“Favorite Son”
Written by Lisa Klink
Directed by Marvin V. Rush
Season 3, Episode 20
Production episode 162
Original air date: March 19, 1997
Stardate: 50732.4
Captain’s log. Voyager passes by a trinary star system that Kim thinks is familiar, but Chakotay assures him they haven’t been through here before. A Nasari vessel approaches and hails them, seemingly friendly, but Kim is overcome by the need to fire on them.
A firefight ensues, as Kim takes over tactical and fires. Voyager manages to escape the fight, though there’s damage and Torres is badly hurt. Kim insists that, contrary to appearances, the Nasari were going to fire on them, though there’s no obvious evidence of that. Kim is relieved of duty and sent to sickbay. Kes cures the cut on his head, and he sees how badly Torres is hurt, and he feels horrible.
Confined to quarters, he goes to sleep, and has strange dreams that include a planet, memories of having Mendakan pox as a child and his mother caring for him, the Nasari attack, and more. He goes to the bathroom to wash his face, and sees red spots around his hairline and neck.
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He goes to sickbay, and the EMH confirms that it’s nothing contagious, but he has no idea what these rashes are. The doctor plans to run more tests. Torres wakes up and teases Kim, making him feel a little better about being responsible for getting her hurt.
Kim reports to Janeway to take his punishment, but a more in-depth analysis of sensor readings indicate that the Nasari were, indeed, planning to fire, as Kim thought. The question now is how the heck he knew that, and why this region of space is so familiar to him.
Tuvok reports three more Nasari ships. Kim checks the local star charts, and urges Janeway to go to a particular star system. They head there, and a ship helps them fend off the Nasari. Once the Nasari retreat, the ship identifies itself as belonging to the Taresians. Their leader, a woman named Lyris, welcomes Kim home—he is, she says, one of them. And the Taresians have the same spots that Kim has been displaying.
The EMH has done a DNA scan on Kim and found alien chromosomes in his DNA that weren’t there before—they were disguised as recessive traits previously.
Janeway, Tuvok, Kim, and Paris beam down to Taresia. Lyris explains that Kim really is one of them. They send embryos out to the wide expanse of the galaxy and impregnate women. The embryos take on the genetic characteristics of the surrogate, but they’re also bred with the compulsion to travel through space and eventually come home.
The Taresians are also 90% female, and this weird method of procreating is how they infuse more men into their population so they can stay viable. Several Taresian women are also fondling Kim a lot—they’re very affectionate. There’s one other man present, Taymon, who has a similar story to Kim’s.
Janeway is concerned with the Nasaris’ hostility, as they’re hovering outside the Taresian star system. Lyris says they have a particular animus toward the Taresians. Kim wants to stay on the planet and learn more about his newly discovered past. The rest of the away team beams back to Voyager and Janeway will try to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Nasari.
Kim and Taymon compare stories—apparently not just Kim’s desire to travel through space, but also his love of music come from the Taresians. The Taresians offer Kim a drug that will enhance the mood, but Kim politely refuses it.
Taymon is about to undergo the marriage ceremony to three wives, which is standard, given the gender disparity on the world. Kim is looking forward to attending the ceremony, which he remembers all the details of once it starts happening—there are a lot of candles, banging of sticks, and tying up the groom (ooh, kinky).
Alben, the Nasari captain, says he has no quarrel with Voyager now that the Taresian is no longer on board. He is skeptical that Kim will return to the ship—none of these “lost soul” types ever leave the planet once they arrive—but he assures Janeway that, if Kim does come back, he will fire on them.
Voyager returns to Taresia to find a polaron grid surrounding the planet, which blocks sensors, transporters, and communications. Janeway and Chakotay get a report from the EMH, who has dug a little deeper and found that the alien DNA has only been in Kim’s body since stardate 50698, which is when Chakotay led an away mission, which included Kim, to a planet to collect vorilium. Kim was alone at several points during that mission. The EMH theorizes that a virus was responsible. The biofilter in the transporter likely caught and wiped out the virus when he beamed back, but the virus had done its job of altering Kim’s DNA already by that point.
