Voyager - Favorite Son

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Wow such a bad episode that Harry made Evil Janeway come off as more reasonable.

[Linkara]

My half-ass, cobbled together explanation for why they don't just abduct men is hostile species outside their territory. We've seen them willing to fire on ships containing people with their DNA, so it's likely difficult for them to get out and return with people and it puts their own people at risk. Instead, any expeditions that get out seed the retrovirus around to try to get people to come to them and reduce the risk to their own people.

[Fianna]

I haven't seen the episode, so I'll ask: was it ever brought up that, since these aliens were (supposedly) able to travel to the Alpha Quadrant to impregnate Harry's mom, they might have info on how Voyager can make that same journey? If they had a way to get to Earth and back in less than 70 years, that'd be something our heroes would be very interested. And even if it took them just as long to get to Earth, surely the fact that they'd made the voyage before would mean they might have important info about the route to share with Voyager? Like, "Don't go to this star system; it's full of temporal anomalies that'll mess you up."

As for why they don't just kidnap men, clearly their neighbors aren't happy with young men being lured off to this planet never to return, but that's likely a mild reaction compared to if they were openly kidnapping people. So long as they maintain the pretense that the men are coming to the planet of their own free will, they can probably keep opinions on them divided enough to prevent serious action against them.

[FlynnTaggart]

This episode continues the wonderful trope of people being medically unable to just say what they need to say to avoid conflict, affecting millions if not billions across the universe from advanced civilizations to medieval societies. Seriously though, the entire plot happens because alien nasty nose (something about the alien captain's nose weirds me out) being unable to come out and say "hey one of your people is infected by some space succubuses. Not sure why I had to add a "space" qualifier but anyway stay away from planet New 52 Themyscira. Also we have Wonder Woman and DC comics on our planet."

I'm not even sure why the alien Vamazons needed to go full on praying mantis on their mates. It doesn't seem to be nourishment for the women or their babies, they say "genetic material" which presumably means the stuff down below or possibly blood judging from how the other guy was looking like a actual vampire victim. Doesn't make sense to me atleast, either way its a renewable resource that I'm sure you can find ways of increasing "yield". You don't kill a cow to get its milk, these aliens shouldn't kill a dude to get his "genetic material". Heck without the threat of death I'm betting quite a few guys would volunteer and would probably solve the problem, seems like beef jerky was supposed to married to multiple women, maybe having more men around means you don't have to "squeeze the orange dry" so to speak.

Kinda wonder if the conflict with the alien aliens results in their death by snu-snu mating practices. Might have been luring in men to breed with and even if they were not deadly at the time having a bunch of your reproductive age males going off to go play hanky with some alien species is probably not good for your society thus leading to the conflict between the two species and the Vamazons need to go trick random men.

I know I'm just way too overthinking this though.

[SpacePaladin]

So what, did the Turisians get notes on raising children from the Founders?

At least they have the excuse of being naturally long lived. What was Harry supposed to do, get himself a starship and wait in stasis for decades to get back? It's not like transhumanism (transturisianism?) is a common element in Star Trek, they can't use radical life extension because the actors don't have that either.

[Trinary]

Seems like any Trek episode named something like "Favorite Son" or "Fortunate Son" turn out awful. Yay ironic titles!

[Wolf359]

One good thing about this episode is that even with Harry’s mum showing up, we didn’t get anything to do with his memories of being in her womb...

And it think it was a bit heartless to beat Harry with those wooden sticks. He’s probably related to half of them!

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

And it think it was a bit heartless to beat Harry with those wooden sticks. He’s probably related to half of them!

Frankly I thought it was Harry's own natural fault.

[planescaped]

I have a vivid childhood memory actually of coming out of my room one evening and my dad was sitting in the living room watching this very episode.

It's the only Voyager episode I know I saw when it aired... XD

[Admiral X]

As I watch this and the fact Harry started a fight for seemingly no reason reminds me of the fact that the thing he got a permanent mark in his record over was continuing to have sex with an alien.