertone given the dark secret to the seemingly enticing planet. Whenever Favourite Son exhibits this sinister dreamy mood I wish the entire thing could have ran along those lines.

Unfortunately, the majority of the episode is made up of laughable failure and its only in isolated chunks when its truly effective (at least on a visual and atmospheric level). I probably enjoyed more moments in this than most though.

One thing is for certian, its a wierd one and a part of me wishes it hadn't been such a mess. 1.5/4

Now finally, next episode might be a return to some proper Voyager!

Garret Wang was voted one of the 50 sexiest people in the world in 1996. Why? The following year he was voted one of the coolest people. The 90s were a blur for me, but what the holy fuck was going on?

I also learned Dwight "Barclay" Schultz is now a wackjob conspiracy theorist, the type who genuinely believes our president is a secret Muslim born in Kenya. Just search for his podcast if you don't believe me. Every topic is pretty much copy-pasted from Beck and Limbaugh. It ruined my day when I saw what he became.

In this case I do agree with you Jammer... totally justified criticisms this time.

Maybe if they'd had the guts to follow-up on the Harry is an alien story perhaps it might have been interesting, but this seems like a throw back to the worst of TOS in the sixties, without the excuse of being in the sixties - "sexy" women, silly rituals, blag, blah, blah. And amazing how the Universal Translator turns these "aliens" into Valley Girls... I'm surprised they didn't just invite Harry down to the mall for some Kimchi.

And I mean, please, since we're coming across quasi-Humans every 5 minutes why don't we just stick around with them? Oh that's right, because Earth is the only enlightened planet in the universe.

I do agree that the head evil one was a bit more interesting... a bit, but next to the rest of those blank canvasses that's hardly a miracle.

All we can say is thank God for the new crew addition at the end of this season, other wise VOY would surely have sunk.

I guess we have Hoshi to blame for the Universal Translator's California Conversion!

That Kim was able to reroute tactical to ops (without an authorization code or anything) when the tactical officer is right there is beyond absurd. The episode loses all 4 potential stars right there.

A horrible piece of junk, no question. Let's not forget, however, the nice touch of seeing, by Harry's trick, that there is still sadomasochistic sex in the 24th century.

Yeah, maybe two stars...

I can't. I just can't. This is easily among the worst. There's no rational explanation why this pile even exists. None whatsoever. I feel sorry for anyone that watches this show for the first time and sees this as a representation. I get that shows have good and bad episodes. But I have seen whole entire series where there were never serious clunkers. Breaking Bad, House, Lost, BSG, Six Feet Under all come to mind to name a few. Why does every single season (with a few rare exceptions) of every single Trek series have pure shit episodes? Do they just decide to throw one out there to meet some sort of season-length quota?

Zero stars.

@ Vylora

I can think of a few stinker episodes of Lost (any Nikki/Paolo episode or the ridiculous finale) and I view House like I view Monk (the quirky lead doesn't seem like a viable human character so I don't like the show).

Anyways, the plot to this episode is pretty silly . . . the most egregious lapse being that anyone would genuinely believe Harry could be Taresian. Then again, Taresians apparently have really boring personalities, so maybe it's not such a stretch after all. ;)

Still, like others have said, this episode has kind of kinky horror vibe and I like that about it. A slightly better-than-average musical score adds to the Anne Rice/pulpy vibe.

I can't give anything this cheesy a score higher than ** ½ , but turn off your logic centers and you'll probably enjoy yourself.

Intergalactic succubi! Because why not? Oh, and some nonsense about Harry being an alien or something.
Did they even try to explain why the Nizari hate the Taresians so much? I don't think they did. They just hate them because ... reasons, I guess.

Yea, no. Not worth rewatching.

A skipper for me. I only watched it last night to give a review here.

But I fell asleep :-)

What a dud.

Exactly Xylar, who knows?

.5 stars because I thought Rinna was kind of cute. She made me think of Fenna (DS9).

LOST and BSG had clunkers aplenty after their first seasons . Six Feet Under never did, and Breaking Bad had only one, for my money ("Fly", which a lot of people really love) although the "berries" plot was a groaner.

