ST: VOY episode review: Fortunate Son

[ILikeDeathNote]

In my last Voyager episode review I argued that Threshold wasn't the worst episode of Star Trek ever made. Sure, the science was outright atrocious, and Jeri Taylor reveals that she thinks the ultimate form of "evolved" sentient life is a belly-crawling amphibian, but other than that there was really nothing that made this episode stand out, good or bad. It was just an average episode, something you could watch if nothing better was on.

So, if I think Threshold is nothing special either way, what do I think is the worst episode of Voyager? Or how about the worst episode of Trek period? Well it just so happens to be that they're both one in the same - Voyager's season 3 episode "Favorite Son."

Now, let's start with what may actually be the least offensive part of this episode, its abuse of science. Once again, we have a plot revolving around genetic manipulation; this time, Ensign Whipping Bo...Ensign Harry Kim's DNA is discovered to have alien sequences within it. It was originally believed that Harry was in fact an alien from a race who goes to extreme lengths to spread their seed across the galaxy, but it turns out that these aliens used random technobabble to scramble his DNA to match theirs surreptitiously while Harry was on an away mission. Now I'll admit that I'm far from an expert on genetics - even though my own stories feature a heavy genetic angle, I often have to refer to the best genetics expert sources I have available and deal with what I have. But I at least know enough to know that genetic manipulation is far from a mundane thing, and at the very least Voyager's transport buffers would have likely picked up something when Harry was beamed up from that away mission, to say nothing of subsequent physicals - and Star Trek and Voyager in particular have demonstrated that they're capable of making biological scans to the molecular level, something which they do in this very episode to prove the aliens' fraud. As for the actual realism of the genetic manipulation shown in this episode, I honestly lack the background or the expertise to make a judgment, so take it as you will.

That said, the aliens themselves are utterly ridiculous in terms of realism, but furthermore the lengths in which this episode takes them to further along this garbage plot make them outright offensive (which I'll get into later). The aliens are unable to conceive males, so they need to modify the DNA of males of alien species, and kill them to harvest that DNA. I hope I don't need to explain why this is just plain stupid - in fact it's so stupid from so many angles that it's honestly hard for me to comprehend just how stupid this becomes in its totality at once. Now some of you may argue that certain real-life species such as the praying mantis and black widow spider do this, and are probably the ultimate inspiration of this episode. The difference is that, first of all, such species consume the male only after a genetic exchange has been made, and that the only reason why the male is consumed is to provide sufficient protein for the female to consist on - genetic material have nothing to do with the actual cannibalism. Secondly, the method of genetic reproduction employed by the aliens requires ensnaring an alien male, changing his DNA, and then killing him - eventually, people will become smart enough to avoid you, and indeed the one thing they got right in this episode is that there's another alien species which has in effect placed an interplanetary blockade upon them. And thirdly, well...it's just stupid. Killing the male of the species may work for praying mantises and black widow spiders but its hardly conductive towards repeated attempts at conception - you effectively are forced to place all your eggs in the basket at one time, in a somewhat literal sense.

There are other stupidities with this as well - if this species is only able to produce females, how the &*^#! hell were they able to procreate before contact with alien species?!?! Perhaps at one point they did have males, and they "used them all up," but if that were the case, if they were able to conceive males once, they should be able to conceive males at any given time. TNG's The Perfect Mate (another atrocious episode for many of the same plot-driven reasons as this one) is at least a more realistic portrayal of this dilemma - the female sex slaves (and let's face it, that's what she was, a sex slave, and of course the writers were too stupid and oblivious to realize this) may be far more rare than the male sex slaves, but there are still female sex slaves being conceived every now and then. Besides, if they have the genetic expertise to modify an alien's DNA to suit their needs, ummmmm...can't they just cultivate and harvest the needed genetic material themselves? Atomic Rockets of the Space Patrol, a website put together by "nyrath" of Stardestroyer.net fame, has an excellent discussion about possible alien life forms - his "Ain't Gonna Look Like Mr. Spock" discussion points out many possible DNA configurations for aliens as postulated by Isaac Asimov (and I believe Carl Sagan did extensive studies on this as well) which include such exotic possibilities as silicon-based life; if they can modify a silicon-based life form and a carbon-based life form with equal ease, then you'd think they have the technology to just be able to cultivate whatever they need. Either way, there's no way to guarantee that every form of sentient life they meet will just happen to be carbon-based, so either way, going though all these lengths to capture males (not to mention piss a lot of people off) rather than just cultivating what they need (which they clearly have the technology for) is just...stupid!