Kim is tucked into bed by one of the Taresians who applies a balm to his head. He has more weird dreams that include the Taresians, the Voyager crew, and his Mom, and he wakes up to two women in his bed who want to smooch him a lot. Kim is suspicious of what’s happening, and ties one of them up (on the pretense of it being just like the marriage ceremony, ha ha) and knocks out the other one when she belatedly realizes it’s a trap.
Then he goes to Taymon’s quarters, only to find him dead, his corpse desiccated. The Taresians explain that they need to suck the life force out of men to survive, or something. The Taresians all surround Kim and are about to subdue him when Kim is transported back to Voyager, the gang having figured out how to penetrate the polaron barrier.
The Nasari and the Taresians get into a firefight, and Voyager slips away in the confusion.
Kim tells Neelix the story of Odysseus and the sirens, just in case we missed the inspiration for the episode, and then Kim talks about how nice it was to be someone cooler than he thought he was—someone more like Paris. Paris points out that, since he came on board Voyager, he’s tried to be more like Kim.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently, the Taresians are good enough at genetic engineering to create a virus that can literally rewrite DNA and turn someone into an alien and give that person memories (and also apparently somehow transmit information about where the virus’s victims come from so they can fake like they know all about them), but not good enough to genetically encode their own children so that they get more men.
Forever an ensign. Kim thinks he’s turning into an alien, and kinda likes the whole notion of being this exotic person who has women fawning over him. He also says he’s happy on Voyager, which I guess retroactively makes his idiotic choices in “Non Sequitur” make sense? Maybe?
Half and half. Torres gets very badly injured when the Nasari first attack. But she’s not so badly injured that she can’t make fun of Kim’s “rash,” calling him “Spot” at one point.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix is fascinated by the story of Odysseus.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH figures out how Kim got turned into a Taresian. Because he’s just that awesome.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. The Taresians seem to be in seduction mode pretty much permanently. They paw all over Kim the moment he beams down and at least one is always after him. Ditto Taymon, who is never seen without at least one Taresian on his arm at all times.
Amusingly, Paris tries to flirt with one of the Taresians, and they’re completely uninterested in him.
Do it.
“Sometimes I wish I could be more bold and confident with women. More like you.”
“Like me? You might want to reconsider that, Harry, there could be prison time involved. Actually, since I’ve been on Voyager, I’ve tried to be more like you.”
“That’ll be the day.”
“I’m serious! You’re my role model! You’re reliable, hard-working, extremely punctual. Did I mention polite?”
–Kim wishing he was more like Paris, and Paris being very unconvincing in his attempt to say the reverse is true.
Welcome aboard. Deborah May, last seen as Haneek in DS9’s “Sanctuary,” plays Lyris, while Christopher Carroll, last seen as Gul Benil in DS9’s “Second Skin,” plays Alben. Irene Tsu makes the first of two appearances as Kim’s mother (she’ll be back in “Author Author”). Cari Shayne, Kelli Kirkland, and Patricia Tallman play three of the Taresians. (Tallman’s in her capacity as a stuntperson, as she’s one of the Taresians who attacks Kim in the climax.)
And we get, not one, but two Robert Knepper moments! I had totally forgotten that both Patrick Fabian—currently being all nice and smarmy on Better Call Saul—and Kristanna Loken—probably best known for her roles in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and BloodRayne—were in this as, respectively, Taymon and Malia.
Trivial matters: This episode was heavily rewritten, at least partly due to directives from the network. Lisa Klink’s original script had Kim truly being a Taresian and the notion was that he would remain such for the rest of the series.
Kim was infected by the virus while they were collecting vorilium on an away mission—Voyager was established as searching for a vorilium source in “Darkling.”
Tuvok responds to an order from Janeway with “Aye, sir,” which is odd, as Janeway was established way back in “Caretaker” as not caring for that particular tradition, and Tuvok of all people wouldn’t forget that.