This entire episode was pretty much a plagiarism of the episode "The Lorelei Signal" from Star Trek: The Animated Series.

I can't get past that the Taresians as aid they'd gone all the way to Earth to implant Harry's mother with him and no one thought they could trade Harry for whatever technology they had that could do make that trip? That's a price I'd be willing to pay. Even if they really could do that, why the hell would they? The Delta Quadrant isn't exactly deserted, there's plenty of easier victims to use, and it's not like they'd know they'd infected to begin with. The Vidiians do alright just in their own region after all. And the biggest issue, how did the Taresians know that Harry, their 70,000 light years away baby, would conveniently end up in the Delta Quadrant and passing their space? Did they know about the Caretaker and maybe even work with him to get Harry there? It would open up interesting possibilities given that the Caretaker was trying to do exactly what the Taresians are here! I don't expect the writers to have thought that far ahead, or at all, but it'd have been nice to have the crew at least speculate on what it all meant

Wow, an idea right out of early TNG here. Replace Kim with Riker on the planet of women and Bob's your uncle. This offers further proof that you can't hang an episode on Harry alone because fundamentally the character is not interesting enough to support it. This is as plodding and predictable as can be - hands up who guessed the other guy was going to end up a drained corpse?

The irony is that I actually quite liked the premise, but the execution was lousy. Although as noted above, you don't see a crew member tying a woman to a chair every day. 1.5 stars.

I think that' B5s Patricia Tallman playing one of the women who attacked Harry just before the end. The only time I actually concentrated on this. Couldn't get over the stupidity of Taresian reproduction. Very poor.

I don't understand how this species reproduces. Do the males die right after sex? or did they kill them and harvest there sperm?

They say they have to "de-nucleate" a number of cells. Fine, but why do they have to be male cells? In fact, why do they have to be sentient being cells? Couldn't they be cows? It just makes no sense.

fun romp if you ignore the silliness (**)

Ignore the silliness Jammer lol

Another episode where the writers refuse to accept what the level of medical technology means.

Like the Vidiians, there is absolutely no reason why the Taresians don't simply use clone cells or grow new cells or organs or whatever they need. Neither species needs to kill in order to harvest, they can simply grow all the cells/organs they need. Hell we can already do this now in the 21st century. If these species are such genetic wizards then growing cells should be mere childs' play.

The only reason why both of these species kill is because they like to kill as they clearly don't have any reason to kill.

I would have liked lasting consequences here. Such as, Harry actually was seeded by these people, and decides to escape and stay with Voyager. So he is a hybrid human and his spots stay on him. The rest of the series he struggles with identity, feeling alone, being genetically programmed to go home , etc. That would have brought much more depth to his character than the nice guy who never gets anywhere in life with women or career.

You always know there's a problem with the episode when you wish you had been sitting in on the early script conference.

There's a dozen questions I could have fired at the writer regarding the lack of logic concerning the basic concept. However there's one question that keeps popping up as I watch this episode.

Wouldn't it be simpler - much simpler - for the Taresians to just secretly beam out sperm from Harry Kim's ballsack? Indeed I believe that last sentence would have made for a superior episode outline.

This episode is so woefully bereft of logic, it would not have been out of place to have inserts of Tuvoc saying "What?" "Huh?" "Seriously?" every five minutes. That's what I was doing, and I'm no Vulcan.

Ugh. Simply ugh.

KIM: Take care of yourself.
TORRES: See you later, Spot.

This already horrible episode is now even more terrible for having the audacity to compare Harry Kim to a much more three-dimensional and better written Star Trek character.

I have to agree with mephyve here - while I can't argue any of the criticism this episode has wrought, I still enjoyed it. It was silly and dumb, but it didn't offend me and on some absurd base level for some reason I found it slightly entertaining.

The first act or two were pretty nice, otherwise way too ridiculous and dumb. Beltran seemed pretty checked out and Mulgrew and Picardo somehow both indifferent and embarrassed.

The episode also felt too predictable and drawn-out.