But that's far from the stupidest or most offensive thing this episode has to offer, sadly. The main point I was trying to make in my Threshold review was that audiences are more than willing to forgive the egregious abuse of science or logic if the storytelling manages to carry the episode. Threshold's failing was that it had an average plot, so people ignored it and attacked its bad science - in a lot of ways, Threshold becomes a case study and a hard-learned lesson about why telling a mediocre story is a bad thing. Favorite Son takes this to the next level - the plot is simply so bad, it overshadows everything else bad about it, and once again it goes back to the aliens it revolves around.

At this point it should be pretty clear that the aliens of this episode are meant to be this episode's version of the succubus, a mythical creature which thrives on the souls of, to put it bluntly, single and horny men. There are ways to do a succubus story properly, and Star Trek has done succubus stories properly - TOS's That Which Survives is arguably a succubus story done exceedingly well, and Mudd's Women has elements of a temptress/siren story in it with an amazing, beautiful twist in the end. I guess we just can't count on the B&B crew to do it well - TNG's Sub Rosa, written by usual suspects Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga about an Incubus (the male version) just utterly stinks by being just so damn boring - it's pretty much 35 minutes of nothing followed by 5 minutes of crap that actually matter but is still boring. Favorite Son at least manages to avoid being boring, but reaches a level of banality of truly staggering height.

Favorite Son's ultimate failure is that it comes off too much like a cheap fanfic written to be a Trekkie's ultimate wet dream (perhaps too literally). Seriously, to the point where I honestly began searching through every Star Trek fanfic and Usenet archive I could find that would've existed back in 1995/1996 to make sure Berman, Braga and Taylor didn't just plagiarize off of some pathetic nerd. You have Harry Kim, arguably a Mary Sue for the stereotypical Trekkie nerd - he can't get a girlfriend to save his life (once again, sometimes almost too literally), and for the most part he just stands in the background acting stupid and ignored. All of a sudden, he's plopped into a world filled with nothing but beautiful women, with a promise of multiple wives. What then follows is about 15 minutes or so of pure Trekkie sexual wet dream (and at this point we're well past the episode's half-way mark as it is) until Harry discovers that, yes, he might be in trouble after all. So how does he escape? He tricks one of his would-be wives into softcore BSDM play and then runs away until he's finally encircled by women in a scene so cheesy it makes the original BBC production of The Wicker Man weep with envy, and then he gets beamed up.

Thus, the moral of the story is: girls are icky and they want to touch your no-no parts while doing weird interpretive dance, so stay away from them.

If that doesn't convince you that this is the worst episode of Trek, I don't know what will.

In Conclusion: this episode is utter tripe, truly the worst of the worst. It stands against everything Trek is supposed to stand for, and comes off more like a wet dream written up by some poor 7th-grader fanboy whose desperately searching for and answer to why girls keep a 10-foot radius away from him. I just cannot truly express or articulate the sheer awfulness of this episode. Whenever this episode is on, do yourself a favor and go channel surfing. Or read a book. Driving a rusty nail through your right testicle is more satisfying than watching this episode. I'd rather play around with dog turds. I'd rather drink diarrhea straight out of a buffalo's anus. I'd rather eat out the asshole of a roadkill skunk. I'd rather....

*Angry Video Game Nerd fanboys storm in and tell me to quit ripping off the Angry Video Game Nerd*

...just do yourself a favor, and stay away from this episode.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I have to say I haven't actually watched it - but sometimes, it's the directing job, rather than the script or concept, that make something the worst Trek.

The worst Trek that I've seen is STV. What makes the film particularly painful is not the script, but the execution. I blame the director for the wooden acting, the evident lack of flow onscreen, the pacing, et cetera.

Is Fortunate Son truly worse than STV, or can you simply enjoy it if you turn off your brain?

[ILikeDeathNote]

I have to say I haven't actually watched it - but sometimes, it's the directing job, rather than the script or concept, that make something the worst Trek.