And for the truly trivial, this is a rare instance of actually seeing the inside of a bathroom in Star Trek.
Set a course for home. “I have never seen so many beautiful women in my life.” So many times in the first wave of Star Trek spinoffs from 1987-2005, we’ve heard of possible plotlines that were discarded that would’ve been so cool. Jadzia dying in “Change of Heart” instead of “Tears of the Prophets,” which would’ve been much much more poignant than what we got in either episode. Will Riker dying in “Second Chances” and Tom Riker remaining on the ship, thus keeping Jonathan Frakes in the cast but significantly altering the dynamic on the Enterprise. Troi permanently losing her empathy after “The Loss.” Torres remaining human after her Klingon half was killed in “Faces.”
Here, it turns out that making Kim a Taresian was the original notion here, and that would’ve been so much more interesting than what we got, especially since the last-minute rewrite to, “no, wait, it’s a virus and they were lying” exposes numerous plot holes. How do the Taresians know where Kim came from? How are they able to fake being the ones who “created” him?
And the Taresians were so—I dunno, bland? They’re superficial arm candy and not much beyond that. I found myself actually longing for the more overt sexuality of the scantily clad Aryans in TNG’s “Justice,” and when you can’t even live up to the bottom-of-the-barrel standards of one of TNG’s lowest points, it’s not good.
The conflict with the Nasari isn’t given a proper explanation, as the script is far too busy flinging technobabble fast and furious to even bother explicating it. They’re just there as a boogeyman to provide a reason for Kim to act weird in the opening, but their animus for the Taresians is given no context.
I did like Kim’s dream sequences, and it’s good to actually see his Mom (among the many failures of “Non Sequitur” was never showing or even mentioning Kim’s parents), but this episode just does not cohere on any level.
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido is one of the guests of honor at the virtual Bubonicon 2020 this coming Saturday the 29th of August. Among the events (which can be seen on Zoom, YouTube, or Facebook) will be Keith doing a reading, and participating in panels on writing (with Connie Willis, Walter Jon Williams, Susan Matthews, and Lauren Teffeau) and the use of mythology in fiction (with Teffeau, Rebecca Roanhorse, Reese Hogan, and Chaz Kemp). Keep an eye on the con’s Facebook page for details.
This episode’s first few minutes are AWESOME. And then it’s all downhill from there.
All I remember about this one is I’ve never wanted to rewatch it and usually skip over it when looking at episodes for this season. Nothing about your review suggests this was a bad idea. Maybe if they’d actually made Kim Taresian – now that had potential to spice his character right up.
This episode being a rewrite suddenly makes a lot more sense.
Keith, Kristanna Loken was in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Salvation was technically Terminator 4, but that was when they started leaving the numbers out of the titles.
“The conflict with the Nasari isn’t given a proper explanation… their animus for the Taresians is given no context.”
Isn’t it? I thought it was self-evident — the Taresians prey on other races, and the Nasari are trying to prevent them from hurting anyone else.
The main thing I remember about this episode is Kristanna Loken. On what was supposedly a planet of incredibly beautiful women, she was the one who really lived up to the hype. Otherwise, it’s a silly plot that feels like something out of Gil Gerard’s Buck Rogers, a male-gaze fantasy of a planet of hot, willing women who are too good to be true. It also strains credibility. If they really did reproduce in the absurdly convoluted way they claimed, the odds that any of them actually reached the Alpha Quadrant would be quite low, and the odds that Harry would just randomly come within a few parsecs of their world would be absurdly low (although admittedly that didn’t prevent “The 37s,” “Tattoo,” “Unity,” etc.). Not to mention, how could life on a specific planet evolve a reproductive system that requires access to life forms from other planets? Of course, most of this turned out to be lies, but they’re so implausible that the crew should never have believed them to begin with.
Also, the Taresians’ alleged reproductive method is, if anything, just as predatory as what they’re really doing. Implanting embryos in alien women without their knowledge or consent? That’s practically rape. What if they don’t want a child? What if they aren’t prepared to cope with that responsibility? This is a massive, life-changing event that they would be imposing without consent. So you’d think the Voyager crew would’ve been more disturbed by it than they were. It doesn’t make much sense that this was the “nice” lie to cover up the true story. It’s not nice at all.