Terrible episode, probably partly because I'm a Kim hater and I find his acting as interesting as a box of nails. Nothing comes out of this episode, no impact on anything, just utterly forgettable.

Complete non sequitur here, but I've seen just about enough Star Trek planets where it seems the entire population including the world leader fits into one room.

How bad is Wang's acting? Watch this episode. Any episode with him as the center of focus is likely to get low ratings because... he stars in it.

Jammer and everyone already pointed out everything that was bad. I at least learned something though, thanks to Tuvok and Janeway: that "paradoxical state-dependent associative phenomenon" meant "déjà vu." LOL..

One last nitpick: once Harry gets back on board at the end, Voyager faces the Nizari ships with the Taresian ship in pursuit. Whatever happened to the grid that they put so much thought and time into figuring out how to get past to get in the vicinity of the planet? Shouldn't they have had to get past it first, before facing the Nizaris? It just happened to disappear when Voyager was leaving?
Oh well... how superficial of me to wonder that in such a stellar (!) episode..

This episode is terrible and I won't rehash all the reasons given above. I normally wait until the end to rate, but yeah, 1 star.

I'm glad Harry mentioned the Sirens at the end, because the Odyssey references here seemed pretty clear -- not just the Sirens, but also the Calypso section. (Disclaimer: I have only passing familiarity with this stuff so don't claim any real expertise.) Since Voyager is an Odyssey story, it makes sense to do an episode about the temptation from "magical" seductress(es) to quit the voyage, I guess. As with Non Sequitur, the episode's failing as a character piece is that it seems as if Harry is being "tempted" to give up on his life on Voyager, and he rejects that temptation, but we don't really learn anything about Harry in the process. In NS, it was never clear whether he was tempted to stay at all or not from the writing and performance, and if so how (emotionally) he overcame it. Here there's a similar thing where lots of badly-acted but good-looking women ply him with massages and the promise of polygamy but Harry doesn't particularly care, which we can mostly attribute to him at least not being that much of an idiot to fall for the obvious trap, even if it's touch-and-go as the episode opens, with the whole crew falling for this obviously implausible story until the enemy aliens say they've heard rumours that those Taresians are kinda shady, at which point it takes the Doctor five minutes to disprove the Taresians' story.

Anyway, the one thing that seems to tempt Harry for real is not so much sex as wanting to feel special. A roomful of attractive women insist that he's special while he has dreams of his mother and Janeway-as-mother scolding him. Harry is floating along without a strong identity and doesn't understand why he deserves the privileges he's had -- which basically comes down to a happy, untroubled upbringing -- especially when he compares to Tom or B'Elanna. There's maybe potential there. But it's not in this episode. I think the Harry problem is partly mirrored by the writing staff -- they really seem to struggle to figure out what to do with this guy, and Harry's own wondering if there's anything special about him (which I take to mean not just impressive, but worth noting at all) is seemingly the best the creative team can do at this point.

Normally I go into a liitle bit of depth of why I dislike an episode, when I do dislike one, but this one....

I can't even bother. I wanted to do it. I honestly did. But holy crap. What's the point?

zero stars.

This episode is terrible, but it’s also a heavy inspiration for Mass Effect. It’s clearly this episode that gave them the idea for the Asari, from the female only/mainly female species, preferring but not necessarily needing alien DNA to procreate, the head spots and the name (though they’re named after the enemies of the Taresians, the Nasari). It’s very blatant and it makes me laugh. Of all the Star Trek episodes to use for your pseudo Trek game, I ask you!

There are some interesting parts like B’Elanna nearly dying and Harry’s guilt, or Tom’s mix of worry and jealousy on the planet, but they don’t go into it enough. They don’t even go into why the Nasari fire without warning on detection of an infected alien - clearly because as neighbours of the Taresians they are or at least feel especially threatened by their vampiric activities. I don’t mind reading into an episode, I wouldn’t come and read these reviews and comments if I didn’t enjoy it, but this one is just so thin. You pretty much have to read all of it in, apart from maybe the Janeway-mum stuff.