The worst Trek that I've seen is STV. What makes the film particularly painful is not the script, but the execution. I blame the director for the wooden acting, the evident lack of flow onscreen, the pacing, et cetera.

Hmmm...I don't intend to do a review on STV since that's been done quite enough frankly, and by better people than I, but it's hard to disagree that at the very least it's the worst Trek film, though IMHO it barely edges out TPM (which manages to be fantastically boring and a rip-off of TOS' The Changeling with a more positive twist) and Insurrection (which as far as I'm concerned is just the TNG crew's version of of STV). Yes, Nemesis is a better movie, and so is Generations.

I think what made STV a failure was pretty much what you said, but I think all of that stems from a feeling that nobody on the cast and crew really took the film seriously. If you're not going to take the film seriously, why bother? Even parodies and comedies are taken seriously by the cast and crew (insofar as to actually bother to care about their craft) and the cast and crew that don't show in their box office performance and scathing reviews, with most of the humor coming off bland.

Sometimes I wonder if STV was meant to be a half self-parody, but they just couldn't make up their minds. Perhaps its a lot like the "worst" James Bond film of all time, In Her Majesty's Secret Service. Ah well.

Is Fortunate Son truly worse than STV, or can you simply enjoy it if you turn off your brain?

Well...(as the point I was trying to make was) I have a hard time trying to turn my brain off, because unlike Threshold, where you can turn your brain off, the problems with Favorite Son (Fortunate Son is a so-so Enterprise episode) are endemic to the plot itself, and the plot just comes off as silly at best, and down right offensive and regressive at worst (depending on how indignant you feel and how badly offended you choose to feel against it)

Like I said, to me anyway, it just came off like a badly-written fetish fanfic.

[Jedi Master Spock]

IMO, TMP is one of the most underrated Trek films. I sometimes feel like it's been dubbed a failure mostly because of its budget (they spent a lot on it). Adjusting for inflation, it actually did better at the box office than TWOK both at opening and overall - just not by enough to make it more profitable.

I like it personally quite a bit. If you ask me to rank out my favorite Trek movies, it will usually make it into the upper half.

[Praeothmin]

I like it personally quite a bit.

So do I.
I always feel like they tried to make it the "2001: Space Odissey" of ST, and partly succeeded.
I feel that it is way too good to compare it to ST V.
I loved how they took their time to re-introduce us to the Enterprise, and how they took their time to let us feel the tensions mounting, etc...

But I also agree that "Favorite Son" isn't that good of an episode.
Honestly, although I will indeed eventually buy the Voyager DVDs, I do feel (without having seen much of Enterprise) that it is the worst of ST.
There are more bad episodes, IMO, then in TOS (seen most of it, and if you take away the old SFX, most stories were good), TNG (yes, utopian, but majority good as series progressed), DS9 (really nice, nice tension, flawed characters, felt more like home).

[ILikeDeathNote]

Hmmm, I guess I was harsh on TMP, come to think of it.

[Mith]

TMP's fatal flaw was actually not in the story or the acting...but in the fact that it took too damn long to do anything. It was like watching an episode of DBZ; they didn't have enough actual material for a whole episode, so they just drew it out as long as possible. This is what the movie felt like to me. Everything took too damn long. It felt as if everything took at least twice as long than it should have. That's the problem with the movie. It's just too drawn out. The story is about on par with a TOS episode and it isn't as bad as some people say it is. It's just that most people fall asleep for anything interesting actually happens. Half the movie was just padding.

Later movies easily correct this by cutting out such silly padding and gave us more action sequence. Despite the sub-par performance of Final Frontier, it wasn't dull...just poorly slapped together. Wrath of Khan was excellent, the Search for Spock was...just...lame (the concept at least), the Voyage Home was excellent (and more in the line of TOS like TMP and Wrath of Khan stories). Undiscovered Country was in my opinion, one of the best. It was clearly in the catagory of one of the best ST movies out there.

The TNG ones suffer however. Generations could have been good, but shoving Kirk in just to kill him off was retarded. They should have just scrapped the idea and just made a new story with Kirk and Picard working together as a main theme for the movie. Not some lame half hearted attempt at the end.