The least they could have done to make it more interesting was to try and make it feel like a real choice for Harry. That they actually kill the “husband” was pretty predictable. If nothing else, the actual wedding night would have been a lot more salacious without the murder.
I did get the slightest vibe that if the women weren’t enticing enough, Taymon was willing to help “encourage” Harry to stay.
I wonder what script they had for people who weren’t super excited for space before they got infected. They could hardly limit themselves to space nerds given how hit and miss their method is.
I just felt myself going “Ugh!” all through this one because it was so dumb and mind-numbing and didn’t make any sense. It would indeed have been much more interesting and significant if Kim turned out to actually be an alien. And there was a cringe-scene where Kim is explaining to the alien women how among humans, it’s a man and a woman that get together for marriage. Because of course in Berman’s vision of the 24th century, gays and lesbians don’t exist and if they did they couldn’t possibly marry. Nor could it be possible that a polygamous type of union among humans would exist. Ugh!
@7/garreth: I have to say, I find it fascinating how open the younger generation has become to polyamory as an acceptable option. I didn’t notice any kind of decades-long effort to change people’s minds on the issue, like there was for gay rights; I just suddenly started noticing that people were talking about it as being entirely okay, and it’s like there was this whole social revolution that happened without me noticing. I mean, personally I’ve always thought society’s rigid insistence on monogamy did more harm than good, but I never expected the rest of the culture (or at least a significant segment of it) to come around so quickly, or seemingly so casually.
The one thing that sticks to my mind about this episode was Tim Lynch’s review of it when it was first broadcast. I loved his anger at the writers for not giving the two women pawing at Kim names. They probably appeared in the credits but they are never mentioned in the episode itself.
I can come up with backstory that makes some sense of what’s going on between the Nasari and the Taresians, but that’s not a job that should be thrust on the reader.
The theory, by the way, is that the Nasari and the Taresians co-evolved. The Taresians routinely preyed on the Nasari but also used them as fosterers or surrogates for their own males. Or maybe the way they mutated Kim into one of them was something that naturally happened with them and the Nasari. Like bees making a queen by feeding a larva royal jelly, they could trigger a change that made some Nasari males develop into a Taresian male (in this case, it’s not a gender or species thing, it’s a development of the traits they need to reproduce with Taresian females).
The Nasari rebelled and killed all the males showing Taresian traits. If they’re the same species as the Taresians, there may still be Taresian males appearing among them that they kill. They’re obviously a bit fanatic about killing them. The real question is why they don’t tell every other species they meet why they hate the Taresians.
The Taresians responded by figuring out a way to modify other species the way they once used the Nasari. Taresian biology may make it so they don’t normally have male children of their own. There could have been attempts to create them artificially, but they ran into difficulties. At least some families would have been reluctant to sacrifice children they’d raised. Also, some of the kids would have figured out what was going on and tried to escape their fate. Preying on outsiders removed those difficulties.
Which still doesn’t save the planet-of-the-black-widows storyline, but it does give it some context.
@CLB: I know this might not be the ideal forum to cover such things but I wonder if you would be willing to expand on the thought about monogamy. Is it more of a concern that monogamy itself does more harm than good or do you see harmful inasmuch as society is rigid in its thinking? Thanks!
@8/CLB: Well, speaking for myself personally, while I think I would prefer a monogamous union, I’m totally all for other people having the ability to have a polyamorous relationship if they so choose. I feel like in the last 20 years or so, at least in the LGBTQ community, I’ve found it not uncommon to come across people in open relationships, open marriages, throuples, or even 3+ people in a formal relationship and still being open to additional sexual partners.