This was an idea hatched on the Next Generation when the producers got it in their heads Geordi wasn't interesting enough. Poor Geordi would have found out that his mother was secretly in vitro-ed with an alien baby - him - and he would have been Alien Geordi for the rest of the series.

How he'd gotten this past Starfleet Medical (remember, Geordi was a Starfleet brat) all those years was never discussed in the article I read - if anyone had thought it that far along. I was glad that they abandoned it. Shame someone picked up the outline out of the slush pile and thought this would make a good Voyager episode.

It was fun. End of.

Re watching and thought of skipping it because of the one star and all negative comments. To my surprise, I liked it. It was very silly but still I somehow liked it. Perhaps because of its obvious sexism and the pretty seductive girls.

It reminded me that you must not only be able to duck for phaser beams, your shield mus also be up to protect you from other dangerous things.

Truly one of the worst VOY episodes -- almost as bad as "Threshold" for me. I think Jammer's review nails where it goes off the rails pretty good.

Like "Threshold" it started out with something of interest (how did Harry get his intuition etc.) but then it just descended into boring, farfetched stupidity. The scenes with Harry getting seduced dragged on for too long and the women were all lousy, wooden actors. The ceremony for the joining was so dumb as well -- perhaps it wasn't meant to be anything cultural but rather just to entice the male into marriage and then his demise. These Taresians seem to be able to concoct all kinds of lies.

There's just too much to shake my head at here from the DNA in Harry re-writing his behavior, to how he was identified etc. Has there even been good sci-fi when it comes down to a race dominated by 1 gender doing anything and everything to get the opposite gender to procreate so that the society can sustain itself? Maybe...but I can't think of it right now.

0.5 stars for "Favorite Son" -- truly a forgettable and regrettable VOY episode. A couple of Trek turkeys came to mind when watching this garbage: "Spock's Brain" and ENT's "Bound" and that's not a good thing. An episode that is so full of holes that it might have been thrown together just to make up the numbers.

With just one change, they could have made this the most awesome episode ever... instead of that other Taresian guy, they should have had Captain Kirk, in a Hugh Hefner-style gown with a pipe and a couple of babes around each arm, saying, "You know, I think you're going to really like it here Harry..."

Hmm, a bad episode. Garett Wang's acting as star was the only positive aspect of the episode. Unfortunately his talent was wasted on this abomination of an episode. Apart form the Voyager crew cast, all the other cast were 2D and boring. The concept was truly awful, and it was obvious that Kim wouldn't be an alien. Oh well.

A stinker. No redeeming qualities.

Just rewatched this yesterday and was amused to notice "that other Taresian guy" was played by a young Patrick Fabian (better known these days as the actor who plays Howard Hamlin on Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul).

Made the episode way more fun the second time around!

Wow... so Saul's Harry Hamlin, the T-X Terminatrix, and Haneek from DS9's "Sanctuary" all try to drag Harry Kim into "Planet of the Angels?"

The only way to make this any better would be silhouettes of two robots and a guy named Joel/Mike/Jonah in the front row riffing on it.

I can enjoy a goofball episode like this, in the same way I can enjoy all those campy "Terror From the Year 5000" MST3K'd movies.

I found this episode to be quite entertaining actually. No barn burner by any means, but definitively not the worst.

2,5 Stars.

Yeah so I'm still very drunk BUT the mini rips, white bread and Hummus gave me some strength to continue (pig power in the house https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxVK3VI4cko). Four 1 star episodes in one evening. Good that I'm protected by drunkenness.

Man, every bad episode DOES revolve around Harry Kim.

Janeway with a different hairdo. Which one do I like more? Women sometimes changed their hair but the only man who changed his hair was Sisko and he didn't change it really... What happened to B'Elanna in later seasons? Did we lose her in the 7 of 9 maelstrom?!