First Contact was great...but the end was dissapointing. The Queen took away any fear you feel for the Borg because they gave them a face. A face that is willing to manipulate, cheat, and lie...which is what the Borg in theory never really cared about. They didn't need to do that. They just dominated you through greater technology and tactics. Other than that, it was a good movie...but the Queen really just ruined it.

Insurrection was bad. The message wasn't all that compelling (what was it, that technology hating pacifists are awesome or that moving civilizations for personal gain is bad? That's the thing, the message is lost in a boring plot). The entire story was contrived and rather pathetic.

Nemesis was good...until rape scene with Troi. After that the story just started falling apart. First, the rape scene is just out of character for Shinzon; he's not the kind of guy who should be doing that to anyone. This was just a shitty dump scene on the entire character. Just because he's evil, it doesn't mean that he's a rapist. Shinzon didn't deserve that. Then when we see Data giving his life, it just falls apart. There was no real emotion put forward by the character to make it feel like this was a tough choice. Why can't we get a man tear? Why not some dialogue explaining the lesson? Then afterwards, we see them toasting to Data...but it lasts about fifteen seconds. Why? You just killed of a 7+ year main character who served a prominent role in the last three God damn movies. The scene starts out touching, but just falls apart because it's just over too quick. Despite that, the inner story was really, really good. Even dropping the rape scene would have bumped this movie up...because that's just such a disturbing and horrible thing that Shinzon just...wouldn't really do. There would have been a hundred different ways that would have made for a mental assualt. Like her sensing abilities making Shinzon uncomfortable, so he has his Viceroy mentally assualt her to put her out of comission. Or perhaps a better idea would be to appear in her mind professing his love and offering her great things, but respecting her rights. Why don't these writers understand that evil people do not rape the ones they love? Logically, Shinzon would have been trying to win her over, not rape her. Throughout the movie he's shown to be infatuated with her...but he does something that most people wouldn't even consider doing...even those with few morale qualms. It would have made it a lot more interesting when Troi used that psychic link to backstab Shinzon by giving the Enterprise the advantage to attack and disable the ship.

Sadly, this is not to be.

[ILikeDeathNote]

Nemesis was good...until rape scene with Troi. After that the story just started falling apart. First, the rape scene is just out of character for Shinzon; he's not the kind of guy who should be doing that to anyone. This was just a shitty dump scene on the entire character. Just because he's evil, it doesn't mean that he's a rapist. Shinzon didn't deserve that. Then when we see Data giving his life, it just falls apart. There was no real emotion put forward by the character to make it feel like this was a tough choice. Why can't we get a man tear? Why not some dialogue explaining the lesson? Then afterwards, we see them toasting to Data...but it lasts about fifteen seconds. Why? You just killed of a 7+ year main character who served a prominent role in the last three God damn movies. The scene starts out touching, but just falls apart because it's just over too quick. Despite that, the inner story was really, really good. Even dropping the rape scene would have bumped this movie up...because that's just such a disturbing and horrible thing that Shinzon just...wouldn't really do. There would have been a hundred different ways that would have made for a mental assualt. Like her sensing abilities making Shinzon uncomfortable, so he has his Viceroy mentally assualt her to put her out of comission. Or perhaps a better idea would be to appear in her mind professing his love and offering her great things, but respecting her rights. Why don't these writers understand that evil people do not rape the ones they love? Logically, Shinzon would have been trying to win her over, not rape her. Throughout the movie he's shown to be infatuated with her...but he does something that most people wouldn't even consider doing...even those with few morale qualms. It would have made it a lot more interesting when Troi used that psychic link to backstab Shinzon by giving the Enterprise the advantage to attack and disable the ship.

Sounds like someone's a big Confused Matthew fan.

That guy could write circles around Berman and Braga, and Nemesis would've been a great film.

[l33telboi]

I honestly didn't mind Nemesis all that much. It's not stellar, but I have watched it more then once so there's definitely something there that appeals to me. The spacebattle looks great for one. Insurrection on the other hand, first time I tried to watch it I ended up pressing the stop button after a while to go do something else and then never pressed play again. Then a year or two ago I decided to re-watch it, but it's just so damn boring and inconsequential that I can’t understand how someone could like it.