It’s the level of the Nasari’s hatred that’s not explained, not to mention the weird specificity of how that animus expresses itself: they attack any ship without provocation that has a Taresian on it, but they don’t seem to ever attack the Taresian homeworld itself. That really doesn’t make any sense….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
grenadier: Thank you! It’s been fixed….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So this has the Voyager tag, but has not been added to the Voyager Rewatch Index
Re: @15
It’s also not visible on the front page of tor.com. The Rewatch link goes to “Rise” still.
@15-16: It should be included in the index/visible now!
@13 Presumably they don’t attack the Taresian homeworld because the Taresians have better ships. Their only option is to attack “Taresian” males before they get to the homeworld.
@13/krad: The Taresians clearly have formidable defenses; a single Taresian vessel incapacitated three Nasari vessels with little difficulty. So it’s pretty obvious why the Nasari don’t attack the planet — they’d lose. They can only go after “Taresians” who are isolated and vulnerable out in space. (Edit: As the previous poster said just before me.)
Although I just assumed that the Nasari’s goal was to quarantine the Taresians rather than exterminating them. As long as they keep to themselves, that isn’t endangering anyone else, but if one of them gets out, they’re a potential threat and have to be eliminated. Presumably the Nasari, as close neighbors of the Taresians, have lost a lot of people to them. They may not know more than “rumors,” as Alben said, but they know that people affected by the Taresian transformation will abandon their lives and never be heard from again, so they quarantine the Taresians to prevent the infection from spreading.
This is worse than Threshold. This aired fairly close to DS9’s Ferengi Love Songs. And what turned out to be one of the weakest DS9 season 5 entries still plays much better than this.
And my biggest problem with Favorite Son is that it’s a Harry Kim episode. A story about Kim being enticed by space sirens. Kim, the character who’s been typified as the resident “virgin”. Right from the beginning, we’re in cliché. Having endless scenes of Kim either being aroused by them or trying to reject their advances doesn’t make for good dramatic content. The story has one goal: titillation (not that I’m opposed to portraying casual polygamous affection on television; I’m probably one of the few who appreciated TNG’s Justice, because that episode was about death penalty and capital punishment; the sexual aspect wasn’t central to the plot).
It doesn’t help that there’s no nuance or complexity to either the Taresians or the Nasari. Any long term ambitions of Kim being permanently changed by Klink and the writers couldn’t salvage this. And even if they did, I doubt they would have done Kim’s new lineage justice in the long run. There are good examples of episodic storytelling out there as there are great examples of episodes with long-term consequences. This is not either one of them.
I get why the writers thought this would be a good idea. It’s been established in the show bible that Kim is the one character with the strongest ties to his family and his home and that he’s the character who’s affected the most by being 70K light years from home. Obviously doing a story about him discovering his life was a construct would be affecting (not unlike Kira being a Cardassian on Second Skin). But of course the network was going to nix it, and it sure didn’t help that Wang never really sold Kim’s loneliness, at least not for me.
The only good thing I got out of this episode was discovering young Patrick Fabian (who I did remember from back in the 1990’s/early 2000’s, because of his recurring role on the Party of Five spin-off Time of your Life). Suffice to say, it’s a surprise when you discover the early roles of people who’ve become better known for Saul and Breaking Bad. Nothing beats uncovering Aaron Paul on X-Files.
You know, a secret genetic urge to return to the Delta Quadrant would explain Kim’s insistence on returning to his original timeline after he found himself on Earth.
(I mean, it wouldn’t explain it well, for all the reasons noted above that this is a silly method of reproduction).
@20/Eduardo Jencarelli: There’s a YouTube clip of Aaron Paul pre-Breaking Bad and X-Files as a contestant on The Price is Right that’s pretty funny:
https://youtu.be/_SEL27xiJGQ
@20 – I remember Patrick Fabian from Saved By the Bell; The College Years, where he played a professor who had a very inappropriate relationship with Kelly. Kelly was my crush, damn it! Also, I’m kinda proud how even young me back then thought it was inappropriate.
And if you’re going to make a habit of draining the life out of people, learn to lock the door.
