Written By: Lisa Klink
Directed By: Marvin Rush
Rating: * (out of 5)
That�s also a little bit how I feel about �Favorite Son,� no matter how much the plot changes it still feels as though nothing ever happened. It started out as a great drama with Harry believing he was impregnated into his mother by these aliens and then compelled to return to his home planet, but it then changes into a ridiculous episode with nowhere to go, the third such episode in a row this season.
Once the plot of Harry being impregnated into his real mother is gone there is nowhere else for �Favorite Son� to go. We learn very little about Harry as a result of these events. There are no exciting scenes, hardly any action, we knew Harry would return no matter what happened, the story is slow, there is no conflict for Harry and the episode seems too highly interested in showing as many beautiful but pathetic acting women as possible.
Both characterization and continuity are squandered in �Favorite Son.� Harry welcomes the beautiful Terasian women without even a mention of his girlfriend Libby (�Non Sequitur�), a point which hits two birds with one stone! You�d think Harry would hold out on his girlfriend! If Voyager gets back to Earth and Harry and Libby get back together then I�ll be appalled.
I really don�t understand the motives for the Terasian women. They want the genetic material to have children and yet they know about sexual pleasures. So why do they bother with the ritual? Why don�t they just mate like normal creatures? And we are never given a good look at Terasian life, so it appears as though the entire population is bent towards getting alien men. It doesn�t make for a very interesting species, nor a very two dimensional species. If we�d have seen more of Terasian life we could at least see the need for these women to go to the extreme lengths they do. And what does happen to Terasian men if they are born?
I�m also not happy how Doc apparently believes that Harry really has been born with alien DNA and never picked up, which is laughable, and then extends this by saying that he later finds that the DNA isn�t really Harry�s, which is even more laughable. Also Voyager somehow didn�t detect the field which later goes up around the planet? Yeah, right. As you can see �Favorite Son� continues to bury itself deeper into oblivion.
The last scene of �Favorite Son� continues the wonderful Harry and Tom relationship that was so strained earlier this season in �The Chute� with Harry saying he wants to be more like Tom and Tom saying he wants to be more like Harry. A very nice scene, but *this* is what �Favorite Son� heads towards? So what was all the other crap about then?
I really have little else to say; Season 3 was going good until this recent run of episodes. I cannot stress enough that �Favorite Son� is the most useless Voyager episode ever made. This was below disappointment because I never even had any expectations.