Ok so apart from the Janeway and Paris turning into our future selves aka slugs every bad episode has some kind of Harry getting laid plot. Is that disturbing? I'm not sure.

harry and the black widow planet. I actually knew what was happening around minute 15. This was the worst kind of 1 star episode. BORING. The other 1star episodes made me laugh quite a bit but this is just... watching horny Harry walk through this ruin of a plot is just tedious. And by god why were the women all wearing red and orange. Are these the only colors they can perceive. Change it up a little ladies! So yeah my mind started to wander pretty early. As boring as carpenter street from Enterprise but with less plot. This one deserved 1 star.

What does Jammer think

I guess I agree that the episode started kind of promising. What's happening?? Harry, the seer? Time shenanigans? No just stupidity.

Jammer calls this a laughingstock, maybe I have seen horny Harry one too many times to laugh about this nonsense.

Anything else. Nice to read Jammer's pre Voyager meltdown stuff.

Positive thoughts: Nothing.

Anyone else catch Patricia Tallman kicking ass? But yeah, this episode wasn't so great. I noticed another B5 alum playing Valen in "The Void." Babylon 5!

I have to disagree with the general consensus here. While I certainly wouldn’t call this a “good” episode, I don’t think it was one of the worst. It seems very much like a TOS episode. If this exact same plot took place with Kirk I think this episode would have been accepted just fine. This was not one of those episodes that was that was so boring it felt like homework nor where there any moments where my jaw dropped and I thought “someone got paid to write that AND it made it all the way onto air”. This is just another middle of the road episode that gets a little bit singled out and beat up in my opinion

I agree with Cody - I enjoy how campy this episode is.

The story was good...but it wasn't enough for an hour-long episode and the dialogue suffered. It was just too one-dimensional...aliens try to convince Harry he is special and to stay...and that's pretty much it. That can work for say 10 minutes, but not a full episode. Had this episode had more subplots or twists, it could have worked.

Best part of this episode? 3 seconds of Patricia Tallman smashing Harry with one of those ceremonial rods.

Absolutely irredeemable virgin-fantasy garbage.

I think they were trying to attract new viewers with all the good looking girls and space battles. I don't think it worked.

Just rewatched this with my wife. I cannot believe all the vitriol over this episode. I thought it was a fascinating idea and I did not see the twist coming at all. It was not perfect, the only change I would've made was I think Harry "figured it all out" too quickly. I think it would've been way better if he was fooled until the end.
Overall, a fairly campy story but a fascinating idea and they pulled it off. I feel like people are so overly harsh on this show. If this had been a TNG episode and it was Geordi who got abducted, I think people would've eaten it up.

VOY: Do you think this episode should have been cut? We were so worried when the boys were writing it. But now we're glad! It's better than some of the previous episodes, I think.

TNG: "At least ours was better visually"

DS9: "At least ours was committed, it wasn't just a long string of pussy jokes"

AUDIENCE: 'GET ON WITH IT' 'Yes, get one wi' it!' "YES, GET ON WITH IT"

VOY: "Oh, I am enjoying this episode!"

GHOST OF GENE RODDENBERRY: "GET. **ON WITH IT!!**

VOY: :/

I kind of liked the scene at the end between Kim and Paris.

Here is a different critical perpsective on this EP. Sometimes I wonder, "what the hell were writers thinking?!" The white-on-POC hostility and violence are subtle but telling. First, the light-skinned Taresian woman orders the dark-skinned woman to go get something for Harry like the sistah is indentured. Later, Harry ties up the white girl all sexy-like but smashes the black girl over the head with a bottle? Then Harry gets his ass kicked by white chicks with sticks? WTF?! To paraphrase a comedian and talk-show host, "I am not saying the writers are racist, I just know they are." Damn, ST VOY! Good thing I know it gets better.

I'd say the racist is you.. seeing something that isn't there - coloured by your own lens.

@SJW Not Really

Good lord, get a life.

The look Janeway gives Chakotay when the Doc is answering her questions... laugh out loud moment.

An absurdly bad episode for all the reasons mentioned above.

But in addition there were two aspects I did genuinely find impressive about this episode: firstly, the extraordinarily vicious way Janeway sneers at Kim, 'In the meantime I'm suspending you from duty. Go to Sickbay. Let the Doctor have a look at that cut' (vituperous emphasis on 'cut') after ostensibly playing the understanding captain after Kim flips out. I actually liked this a lot; Mulgrew really shows what she can do here.

