Star Trek: Voyager
"Favorite Son"
Air date: 3/19/1997
Written by Lisa Klink
Directed by Marvin V. Rush
Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
"What's your next trick, Harry? Pull a shuttlecraft out of a hat?" — Dumb line spoken by Chakotay (although it could be a worthwhile skill given Voyager's shuttle loss tally)
Nutshell: In a word: "Dumb." Silly, pointless, and implausible to the extreme. Not completely unwatchable, mostly because it's so darn laughable, but this is some bad science fiction.
I want to extend my congratulations to the Voyager staff. They have come up with yet another claim to fame: They have created perhaps the longest streak of consecutive bottom-of-barrel episodes by supplying the back-to-back-to-back offerings of (1) "Darkling," a superficial, one-joke, pretentious hour of substance-free plotting; (2) "Rise," a horribly executed, by-the-numbers "adventure" outing; and now (3) "Favorite Son," an utterly predictable paradigm of pointlessness, characterized by some of the most sickening displays of shallow silliness since DS9's "Let He Who Is Without Sin...".
Since there's plenty bad to say about "Favorite Son," let me go ahead and discuss the few good elements to get them out of the way. First, this episode started out okay. I have no real objections to the first two acts. These acts, of course, focus on the "hints" of the premise; they lead up to the story that will eventually follow. In short, the early passages demonstrate Harry acting weird. He fires phasers on some aliens called the Nizari with no apparent justification, yet he's absolutely sure they were hostile and had planned to open fire on Voyager anyway—and later he is proven right. Further, the region of space Voyager is travelling through feels very familiar to him—he is certain he has been here before. He also has weird dreams and develops a strange "rash"—neither of which can be coincidental to his bizarre insights.
"Favorite Son" director Marvin V. Rush—a regular director of photography for Voyager who also directed last season's "The Thaw"—shows some panache in some of the early scenes. 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, and some surreal qualities in the dream sequences) that managed to be interesting without being distracting.
Unfortunately, that's about all I have to say in praise of "Favorite Son." The rest of the episode did fairly well for making itself one of the laughingstocks of the series.
The "premise" is another one of those devices that drops a "major character revelation" upon us and hopes that we'll take it at face value and ponder it for a few minutes. In this case, Voyager ventures into a region of space that Harry is sure will provide safety from the pursuing Nizari. This area is inhabited by the Taresians, a race of friendly-seeming aliens (who are entirely too human-looking for the sheer convenience of the plot) with a population that is 90% female. The "major revelation": Harry is really a Taresian himself, driven by instinctual urges to return home.
According to the Taresians, Harry was conceived on Taresia and his embryo was then taken to Earth and used to impregnate a human woman without her knowledge. (How Harry's embryo was taken to Earth is never explained. Apparently the Taresians have very fast ships.)
So what exactly is the problem with the way "Favorite Son" unfolds? In a word, everything. This premise allows for more Fun With DNA™, as Harry begins transforming into a Taresian a la the "Threshold"-esque idea that rewriting DNA can do whatever an episode requires. When Harry and the Voyager crew are greeted on the Taresian homeworld, there's a standard, interminable stretch of dialog that explains "everything"—and, unfortunately, every guest star portraying a Taresian delivers a perfunctory, sub-par performance.
One fundamental problem with the "revelation" aspect is that, really, it's inevitable that it will all be undone by the end of the episode. Or, in the case of "Favorite Son," not even the end of the show; the story only goes for about 15 minutes after the "revelation" before it's reversed by plenty of Doc's technobabble—who explains that Harry is the victim of some sort of virus that was set by the Taresians to rewrite his DNA. Why? Because they need to trick him into living with them so he will add to their gene pool. Honestly, who really thought that the writers would go through with the story that Harry is an alien? (Heaven forbid, that would have consequences!) I didn't buy it for one second. I was just waiting for the scene where the creators would let themselves off the hook. And the scene I envisioned was straight out of the Voyager textbook and as predictable as I could've imagined—maybe even more so.
Ask yourself, what is the point of doing any of this? The real story is not about how Harry reacts to being told he isn't who he has always thought he is. No, the show only spends about five minutes on that, and those five minutes aren't really even effective. Rather, this story is simply about following the dumb plot machinations of Harry on a world full of women who try to coax him into their trap—and it's about as transparent and shallow as it can be.
Lisa Klink's monotonous teleplay proceeds into redundancy with one boring sight after another in which Taresian women massage, caress, and kiss Harry. The intention here, I think, was to add a sensual, seductive feel to the episode. Unfortunately, the portrayal here is simply bad. The story supplies these scenes in such excess that everyone comes off looking silly, and the whole thing gets very old very fast. Maybe if I had believed for a microsecond that Harry might actually fall into this trap then I would've been more open to it, but the execution was just too corny and uninspired to work.
"Favorite Son" also treats us to plenty of clichés. Ws. Within the episode there's an obligatory Alien Ritual Scene, as well as plenty of Stock Battle Footage and Hard-Headed Aliens of the Week. These are typical Trekkian devices—and I'm willing to accept them as such and I will praise them when they're used effectively. But here they just sit idly.
The plotting-by-the-numbers documents Harry's realization that his situation is not as it seems. Before long he learns that he is a victim in a scheme where he must be slaughtered and used for his raw cells, as one Taresian explains he must die because Taresian women "must enucleate a large number of cells to gather enough genetic material to ensure conception." Yeah, whatever. How awfully convenient for a jeopardy premise. The actress who informs Harry of his fate speaks this line like a robot. Further dialog suggests that Taresian men are so rarely born that Taresian women must create compatible mates from males of other species. My question: If these Taresians are really this desperately in need of reproduction, just how did they survive long enough to develop their own solution to their problem—the supposedly awesome feat of genetic engineering? If they are such geniuses of genetic engineering, why can't they control the X and Y chromosomes and give birth to more men?