The most memorable thing about this episode for me was how damn redictable it was. I knew Taymon’s ass was grass as soon as he came on screen with the women all hanging off him. Although I would give one extra warp factor rating because Garrett Wang looks kinda cute with spots
I actually like the scene at the end with Paris & Kim. I think it’s sweet. And it’s funny because ***spoiler***
Paris really does end up becoming Mr. Straight and Narrow family man by the end of the show
Same thing happened in “Second Skin” on DS9 – the writer wanted Kira to actually be a Cardassian. You’d think the writers would realise that those changes won’t fly.
@26/gareth: A great deal of film and TV writing is proposing the most ambitious things you can think of, then dialing it back to what you’re practically able or allowed to do. After all, it’s better to try something that doesn’t succeed than to fail to try something that could’ve succeeded.
garethwilson: Christopher is correct. It never hurts to ask. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
And here we are back with Harry Kim’s traumatic love life. It’s only been, what, six episodes since the last one? Actually, the bevvy of beautiful women wanting to have his babies is almost a minor consideration to him. Even though he’s taken in by the Taresians’ claims, it’s notable that he never seriously considers leaving Voyager. It seems to promise major revelations about him only to hit the reset button at the end, so it makes sense that the major revelations got removed in rewrites. It’s also a shame that a fairly promising plot thread about him starting a fight is kind of reversed by the convenient reveal that the Nasari actually were attacking.
Paris spends a fair amount of time on the surface giving Kim “Some people have all the luck…” looks. He’s curiously absent from the first half of the episode: Several bridge scenes don’t show the helm, and the one time we do see it, someone else is at the controls. But it ends with a nice bonding moment between him and Kim when they both note they wish they were more like the other one.
Chakotay gets to fill in at Ops this week: Apparently there really isn’t a job he can’t do. Tuvok calling Janeway “sir” really is odd: Would he forget? Future film star Kristanna Loken having a smallish role as a Taresian who decides to be oddly loose-lipped around Kim. I remember being surprised to hear she was my age given how long she seemed to have been around for: She can only be about 17 here!
I’m not sure if the “sucking the life out of them” is tongue-in-cheek or not, but in case it’s not, it’s actually explained as them harvesting genetical material for mass reproduction. I guess the fact they need to do that kind of explains the Nasari’s actions: If the Taresians are really so short of males that that they have to alter the DNA of other species to father their children, then stopping any of these fathers reaching the planet would eventually lead to their extinction.
@29 But if all they are doing is harvesting DNA, they don’t need males.
I remember this during first airing: some of my family were in the room and I remember feeling so embarrassed by the plot and acting. I’d never felt embarrassed by Trek before. This is such garbage!
@30: You mean they could clone themselves? Possible, I suppose, although TNG’s “Up the Long Ladder” indicates that’s not a viable long-term solution. They don’t appear to have realised that anyway, given the lengths they’re going through to get males!
*Obligatory disclaimer here that I’m using male strictly as a simplified term of biological sex, not of gender.
@32: Not necessarily cloning. From a reproductive standpoint, the importance of males is that we’ve developed a specialized set of equipment to deliver our half of the DNA. Assuming that “sucking out his DNA,” isn’t just an unusual euphemism for Death by Snu-Snu, it doesn’t seem like they’re specifically harvesting sperm- therefore they must have some other way of combining the DNA, and there’s no obvious reason in that case why they would need male DNA to work with.
@33 I could swear there was a Trek novel that suggested that given the level of science in the future, biofemale human couples could have properly random children with each other, the only caveat being that they’d be biologically female every time due to the lack of Y chromosomes. Or rather genetically female.
Come to think of it, though, it probably wasn’t Trek, considering I’m sure they were only talking about future humans.
By the way, I’ve finally worked out that this page is in the index page, but it’s been added to the top section under the introduction rather than to season three…
@35 – Fixed, thanks!
When I started reading this rewatch review, I couldn’t believe Lisa Klink wrote this. I remember loathing this episode back in the day. It all makes sense now. Klink is a solid writer, but her hands were tied by the requirement of a last minute rewrite, sigh…
Urrrgh… the plot (such as it is) resembles something that a fanfic writer of Red Dwarf would have thrown in the bin. Another one of the WTF episodes that sprinkle throughout Voyagers entire run. Dreadful.