Secondly, unfortunately, there's a striking TOS/S1 TNG vibe to most of 'Favorite Son' - the premise and plot, the acting, the set, aesthetic and character design, the guest cast, and of course a surfeit of Gene Rodenberry's favourite topics: the importance of a lack of sexual inhibition, of group sex/seduction, og free love in space. I hasten to add that this latter point isn't impressive because it is good, but because of the extent to which it was utterly tone deaf and cringeworthy to watch. Just as those aspects of TOS and early TNG were and still are. At times 'Favorite Son' felt like a pastiche of that.

I pity the cast getting scripts like this and wondering whose turn it would be to debase themselves on screen for an hour.

An episode filled with beautiful women and the episode stunk. Pointless idiotic episode. A half of star.

This episode showed why DS9 was overall a better series than VOY. The former took a minor character (Nog), and made a radical shift in direction, having him decide to be the first of his race in Starfleet. VOY made it look like it was taking Harry (who had pretty much worn out his original "wet behind the ears newbie" premise) in a wild new direction by having him be an alien... and slammed its fist down on the Big Red Reset Button. Not only that, it proceeded to stick with the "newbie" premise for the remainder of the series, long after it ceased to make any sense at all.

If Harry had been on DS9, he'd have probably been promoted twice, had a few disastrous romances before meeting the girl of his dreams, gotten married, had a kid, gone to war, faced PTSD, and who knows what else. On VOY... well, he switched from the clarinet to the sax at some point.

In addition to all that's been said, you would think Janeway's first reaction would have been, "The Taresians have been to Earth??? By what means??? Can you show us and help us get home??!" Even taking the naively optimistic bent to Janeway's reaction would've been better than nothing at all. The Taresians claim that a fertilized embryo could be transported across the galaxy and unknowingly implanted in a human female without her knowing, all before the embryo dies. What a feat!

But nobody seems to react to this. It takes the doctor's investigation for everyone to care one way or another.

Wouldn't it have been awesome if Harry really was Taresian and the whole thing turned out to be true, but wanted to escape and continue on with Voyager anyway? Now that would've made for some good writing. But then, that would require consequences, and the writers don't do that. So, on with the magic reset button!

This episode was absolutely pointless.

Not to mention... their whole mode of procreation makes absolutely no sense. The females produce embryos after killing the males, but can't house their own embryos. Instead, the embryos must be transported all over the galaxy, only to make their way back and complete the cycle. Why would this story be believable to ANY scientist at first glance?

Ok... so the part about sending embryos into the galaxy was a lie. The rest still makes no sense from an evolution perspective. Species that are close to 100% female are simply asexual (self-germinating). There is no benefit to sexual dimorphism (male/female) because the number of males is so small that they can easily die off.

It makes no sense that the Taresians would kill their small number of males in order to reproduce. It also makes no sense that their species would just keep pumping out hordes of females with no means of them reproducing. Nature doesn't work that way. It's not wasteful.

I rather liked this, maybe 3 stars.

It definitely has a TOS vibe, but the "science" was relatively solid. DNA wasn't used here to devolve people from salamanders or cure them from being transformed into gorillas or spiders or whatever.

The aliens used a retrovirus to add information to Harry's DNA that then *gradually* altered his behavior.

The Doctor also correctly reasoned that the transporter bio filter may have eliminated the virus itself, but it didn't matter if it had already delivered its payload.

Someone did their DNA homework here.

As to the bizarre way these people reproduce, well, there are life forms on Earth that reproduce in often truly Rube Goldberg ways.

Consider, the horsehair worm, which infects crickets and ultimately compels them to jump in water-- essentially suicide-- as part of their reproductive process.

Rabies alters the behaviors of much more complex life forms, including humans, to spread itself. It makes the mammal crazy aggressive, wanting to bite everything, while simultaneously making the mammal terrified of water. Why? Because the virus concentrates in saliva, and biting will spread it, while drinking will dilute the virus through swallowing.