And more questions: Just how did the Taresians know Harry was from a place called Earth? Why would the Voyager crew buy into the Taresians' story so easily? One would think Janeway, or somebody, would be suspicious of a race who claims to carry an embryo 70,000 light years to conceive a child—especially considering this child conveniently gets stranded in the Delta Quadrant so that he can meet his creators. No one bats an eye at any aspect of Harry's predicament—making it feel just as falsely manufactured as it truly is.
I also don't care for the idea that the Taresians genetically pre-program their offspring to hate the Nizari. Does this strike only me as counterproductive to solving a long-standing conflict? Still, how would even this lead Harry to be so sure the Nizari are about to fire on Voyager in the opening minutes of the show?
On its own banal terms, what this story ultimately comes down to is the attempt of a society to convince an individual into believing a lie by supplying a large amount of contrived persuasive evidence. This is a firmly established storytelling device, but I don't think I've seen it carried out with as much cheese as "Favorite Son" lays on. For a far superior example of such a story on Trek, see DS9's "Second Skin."
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. I'm just trying to think about the show critically from week to week.) But the last three episodes have been so bad that I really have had no other choice but to derive enjoyment out of doling out really low scores and appropriately harsh wording.
I'm very worried about the future of Voyager. I won't say anything else about it at this point; we'll just have to see how things go the rest of the season. But any optimism I had for season three turning around the disturbing slump that season two began officially ends here.
Previous episode: Rise
Next episode: Before and After
58 comments on this post
Mon, Aug 4, 2008, 10:13pm (UTC -6)
Sun, Jan 24, 2010, 5:07pm (UTC -6)
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.
Fri, Aug 20, 2010, 7:04pm (UTC -6)
I definitely like it when a director focuses on racks.
Fri, Aug 20, 2010, 7:06pm (UTC -6)
She said "denucleate."
Thu, Nov 11, 2010, 8:32am (UTC -6)
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.
Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 12:53am (UTC -6)
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.
Mon, Apr 2, 2012, 12:34am (UTC -6)
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.
Mon, Mar 18, 2013, 7:59pm (UTC -6)
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!
Mon, May 27, 2013, 4:23pm (UTC -6)
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.
Wed, Sep 11, 2013, 4:20pm (UTC -6)
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.
Wed, Sep 11, 2013, 4:22pm (UTC -6)
Fri, Dec 6, 2013, 3:49pm (UTC -6)
Thu, Apr 10, 2014, 3:31am (UTC -6)
Yeah, maybe two stars...
Mon, Aug 25, 2014, 8:16pm (UTC -6)
Zero stars.
Mon, Aug 25, 2014, 8:39pm (UTC -6)
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.
Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 9:03pm (UTC -6)
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.
Mon, Aug 17, 2015, 11:50am (UTC -6)
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).
Mon, Nov 2, 2015, 8:12pm (UTC -6)
Sun, Nov 22, 2015, 1:06am (UTC -6)
Mon, Dec 28, 2015, 12:27pm (UTC -6)
Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 6:17am (UTC -6)
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.
Mon, May 2, 2016, 10:45pm (UTC -6)
Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:56pm (UTC -6)
Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 8:05pm (UTC -6)
Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 4:53pm (UTC -6)
Tue, Aug 23, 2016, 4:55pm (UTC -6)
Fri, Sep 2, 2016, 12:33am (UTC -6)
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.
Sun, Dec 25, 2016, 3:56am (UTC -6)
Mon, Dec 26, 2016, 4:49pm (UTC -6)
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.
Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 3:32am (UTC -6)
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.
Sun, Mar 12, 2017, 1:58pm (UTC -6)
Mon, Mar 20, 2017, 2:44am (UTC -6)
Mon, Mar 20, 2017, 9:51am (UTC -6)
Tue, Jul 18, 2017, 11:04pm (UTC -6)
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.
Sun, Aug 20, 2017, 11:41pm (UTC -6)
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..
Sat, Oct 7, 2017, 10:16pm (UTC -6)
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.
Thu, Nov 9, 2017, 5:49am (UTC -6)
I can't even bother. I wanted to do it. I honestly did. But holy crap. What's the point?
zero stars.
Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 8:36pm (UTC -6)
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.
Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:58pm (UTC -6)
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.
Wed, Feb 21, 2018, 3:03am (UTC -6)
Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 8:55am (UTC -6)
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.
Wed, May 2, 2018, 8:05pm (UTC -6)
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.
Sun, Jul 29, 2018, 5:14am (UTC -6)
Mon, Sep 3, 2018, 11:31am (UTC -6)
Sat, Sep 8, 2018, 11:03pm (UTC -6)
Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 6:07pm (UTC -6)
Made the episode way more fun the second time around!
Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:11am (UTC -6)
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.
Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 3:45pm (UTC -6)
2,5 Stars.
Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 4:46pm (UTC -6)
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.
Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 2:29pm (UTC -6)
Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 7:45am (UTC -6)
Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 11:50am (UTC -6)
Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 10:22am (UTC -6)
Mon, May 4, 2020, 9:25am (UTC -6)
Absolutely irredeemable virgin-fantasy garbage.
Fri, May 8, 2020, 8:15pm (UTC -6)
Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:10pm (UTC -6)
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.
Wed, Jul 8, 2020, 7:42pm (UTC -6)
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: :/
Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 12:45am (UTC -6)
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