@11/raven1462: “I know this might not be the ideal forum to cover such things but I wonder if you would be willing to expand on the thought about monogamy. Is it more of a concern that monogamy itself does more harm than good or do you see harmful inasmuch as society is rigid in its thinking? Thanks!”
I apparently missed this back in August, or didn’t feel like getting into it then. It’s just that I realized that when relationships broke up because of affairs, what doomed the relationship wasn’t so much the non-exclusivity itself, but the unwillingness to accept it, and the lies and guilt and anger that resulted. It seems to me that if you don’t demand exclusivity from your partner in the first place, then if they do occasionally give into temptation with someone else (which statistics say will happen in the majority of relationships at least once), then they won’t have to lie to you about it or hide it from you. It’s the lies and mistrust that really do the damage, and in an open relationship, there’s no need for them. So it seems to me that the expectation of absolute exclusivity is an artificial conceit that does more harm than good.
And anthropologically speaking, the reason monogamy was invented in the first place was not about emotions or relationships at all, but simply so that men could be sure their children were biologically theirs, for the purpose of passing along their inheritance (which led to the sexist double standard where men considered themselves free to have all the affairs they wanted as long as their wives remained exclusive to them). In modern times, there’s no longer any need for that.
Even from a viewpoint inside the story, it’s pretty obvious from the start that the Taresians are fishy. It’s a decent premise, but the execution left a lot to be desired.
Kim must have been infected with the virus sometime after Darkling and before Favourite Son so it must have lain dormant during Rise. What makes Malia’s lack of interest in Tom all the more amusing is that Kristanna Loken’s a lesbian. All those things Paris says about Kim in the final scene doesn’t apply to Garrett Wang in the slightest.
The Star Trek Fact Files speculated the Nasari were victims of the Taresians mating process. Favourite Son was directed by Marvin V. Rush and Kim’s dream sequences have the same unreal quality Rush brought to The Thaw. Are those mood enhancers one of their methods for stealing DNA from their males?
1: I couldn’t agree more. 20: I think Favourite Son and Ferengi Love Songs were scheduled at the same time in they’re respective seasons. 21: A secret genetic urge to return to the DQ? Didn’t they do that with Odo? 23: What was more inappropriate – that he had an improper relationship with a student or that it was your crush?
29: VGR does love the reset button. I had no idea that Kristanna Loken was only in her late teens here before her most famous role as the female Terminator (a role Jeri Ryan was surely born to play). 31: I felt that way for much of early TNG.
Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeil’s review of this episode on their podcast is one of their more entertaining ones so far. RDM was particularly uncomfortable watching it and rated it a 4 out of 10 which is apparently the lowest score yet he’s given to any episode. And Wang, for once, wouldn’t even give the episode a score, which basically spells out his feelings on it. He did concede it’s his least favorite Harry-centric episode.
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0vdGhlLWRlbHRhLWZseWVycy8/episode/OGQwNTg3MjUtYjBlYS00NmNmLWJlYTItNmVjZDMyMzg0YmY2?hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwirjoG2ocvxAhVGuZ4KHfqeB-gQjrkEegQIJxAH&ep=6
This reminded me very much of The Lorelei Signal, which is not a good thing.
@Krad/Set a course for home:
I agree Kim remaining a Taresian would have been cool. Ditto for Jadzia dying in “Change of Heart,” Tomas Riker replacing a deceased Will Riker, and perhaps Troi permanently losing her empathic abilities. However, in my opinion, Torres remaining fully human would have felt like a step back.
Poor Harry; even if he actually had been Taresian, he would just have ended up belonging to one of the most singularly bland and unappealing alien cultures that Star Trek has ever done. Even the makeup was lazy. Still, if it was the intention all along to make Harry an alien, it would at least give context to that one bizarre line back in “The Cloud” about how he could remember being in his mother’s womb.