This is a rare one where I strongly disagree with both Jammer and Elliot. This script did its homework.

This was a good episode. When I was watching it I predicted that people here would hate it. I guess it's a group think factor.

The science was good. The use of a virus to change DNA is actually possible. It does happen on Earth right now.

There are three things that stand out in this episode:

1, Harry does not yield to his internal desires. This is a massive lesson for us humans. We often let our desires get us into trouble. Given how so many men in this world are slaves of their desires, you have to respect Harry.

2, The words that Paris tells Harry at the end are inspiring. The guy has all these noble traits yet fans dislike him. If more humans were like Harry Kim the world would be a better place. He is a role model.

3, The episode raises some intriguing questions about the ethics of those aliens. Do we humans not harm other species for our own good?

"I really hate to be trashing Voyager like I have been recently. (Honestly, I don't have an axe I need to grind upon the series. "

You are clearly biased. You gave DS9's Meridian a good review even though it may be the worst Trek episode. You give Picard better ratings than classic Trek episodes!!! Insanity!

This is like a very bad episode of The Original Series that fails in every respect.

Ok dumb episode. Some thoughts:

- the nisari ship in the beginning of the episode sidles up to voyager with the apparent intent of opening fire presumably because they detect at taresian on board. This implies that the nisari know what the taresians have been up to, infecting unwitting dupes with DNA altering viruses and whatnot. So why wouldn’t the nisari just explain the situation to Janeway and co? “Excuse me, but our scans indicate that one of your crew has been infected by those lunatics over there, who are trying to lure you over to harvest your genes, which will kill you by the way. So, you know, heads up.” Boom done.

- Harry Kim should no longer be trusted as a bridge officer. Subverting the chain of command in order to fire on an unidentified alien ship ought to be viewed by Janeway, Chakotay, and Tuvok as universally unacceptable. The fact that he turns out to be correct really doesn’t matter. Altered DNA or not, from the captain’s point of view he acted on a hunch to hijack the ship and use lethal force. That cannot be allowed to stand.

- I found the scene where Harry ties up that one broad and bashes the other poor girl over the head with a vase to be super weird. Aside from the fact that hitting someone over the head with a solid object in order to incapacitate them is more along the lines of a three stooges bit than Star Trek, it also simply didn’t seem necessary. These two women were pressuring Harry to give in to their temptations, but neither of them could have reasonably stopped him from just walking out the door, they weren’t armed to super strong or anything. No need for the creepy bondage routine. Unless Harry was actually revealing something about his own sexual preferences..

This will likely be controversial, but they should have destroyed the planets shield generators as part of the escape. It would be "inadvertent", but the Nizari would have done the dirty work of ridding the galaxy of these mass murderers who are almost worse that the Borg, as at least with the Borg you know what you're getting.

Instead they will continue to pray on thousands - maybe millions - of people in the future. It appeared like the girls only produce girls, and men have to be terraformed - so they will just continue to produce more and more murderers.

This was an unusual, yet enjoyable episode! I think it nicely shows the fight against temptation we all must face. Sometimes we encounter illicit and immoral people who try to lead us astray. I don't know if the writers had this in mind or not but to me, this episode is a good analogy of that.

I knew Kim wasn't leaving the show (and I also knew he wasn't really an alien), but I forgot this episode entirely, so the reveal was potent. I assumed it was some nefarious plot, but I also thought it might be some mistake. The only thing I would have liked to have happened is if the other aliens (the ones who initially attacked Voyager) would have been shown as heroes who were trying to stop this plot of drawing males into this web

I started to make a list of all the ST episodes that show sexy guest-star women fawning over our male heroes, Playboy-fantasy style. I gave up immediately. Even leaving out the horror that was TOS, the “modern” Treks did it constantly. A few examples: there were the fawning women Picard met on Rysa, the TNG metamorph who exists to please men, countless fawning Holodeck women (eg, Riker’s women, Barclay’s women, the women of Tom Paris’s Tahitian paradise, the Doctor’s first Holodeck wife), and background fawners like DS9’s Dabo girls etc. For all its pretentions of using scifi to make us think about our own society, ST never wanted us to question why females (both characters and actresses) are forced to be sex kittens, and why males (characters, writers, and you dear fans) like them that way.

I tried to make a list of all the episodes that show sexy guest-star males fawning over our female heroes in similar fashion. That was likewise impossible.

Surely, somewhere in all the galaxy, males offer themselves up as sexual playthings. Somewhere, sexual dimorphism has evolved to make males sweet and submissive while females are aggressive and dominant. Somewhere, an alien culture has Dabo boys and males who rub their crotches against a pole for money, while leering females run the society, make the money, and go to war.

“Favorite Son”, amazingly, to lower the bar on this genre. It presents a female dominated society in which the females - despite being the sex that has all the power, all the wealth, creates all the inventions and owns all the weapons - still act like pleasing sex kittens.

Why is it that the only way they can control Harry (whom they hold captive, and outnumber a million to one) is to use seduction and prostitute themselves?

And of course, being sully sex-kitten females, they are also stupid. “Let me tie you up!” says Harry. “You said you wanted to make me happy!” The women clearly don’t want to go along with this. But they are so are so submissive that after a moment’s hesitation, they give in to his demand.

(Why don’t they have weapons? Why don’t they stun him, drug him, kill him at their leisure? How can they run a planet, achieve spaceflight and advanced genetics, when they’re this dumb?)

I don’t know if I’m more angry at these female characters, or the writers who created them, or the ST fans who are the obvious driving force behind this fanservice. If fans didnt want to see stupid submissive sexy women, these stories wouldn't keep being written. Again. And again. And again.

"Surely, somewhere in all the galaxy, males offer themselves up as sexual playthings. Somewhere, sexual dimorphism has evolved to make males sweet and submissive while females are aggressive and dominant. Somewhere, an alien culture has Dabo boys and males who rub their crotches against a pole for money, while leering females run the society, make the money, and go to war."

Haha you forgot about Angel One.

Oh ya, and Jadzia's holodeck programs too.

I didn’t forget “Angel One”, but to my memory it did not break the mold of “Favorite Son”: it featured attractive female guest stars, at least one of whom came on to a flattered, leering Riker. As I remember, the planet’s males were barely seen; I don’t remember any scenes of Troi, Beverly and Yar kicking back in smug bliss while submissive men waited on them and massaged them. (But I havent seen it in years so I may have forgotten.).

Now I’m trying to remember Jadzia’s Hokodeck programs. I dimly remember her doing exercise routines and training with a battlith.

In Angel One the males were portrayed as being of slight build, spraying perfume on themselves and being stereotypically feminine in presentation - so basically what you described.

I'll say this in response to your question which was why does Star Trek not portray a world where males are sexual playthings for women.

I would answer twofold: 1. Because even in scifi it is hard to portray a truly different society outside of superficial technological changes and 2. It would seem very few women have such a fantasy.

On #2 I would point out that strip clubs with male performers catering to female heterosexuals are rare and from what I have observed they seem more like a joke rather than anything truly sexual in nature if you catch my drift.

I don't say that some women don't get off on a naked male grinding on them but it seems that translating the male impulse in a 1:1 transposition results in something that doesn't quite work and comes across less as fantasy and more as farse.

Incidentally, there are media products that seem to present a distinctly female fantasy, the entire Twilight Franchise to use an example.

So my point being that if women generally fantasized about having scarily clad submissive males grinding against them submissively, one presumes the market would respond accordingly. But the demand seems wanting is my point.

I find myself in agreement with Tara.

And: how is it that not one person questions the morality of the Taresians' (alleged) reproductive methods? The lead Taresian lady describes implanting an alien embryo in a human woman, and then when Harry slightly balks at this, she 'reassures' him by saying his human mother would have no knowledge of what was happening.

Now obviously this turns out not to be true, but as far as anyone from Voyager knows at this point, it is true. And nobody raises any objections to the idea of impregnating people without their consent or awareness...?